#newlife

So we have been official PC volunteers for about a month now. We have spent some time in our village and some time in Luganville town. It is fall here now and our village is on top of a high hill so the mornings and nights have actually been pretty chilly! We even sleep with a blanket and I sometimes wear leggings or a light sweater! Some nights Cole makes a fire and boils water for me so that I can add it to my bucket bath water to make it a bit warmer. He’s the best! We have had some good days at site and some really hard days. We have a WONDERFUL host family here, most of the people in the village are kind and welcoming, we have a great view and there is plenty of work to be done! All great things! However, there are definitely challenges, like…no running water and electricity, lots and lots of mud, bugs and other critters, island time, island organization or lack thereof, lots of downtown with not a lot to do, no set schedule yet, and of course missing our family and friends and Murr. We expect many of these things to get better with time, we expect a lot of ups and downs and we expect a lot of time needed to get used to village life! Here are some happenings, observations, feelings, and information…It’s a lot since I haven’t posted anything in a while!!

·         We were supposed to be taking a ship from Vila to Santo on Tuesday April 21^st that was scheduled to leave Vila at 6:00 pm and arrive in Santo at 8:00 pm on Wednesday April 22nd. It was decided, however, on Tuesday morning that the ship would no longer be going to Malekula and Santo as planned, but would be going to Tanna instead to deliver relief supplies there. So, plan B. PC books us flights instead for the following day. We were taking the ship so that all of our heaps of stuff could travel with us as it is WAY cheaper to carry things on a ship than a plane. Due to the price we still needed to ship most of our things and would not be able to take them with us on the flight. So, we decided what was important to us and what we wanted to have with us for the first week at site because there was no telling at that point when a ship would be arriving with our things. A little annoying, but whatevs! This gave us one more night in Vila, which gave me the opportunity to get my nose re-pierced AND gave us two nights in Luganville after a hard first 5 days at site to retrieve our belongings from the ship once it came!

·         My village, Narango, where we live and spend most of our time, consists of between 400 and 500 people. Their local language is called Farsaf (sp) but most people speak Bislama. They tell us all the time that we should learn Farsaf and that Jessica, the volunteer before me, could speak it. We have learned some basic words and I guess will learn more as time goes on. We keep telling them that we want to get really really good at Bislama first and then we will start working on local language! We get stared at A LOT and we are pretty sure we get talked about in Farsaf A LOT. We think people are glad we are here, they are interested in us and they ask us a lot of questions about America. We have had the same conversation about 145 times now I would guess, but at least it’s good Bislama practice! We get asked about where we live, if we know Jessica, if we were at the place where 9-11 happened, how many people live in the US, what the military is like, how far it is from Vanuatu and if we have the same food as they do, and other questions like that. The pikinini (kids) call out to us all the time when we are walking through our village or to Cole’s village or around the island to different places. They just yell and say the same thing over and over no matter how many times we respond! Some of them run over to us and touch us or follow us for a while. In our village they mostly call out our names over and over again, they call me Karolean. When we are walking around other places they call out either “WHITE MAN, WHITE MAN” or “PIS KOP, PIS KOP” (Peace Corps in Bislama). It’s always like a little adventure when we leave our hut and go anywhere!

·         Cole’s village is about the same size. We haven’t spent too much time there yet. Cole has walked there 4 or 5 times and I have gone with him a few of those times. He has gone to his school and we have eaten with our host family there. He will start going there more regularly once school starts back, and I will go there with him once a week. They seem glad to have us, but a little less prepared for us as they have never had a Peace Corps volunteer.

·         One Saturday morning we worked on a water project with our brother Junior, our mama and some other people from our village. We had heard a lot about this, but still really had no idea what was going on. Understanding Bislama is still a bit difficult at times. All we knew was that a water pipe was being brought into the village from a water source a ways away and we were going to help get it there. We walked with Junior and some other Ni Vans down the road in the village for a little bit and then took a sudden turn into the thick bush. With no path at all, we walked through the bush for about 5 minutes before running into a large group of people who were already there working. I was almost immediately handed a large bush knife by some of the ladies in the village and told to come and help them clear a path with said bush knife. I told them that I had never used a bush knife before, so they taught me how and I helped them clear a path through the bush. They was a small boy, about 4 years old, who was the son of one of the women I was working with. His name is Jimson and he too had a bush knife and was helping. Embarrassingly enough, he was WAY better at using it than me. Cole was working behind me helping with burying the pipe in the ground after a hole was dug along the path we had cleared with our bush knives. It was hot and sweaty and we got very dirty, but it felt good to be helping. We worked for a few hours and then took about a two hour lunch break where we sat in the bush and Cole and I ate something out of a Tupperware that our host mom handed us. Neither of us were sure what it was, but we ate it all the same. After our very long lunch break, we worked for another hour or so before stopping in the middle of the bush. We were told that another group of people from our village would pick up where we left off on Monday. The pipe needed to be buried in the bush so that it won’t get destroyed. When the pipe project is finished it will be great because right now we use water in rain tanks, which are thankfully full at the moment, but may not be forever because the dry season is coming. The water pipe will bring water to a spigot that will come from a natural water source.

·         That same Saturday afternoon our host family came over to our house to help us build a stand for our solar panel, a shelf in our swim house, a bamboo fence around our little garden, and a little hut for washing dishes in. It was a very productive day.

·         One Sunday we had walked together to Cole’s village (about 45 min) where we talked with several people there and ate lunch. They were having lunch all together in a building next to the church that day in honor of a baby who was born the Tuesday before. The lunch was okay but the juice they gave us to go with the lunch was not. It was served to us out of large buckets and looked and tasted a bit like urine. We decided it may in fact have been urine. We’ll never know for sure. After that lunch we went to our host family’s house and had another smaller lunch with another round of disgusting juice, but this time it was green so thankfully it could not have been urine, right?

·         We headed into town after 5 nights at site, because we got word that the ship would be coming in with our stuff. Gabriela had arranged for a truck to pick her up first in her village (about an hour and 25 min walk from us) and then pick us up on the road on the way into town. We were supposed to be ready and waiting at the road between 6:30 and 7:00. We walked down the steeeeeep hill from our village to the road leading to town and got to the spot where we were to be picked up at a little before 7:00. The mosquitos were TERRIBLE and, of course, we had forgotten bug spray. We had to pace around to keep the mosquitos from eating us alive. We waited and paced and waited and paced for about 45 minutes, until we couldn’t take it any longer and just started to walk. We figured they wouldn’t be as bad if we were walking and the truck could just pick us up wherever we were. We walked for a little over an hour before the transport finally picked us up! We ended up spending two nights in town instead of one because the ship was supposed to come at 1:00 on Wednesday but did not arrive until 4:00 which was too late to take a transport to Gabriela’s site and then to ours before dark. We spent both nights at Kate and Brian’s house, saw all of the Santo volunteers, ate plenty of American food and used plenty of internet!

·         Friday, May 1st was not a good day. It was Labor Day here in Vanuatu so there was no school. We got up and I decided it would be a good day for washing clothes. I was outside putting powder soap and water in a bin with our clothes so that they could soak for a bit before we scrubbed, rinsed and hung them to dry. I came back in and Cole was sitting at our little table holding my phone and I could tell immediately that something was wrong. I asked what it was and he said “why don’t you come and sit down and have some coffee”. I didn’t. I asked again what was wrong and he told me that I had a message from our country director, Keith, to call my grandfather. I knew immediately. I called Poppy and he told me that Annma had died in his arms that morning at 11:00 am. After talking to Poppy, I talked to my parents and Amanda and Jen. I cried a lot and wished so very badly that I was in the US. I called Keith and asked if Cole and I could go into town on Monday and stay for a few days so that I could talk to my family using the internet when they were all together for the services. He approved two nights in town at a hotel with per diem for both Cole and myself. Peace Corps did not have to do that for us and I will always always be so thankful and appreciative for it. The two nights we spent it town were really great. We stayed at a hotel with a fan and internet, I got to talk to my family several times and we got to talk to Cole’s family and several friends. I appreciate so much all of the messages from friends (PC and back home) and family during that time. It was hard being so far away and those messages really did help. Thank you.

·         One Sunday we were supposed to go to church with our family but it was cancelled because there was a ded in our village (a ded is what they call it when someone passes away). She was a women with 6 kids, the youngest in class 2. Our brother Junior came over that morning to tell us not to go to church and to go to their house instead. We thought first that the funeral would be that afternoon but later found out that it would be the next day because people were walking to our village from other villages and would not make it there by that afternoon. So, school was cancelled for Monday so that everyone in the village could go to the funeral. It is custom here for the body of the ded to go into the house for a day and for friends and family to come and visit the body in the house and offer condolences. The women had died at the hospital in Luganville (we still aren’t sure from what. We have heard diabetes, high blood pressure and asthma) and her body had just arrived via truck when we were walking back to our house from our family’s. We could hear people screaming and crying long before we could see them. We walked up to the house to offer our condolences since we would be in town the next day and would miss the funeral. We did not go inside to see the body. We stayed for about 15 minutes, standing awkwardly in the rain watching people scream and cry. It was very sad. Once we got back to our hut we could still hear them through the afternoon and night. Some of the family had brought a cow that they had killed and others would be killing a pig for the friends and family to share and eat over the coming days. The family will not go to the garden to work and will not bathe or shave for 10 days. They will eat together, spel (rest and stay at home) and then have a big kakae (feast) on the 10^th day after her death.

·         Once in the back of a truck on our way back to site from town after Annma’s passing, we were asked by one of the 13 people back there with us if we had ever eaten snake. Cole told him no but that we had eaten frog before. An older man with very hairy ears and very few teeth was intrigued and asked us if we had tin frog in the US because he wanted to try it. We told them that no, we sadly do not have tin frog in the US. They eat a lot of tin fish here. We try to stay away, as it is quite disgusting.

·         We had a chicken in our bush kitchen for a while. She had laid 7 eggs and spent a lot of time laying on them in there. I was terrified every time I was in there that she was about to pounce on me. She was there when we went into town to get our bags off the ship, but was gone once we got back two days later. We haven’t seen her or the chicks. There are LOTS of other chickens and roosters that hang around our house all the time. The roosters start to crow around 5 am. It’s a real treat. They do eat the poisonous milpods though, so I’m cool with them hanging around.

·         Our cat, Pepper, is both amazing and terrible. She is kind of cute, she’s sweet and she keeps the rats away. BUT, she also constantly brings live lizards into the house and tortures them until they are dead and then eats them and the crushing bones of a lizard is not exactly a pleasant sound. She has brought in a dead rat once that Cole swept into our dustpan and deposited outside in the bush. And she has also decided that she likes to poop on our concrete floor under our spare bed in a corner. I assure you it is not easy or fun to clean cat poop off of a concrete floor! She likes to climb on the bamboo that is our ceiling and loves to jump in and out of the house through the opening between our walls and our roof at all hours of the night. Cole isn’t a huge fan, but he tolerates her and I even catch him snuggling her or letting her sleep in his lap from time to time.

·         One afternoon we decided to walk to the closest beach to us and see what it was like. The walk takes 1 hour 20 minutes. Clouds started to move in about half way through the walk, but we continued onward anyway. We finally got there and laid out my lava lava to sit on and shared a delicious pack of cookies that we had been saving. Then, about 5 minutes in to our little beach adventure the sky opened and it started to torrential down pour. We moved under a tree first but we were still getting soaked so we ran to seek shelter at the school you have to walk through to get to the beach. We stayed under the shelter for about 10 minutes until we realized the rain wasn’t going anywhere and walked back in it. Nice little Saturday.

·         On Mother’s Day we went to church with our family. Before church started a women came around with flowers and baby powder and was putting flowers in all the mama’s hair and baby powder on either side of their chin, as it is custom here to put baby powder on someone when they are being celebrated. She came and put a flower in my hair and baby powder on me, too. I thought this was odd since and I am not a mother, but I just smiled and went with it. After church we went to our family’s house to have a Mother’s Day lunch with them. When we got there our brothers and dad stood up and made a little speech and asked our mama and myself to stand up. They gave us both a salu salu (a Hawaiian lei) and they gave me a used white towel as a Mother’s Day gift. They were so sweet and so excited about it. I thanked them a lot but told them that I am not a mother and do not have any pikinini yet. They told me that it doesn’t matter and that I am a mama because I am married. So, I accepted my old towel and my salu salu gratefully and enjoyed my first Mother’s Day lunch with our family! I also insisted on Cole being super sweet to be for the rest of the day, as it was my first Mother’s Day ;)

·         The Monday after our beach adventure and my first Mother’s Day we decided to venture out again and walk to Gabriela’s site to visit her. That walk is only a little longer and wasn’t bad at all. No rain or clouds! We had a nice visit with Gabriela. She made me delicious non instant coffee from her fancy coffee maker, Cole made spaghetti and we watched Horrible Bosses 2. It was a good day. Also, a truck picked us up on our walk back before we had to climb our last hill which made it an even better day!

·         One afternoon, after a walk to Cole’s village we were back in Narango and had decided to go to the 10 day kakae (big feast 10 days after someone passes away) that was going on because of the women in our village that had died the week before. We were sitting and chatting with some men and, sadly, had to burst their bubble big time and tell them that Rambow is not a real person and is, in fact, an actor in a movie and that the US military is not made up of thousands of Ranbow’s. They were all very disappointed.  

h    The other day we were laying in our hammocks reading when we heard something outside. We live on school  grounds so it is not unusual for people to come by now and then or walk though the school to get to their garden. This particular man had a bush knife in one hand and a large stick in the other. Cole went and greeted him and asked him what he was doing and he told us he was looking for a chicken to kill for dinner that night. There was nothing to do but say, "ohhh ok" and then watch as he chased his dinner. Normal little afternoon. 

           We decided to come into town for a long weekend this weekend, as our schools are on break and all of the teachers at both of our schools have gone back to their villages for the break and are not around. We came in on Thursday and will go back on Monday. School will start the following Monday, May 25^th (A GREAT DAY IN MY OPINIONJ).

·         We got into the truck to bring us to town at around 7:15 am on Thursday after taking Pepper to our host families to spend the weekend and waiting for about 45 minutes (it was scheduled to leave at 6:30). We were driving through our village when we noticed several people crowed around to the left of the road. At first we just started to wave and a few people waved back and smiled. Then we realized that everyone was looking at one thing at that several of the mamas and children were crying or screaming. As the truck inched further up the road we realized that two men with their shirts off and giant sticks in their hands were having a little Thursday morning brawl. The truck stopped so we could watch the action. Several other men were pulled the two shirtless stick holding men off of each other while they all yelled at each other. Once the men were pulled away, our truck pulled away too and we wet on about our day. We will try to find out when we get back what the brawl was all about.

·         Tuesday was our friend Brian’s birthday and Thursday was Gabriela’s so we decided to cook dinner at Brian and Kate’s house on Thursday night to celebrate. Cole made a delicious meal and Hannah and Sam both came over. Gabriela hadn’t been feeling that great since lunch time and had been complaining about her back and stomach hurting. About an hour after dinner she started to throw up and proceeded to throw up about 15 to 20 times. The PC doctor that we were in touch with suggested we take her to the hospital. So, Kate, Hannah and I rode with her in a cab and Cole and Brian rode their bikes and met us there. The nurse man that was there was wearing board short and flip flop and was clearly unsure about what to do a lot of the time and was asking us for our opinions or approval on what to do or what he decided he was going to do. He gave her a shot that was supposed to stop her from throwing up. She threw up about 5 more times, he gave her some ibuprofen and a shot of an antibiotic and put her on an IV for a bit. About 2 hours later Gabriela said she was feeling better so he took the IV out, she threw up once more and we went home. Thankfully, she is feeling much better today. We think it may have been food poisoning, but who knows. Quite a little adventure!

     On Saturday we went to Million Dollar Point, which is a place where a bunch of WWII stuff was dumped by Americans after the war and has been there ever since. Some of it is washed up on the beach and some of it you have to snorkel to see. The visibility wasn’t great that day and it was really windy, but we did see some cool stuff and we collected some neat old pieces of Cocoa Cola bottles, sea glass and other little trinkets.

     On Friday night Cole went out for kava with some of the other Santo volunteers (I stayed in and read Harry Potter and watched Friends J) and they met some European guys who were sailing around the world and were here in Vanuatu for a little while. They asked if we wanted to go sailing with them on Sunday and we all gladly accepted their invitation. We met them at 8:30 a.m. on Sunday and left around 9:30 after the sail boat captain took us out to the sailboat two at a time on his dingy. We sailed around the island of Aora all day and got back around 4:30. It was really fun except for the 20 minutes or so where it was a bit rough and I thought for sure the boat was going to flip over any second! For lunch we had some pasta that the captain whipped up on board, some fish Sam’s boyfriend Batu caught, some boiled corn and some other snacks that people brought along. Most of us had never been sailing and these guys really seemed to know what they were doing it was awesome of them to take us out for the day for free! Good day!

·         We were very sad to be missing Crawford and Mcrea’s wedding this weekend and wished that we could have been there! We thought of you guys all weekend and love you both very much! BEST WISHES! We can’t wait to hear all about it and see pictures!!!!

·         There has not been much to do yet in terms of our “jobs” because when we got here there were only a few weeks left before the end of the first term and a two week Holiday. We have been observing in classrooms some, meeting people in the community and getting settled in. After the two week break we plan to assess all of the children at both Cole’s and my schools and then we will work with small groups based on the results of those assessments. I will also be taking classes into the library that was built at my school by the previous volunteer. It is a great library and is sadly not being used at all. We hope to help build a library at Cole’s school and we will also be co-teaching some. It will be so nice to have a schedule and regular things to do. Right now we do a lot of reading, watching movies on the laptop which we charge using our solar panel, napping, I write in my journal, Cole cooks in our bush kitchen, we play cards, and we go to our host families house for dinner every couple of days. We have a lot of down time and it can get very boring at times. BUT, we are taking it one day at a time and doing what we can to stay busy, be happy and eventually be helpful! Thanks for reading and keeping up with us! Also, as always, THANK YOU SO VERY MUCH for the letters, cards and packages. As I have said before, they are an amazing treat and we appreciate them so so so much! 

      Here are a few photos of Pepper, the view from our "backyard", million dollar point and two from our sailing adventure! I have a lot more that I would love to share, but these 5 took over an hour to upload and my patience is now shot! I'll try to post more on facebook!