Cole and Caroline's PC Adventure: August 2015

Santo Rodeo

Here in Vanuatu there are two holidays one week apart from each other, Chilrdren’s Day and Independence Day. Celebrations start on Children’s Day and last throughout the week leading up to Independence Day. During this time in Luganville there are parades, feasts, a big celebration in the park, and a Rodeo. Children’s Day was on a Friday this year. We were at our site and we met Smol Cole and Smol Caroline (more on that later…). The next day we headed to town to go to the Rodeo and spend the weekend. At the rodeo we saw barrel races, kids bobbing for apples, wild horseback riding and bull riding. We have never been to a rodeo so it was an exciting new experience! There were lots of people there! We ate sausage dogs and had a good time watching the action!

Aore

We normally head back to site on Sunday, but this time Kate was coming back with us to help with our world map and we decided to stay in town an extra night before heading back. We went to catch a boat to another little island called Aore at aroud 11:00, spent a lazy Sunday hanging out by the pool reading and chatting and then headed back for a busy few days of map painting on Monday!

Brian was chilly

World Map and Vanuatu Maps

We got settled in and showed Kate around on Monday afternoon and then got to work once the sun started to go down. We cleaned the wall and then set up the laptop, generator and projector and got started tracing the world onto the wall! We had some helpers and it didn’t take long. On Tuesday we got started on the painting at around 9:00 a.m. and worked until about 4:00p.m. with just a small break for lunch! We made some good progress and then headed to our families house to eat and story with them. On Wednesday we worked all day again and finished painting the world that afternoon! That evening we got the generator and projector out again and traced a map of Vanuatu. The next morning we took a photo of our finished world and then caught a truck into town for Independence Day! Cole and I finished the map project over the next couple of weeks. We painted and labeled a map of Vanuatu, labeled all the countries in the world, painted and labeled a map of Santo, Cole added a bamboo border and the title, we painted the wall white, did some touch ups and now it is finished and looks great (if I do say so myselfJ)

They promised not to let me fall...I was still terrified!

Independence Day

On Vanuatu’s 35^th Independence Day it was raining and gloomy. Cole and I walked around the park for a while, which was set up with tons of stalls selling food and snacks, went to rest at Brian and Kate’s and then headed back to the park that afternoon. We watched the Monkey Boys (a Ni Van comedy group that the locals LOVE!) They are kinda funny from what we can understand--they speak in really fast Bislama and with pretend voices depending on their skit so it’s difficult to catch everything--, but the best part is watching the locals literally fall down on the ground laughing! There was supposed to be fireworks show that night but it didn’t happen for some reason so we just walked around, ate, the guys drank kava and then we called it a night!

The crowd watching The Monkey Boys!

Library

As I have said in the past, the volunteer before us, Jessica, worked hard and created a great library here in Narango. She got books donated, organized them and painted the library. It looked great when we got here! Since then we found out that another previous volunteer, Dane, had gotten a TON of books donated from the US and Jessica had signed up for a portion of them to come to Narango. So, Cole went and picked up the 16 boxes of books from town one day and brought them back here to Narango. There were also two other boxes of books from a different donor already here at the school that needed to be unpacked. So, when we finished the world map project we unpacked all 18 boxes, organized them and then re-organized the library a little in order to accommodate all of the new books! Now the shelves are nearly all the way full! There is a fiction section that is divided into Easy, Medium, and Hard books, a Young Adult section, an Adult section, a section full of Teaching Materials and Resources, and a nonfiction section that is separated by categories. Jeffrey came to visit this past week and helped! So now Jessica, Cole, Jeffrey and I have created an awesome library FULL of great books and resources. Now, I am trying to get our Headmistress to hire a librarian to come to the school for one hour each afternoon to take a class each day to the library and give the people from the community a chance to come and use it as well. She is on board and says she has someone in mind. Fingers crossed!

Jeffrey’s Visit

Jeffrey came this past Monday afternoon. When he got here we had some lunch and then spent the afternoon working in the library. He and Cole went for kava and then we made the steaks that Jeffrey had brought from town. On Tuesday we had big plans of finishing the library and then taking Jeffrey to the sink hole, but it rained all day and ruined our plans L So, instead we finished the library, Jeffrey and I made lunch, Cole cut Jeffrey’s hair, we hung out with Erikson all day, walked around the village, went to have kava and then went to our families house for dinner. I wish the weather would have been better and we would have gotten to do more, but we still had a good time with Jeffrey and love having visitors!

Having a shell of kava!

The next few weeks

Tomorrow we are flying to the island of Ambae. We will be there for a little over a week. Monday-Friday we will be attending a Peace Corps Training of Trainers camp called GLOW/BILD (Girls Leading Our World/Boy in Leadership Development). On Saturday we are heading to some bungalows that are a truck ride way to stay the night and then on Sunday we are hiking a dormant Volcano called Manaro. On Monday we are taking a boat to another island, Maewo, to visit with our firend Lea for a few days! On September 3^rd PC is flying me to Vila for a VAC (Volunteer Advisory Committee) meeting. Since I will already be there for VAC, they are letting me extend my stay and attend a digital library training (Cole is meeting me in Vila to attend the digital library training as well…thanks to several awesome donors who made his trip possible!) We will be flying back to Santo on September 10^th.

Life Update

When we get back to Santo on the 10^th our lives will be changing a little bit....Due to several issues at the school in Narango we will be moving to another site called Ebinezer, about a 15 minute truck ride away, for the last school term. We will be there until we come home in December and then we will be moving to Luganville to work at Santo East School for our second year of service. Ebinezer is our friend Gabriela’s site, but she unfortunately had to go home for some medical issues. We are hoping the she will be coming back and going back to Ebinezer once we move to Luganville. If she ends up coming back sooner, which we would LOVE because we miss her, Peace Corps will reevaluate and our plans will change change again! But for now, we are going with what we have most recently been told which is that we are headed to Ebinezer mid-September. Since we will only be there for a few months we won’t be doing much teaching. Instead, we will be working to organize their library (they have about 16 boxes of donated books too from the same donor that our Narango books came from), painting a world map, doing some literacy workshops and getting started with a community center project that hopefully Gabriela will finish. We are sad to leave Narango and will miss our family, Erikson, and the children and people from our village, but we simply cannot do the work that we came to do here at this school. Our cat, Pepper, will be coming with us to our new site. Here is a bulleted list of some of the reasons for our departure.

Student attendance: On average there are anywhere between 30 to 45 out of 127 kids here each day, sometimes less.
Teacher attendance: On average there are anywhere between 2 to 3 out of 5 teachers here each day, sometimes less. Sometimes there is only one or no teachers here and school is just cancelled for the day.
Community/School Issues: The community, the teachers, and the school chairman do not always see eye to eye. From what we have heard the chairman has the ability to shapeshift into animals and has been coming to the school disguised as different animals and putting cursed items all about the school because of his issues with the teachers/school/community. A chicken flew into our hut one day about a month ago and we have since been told that it was not a chicken, it was in fact the chairman and he put two cursed rocks under our bed. Our brother, who we have recently been informed has the ability to see into the past and future, found them under our bed and gave them to our mama so she could burn them.
Misused/Stolen Vatu: It came out a few weeks ago that a total of over 100, 000 vatu (1,000 dollars) has been stolen from the school. One previous teacher, one current teacher and the chairman are among the accused. We have heard a total of about 10 different stories about who did it and how from different community members. The current accused teacher ran away for a bit. When he came back some men from the village came looking for him several different times to talk to him or beat him up. He never got beaten up and he has currently run away again (to his village as he is not from Narango). The community has gotten together to raise back some of the stolen money, but not all of it. For a while there was talk of the school closing due to this issue. We have recently heard that it is in the process of getting worked out and that the school probably will not close.

Us and our Narango family

Cole and our little brother, Junior, after they made covers out of duct tape for their bush knives!

Smol Cole and Smol Caroline Update

We met smol Cole and Smol Caroline on the same day, Children’s Day. Cole was 11 days old and Caroline 10. Cole was wide awake so we both held and cuddled him Caroline was fast asleep so we didn’t hold her at that time. We let her rest and told her we would come back another time. We have been back a few more times to see her but each time she has been asleep! Girlfriend loves her sleep! The last time we went, this past week, I picked her up to hold her even though she was sleeping. She didn’t care at all and barely stirred! So, we still haven’t seen her awake! They are both a little over a month old now and doing great! We are glad that our new site is close by so that we can walk the hour in a half or so to visit them (and our family!).

Cole and Smol Cole

Me and Smol Caroline

Erikson and his helping hands

Erikson is our 4 or 5 year old (sometimes people here in Vanuatu are not certain of their ages or the ages of their children. So, when we ask about people’s age we are often given a ballpark number… like oh he is 23, 24 or 25) next door neighbor that lives with his grandmother who is a teacher at my school. When he was a baby one of his eyes was eaten out by ants and we think he may have a slight learning disability. He doesn’t have much in the way of toys and things and he doesn’t usually go to school (we think because of school fees) but that doesn’t stop him from always always smiling and being totally full of life! He is super sweet, very funny, and LOVES to hang out with us and help us in any way he can. Any time he sees us heading to our water pipe to fetch water he runs over to lend a helping hand! He has also recently helped up with painting the map, burning trash, washing dishes, and cutting Jeffrey’s hair-among other non pictured things! He also loves “tea blo US” which means tea from the US and is otherwise known as hot cocoa, which was sent to us in a package from the US! He keeps us laughing and entertained and is one of the people here who have taught me that you don’t need much to be happy!