Update in August :)

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!  

Enjoying his tea blo US 

Here are a few other random pics... As always, thanks for reading and keeping up with us! :) 

Cole did a workshop in his community! There was a great turn out and it went really well! 

Twins!

Cooking steaks in the bush kitchen! 

Cole thought Pepper was chilly...

baby rat

A decaying rat, our first visitor, a giant hole, a couple of namesakes, and MORE

We meet the Director of PC, Carrie Hessler-Radelet

A PC director has never come to Vanuatu before, so her arrival and stay here was a big to do! She was only here for two nights, one of which she stayed in Port Vila and one she stayed on Nguna Island, which was one of our training villages. While she was here she came and spoke to us PC volunteers, then there was a big ceremony where she presented the Women of Courage Award to the award winner in Vanuatu. The US Ambassador to Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands was also here for the ceremony. There was a custom dance, several speeches, a display of the work some of the current volunteers are doing here in Vanuatu, and lots of pictures taken with Carrie! She is very kind, super approachable, and it was really awesome to get to meet her. She served in the South Pacific 30 years ago with her husband, so she was also very relatable. She and the Ambassador also agreed to participate in the Shutup and Dance video Jen was making, which I thought was pretty great of them! If you haven’t seen that video yet you can check it out here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94eptJzlFdI&feature=share&app=desktop

A decaying rat welcomes us home

The morning that we were leaving to head to Vila our cat, Pepper, brought a dead rat into our hut (she loves to bring her meals inside to enjoy them. It’s just lovely). Cole put him, with the rat in his mouth, outside. He came back in and Cole put him outside again. We knew that our neighbor was going to be taking Pepper to our host family’s house, where he would be staying while we were away, in the next few minutes so we just thought he wouldn’t have time to come back in again after we left (he can come in and out at his leisure because of the gap between our walls and ceiling. He just scales the wall and jumps right in). We thought wrong. The day we got back to site, 17 days after we left, Cole went in first to survey the critter damage and was welcomed by a terrible smell. He started to look for the cause of the stench and found Pepper’s half eaten breakfast decaying under our bed. It had been there so long that it was stuck to the floor and he had to pry it up with a stick. He then swept it, along with all the maggots that were inside of it, into a dustpan and threw it into the woods. Then, bless his heart, he had to sweep up all of its fur and then pour bleach on the cement floor and scrub it with a rag. We still get whiffs of it sometimes when we are laying in our bed…a gentle reminder of our warm welcome home. Cole is such a saint. I would be seriously lost without him!

Some projects we are working on

Many people often ask us what we are doing here in Vanuatu. The truth is, we have no idea. BUT, here are some of the things we are trying our best to work on while we are here!

Caroline:

• Depending on the day, I work with either class 1 or class 2/3 (combined class due to a lack of teachers) in the mornings from 9:00-10:00 on a literacy/phonics lesson. Then I work with a small group from either class 1, 2, or 3, again depending on the day, on things that they are struggling with (mainly letter names, sounds and site words). In the afternoon I take one class each day into the library. As I may have said before, the volunteer who was here before me, Jessica, made an amazing library that is unfortunately not being used at all. One of my main goals is to get the kids in there and to get someone from the village trained in taking the kids to the library each afternoon, so that it can continue once we are gone.
• I am also working on starting a Mama’s English Class in our village. Dawna, a Group 26 volunteer, started a Mama’s English Class in her village and it was wildly successful! She has created an amazing resource book for future classes to use and has inspired me to start a class here in Narango. I plan to start in September! This is a class where 7-10 mamas will come to learn English, and then have the skills to help their children with English. The mamas from Dawna’s group came and helped with a workshop that Dawna put on about the group. They spoke during the workshop about the impact the class has had on them and on their children. It brought me to tears and I can’t wait to get it started here!
• When Jessica was here she started a group called “Gel Paoa”, which means Girl Power, with class 4, 5 and 6 girls. When I got here the girls started asking me almost immediately if and when I would be starting Gel Paoa again. I started it up again on Tuesday June 30^th. I had 29 girls interested in joining the group so I decided to split it into two different 7 week groups. For the first 6 weeks we will meet every Tuesday to talk about issues like self-confidence, bullying, positive relationships, education/jobs, etc. On the 7^th week we will take a trip into town (which we will start fundraising for around week 4) and the girls will meet some successful women in Luganville (and we will also get ice cream which will be a major treat since there is not electricity, no refrigeration and no ice cream in our village!). I am working with the first 14 girls now and will start with the second group of 15 girls in September.
• Lastly, another volunteer, Shannon, and I are working on putting together some workshops on how to teach literacy for volunteers and the teachers at their sites. We are writing a grant right now in order to secure funding to travel to other islands and put on these workshops. We are doing this as a result of many of the other volunteers, who have little or no teaching experience, expressing stress and concern about being able to meet the expectations of their villages or communities. We did a small workshop at our last training in Vila for the volunteers and their counterparts, and got great feedback from it! And they want more! So, hopefully we will get the funding and it will all work out!

Cole:

• Cole walks to his village most weekdays and teaches phonics lessons at his school. His schedule is not quite as set as mine because of his commute, but he usually goes there 4 days a week and works with classes 1-6 on the same kinds of things that I work on here in Narango (letters, sounds, site words). He was really nervous at first about teaching since he hasn’t ever taught before, but he has great ideas and does a really good job!
• Cole has also successfully gotten a water system, called Life Straw, to his site! It is a water filtration system that will allow the people in his village to have clean drinking water. He got it to the village a few weeks ago and they worked on setting it up this week! Here is a link if you would like to learn more about Life Straw and a picture of Cole and some members from his community setting it up! http://www.buylifestraw.com/en/
  
• He is also working to put together a clothing drive (which some of you may have received e-mails about and others may have seen on facebook) here in Narango. Many of the kids and adults here have very little decent clothing and shoes. He would like to get the clothes donated from friends and family back home and shipped to Vanuatu. Once they are here we will sell them to people in our village (at VERY low cost) and then give the vatu we make to the school. If you would like to help with this project you can email him at smithnb21@gmail.com. We will be looking for clothing of all sizes and for shoes (flip flops or crocs).
• Lastly, Cole is working with another PC volunteer from our group, Cade, to start a Disaster Management Committee and go to villages to discuss disaster management and preparation committee. This is a very important topic here in Vanuatu, especially in the wake of Cyclone Pam. He and Cade are also working on a grant in order to secure funding and get the committee started!

Cole, Caroline, and Friends:

• World Map! We are working right now to try to get paint and paintbrushes to paint a world map and a map of Vanuatu at my school. We will be painting both maps on the walls on the outside of one of the school buildings. Many of the students have no idea where their country is, where other countries are, or where Vanuatu is in relation to other countries. Jessica put a laminated world map in the library, and the kids love to look at it when they come in there with me on their library day. But, they only come into the library once per week and so they do not get to look at and study the map often. We hope that some other PC volunteers in Santo will come to Narango and help us with our world map and our map of Vanuatu! World maps are something that many Peace Corps volunteers make in their villages, and we hope to jump on that band wagon soon!  

A mared in our village

On Friday, July 3^rd there was a mared in our village. The custom here in Vanuatu, as I discussed briefly when I wrote about the marriage of our host parents in Lelepa, Rex and Tommy, goes something like this…On Thursday night there is a kakae (feast) at the house of the man blo mared (groom) and a kakae at the house of the women blo mared (bride). At the groom’s house family and friends come and give the groom money to help him pay the 80,000 vatu ($800) bride price. People come, give money, eat, story, drink kava, hang out, listen to music, etc. At the bride’s house family and friends go and take gifts for the couple (bins for washing clothes and dishes, mats, plates, things like that). They also eat, story, drink kava, listen to music, etc. On Friday morning the groom goes to the bride’s home and pays the bride price. Then there is a wedding ceremony at the church. After the ceremony the bride goes to her home and the groom to his. At each home there is more eating and what not. Then, that afternoon the family of the bride walks her and all the gifts she has received to the groom’s house and puts her there. And, as you can probably guess, more eating, kava, music, etc. So, on Thursday night, July 2^nd, we headed to the groom’s house first as he lives closer to us. We ate rice and fresh meat from a cow that was killed that day for the occasion. We storied with the people there for a bit and then we headed to the house of the bride where we ate and storied more. While we were eating at the bride’s home some men were setting up a sheet and a laptop with a projector to watch what we thought would be a movie. The kids all sat on mats in front of the sheet waiting patiently. After about an hour they finally got it working. First they showed a music video of a local Christian band called Scripture Vibrations, then when that stopped working they showed a video from a festival in Vila about 10 years ago.

On Friday we missed the bride price and the ceremony because we were at school. That afternoon, we stopped by the groom’s house briefly where a man tried to give Cole a giant handful of raw meat out of a bowl on the ground. Cole kindly refused saying that he would just enjoy the meat with everyone as a group instead of taking it in his bare hand back to our hut. After that we went to the bride’s house where Cole drank kava and we sat around and storied, waiting for the time when we would walk the bride and all of her new possessions to her new husband’s house. We hung out for a long time, me talking to our mama and some of the other mamas and Cole hanging out with the men drinking kava and butchering the cow, not knowing what the holdup was. Then, our mama told us that the groom had decided he was thirsty and had gotten someone to take him the hour and a half into town to get wine. This meant that taking the bride to his house would not be happening for several more hours. We hung out for a little longer, were given a pile of a rice wrapped in a giant leaf, and headed back to the hut. On our walk back to the hut a smol pikinini came running over to me, latched onto my leg, took her lollipop out of her mouth and handed it to me. I said to her “no, no, hemi lolli blo yu” which means no, no it’s your lollipop. She was persistent and insisted that I take her half eaten lolli. I eventually took it and then said a quick prayer that she wouldn’t stick around long enough to make sure I put it in my mouth. She didn’t, and we continued our trek through the mud back to our hut where I disposed of the lolli, we ate our rice out of the giant leaf, and we went to sleep! We were woken up around 1 am to screaming and partying at the groom’s house which, like I said, is close to our house. Guess he got back from his wine adventure and the bride made it to her new home!

Pikinini watching Scripture Vibrations 

Our host dad and brother helping butcher the cow 

4^th of July in Vanuatu

A Peace Corps committee called GAD (gender and development) was having a week long workshop in Santo the week before the 4^th of July. This meant that there were lots of PC vols here is Santo that do not live here (mostly from g26, the group before us). Their workshop was right next to Champagne Beach. The workshop ended on the 3^rd, but several of the PC vols decided to extend their stay and celebrate the 4^th there. We decided to go and join them. So, on Saturday the 4^th we left our village and went into town (Luganville). We stayed in town using the internet until around 2:00 when we went with Brian, Kate and Hannah to catch a bus and go the 45 minutes to the Towac Bungalows, which is where everyone was staying and is about a five minute walk to Champagne Beach. There were 21 of us squeezed into the bus we got in. When we got there we reserved our tents for the night and then walked to Champagne Beach and hung out there for an hour or two. Then we spent the evening drinking wine and eating burgers, sausage dogs, fries and some lap lap that the mamas there made for us. We decided at some point during the night to walk back to Champagne beach and go skinny dipping, which I had never done before! Sorry moms, dads, and granparents who are reading! There were about 10 or 12 of us that went, but I won’t mention names! Shortly after our little skinny dipping adventure we retired to our tent by the beach for the night. Sunday morning we got a ride in the back of a truck back to town where we used the internet again and then Lucas, Cole and I headed to the spot where we wait for a truck back to our village. Lucas was coming to our site to visit for a few days! 2 and a half hours later, we finally got a truck and were on our way back to Narango after a fun 4^th of July!

Lucas comes to visit

On Sunday afternoon when we arrived in Narango it was raining and very muddy. Cole and Lucas worked on making some dinner while I straightened up the hut. We ate and hung out and then went to bed early after a long previous night! Lucas was coming to visit us because we are awesome and he loves us so much, but also because he wanted to watch me teach and get some ideas. No such luck on Monday because at 9:00 a.m. there was a grand total of ZERO out of the 5 teachers at my school here. Some kids came and I told them to go home and try to come back tomorrow when maybe a few of the teachers would be here. At around 9:30 the headmistress/class one teacher showed up and a few kids went and hung out in her classroom for the day. Cole had walked to his site so Lucas and I just hung out at the hut. It was pouring rain so there wasn’t much to do besides sit around and talk. Lucas played on his computer a little, I painted my nails, and we drank coffee. When Cole came home we had lunch and then more just hanging around. Cole wasn’t in the best of moods because on his walk that morning one of his chaco flip flops got stuck in the mud and broke. He has to walk the 45 minutes home through the mud with only one shoe. That night we walked to a kava bar where Cole and Lucas each had a shell of kava. Then we walked to our host family’s house and had dinner there with our mami and our brother, Junior. Dinner was good and we had fun with Lucas and our fam! On Tuesday a few teachers ended up showing up to school, so Lucas came and watched me teach a lesson to class one and then hung around for a few minutes of a small group with class one. He then decided to take some of the left over paint from when Jessica painted the library to our house and start painting a tree on one of our hut walls. After my small group with class one he insisted on me helping him, which I did while Cole made lunch. After lunch I took class 2/3 to the library and then Lucas and I took a spel (a rest) for a while before continuing our tree painting. I was skeptical of this tree painting at first, but I have to say I ended up having fun painting it with Lucas and it turned out pretty good! In the afternoon it FINALLY stopped raining so Lucas convinced us to venture out into the mud and walk about an hour to the river. We swam and hung out at the river for an hour or two and then walked back. For some of the way a bunch of pikinini who were walking home from school joined us. Lucas and Cole went for kava when we got home and then Lucas made dinner. He left on Wednesday morning. We wish the weather would have been better and more teachers and kids would have been at school, BUT we loved having our first visitor, had lots of fun and can’t wait for more visitors to come!

Pikinini Prayer Warriors

Our mama and some other mamas in Narango have started a pikinini prayer warriors group where kids come to the church at night and sing and pray. At first they were doing this every night of the week, but after a few weeks they decided that was too much for the kids and are now doing it about 3 times per week. The bell rings any time between 5 and 6 or 6:30. When the bell rings people start to head to the church  and continue to join in for the next hour or so. We decided to go and check it all out one Wednesday night. We went about 30 minutes after the bell rang, as we have learned our lesson about going right when the bell rings and being the only mopes in there for the next 30 minutes at least. The kids spent about an hour singing songs, then one of the mamas who leads the group made a sermon for about 30 minutes, and then we all got up, stood in a circle and held hands. For the next hour or so we stood in that circle holding hands and the mamas would name a topic, like “mamas and daddies” or “pikinini” or “people who don’t have food”, and then they would all scream the same prayer in unison. We didn’t know the prayer they were saying so we just stood and listened. A few times during this circle scream praying some of the kids would leave the circle and go whisper something in one of the mama’s ears, then we would all have to stop and pray away the demons that the kids said they just saw. We would have to point to the doors and then everyone would scream something else in unison so that the demons, who the mamas said some of the kids who have a special gift can see, would go away. Also, a few times we would stop after a pikinini went and whispered in the ear of a mama because he or she needed to be prayed for. Some of the group would put their hands on the child and then they would all scream the same prayer again, and then everyone would rejoin the circle and we would continue. After about an hour of this we sat back down, sang a few closing songs, a mama said a closing prayer and we all shook hands and hugged. Cole and I headed home, but when we left several people had gone back inside the church to keep praying for kids who needed it, either because they had seen the demons or for other reasons. It was a very interesting experience.

Sink Hole

There is a village close to Narango, about a 25 or 30 minute walk, called fonovos (sp). Several kids from there walk to school in Narango because there is no school there. When we got here many people told us about a big hole in the earth near this village. We had also seen some pictures of a time when Jessica went there and we had heard about it from an Australian volunteer named Sky. We have been wanting to go for a long time, but weather or other things have kept us from being able to. This past Monday it had not rained in a few days and we had nothing going on in the afternoon so a man who lives close to us, named Toa, said that he would take us there. So, we walked the 30 minutes or so until we were almost to fonovos and then turned off the road and into the bush. We walked along a makeshift path for a bit and then came to a point where we started to go down. For the next 45 minutes or an hour we continued to descend down a rocky, slippery, steep, intense, muddy “path”. I nearly fell about 25 times and Toa had to help me a lot. I’m not gonna lie, it was a tiny bit terrifying. BUT, when we got to the bottom we were greeted by a cave like area with rocky rapids and small waterfalls. When you looked up you could see that you were at the bottom of a giant crater like hole in the earth. It was beautiful and cool and like nothing I have ever seen before. It’s hard to describe and pictures don’t do it justice, so come and visit and we will take you there! We trekked from one side to the other, I took a little dip in the water, and then we walked back up the hole (thinking the whole time that we couldn’t believe we had made it down that steep, slippery path without busting our buts!). We we got back to the road we decided to walk to fonovos because Cole and I had not been there yet. When we got there we chatted with the chief of the hole for a bit, saw a chicken that some kids had painted, checked out the awesome view, and then headed home and slept really well that night!

Smol Cole and Smol Caroline

This past week some of the mamas had a fundraiser in order to raise money to send a few of the mamas to a church conference in Vila. We are always down for supporting our village in any way so, after we walked to a kava bar and Cole had a shell of kava, we headed to the nakamal for the fundraiser. It was a “Tea Night” fundraiser so you payed to come in and then you got local bread made by the mamas and tea (coffee). It was 50 vatu for kids (50 cents), 100 vatu for adults (1 dollar), and 300 vatu for mamas (3 dollars). When we got there several mamas called us over and very excitedly told us that a smol boy had been born that day, July 13^th 2015, and that his parents had named him COLE! Two days later on Thursday July 15^th 2015, Cole was making dinner and I had just gotten off the phone with our friend Shannon when our neighbor, Catherine, who was standing at her house with another mama called me over. There is a transport driver named Cliff in our village who has taken us to and from town many times. He lives very close to us and is a super nice guy. The other women standing with Catherine turned out to be his mom who had come by to tell us that Cliff’s wife had given birth to a smol girl that day (or maybe the night before, we aren’t certain) and that they had named her Caroline! So, now both Cole and I have smil pikininis in our village named after us, born just a few days apart! Maybe they will grow up and get married! We are going to go and meet smol Cole and smol Caroline next week and I will be sure to take and post lots of pics!

Fiji and AMERICA

As some of you may know, Cole and I are coming home for Christmas! We will be in Vila for a few days at the beginning of December (I have a meeting for the committee that I am a part of and we need to fill out some papers for our trip), then we are heading to Fiji from December 11^th – December 15^th with some PC friends, and then we fly from Fiji to the good ole USA on December 15^th. We will be home until January 9^th. We can’t wait! We are going to cuddle Murray A LOT, eat A LOT of chick fil a, Jungle Shack, Seacow, Oysters, and Christmas dinner, hang out with our families and friends, I am going to get a mani/pedi and a haircut, Cole is probably going to have a few delicious brews, we are going to get to meet sweet baby Charlie Bean and who knows what else! We are so excited!

As always, thanks for taking the time to follow our adventures and read my super long posts! Cole has started a blog, too. You can check it out here: http://chronicallyuncomfortable.blogspot.com/

Ale, Ta.

Okay, Bye.