Life on Ambae

Many of you may wonder how I keep myself occupied, even if you don’t I’m going to tell you. I swim at a wharf near my house where most of the Ni-Vans go swimming which is pretty cool. I also do a little fishing, which is a little bit different here. I don’t think there’s a single fishing pole on any of the islands, at least I’ve never seen one, and yet people here still collect a large amount of fish, any guesses? Here are some of the main methods: the first and my most personal favorite is using a spear gun. You must take a spear gun which is spring loaded and dive down and stay still so you don’t scare the fish and then shoot you’re mini harpoon at the nearest fish you see. This not only takes great skill but a very long breath. Some of the men can stay down there to shoot a fish, reclaim the harpoon, reload the gun and then shoot it again. I can barely stay down for 30 seconds so obviously I haven’t caught many fish, I usually leave it to the Ni-Vans to take care of it. I do get to be the shark bait though, once they catch a fish they put its head through a wire so you can carry many fish (like a belt, while you’re swimming, filled with dead fish) and that’s what I usually do. Since you have to stick a wire through their head and they just got harpooned you can imagine that some of their organs are hanging out along with bleeding. Whenever I’m the shark bait (fish carrier) I like to hold a knife, just to feel a little bit safer.

The other day I was with my buddy Zack and we wanted to go swimming. All I had on my mind as far as plans go for that day was just swimming. It was then that I saw my friend who stopped his truck and asked if we wanted a ride. We gratefully obliged and hopped in; he told us he was going to Devils Rock so we obviously went with him. It turned out to be an all-day fishing trip complete with a fish roast (along with one lobster) on the beach. Afterwards I went back to his village where we drank kava at his nakamal. The name of the village was Lolowalaquesa (sp?) Where we baked laplap, I was adopted by a papa, and then was then made into a high ranking chief with the name being Alanamoli, which has something to do with pigs tusks swirling around and my papa told me I outrank the chief of the village there currently. I wasn’t too sure how that worked as I didn’t really do anything but hey, there ya go, some days you just plan on going swimming but you can turn into a chief at any moment. Only here could something like this happen, oh man, TIV (This is Vanuatu).

Dogs & Other Paraphernalia

What would if you’ve ever only known happiness? There was no hate, no malice no contempt that ever came anywhere near you what could that feel like? Rather, what wouldn’t that feel like? It’s quite plausible that you wouldn’t know, but now imagine the exact opposite. In case you’re wondering, I’m talking about our loyal canine companions. It’s a well-known fact that I’m an animal person, a model student after my sister the teacher when I was young, to be their voice because they don’t have one.  It came to me after a pretty ghastly but typical dog-eat-dog experience here on the island.

It was once again a hot muggy night, walking back from my favorite spot on the pier reading until the suns last rays reflected off the sea. It was there I spotted a neighbor who was waiting for her husband, as we spoke she handed me a piece of bread for dinner which I was duly grateful.

He (we’ll call him Brian) emerged from the night, slightly kava drunk ready to go back to the house which was quite a walk but luckily, Brian holds much power in the village so, we found a truck. There’s one thing you need to know about Brian, he has two very loyal dogs. I did not say loving dogs, and I did not say happy dogs, but they would die for him.

As we boarded the back of the pickup I realized the two dogs we’re still on the ground and was wondering what we would do with them, either A) just go and they’ll follow us home later or B) pick them up and take them with us. Since Brian was already in the truck I figured we would take option A, which of course was until Brian reached over the bed of the pickup, grabbed the older dog by only his left front leg and hoisted him up onto the truck. As the dog cried in pain, so did I, on the inside anyway because what I just witnessed was something that I’ve never seen before, let alone imagine anyone could pick up a dog like that. It was quite the gruesome sight and as he picked up the dog and it yelped terribly he turned to me and just smiled like he dropped a piece of food that maybe he still wanted to eat.  Unfortunately it only seemed to be an injustice to me and I’m sure to many of you reading but that’s just one more thing about life as a Peace Corps volunteer, learning to deal with culture that isn’t your own.

 Is it cruel if an animal has never experienced joy? If its never been where the grass is greener? I was going to go on a tirade about animal cruelty in this country but if that’s all it’s ever known could that be the comparison of a dog only ever knowing love? I’ll let you be the judge of that but while everyone has their own views and mine are obviously leaning one way, it’s something hard to swallow but things are done differently everywhere and treating their animals is most certainly one of those ways.

(Oh and as for what happened to the second dog I immediately jumped out of the truck and picked him up and put him in the back in case you were wondering)

Phase II Training

Phase II Training started in Port Vila, where all of the VITEL members (English + IT) were flown into Vila for about two weeks of final training before school starts. It was really great to see everyone because it’s been a while, not only that our counterparts came with us as well. A counterpart is a teacher at the school that the Peace Corps says each volunteer must have and it was great for them to come into Vila too to learn more about the Peace Corps and what it’s all about. I did realize I’m going to be teaching..a LOT. Most IT volunteers have an IT counterpart who helps teach the kids computers but since I’m the first IT vol at my site there are no teachers who are teaching computers besides which leads me to teach year 7, 8, 9, 10 and the vocational school all about IT, woo! That’s going to be a lot of work but this training definitely helped prepare me for it by getting my curriculum and lesson plans in order.

Anyway I’m going to keep this one short because it’s pretty late and in about 4 hours I have to wake up and hop on my plane back to Ambae. This time it’s a little bit more of a big deal because we’ve had all these trainings and my broken toe so I’ve been to Vila a lot and now I’m not going to come back in for three months. So for the next three months I’ll be teaching children and really starting to get to doing my job I came here for and yes I won’t have any Internet at all, you can feel free to call me anytime or write letters (I love mail!).

Oh and on a side note I watched the super bowl at a bar overlooking the ocean, it was awesome.

Thanks for reading, take care all and I’ll talk to you again in a few short months!

Life in Vila

Hey all,

So today's the 21st and I've been here (Port Vila) since the 2nd when they flew me in for the broken toe. I'm going back tomorrow to site which is good because I've been away so long. So what have I been doing here for so long you may ask? Well not much, in the beginning I couldn't walk too much and crutches really hinder your shopping abilities by needing two hands. Just enjoying the electricity, watching Mad Men (I'm almost done with season 3 and started when I got here.), a bunch of movies and really enjoying downloading new music for my ipod! Also I got my new kindle which is great news! One Peace Corps guy Nic was visiting the states and my parents sent the kindle to him so he brought it over for me, I just re-uploaded all my books so now I'm super happy to be able to read again. I've been hanging out with some of the volunteers from the other group and got to see some people from my group who are on Efate. Not too much has been going on but here are some photo updates since I've been here too:

A few of us spent the day at a nice resort (Le Legan - look it up if you want to stay here it's really nice!) And yes that's some serious sunburn haha

Another beautiful sunset in Vila

My hotel room for almost a month!

Hot plate - yes!!

Rockin' the crocs for toe defense!

Real shower and toilet...so amazing!

My "view"

Well that's about it for now, I'm going back to Ambae tomorrow for about 9 days and coming back to Vila on the 30th of January for Phase II Training with the rest of my group so it should be a great time, ale lukim yu fala afta!
Ta ta

Kicken off the New Year hard..

So I literally kicked off the New Year pretty hard, so hard in fact:

Well that's not good

I broke it.
This was on 1/1/12 and then the next day I was on a flight to Vila and then on the 3rd I got x-rays and it's official it's fractured. The doc said because it's the last bone in the toe it's going to take about 6-8 weeks to fully heal because there's low blood circulation there. I think I'm going to be in Vila staying at a hotel for about 3-4 weeks so I'm literally here just hanging out in my hotel room not doing too much. I do have the best Internet I've ever had since being in Vanuatu so if you'd like to talk to me/call me add me on Skype (skype name: skirjames) I'm on a lot!

I don't have too much else to do except watch movies and TV shows because it's pretty hard to get around on crutches here, hope to see you on skype, ta!

Long Awaited Photo Update

So I haven't had too great of Internet until now which I'll explain in my next post but here is a whole bunch of photos which I've been meaning to get on here:

(The pics are divided into three sections for three different islands: Vila, Ambae and Santo)

Vila:

A map of Ambae in the PC Office

We're Group 24 - so why not?

Swearing in, becoming official Peace Corps Volunteers

Mine and Sam's amazing host family in Tanilou, Efate

Papa Pascal and Brota Brandon

Sunset in Vila

Some flying fox in the market (bat for you Americans)

Ambae:

Devil's Rock on Ambae

                                               

                                      

Rory and I with our 50 cal bullets we dug out

One spot during the hike to Zack's

Manaro with it's head up in the clouds

Up by Zack's Village - the view down

The start to East Ambae..

So many miles..

Keep going..

Had to trek across a couple of these

Zack

Friendly family of bulls right?

Wrong! Run away!

This was papa cow mid charge at us

So tired...

Kara's Xmas tree!

Mmmmm turkey spam

Kara's village Xmas celebration

They split up the white man..

We had fake snow!

Our Christmas ended in a paint war..

Santo:

Champagne Beach!

Jason & Ryan grappling

Meg and I

1st place fish!

AMBAE!

Santo people

Man Ambae! (Joel, me, Zack)

That's it for now, hope you enjoyed the pics!

AMBAEleavable Christmas

So I pronounce my island Ambae as: uhm-bye so you can see how clever ambaeleavable is ;]

Anyway..

Zack and I were planning on spending Christmas together and two days before I walked up to his village and he came down to mine to hang out. One volunteer Kara on East Ambae said we should hang out with her for Christmas so we thought that was a great idea and had it in our heads to walk from West to East (which is rarely done).

I timed it using the stop watch on my watch and when we ended it was 8 hours 23 minutes. That doesn’t include a 10 minute stop for lunch – it was all walking. Needless to say I physically couldn’t move after that – it was the most intense walk of my life. Because I knew we were eventually going to Santo for New Years, I packed my kindle, laptop, ipod, speakers and cell so I basically had all of my electronics with me. I did not know that it was going to downpour like crazy and have to ford three different raging rivers. I was so scared I was going to go down and lose all my stuff but we made it through. Afterwards we found a family of cows on the beach who then proceeded to charge down the beach towards us so we had to make a run for it up in the bush. It turns out there wasn’t much of a trail so we got lost for a few hours after completely running out of water so I was survivor man style and sipping the collected rain water from lily like leaves. Apparently we only got half way and had to charter a really expensive boat to take us the rest of the way, by the time we finally got to her house my legs just could not move anymore and I slept incredibly well. Later the next day I found out that during that crazy adventure my kindle got soaked and water got under the screen ruining it. It’s pretty sad because I use my kindle a LOT and now it’s gone :’[ all is not lost though because my parents already got one and sent it to a current volunteer who’s visiting the states and he agreed to bring it back to Vanuatu with him when he comes home from vacation! So my replacement is already on its way and until then it’s back to physical books..

Our Christmas was pretty great, another volunteer Megan from North Ambae joined us and we had a whole bunch of American food! Fried turkey spam, mashed potatoes, gravy, Mac & Cheese, sweet potato fries and a pumpkin pie (which turned out more to be pumpkin pudding, but still delicious!

It was definitely a different experience and didn’t really feel like Christmas being on a hot island with no snow anywhere in the future. It was definitely sad to be away from my family and friends for the holidays but everyone here is in the same boat so it was good to share it with people who are going through the same thing and we had a great time.

We just hung out for the next two days and then found out that the Efate Queen, which is a passenger ship, was heading for Ambae to go to Santo and that’s where we needed to go. Santo is the other main city in Vanuatu and has power and Internet and all that so we all went to go stay with Ryan. We left at 7:00AM to walk two hours to the north port and didn’t get to Santo until 2:30AM the next day! The distance is only a four hour boat ride but it had to stop a few times and let people on and off. The ship system is truly inefficient to say the least, a little boat that can hold 4-5 people per trip had to keep coming and going from the trip transporting hundreds of people, adding up to several hours of just waiting. There really must be a better way but no one has seen fit to adopt that way as of yet.

So we finally made it to Santo and hung out in town for a few days which was great – cheese burgers, beers and milkshakes. There’s really nothing better than that after living off of bread and rice for the past few weeks. A bunch of us got together for New Years, partied all night – just like the states. After New Years we went to this place called Champagne Beach (which if you Google real quick you’d see it’s one of the best beaches in the world) was absolutely gorgeous (pictures to follow in next post).

All in all my first Christmas and New Years away from home was a pretty good time.