Repercussions, Vila Town & 4th of July

So I’m not going to go into too much detail but let’s just say Peace Corps wasn’t too happy with what happened and granted that’s due to me breaking some policy. A few days after everything happened I get a call from the office telling me I have a plane ticket to go in two days and that was all. Obviously I was pretty worried because at that point I thought they were bringing me in to kick me out of the Peace Corps which would have really sucked. Anyway I get into town after saying bye to some close friends telling them hopefully I would be back. I go in to one meeting and then am pretty much left to just sit in limbo for two weeks which wasn’t too fun. All I kept hearing was “no decision has been made” so there were some pretty stressful times here but then our country director came back (he was away in DC). This was an extremely good thing. Our current country director is one of the best people I know, he’s really great. We talked and he listened to my story and understood more of what happened from my perspective and asked me to do a few things so he could try to get me to stay (writing up a report of what happened, etc..)

            So what happened after that was pretty surreal, the country director himself decided to come to Ambae and see what it’s all about, and guess what else? I’d be acting as his guide. So it was pretty ironic and pretty fast planning but he asked me how to get around and where to go so I told him and he asked me to walk around Ambae with him which I of course acquiesced. We flew into East Ambae, saw some other volunteers sites and then hopped on a truck and went for a pretty bumpy ride up to Mac and Joels site and spent the night. The next day we walked to Zacks site and that was no easy walk, luckily our CD is in pretty good shape and he was able to handle it greatly and this was a real eye opener for him, he said he gets to see how hard it is and what we have to deal with every day so I’m really glad he got to come.

Anyway it wasn’t all bad being in Vila and I got to be there for 4^th of July which was really a lot of fun! Something pretty fun to do in this country is to browse through Chinese shops and find the most ridiculous and outlandish clothes you can possibly find and then wear them! This time I got pretty lucky and found some good stuff (pics below) and we got to drink bud light and party on a beach with a bonfire. It was a good night and I’m glad I got to experience the most American holiday there is with other Americans! Also everything is all good now in case you were wondering and I’m going back to Ambae very soon, so here’s to hoping I don’t get in to any more trouble!

Our chinese store clothes find!

Pidgeon blong Amerika!

Face paint!

I think mine was the most elaborate

Volcano? Nah. Lost? Yea.

So just the next weekend I wanted to go up the volcano again and two British/Australian volunteers near me (Katie + Lucinda) had a friend that was going up and invited them along, who in turn invited me to go up. The plan was that we were going to clear the road as we went up so they took up bush knives some food and a tent. The plan was also to sleep at the top when we got there and just come down the next day. So we left at 2:00AM for some reason – we were under the impression that we would get there early afternoon and be able to just relax and enjoy hanging out by the volcano for the day but boy were we wrong about that.

So we walked and we walked all day and when it was early afternoon I asked if we were close and the response was 3 more hours, so then 5 hours later I asked if we were close again, and then apparently there were 2 more hours left, and then after 4 hours I knew things weren’t going right. We were in the middle of the bush walking since 2:00AM and it was about 4:00PM now and our guide then informed me that we would not be making it to the top tonight and we are going to have to just sleep here in the middle of nowhere.  So we set up camp, but there’s something you, the reader, should know and that is where we were on Ambae is the second highest point in Vanuatu and what that means is it’s ridiculously cold up there, especially at night. Most of my friends know I got minor frostbite in Vermont skiing one time so I get super cold, super easy. Basically that night was like torture, it was super cold and the one blanket I brought just didn’t really cut it. Also it was sort of drizzling all night which doesn’t help with being cold either. Anyway me along with the two other white man were pretty miserable and didn’t really enjoy being up there and our guide said that we still have about 5 more hours tomorrow, which could mean it could be 10 hours away. So after trying to sleep all night and being super cold and super tired we decided to turn back the next morning and we let them know and they said OK! We thought it would be easy to follow the road back because we just cut it the day before, we thought.

We walked for about 3 hours and then realize that we weren’t on the same trail we were on yesterday. Uh oh. Tried to back track, tried to follow the path, it ended. So it turns out we got pretty lost and I have no idea how. Luckily we found a creek and I just said lets follow that because they all lead to the ocean and the main road. It was the best idea and the easiest to walk on because some things you should know about the creeks here – they are dry creeks and only have water if it’s raining and they were formed from old run off of the volcano lava. This means that it was much easier to walk on uneven rock than through the deep bush of Ambae so we stuck with it. It turns out that there were numerous large cliffs that were formed which were untraversable. We had to go around which turned out to be extremely difficult and way harder than I could have imagined. We left at 7:00AM and walked and walked all day, lost, and had to eventually stop at 6:00PM because that’s when the sun went down and we couldn’t see anymore. Now during this whole day we ran out of food and water, which was really bad. The dry creek had some stagnant gross pools we found and luckily didn’t get us sick but otherwise we were pretty hungry. Since the sun went down we had nothing to do but to just lay down on the rock, huddle up (it was still cold), and go to sleep.

We woke up the next morning and started walking as soon as the sun gave enough light and then we were back on our way. Luckily the night before I got random sporadic spurts of cell phone reception and was able to text my counterpart and let him know that we were lost, this is serious and we need help! My counterpart is a really great guy and he ran to some villages and started organizing some search parties, they knew we were in a creek and there weren’t TOO many so all along West Ambae there were search parties looking for us which was nice to know. Anyway we walked for half of the day and then finally heard someone far away. We walked towards the sound and eventually found a bush garden and some people saw us and were very confused to see white people wandering around the middle of nowhere. After telling them our story in Bislama (mifala bin lus lo bus!) they were very worried for us and immediately got us some mantioc, capscicum and some coconuts which we drank ravenously.

Afterwards they took us down to the main road because I could get home from there, we got to the next village only to see a large group of people wielding bush knives that came in a truck. This wasn’t just any group of random Ni-vans wielding large machetes, these were my friends! It was a lot of people from my school that just got to that site and we just about to head up into the bush to go look for me! It was crazy, I was super happy, they were super happy, it was pretty emotional because they care so much about this white person who just came from America but now I’m a part of their community and they didn’t want to lose me, which is nice. So that’s my story about getting lost in the bush, it was scary as hell, and certainly one hell of a learning experience. I’m pretty sure I’m never going to walk around without a guide in the bush ever again. 

One of the insane cliffs

Here's our road

Spel smol

First night camping with the group (wasn't lost yet so that's why I'm smiling!)

Ambae Trek & Volcano

So my friend Zack and I decided to have another adventure on Ambae. Some other volunteers were going to East at one girl’s house, Kara, to climb up to the volcano. The day before Zack and I walked from West to East which took most of the day. Afterwards we met up with the other volunteers and stayed at Kara’s for the night. We had previously arranged transport so we could get from Kara’s site to South Ambae because that’s where we were going to climb up the volcano from. It was supposed to come at 5:30AM and we were all up and ready to go but surprise, the truck never came. It was about 7:00 when we decided to just start walking to the village we needed to get to. Finally we get there and then by this time it’s too late to go to the volcano because it takes a while to get up and go down and then we’d have to worry about transport getting back once it was dark. Everyone decided to get the tattoo that day (oh did I mention you get a tattoo when you climb this volcano?) and then climb up the volcano the next day. I know how things work here and I pretty much knew it wasn’t going to happen and I really wanted to go so the guides were going up anyway and I decided to just go with them.

So we went up just me and two Ni-van boys and we were going at a pretty brisk pace. We actually made it up in 4 ½ hours and but the entire place was shrouded in clouds once we were an hour up so it was hard to see a lot but I did get to the see the big lake on top next to the volcano. From what I understand there’s one giant lake (Manarangoro) which is what I saw and then there’s lake Vui which is where the volcano is (underneath the lake). I took some pics (below) and then we went back down really fast, it only took 3 hours. We got back just at 6:00pm which is when the sun goes down so we got back just in time. I knew I wouldn’t be able to find a truck back to Kara’s so I decided to stay with the Ni-vans in the village which was pretty cool. Oh so I got my first tattoo! It’s pretty small and the meaning behind it is everyone used to have it and it means when you die you will eternally be dancing on top of the volcano where as everyone else who doesn’t have it will be swimming in the ocean with the sharks. So yeah it’s pretty cool and I’m pretty excited about it. Anyway the next day was Sunday and I knew I had to get back to school on time to teach class on Monday so I slept in the village and set off early the next day to make it back to West. So I started in South, walked to East, walked to North, got a truck for an hour of the way, eventually made my way back to West, hopped on a boat, and then walked some more and made it back to Londua at about 8:00pm. So I walked for about 10 hours but I pretty much rounded Ambae in one day which was really tiring. After telling Ni-vans what I did they were pretty amazed and said they would never make that walk so now I’m man blong walkabout.  Anyway that was the first time I climbed up Manaro so I’m excited to go back again a bunch of times and if you’re reading this and you also want to climb just contact me and that would be pretty awesome!

Our group going up

Wokabout bakagan

So I've been in Vila for about 2 weeks but that’s a long story, I still have to write my blog post for that but let’s just say I was in a little trouble. Things are totally fine now and now I’m actually going to be travelling with the Country Director of Peace Corps Vanuatu all around Ambae. We’re flying into the East and visiting most of the volunteers. We are staying with some one night, walking and staying with others another night and I’ll be with him guiding the whole time. Eventually we’re ending up back at my site on West. It’s going to be pretty awesome and I’m excited and then finally we’re both heading back to Vila in only a few days because I have a meeting with VAC – Volunteer Advisory Committee which I’m apart of and we both have to be back for that so it’s going to be quite an adventure! So I’ll be back in Vila with Internet in only a few short days – that’s all for now, ta!

Welkam nu man Ambae

So the volunteers from Mali finished their training and went out to their sites. Zack and I met Lucas at the airport and showed him around West. After we had lunch we took him up to his site by taking a truck as far as it can go and then walking the rest of the way. He had a nice welcoming ceremony and in the pic below there’s a whole roasted chicken and some laplap wrapped up in banana leaves.  After we had kava and we went back to Zack’s because we were walking to go to East tomorrow morning for the volcano which I will get to in the next post.

Two cats too many

So between the time I knew my dog was missing and I found her I decided to get a cat. This time it was more for practical purposes: catching rats. Every custom house has rats and they are really annoying and just totally destroyed my food safe so I decided it was time to even the odds. I tried poison and rat traps but nothing worked, and if it did another one would just be there the next day. Also late at night they love to just chew on wood really loudly in my house, so that’s also really annoying and keeps me up at night. I knew that my host family has some wild cats that just had some kittens that like to hang around outside their house so I went up there to ask about them and my host papa was more than happy to grab one, throw it in a rice bag and hand it to me. I brought this cat back to my house and could tell pretty quickly it wasn’t too thrilled at its new living arrangements. It sort of freaked out and kept meowing and tried to escape my house, but I made it some powdered milk and gave it some tin tuna so it would hopefully realize this is where it’s going to live now, so don’t go anywhere. After about an hour I gave up trying to pet it, it was pretty wild and wouldn’t come anywhere near me so I just laid down on the floor and took a nap. After I woke up I noticed the cat was now gone, oh well not a big loss, he didn’t seem to be too happy here. Later that day, as the sun was going down I saw this pathetic looking cat sitting outside the kitchens hoping to get some sort of scraps so I scooped it up and brought it back to my house and that one was very grateful cat. 

As soon as it started eating all the food I heard this other meow come from somewhere inside my house and there crawling out from underneath a suitcase was the original cat who got instantly territorial and hissed at the other one. I had the two cats for a few days but realized that I couldn’t keep the pathetic looking one because that didn’t know to go to the bathroom outside which was not good. I just kind of brought him back to the kitchens and that’s pretty much where it lives now. Anyway jealousy hit the other cat pretty hard and now it’s turned into my best friend and is constantly coming up to me and just being annoying in general. Right now it’s pretty small so I don’t think it can handle rats yet but it has caught a few geckos which is good because they crawl on my roof and piss on my head which is not enjoyable.

So as soon as I got Shaiah back I was wondering what was gonna happen with my new cat and my new found dog. It was pretty strange when the cat hissed at Shaiah and she was immediately terrified of it. Over time they’ve gotten to be pretty good friends so now I have one security for people and one for rats!

Smol dog blo mi i lus!?

So after coming back from Santo for about two weeks I was hanging around on campus and expecting to see my dog. One good thing about living on a campus with other teachers is I can ask everyone to look out for my dog while I’m gone and island dogs are super easy to care for (the largest food group consumed being garbage). Unfortunately when I did ask about my dog nobody seemed to know where she was. I quickly learned that she was “just here” yesterday and that they saw her a lot when I was gone. Another thing I learned was that one teacher said they went fishing and caught a poisonous fish, which was then fed to my dog but it’s OK because she survived. Things weren’t looking good in my search for my dog as a few days went by and people said they just saw her at some other village and when I asked where that village was to go check it out they couldn’t be too specific. I knew unless I took some action I’m most likely never going to see my dog again so I made a public notice (publik notis, pic below).  It’s pretty self-explanatory and there was quite a large photo of her which I took before she was missing. Anyway a few days go by and as I walk up and down West, so many people came up to me asking if I found my dog and I had to keep answering no, but have you seen her? No leads was bringing me closer to despair and having to accept I’ll probably never see her again.

A week later I was waiting with 100 or so Ni-vans for the E Queen which had a bunch of cargo on it people were waiting for. I happened to buy a mountain bike from a volunteer in Vila, a pretty nice one and it was on the boat. As I was waiting for it there was talk that somebody found my dog and that they were bringing it to me now. I was filled with cautious optimism because if it wasn’t my dog I would’ve been pretty disappointed. As I was the only white man surrounded by a bunch of Ni-vans this man comes down the road holding a dog and everyone is looking at him, who’s looking at me. Pretty much anything I or any other white man in the country does you get stared at a lot, and that’s just something you learn to accept. Now you can imagine in a country where people kick dogs that when a Ni-van dude is walking towards a crowd actually carrying a dog in his arms people are gonna stare at that. He walked up to me and handed me my dog and she freaked out, she was super happy to see me and started crying and licking my face. She didn’t take two steps away from me after that and followed me everywhere I went, and eventually the E Queen came with my bike, so I would say it was a good day. 

my public notice in Bislama

Put up in the city center!

She's back!

My dog and cat (off to the left behind the jug)

bff's

here's the view from my garden outside my house

Santo Spel

So it was time for the academic spel which means that the kids have off for two weeks (but they never come back on time so it’s more like three or four weeks). GAD (Gender and Development) is a PC committee which is all about, well, gender and development. Every year they host a youth leadership camp to teach us and a Ni-van that we bring how to run a camp back on the island. So a bunch of us got sent to Santo for the first week of spel and we all had to bring a counterpart of sorts and have a week long camp on how to run the camp so we can do it when we go back to our sites. It was a good time, we had activities to do every day and had a different sport every day which lead to us introducing Ultimate Frisbee to Vanuatu which was great. Eventually one day we did tie dying (sp?) and I made a pretty sweet shirt. After that, as some of you may have seen on Facebook, I decided why stop at shirts when you can do your hair? So we soaked my hair in purple for a while and the result is below (pic). Luckily that lasted less than a week because I was given the name of Purple Flame who is a… super villain of sorts.

Anyway once the camp was over I decided to spend some days in Luganville for some Internet, ice cream, the usual things you can’t get on my island. Had some fun, went to the Blue hole (pics below) which was pretty fun, it also had a rope swing which was really awesome. After a few days in town I was ready to go back to site and all the teachers also had to go back because we had to start teaching. I, along with some gap and PC vols were preparing to board the efate queen (passenger ship) to take back to our islands. So what I’m about to describe is just typically how things work around here. Boarding time for the boat was 10:00pm and it was supposed to go out at 12:00am. Since Ambae is the closest island to Santo theoretically the trip should take four hours which would put me back to site at 4:00am. Unfortunately, things don’t exactly work on time in this country and we didn’t leave until about 3:30am. The thing with the Efate Queen is that actually has air conditioning. Normally that would be a good thing, but the only times I’ve been on the E Queen is at night and it’s not really necessary. The other thing with the AC is that it only has one setting, and that’s max. When I say max, I mean it’s like a meat cellar - ambaeleavably cold.  So I can’t actually stay inside the area that has AC because my poor fingers and toes can’t take it so I go to the outside deck area but the seas were pretty rough so unless I wanted to get drenched with water and slapped with wind all night I had to suck it up and stick with the freezer inside and somehow throw all my clothes on me to make some sort of blanket.  We eventually made it to Ambae and west Ambae (my place) is the first stop, so that’s excellent. I brought my torch with me thinking I would have to walk back to my house from where the boat dropped me off in the dark but because it was so late I arrived in the fully glory of the sun rise and not being able to sleep all that night I got to my house and passed out on my bed for the rest of the day. 

TP but they have brand names for all sorts of stuff like Nambawan peanut butter, etc..

The intestines of a pig, just in case you wondered what it looks like

yum.

shirts we all made

just dyed the hair!

It was pretty purple, good thing it only lasted a week

Joel writing/practising the Richard song

New Mali Vols

We’ve just received news that all of the Peace Corps in Mali, Africa were evacuated due to a coup. Whenever there is any sort of internal struggle or any engagement in war/rebellion Peace Corps is immediately evacuated out and leaves the country, and it turns out there were about 200 volunteers in Mali and they were given the option of just going home or going to serve in another country. Out of the few who decided to continue on to another country three of them are going to be sent to Vanuatu. Someone from PC called Zack (who as you know lives very close by me) and asked if it would be OK if someone moved to his village and he said sure, which means we are getting one of the Mali vols (short for volunteers) which is pretty cool! That will bring Ambae up to eight PCVs which beats every other island except Efate in terms of number of volunteers and that will make three man Ambae on west which is also nice. 

Flies + Real Housewives

So this is just a short post but when I was applying for the Peace Corps I always wondered what some of the hardest challenges were going to be when you actually become a volunteer. Now that I’ve been one for about seven months I think it’s safe for me to draw my own conclusions. This may sound ridiculous and I never thought this would be my biggest challenge but if it was one thing I would have to say it’s the flies. I can handle the food, the culture, the walking, everything but the worst thing (in my opinion) about this country are the flies. Unfortunately I can only describe them and I have a picture below but unless you experience them for yourself you really can’t imagine what it’s like. I just remember being in America and even if there’s a single fly inside a restaurant it makes a lot of people unhappy – here there are scores of them buzzing around you constantly landing on your food or your body. Occasionally there are some that land on your nose, eyelashes or lips just for a split second just to really make you loathe them. Also if you have an open wound (even just a scratch) they are all over that, like white on rice, or flies on rice because it’s pretty much the same thing.

In America there are a lot of TV shows about house wives and following their daily lives, if anyone of them had to walk in the shoes of an Ambae mama for just a day I’m sure they wouldn’t be able to cope. These women or “mama’s” as they’re called work harder than anyone I’ve seen. Because this is a male dominated society it’s the women who has to do most of the work such as cleaning the house, taking care of the children and cooking all of the food for just some examples. They work quite hard and I just am amazed a little by coming from a country where men and women are equals and coming here it’s like taking a step back in time. Hopefully one day soon women will be treated with more respect by most of the men here, oh well that’s all for now, ta.

Here is tin tuna in Vanuatu...

Hmm..not too tempting is it? Don't worry it's for my dog but I do have to eat it sometimes..

Here are the flies that surround our lives everyday :(

Another Ambaen Adventure

So a few weeks ago I had another mission to go on another adventure in North Ambae. It was Mac’s birthday who’s in North Ambae and she’s right by Joel. I was invited for a birthday party so obviously I had to go. First let me backtrack a little, I had my first birthday on the island! I told my host family that it was my birthday and they said they would prepare a little something and told me to invite some friends. I invited Joel and he said he would walk over and hang out on West Ambae for a little while. I also invited two gap volunteers (Australian/English) who are here for six months at a time. As the sun was starting to set and I was on my way to my host family’s house I was somewhat disappointed due to the fact that none of my friends showed up. Joel told me he wouldn’t be able to come if it was raining which it was by him and I have no idea where the other two where. I left a note on my door just in case and went up, my family was also disappointed that no one came because they really went all out. They made me a cake and killed a chicken. Just as I lost all hope and was about to eat, my two friends Katy & Lucinda (gap vols) showed up! I was super excited and so was my family. We ate cake first and then my papa took us up to get some kava at the nakamal. After the kava we got to eat some delicious laplap and chicken and my papa, being the only alcohol seller on the whole of West Ambae hooked us up with some Tusker (national beer of Vanuatu) which was awesome. All in all it turned out to be a good night and everyone had a good time, which sums up my story of my first birthday (and one more to come) in Vanuatu.

Going back to the original story, Joel did show up about 3 days after totally unexpected but I was super glad to see him. We celebrated my birthday again and just hung out while Joel admired the street signs on West (he’s from the bush in North). We also started making plans of rowing a small boat back to North so we didn’t have to climb all the hills of Vuingalato (which are extremely treacherous and difficult to say the least). We made a practice run and it turns out it was much harder and much slower than we anticipated so Joel made plans to take the ship that was going by in the morning back home and I wanted to go with him to go celebrate Mac’s bday. Unfortunately I had a class that morning and I couldn’t get out of it so Joel left on the ship while I was stuck teaching. For those of you that know me I’m extremely determined so I gathered a crew which consisted of James the French teacher, Amos the Science teacher and the Chaplain. I wish I took a picture but it was a small row boat consisting of two oars so we switched off every 20 minutes and rowed for about three hours. We didn’t make it as far as we thought and because we didn’t leave until late afternoon the sun was already starting to go down and I still had a two hour hike in head of me. They dropped me off and rowed back while I started the last part of the adventure on foot. I really didn’t know the road so every time I saw anyone I asked which way to the village Quantemele. I was walking along a stone beach when it just sort of ended and there was no way to get past these very large cliff rocks. Things got a little scary then because I started thinking of where to sleep because the sun was almost down and I had no idea where I was or how to find anyone. Luckily I saw a kid of about 15 rowing in a canoe who saw me obviously quite lost. He picked me up in his one man canoe and took me past the big cliff rocks which was extremely kind of him, I then immediately set off at a brisk trot hoping to run into someone else to ask for directions. Eventually I found a mama and when I asked her how to get where I was going she looked at me like I was crazy and said I can’t go now it’s too dark now. I briskly replied that I HAD to go and just asked her which way to go where she replied with an “on top” and pointed. So “on top” was where I was heading when you wouldn’t believe, but I got lost again. Luckily I kept running into Ni-Vans who would show me the way temporarily and then I would seem to get lost again. This happened about three or four times until it was past 7:00pm and I was lost somewhere in the bush in the dark of night. At this point I started calling out to see if anyone was around to help me, after ten minutes someone finally replied a long way off and we finally met up and I was very close and he escorted me the rest of the way. When I finally arrived at Mac’s village, I found the one house that had a few solar lights on and went and saw that it was Mac and her host family and Joel who were very surprised to see me walk through the door. They gave up hope that I was coming but I eventually made it there around 7:30pm soaking wet due to the rain. I was pretty tired but it was a good trip and I got to eat a lot of good food. So I hung out at North for a couple of days and then had to make my way back to my home on West. This time I found the truck road to follow for a while and then made it to the last village before the dreaded hills of Vuingalato. I asked if anyone had a boat but the man who had one was not there that day, one man took pity on me and took me in his one man canoe past the bigger hills and we rowed for about 30 minutes where he dropped me off at my friend Zack’s house. Luckily I knew the road after that so in just another hour and a half of walking I finally made it back home, just chalk it up to another gudfala adventure on Ambae!

Amos paddling

Chaplain and James!

This nice boy helped me pass some big rocks in my way