Three new entries

This is Ed’s blog entry. Beth said I had to say that. 

Photos are uploaded at the end to the extent I can.

 April ____, 2010 Why I haven’t blogged in so long? It’s because I wasn’t really doing anything but waiting in Vila while I was on a phantom sick leave. It was not feigned or nonexistent, phantom is what the right word is, at least for me. For all the world I look like a pretty healthy guy but from the inside my vertebrae are rather like paisley, kind of curly the wrong way. So I got a free trip to Australia out of it mainly to get an MRI. There are no MRI’s in Vanuatu, and I don’t know if it’s a lack of money to buy one or that to power one up might cause a brownout in Vila. Either way, we were able to spend 8 days in Brisbane. We didn’t travel outside the city such as going to the Great Barrier Reef or the Gold Coast, or the interior but we were able to visit and tour the very nice but expensive city. But, this blog wasn’t intended to be about me or Australia for that matter. It’s about….. not sure, but I know it includes Vanuatu.

When we got back to our island of Ambae, Peace Corps made us move from our village up in the mountains to Lolowai, the main city (really just a large village of a couple of hundred people) on East Ambae. So now instead of a 2-1/2 hour walk or 45 minute truck ride, I have 2-1/2 minute walk to work from our temporary housing. Temporary may mean we stay there the rest of our time in Vanuatu, or not, it’s just a matter if they get a doctor to come and reside on this island. Our temporary home is the Dr.’s house. Here is the great view of the lagoon from our house. Nothing short of spectacular on the scenery end of this place, though the housing, while the nicest place on East Ambae is somewhat wanting in certain types of amenities. Well, to be accurate all amenities.

I finally have a bicycle. It’s a GT Mountain bike, so it’s good quality. On this island only the pikinini (children) ride bikes, usually a cheap Chinese variety that tend to break down quickly and easily. So my bike is considered “flas” (flashy), with all the gears and cables that actually work. It’s a wander to me why bikes aren’t used more around here since the terrain, while hilly at times, make it easier and certainly more pleasant to get around. Since people spend a good part of their days walking it would be a great alternative. Beth and I are finally settling down in our new home – I think. You would think after almost 8 months acclimating would have come sooner but in reality, living in this other worldly place takes a lot of adjustments that kept us off guard, especially considering the distance between home and work that we did have.

We are finally starting to drift out of our self inflicted sequestration at home. Up to now home is what we craved after a day at work where we butchered the language or culturally stepped on toes or felt like we were intruding in the locals’ lives. These gains are small but significant to us. For instance, the Sunday before last, instead of lounging around the house we decided to walk to the beach in Saratamata, normally about a half hour walk on the main road. This time we took the bush road over the hills surrounding Lolowai, affording some great vistas of the lagoon and ocean. Then we walked down the other side through the jungle to the beach where we snorkeled in some very nice coral reefs, saw colorful fish after which we laid on our mat, read books and generally watched children play in the surf. Occasionally a dugout canoe would drift by but other than that there were no boats or noises of any kind to interrupt our view of our neighboring island of Maewo. Pretty nice afternoon. The weekend before that, me and about 6-7 small local boys took me over the cliff surrounding the village to a large, long beach on the other side. It’s completely secluded because it is so difficult to get to. It is about a half mile long and is completely surrounded by cliffs that jut out into the ocean on each end. So the only way to get there is by climbing down the soft side of a cliff or by canoe. We were the only ones there, and mostly I watched as the boys jumped from cliffs into the water, search for turtle eggs, go into the bush to spook out the flying fox (large bats). I had my swimming goggles with me and they loved using them. The coral here was pristine but I didn’t venture too far out.

And yesterday, this past Sunday, Beth managed to get herself invited to go to services at the Jehovah’s Witness church near the airport. Between the service and the kakae (meal) after she was gone for close to 6 hours. I was beginning to wander if I would have to an intervention to get her back. I managed not to go to church, rather, I went on my first exploratory and recreational ride on the mountain bike. I went on bush roads (that is all there is here) where I had no idea where I was going. What started out as a 1 hour ride turned into 3 hours, and thinking the whole time I wasn’t lost, I was. When I realized I was lost, it was close to midday so even the sun was no help in telling me which direction I was going. So on I rode thinking I was heading northeast and back towards my village when in fact I was heading southwest on the opposite side of the island. As it turned out I probably went around about a fifth of the island. It kind of made it feel small, but with that being said, it gives me the confidence to try to circumnavigate the island one day soon, something I’ve been thinking about since I got the bike. Most of the trip will be coastal dirt road but there are plenty of places where there are no roads and I will have to hike. But it could be fun (operative word being could).

Since we’ve moved down to Lolowai, our house has quickly become a popular stop off point for other Peace Corps volunteers who are passing through. Our house is just above the place where small boats from the other nearby islands come to drop off passengers who are going to the airport. Last Friday, Justine, a volunteer on Maewo came over on a boat and spent a couple of hours with us before heading to the airport. Two hours later she returned saying her plane had been overloaded and had no seat for her. So the next flight not being until Sunday morning we ended up spending a very pleasant weekend with her. Justine is finishing up her two years service in June so it was fun to talk with her about her feelings about her time here, her thoughts about leaving, her future plans, etc. In a way we were jealous because, even though we are settling in nicely, it brought feelings of homesickness back. Not to worry though, if we can’t go home, we are having “home” brought to us.

This week we’re having friends visit us from South Africa, friends originally from home in Dry Ridge, Kentucky. In June, our daughter Maggie is coming to visit us for two weeks, and we think sometime a little later our son, Tyler, will come visit us. That’s in addition to others in my family who have talked about coming but so far nothing has developed, but we’re hoping. A couple of weeks ago, Beth, after having returned from doing a workshop with a couple of other volunteers on North Ambae, went into a terrible funk. She had always been the sunny side of our relationship and it was not going well when she gets a disposition like mine. She had been that way for a couple of weeks actually. Too, she was having violent dreams where she’d kill people and aside from worrying about getting caught, she said she was pretty remorseless and indiscriminate in whom she’d murder. For reasons that should be obvious, I was becoming a bit concerned. Sleeping with her and her guilt free murderous rampages was slightly disconcerting to me on a visceral level. But before the axe fell so to speak, she figured out that it was her malaria medicine (it is well known for having these side effects) that was causing both of these symptoms. So she switched to my medication (a daily dose instead of her weekly dose) and within a week, all was back to normal….except she keeps walking around with this machete in her hand and a snidely grin on her face.

Beth has started finding her niche as well. Since moving down she has found herself going to schools and giving classes on female health issues. At the request of a volunteer from New Zealand who is teaching hospitality at a local rural training center, she is giving a class every week for a month. Too, she is working with the nurses at the hospital and going with them when they go to schools and villages when they are doing immunizations and physicals, also giving talks. She seems to like it very much though the trips are inconsistent and often cancelled at the last minute, such as when the truck is broken or has no fuel, or like today, the rains washed the road out to the village they were going.

Another blog entry from ED April 21, 2010

I had an interesting day yesterday. When I went to work in the morning I had forgotten that the provincial health minister and the nurse in charge had decided to visit a dispensary on the south part of the island, Sakau. A dispensary is a medical treatment clinic staffed by a nurse and a nurse aid, and is managed at the local level by a community health committee. Anyway, they were having management issues and suspicions of misuse of property. I invited myself to go along and as it turned out it was an informative meeting for me in terms of getting a perspective on attitudes and how situations are handled. In turned into an all day trip. We left at 9:30 and the first half hour of the trip was along road I am familiar and, for Ambae the road is in pretty good shape. Our hired driver, Simeon, drove us there in his late 1980’s Toyota pickup truck, explaining the regardless of how bad it looked (it did) it always started and moved, thus it was declared as dependable transportation. Solidly fortified by this information, off we went but after about 20 minutes he stopped, rooted around in a mess of tools behind his seat and came out with a tire iron stating that he felt the rear wheel coming loose. Indeed, he was right. Four of the six lug nuts were barely holding the wheel on. There probably would have 6 lug nuts loose except that there were only four lug nuts to begin with, the other two bolts had been sheered off some time ago, but he didn’t seem worried.

With that minor housekeeping measure taken care of we went off again. We knew we had left East Ambae when we came upon a fence across the road, for which we had to jump out and dismantle, then let the truck go through and then reassemble it (we had to do this 6 times on the way there). From there on we were on much worse road and progress was at a much slower rate. Small rivers had to be crossed at the bottom of steep ravines after which of course we had to climb the other side, only to repeat this process every three or four minutes. After about two hours we stopped in the middle of one of these rivers so the driver could refill the truck’s radiator that was complaining badly and belching steam. My confidence in the driver’s statement about the reliability of the truck was waning but no one else seemed to be too concerned, and I can say that it provided me a measure of comfort. After all, the worst that could happen is that we’d have to walk, something that in terms of time would not have been appreciably slower than the truck was moving.

As we were nearing the village of Sakau, our destination, we came upon a particularly steep rise out of a ravine, and as it had been raining lightly off and on but apparently hard enough to wash out part of the road. I have learned since being here that these 4 wheel drive trucks can scale just about any hill but our driver thought this one had too big a rut in it that he felt he would bottom out and get stuck. For the next 15 minutes he dug dirt out of the hillside to fill in the rut, as we looked on from our perch in the bed of the pickup truck. Conveniently he had a shovel for just such an occasion, and from his attitude this was just another everyday occurrence. Finally after close to three hours we arrived in Sakau. We ate local island food and then had a meeting with the nurse and the health committee for about 1 ½ hours, after which we were off again on our return trip. On our way back much of the same as on the trip down. This time we had to stop for water twice for the radiator, and another time we had to stop for 15 minutes or so because the truck had slide sideways in the mud just at a point where a fallen tree limb was sticking up on the side of the road. The limb became lodged into the front wheel well, ripping of part of the bumper, the front lights and part of the fender. Yet another tool was produced, a machete and the driver cut away the log and as he spun to get out of the mud, with me and others pushing and up to our knees in the mud the truck slid right even more and the taillight and fender were summarily smashed. But we were out and I must say the driver seemed completely nonplussed by all the damage. I suppose being a 1980’s truck, already in bad shape, I’m guessing the sum total of damage was maybe 15 bucks.

Anyway, a little after 5 o’clock we returned back to Lolowai none worse for the wear. Interesting fact is when I asked the driver how much distance we had driven today, he said 12 kilometers each way, a total of 24 kilometers in close up to 6 hours of travel time. The hospital manager asked me how long it would take to go that distance on American roads I told him about 10 minutes each way. He just smiled and shook his head. So did I.

Ed’s blog yet again. May 12, 2010

We are in Vila and have been here for two weeks. Last week we stayed at a remote church resort that was rustic by American standards but only twenty minutes outside of Vila. We had no electricity, certainly no internet, and spotty phone service. There we attended an HIV workshop with some village health workers brought in from other islands. Village health workers are people within a village who are minimally trained to provide very baseline medical care. A couple of these workers had never been off there island or had never been to Vila, and these were not young people by any means. Imagine living on a small island your entire life and then all of a sudden finding yourself flying in a plane and going to the city with cars, electricity, paved streets, running water, and certainly a much less modest lifestyle. It had to be overwhelming.

The entire group consisted of about 30 village aid workers and 15 PC volunteers. It went well. This week we’ve been in the city for a Peace Corps training session, and, this past week marked our 6 month service date. It’s hard to believe we are one-fourth of the way through our service. And counting our training time we’ve been in Vanuatu for 8 months.

Just before this workshop and training started we happily played tourists with Brian and Annphia, friends of ours who came to visit from South Africa. They spent a couple of days on our island after which we spent some great days touring in Santo where we snorkeled, kayaked, and hiked the Millennium Cave walk in the interior of the island. This was the highlight of the trip. The Millennium Cave is a large, high and fairly long cave that has a river through it and to hike it we basically had wade and portage down this river. It was first discovered in 2000 which gives an indication of just how remote this place is. Before entering the cave our guide painted our faces which was necessary to insure our safe passage through it. It was probably touristy schtick but it made for good fun. After the cave, we rode little kiddy inflatable rings down a slot canyon that had waterfalls coming from the rock walls, a couple of places where we could do small cliff jumping and there was one place you looked up and saw a bamboo bridge a couple of hundred feet up that crossed from one side of the canyon to the other. In several places where there were rapids we had to do some rock scaling to get around. To top off the long day, we had to climb a cascading waterfall to get out of this deep canyon. Really spectacular. Felt like we were in an Indiana Jones movie.

 A few days later we flew to Tanna where we stayed in grass huts on the ocean for two days. The day we arrived we went up to Mt. Yasur, the most active volcano in Vanuatu and relatively easy to get to. It’s a two hour truck ride that winds up and around the mountain, and we drove through ash plains (a desert looking place where all the volcanic ash falls after the volcano belches it out) and drove within a few minutes walk from the top. We were not disappointed when we arrived and this evening the volcano was particularly active. About 1 -2 times every minute it would belch out huge clouds of ash along with this brilliant hot lava. The wind was blowing away from us so we weren’t affected by the ash, but we were close enough to feel the heat, though it was very faint. Really quite impressive. After our trip to Tanna, we flew to Vila where we stayed but did quite a bit of snorkeling and went to another waterfall nearby. All in all it was a huge success of a holiday/vacation.

Beth at work

 

Ed at work

Kava happy hour – 1st shell

Ed and the volcano

 

kava happy hour – after

Beth at Tanna

Annphia and Brian – Millennium cave walk

Pikinini pleiplei – local children at play

Tanna PCVs going to our house while we’re on our way to Tanna – passing each other at the airport on Santo

Mr. Yasur – Tanna

Milennium cave walk

Millennium cave entrance