wishing you a very ...

Hopefully you can read the message we wrote you in the sand when we went for a christmas BBQ picnic at the beach on Sunday with a few VSO friends. It’s hard to believe its Christmas in a few days and that we’ve been here for six months already. It doesn’t feel very like christmas as its been about 30° for the last couple of months. The lovely tree below is called a Christmas tree – doesn’t look quite like the Christmas trees we’re used to but there are loads of them here all covered with hundreds of bright red flowers, really beautiful.

We are off to New Zealand on Saturday to stay with Kate and Grant who have handily just moved to Auckland in time to look after us for Christmas. We’re planning to travel around New Zealand for a couple of weeks so we’ll probably not be blogging or emailing that much. But we will be thinking of you all and missing everyone over christmas and we'll be in touch in the new year. Lots of love H&J.

WAD mo IVD

We haven’t emailed or blogged much for the past week partly because the phone bill didn’t get paid in my office so VNCW have lost the internet again, and partly because we’ve been off work for a couple of days because of a run of international awareness days and our annual VSO conference. (hopefully the internet will be back soon and I can catch some of you on skype or messenger to wish you a happy christmas – my skype name is hannah.vanuatu)

Last Friday was World AIDS Day and in Vanuatu a sort of workshop meeting had been planned in the Chief’s Nakamal. I had to give a small tok-tok (speech) as part of the opening session about the research I wrote earlier this year which suggests that women in Vanuatu are at greater risk of contracting HIV & AIDS than men (mostly because women are quite often unable to decide when they have sex and to use contraceptives.) I’m not a very confident public speaker so I was quite relieved that there were only about 30 people at the meeting although when each of the speakers stood up to talk a dictaphone and camcorder were pointed at us and we were recorded for TV Vanuatu and Radio Vanuatu. Luckily we don’t have a TV so I didn’t have to bear the shame of watching myself on TV, although one of our colleagues heard someone called Anna Perch talking on the radio later on. My Ugandan colleague said I sounded like the Queen and has started calling me Elizabeth….not sure that’s a compliment.

Then Wednesday was International Day of the Volunteer. So we all assembled in the car park in town; about a dozen of us from VSO and also volunteers from the other agencies here (Peacecorps, JICA, Australian Volunteer International) (the photo is me with some colleagues from my work) and followed the band on a parade through town. It would have been embarrassing if these types of parade didn’t happen practically every week although it was slightly unfortunate that the band were playing Onward Christian Soldiers as we walked down the high street. We marched to Independence Park where the President of Vanuatu – Kalkot Mataskelekele made a small speech in which he thanked volunteers for being angels of mercy (think that may be overplaying our part a bit but it was very nice of him to say so.) Then we were meant to have a couple of hours of inter-agency football and volleyball matches but it was midday and about 32° so that only lasted about half an hour before we went for a swim.

And then Thursday and Friday last week we had our annual VSO conference for staff and volunteers. I had organised it with another volunteer who ended up leaving last week so I felt quite responsible for making sure it all ran smoothly which it did, although I was a bit tense for the first hour on Thursday morning because none of the volunteers, staff or speakers I had arranged turned up quite on time or really anywhere close to being on time. But after that initial panic it all went really well and we had a good couple of days of talks, and “sharing sessions” and a vicious game of water polo. On Saturday we finished off our get-together with a 4 hour walk along the coast followed by a picnic (actually something called buña in which a ton of manioc, taro, island cabbage, chicken and bananas is cooked underground encased in banana leaves) followed by a trip across the lagoon in a dug out canoe.

Its not all about the beaches

Apologies for the lack of entries over the last few weeks: we have both been a bit busy. But hopefully this week there will be a few more just to let you know what we have been doing.

Despite a number of blog entries showing pictures of beaches, trips round the island and diving, we are actually doing some work aswell, and some of it is actually bearing fruit!

As I mentioned when we first started here, a part of the work that I am doing is advising the government on human rights issues. One particular area that I have spent quite a lot of time working on is the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. This is one of the foundation pillars of international human rights law which, along with the International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights codifies the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The ICCPR sets out the civil and political rights of individuals, such as the right to life, prohibition of torture, freedom of movement, freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, the right to family life etc. Vanuatu was one of only 27 of the 192 UN member countries that had taken no action to sign up to or become a party to the convention. Given that the Vanuatu constitution already recognises many of the rights set out in the ICCPR and it is also one of the few countries of the 27 that does not have the death penalty it raised the question of whether there was any reason why Vanuatu could not look to take steps to recognise these issues internationally.

After several months of research, briefings, meetings and consultations it was felt that there was no reason and so the minister of foreign affairs put forward the proposal that Vanuatu sign the ICCPR. The Council of Ministers, which is the Executive limb of government, approved the proposal and on Thursday 29th November Vanuatu signed the ICCPR in New York, becoming the 166th country to have taken action on it. (And only the second country in the Pacific to have done so.)

conference junkie/ junket #2

The all day seminar I went to this week was at the 4* Sebel hotel (very ugly high-rise, new hotel, on the harbour) and wasn’t directly relevant to my work but was a really interesting event. The title (by which I guess they were trying to put people off coming) was the Regional information seminar on the EU Economic Pacific Partnership Agreement. Vanuatu is one of the 77 ACP (African, Caribbean, Pacific) countries which ‘enjoy’ special trading arrangements with the EU. At the moment these preferential trading arrangements are based on the Cotonou Cooperation Agreement (which took over from the Lome accords if you're up on this kind of thing) and function under a WTO waiver. The WTO waiver expires on the 31st December this year, and the EPAs are the successor to this agreement.

The EPAs raise the bar and suggest a higher level of trade liberalization than these countries have had to face from the EU before. As a result many of the EPAs which have been negotiated for the past 5 years are still to be signed by ACP countries from around the world. Vanuatu is refusing to sign up to the Pacific Region EPA.

It was a really interesting day and not for the first time I wished I had more of a clue about economics as a lot of the discussion went over my head. I think the argument for trade liberalization as the best way forward for sustainable development was not really at issue, the disagreement, with the EU delegation at one end and the Oxfam rep at the other end, is how fast this liberalization is made/ allowed to happen. The main concerns of Vanuatu and other ACP countries are loss of fiscal resources (Vanuatu doesn’t have an income tax but relies on import taxes for massive amounts of its revenue), protection of local businesses and competition from EU countries. The EU representative from the Trade Unit in Brussels was very polished and pretty persuasive as the ‘guy who is just trying to help,’ but the fact that Vanuatu exports very little to the EU (kava or a mat anyone?) and imports 4 times as much as it exports (imports are mainly electronic goods, processed food, cars and clothes etc) from Australia, NZ, China, Japan and the EU makes me think Vanuatu has less to gain from the arrangements than Jacques might think. He made an interesting point about the new make-up of the EU (with all the new eastern bloc accession countries) which meant that the attitude of paternalism and ex-colonial responsibility of countries like the UK, France, Spain etc is being diluted by countries in Eastern Europe not a great deal richer than some of the ACP nations and without the post-colonial guilt.

The whole question is actually irrelevant to Vanuatu at the moment as it is currently classed by the UN as an LDC (least developed country) meaning it gets preferential treatment under LDC rules anyway. This meant the Trade Minster could remark that “no EPA at all would be better than a bad agreement.” True for the time-being but Vanuatu’s status as an LDC is under review because of its growing GDP, some of John’s foreign affairs colleagues were making the case for Vanuatu remaining on the LDC list at the UN last month. If anyone is still reading at this point and has any suggestions on something like a duffer’s guide to global economics that would be great.

conference junkie/ junket

I’ve come to realize that in Vanuatu you can spend large chunks of your life in one of the 4 smart hotels in Port Vila attending conferences or workshops of one kind or other. Having managed to avoid attending any of these events until recently I’ve been to two in the last two weeks. I’m not sure why the concentration of these events is so great I guess it’s just the smallness of Vila/ Vanuatu that makes it feels like it is being swamped and that there seems to be some conference or other taking place pretty much every week.

So last week I spent the first three days of the week at the 4* Meridian Hotel (quite smart, on the lagoon, bit anonymous) at the CEDAW (UN Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women) Sub-regional implementation workshop which was useful not only because the content of the conference was directly relevant to my work but also because it meant I would be able to buttonhole a couple of the women I haven’t been able to track down.

There were 4 country delegations at the conference, from Fiji, Samoa, Cook Islands and Vanuatu. All of them there to discuss the recommendations handed out to each country by the UN CEDAW committee. The discussions were organized over 4 issues which are pertinent to all 4 countries; violence against women, women’s access to healthcare, women and employment and women’s participation in politics and government. I sat with the Vanuatu delegation and there was some interesting discussion but nothing that hasn’t already been written, said or agreed to several times. It was really unfortunate that there wasn’t a session where the delegates got to discuss the issues in detail with the delegates from the other countries as these countries are always being told to work together as a region, it seemed a bit of a stupid missed opportunity and was really just another talking shop.

unwelcome visitor

Feeling a little tired at work this morning. I was woken last night by a feeling like a bee sting on my arm. I turned on the light to find a little bloody mark on my forearm. I was a bit confused and couldn’t work out how I had managed to scratch myself on something so I turned the light off. But it was so sore, to John's annoyance, I turned the light on again and made him get out of bed so we could check underneath – nothing, and pulled the sheet back to find an 8 inch, shiny, black millipede at the end of the bed. We were so freaked out it managed to scuttle away before we could kill it, so then we spent the next hour unsuccessfully looking for it. You can imagine we didn’t get much sleep after that.

My arm went a bit pink and swollen and when I showed a colleague this morning and told her what had happened she gave me a bit of local knowledge; as its getting wetter we’ll see more millipedes (great), apparently its lucky to have been bitten by a big millipede (smaller ones have a nastier bit) and the best thing to apply to a bite is to rub on a few drops of ‘pis-pis.’
So now you know.

'Thrilla in Port Vila'

well thats maybe stretching the truth a little ...whilst some eyes might have been on Israel v Russia on Saturday the main game in the international football calender was the world cup qualifier here in Port Vila - Vanuatu v New Zealand. Games don't come much bigger than this round here.

However it very nearly didn't go ahead, approval from FIFA on the Municipal "stadium" came only two days before the game after round the clock work putting right some minor flaws, such as putting some grass on the pitch, providing toilet facilities for players and fans and providing the ref and linesmen somewhere to change other than the home team dressing room. But in the end, and thanks to some money from the New Zealand High Commission to help with the repairs, the place looked great.

It wasn't a sell out but this was principally because many people decided against shelling out 500 vatu (2.50) in favour of a nearby roof or paw paw tree. By the time the players ran out the place was going wild - which we could largely assume to be in appreciation of the Vanuatu kit which was the flag made into a shirt. Reasonable enough but on eleven players it looked more like the tour de france than a football match.

The game itself was a cracker. Against the run of play, a ball over the top and the Vanuatu No.9 Jean Nako Naprapol skipped round the keeper and thumped the ball into the back of the net. The place went wild. It got even wilder moments later when the Vanuatu keeper made a miraculous triple save. It was 1-0 at half time and expectation running high. But then almost straight from the kick off the All Whites equalised. The next forty five minutes were a see saw - Vanuatu hit the bar, New Zealand missed an open goal. And then ten minutes before the end the brilliant Vanuatu keeper was carried of injured, his replacement arriving to rapturous applause.

The game drifted into the 94th minute when a cross came in from the New Zealand left wing. Never before has their been such a feat of human propulsion as the Vanuatu keeper flew out to punch the ball away. Unfortunately, he missed by several metres and landed somewhere near the penalty spot just in time to see the ball loop off the head of Scunthorpe United utility man David Mulligan and into the net. So, 2-1 the final score. But it didn't seem to deter the crowd who, slightly strangely, cheered for all they were worth at the final whistle. I asked a colleague at work about this the next day and she said that the Vanuatu fans just enjoyed the excitement of the game. I am sure we can expect the same reaction from the England fans when Croatia score a last minute winner against England on Wednesday.

Spel mo storian…

Having driven round the island last weekend, we were back up on the north of the island again this weekend – this time without the aid of a little hire car. We had decided to go up to Pele and Nguna, two islands just north of Efate, in order to go and see a couple of Peace Corps guys we have met who work up there and also to show Peter, a (relatively) new VSO something of life outside Vila. Pele is the island where we went to stay in our first month so it was an opportunity to say hello to our host family in the village of Pilliura.

The women from the market in Vila tend to head back to their islands on Saturday mornings and we were able to hitch a lift in the back of the truck with the Pele mamas heading up to the north of Efate and from there get a boat across to Pele. We stopped for a few hours on Pele and had some lunch, but the main reason for the trip was to go across to the island of Nguna which is only a short boat-ride away. It is a much bigger island than Pele and rises steeply from the beach up into “highlands” with an extinct volcano.

We stayed at a very sweet little guest house near the beach and just after the sun had gone down we hacked around a couple of the villages looking for somewhere to drink kava. This is always made slightly more difficult as the default setting for a Nakamal is very quiet and dark, so they are not the easiest places to find after dark. But, we found one just as they were making a new bucket and we had a couple of shells before going back to the guest house. Over the past couple of weeks the weather has started to get really hot and by the time we went to bed any breeze there had been had completely disappeared so it was a bit like sleeping in warm tea.

Sunday morning was hot and absolutely stunning and we headed off to hike up “on- top” (of the island) to visit the other Peace Corps who is living up there: Dominique. She and Seth are working on a marine conservation project around these two islands. Despite the fact that most of the forty minute climb was in the shade of the bush I think we were all about 3 stone lighter by the time we got to the top. But the compensation was seeing Dom’s very sweet village and the stunning views from the top of the island.

There are two expressions you hear over and over again in Vanuatu and they are “spel” which means find somewhere shady and rest , and “storian” which means find somewhere shady and sit and talk, or very often, just sit. A very large amount of time is spent doing one or both of these and so, after our arduous climb up and then back down to Dom's village we decided to spel on the beach for a couple of hours and then take the boat back across to Pele where we had time for a nice snorkel and storian just as the sun was setting.

After a night listening to torrential rain and cockerels we were up at 5.30am to hitch a ride on the boat back across to Efate and then a truck back into Vila just about in time to go to work on Monday morning.

A trip round the island

We have been planning for some time to hire a car and drive round the island (Efate) but kept getting thwarted by the England rugby team. We obviously had to stay in town to watch the games and that meant one very late Saturday night and two very early Sunday mornings which got in the way of our plans.

The late Saturday night was spent in a posh hotel bar with a load of very loud and abusive pissed aussies who got quieter and quieter as the game went on. The following Sunday we were up at 5am to watch the England v France game in the French Embassy. They were very friendly and gave us free coffee and croissants even while their team lost. And then the following Sunday we were up again at 5am to watch the final in an aussie bar with the only four South Africans in Vanuatu.

There was an air of despondency with defeat but we were pleased to finally be able to leave for our trip round the island. We went to Discount Rentals and hired ourselves a little hot hatch and motored off at a mighty 50km/h. This quickly dipped to a more sedate 20km/h as we came off the only tarmacced piece of road that runs for about 2 miles either side of Port Vila. We decided to go anticlockwise around the island purely on the basis that we weren’t sure our little car would get up Clem’s Peak – the very steep hill to the west of town.

The road around the island is about 130km, hugging the coast all the way. It was lovely to be out of Vila and to see the rest of Efate. The east coast in particular had some spectacular beaches and we stopped at a place called Eton for a swim and some lunch. It has a large natural swimming pool that is protected from the ocean by tall reefs across the front of the bay and a pure white beach. There were a number of villages all round the island but we were quite surprised by how few people we saw. A large majority of people live in and around Vila and there is an ongoing problem with urban drift. Outside of this one coast road, the centre of the island is largely uninhabited and made up of low lying mountainous jungle: large parts of which are covered in a rapid growing weed that the Americans brought over in the second world war to use as camouflage and kindly left to spread its way all over the island. The south and east parts of the island are pretty flat and full of coconut plantations and cattle grazing, a lot of it looks more like English parkland than a tropical island.

We have been thinking of planning a cycle trip round the island at some point and we were pretty happy about the idea until we were about 40km from home when suddenly the lovely level dirt track turned into an endless rollercoaster of steep hills with massive potholes – I think if it had been raining we almost certainly would not have made it round in our little car.

On Sunday we drove half an hour out of Vila to a beach which was spectacular, your perfect south pacific island beach, pretty much to ourselves, and with amazing coral to snorkel round. We had to pinch ourselves a bit, and hope none of the other outgoing VSOs we met back in the UK check our blog from their placements in Mongolia, Sierra Leone, Rwanda etc…

So it was a lovely weekend and a real treat to have a car for a couple of days. The trip around the island on bikes is currently under negotiation.

Is it me?

The blog monitor (Hannah) has edited my original blog (on the basis of excessive length and bad language) and I have been limited to saying the following:

As you know we are both working on issues of institutional development and better working practices. Just for interest I thought I’d name the institution that has proved to be the most time consuming and frustrating to deal with since we have been here – the Solicitors Regulation Authority in the UK – as they say here, it is cranki.

Anyway, on a more positive note there is a man currently mending the air conditioning unit in my office which will hopefully mean that I now don't leave work two stone lighter than I went in. Although saying that as I am typing he has just stuck a screwdriver into the machine and a large spark has come out. It doesn't appear to have done any harm, although this has happened twice since I arrived and I am thinking I might wear thick soled rubber shoes to work in future.

I spoke too soon and I'm glad this isn't coming to you live as I would have lost you for a bit there. The spark it appears did somehow manage to fix the air-conditioning but also managed to shut down my computer for a short spell. Anyway all appears well now: i have a computer and i am cool (words which I think I also said in 1982 with the arrival of a Spectrum 48k) - what a relief.

scramble for vanuatu

This week I went with the director of the NGO I’m working for to see AUSAID (the Australian version of DFID) to ask them to fund the leadership project I’m working on …they should let us know next week.

Despite the pretty ropey state of many of the NGOs in Vanuatu (in terms of leadership, staff capacity and organization, financial planning etc) funding is actually not hard to come by. There’s something of a scramble for the south pacific going on which has presumably been going for ages but doesn’t make the news much in the UK. Ausaid and NZ aid are major donors and have been for years; the UK (DFID) pulled out much of its funding and rationalized its embassies in the south pacific some years ago although the EU is still much in evidence. But increasingly China is throwing money at the region (as it is in Africa) and unlike the Ausaid, NZ Aid, EU approach which is heavily bound up with bureaucratic processes attempting to ensure accountability and funding to achieve “good governance” the Chinese money comes with no strings attached.

In recent years the Chinese have built the parliament building, the Department and Ministry for Foreign Affairs (where John works) and a large workforce of Chinese labourers are currently building the head office of the Melanesian Spearhead Group (another regional economic trade and development grouping) – while hundreds of unemployed Ni-vans wander around with no work. One of the examples of the quid pro quo is that a Chinese company is building a large tuna processing plant just north of Vila threatening to pollute the beach and sea, damaging the tourist industry and the fish population (There is public opposition to the project which has apparently skipped the full environmental impact assessment stage of the planning process. Although it has to be said that the most vocal opposition comes from the ex-pats who have got large houses and fenced off bits of beach near the area in question.)

I hadn’t really thought about the strategic importance of little islands like Vanuatu before coming here but the approaches from the donor/ investor countries are enough to keep Vanuatu’s overstretched government ministers busy full time. And it’s hard to blame them for pretty much saying yes to everything that’s offered to them when they are unable to deliver the most basic services to their population. However this means strategic development doesn’t happen and rather than setting the agenda the government just says yes to the money on offer, so there’s a lot of overlap and a lot of gaps. At the moment the Vanuatu government has a firm ‘One China’ policy but this was interrupted some years ago when the government pillaged the country’s pension fund and Taiwan offered to plug the gap for a bit of recognition….

In the run up to the Australian election the parties there are jumping on the ‘war against terrorism’ band wagon and talking up the region’s potential for instability. Kevin Rudd the labor leader has even called it an axis of instability shamelessly echoing Bush and citing the violence and political unrest in the Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea and the latest coup in Fiji. All in all the money coming into Vanuatu is pretty significant – an Ausaid report from 2006 claims that on a per person basis the pacific islands receive the most aid of any group in the world which is pretty extraordinary when you compare it to countries who are far more debilitated by war, famine, HIV etc and is also a pretty strong indictment of the failure of that investment to make an impact in Vanuatu…

Bildimap olgeta woman blong lidas

At the moment I am working with a women’s group on a leadership project, helping them to develop a strategy (developing a training course, getting proper support from political parties and government etc) to increase the number of women in leadership positions. Depending on which way you look at it its either a hugely challenging project or one with enormous potential… currently there is one woman on one of the two municipal councils, no women on the 6 provincial councils and 2 female MPs out of 52 in parliament, and an unknown (but likely to be small) number on village councils and clearly no women on the council of chiefs. The project was meant to begin in April of this year in order to have some influence on the expected June/July 2008 general election. Unfortunately due to funding problems and lack of staff within the organisation I am working with the project has slipped a bit....
As most of the dozen or so (!) political parties have already confirmed their candidates the project is unlikely to have an impact on an election that will probably happen in 8 months time so I think the focus will be more on building up women to stand for local and provincial elections. As its a long term issue its clearly valuable to try and start something as soon as possible anyway. The familiar attitude towards women was summed up rather nicely by the chair of the malvataumauri (council of chiefs) a few years ago when Vanuatu signed up to CEDAW (UN convention on the elimination of discrimination towards women- the primary international treaty on women’s rights) when he warned women “not to take CEDAW to start thinking highly of themselves and forgetting their place in society,”….not sure if anyone mentioned that he may have missed the point.

a day trip to parliament

Well after the excitement of Tanna it has been back to the relative calm of everyday working life in Vila. Last week I had an outing to parliament as I was invited to a presentation ceremony there. It is a very nice new building (courtesy of the Chinese) that has a fantastic view over the bay. The event was the presentation of the consolidated laws of Vanuatu, which was something that a former VSO volunteer had been involved in. Most of the great and the good were present which gave me an excellent opportunity to meet both the prime minister and the president.

As with a lot of things in Vanuatu, ceremony is very important. This is particularly true when it comes to meetings and public speaking. There is always a prayer before any meal or meeting and when it comes to speeches the etiquette, as far as I can work out, is to acknowledge pretty much everyone who is in the room, then give the contents of the speech and then acknowledge everyone else all over again. As you can imagine this can make for quite a long speech and, in the event that there are a number of speeches, quite a long event – but quite a good game of Guess Who?

So, the meeting started with a speech from the Attorney General:
“Mr President mo mises” (and your wife)
“Mr Prime Minister mo mises” (and your wife)
“Mr Speaker of the House” (he didn’t appear to have a wife)

And so it went on – fortunately, of the 150 people invited only about 60 turned up. Eventually the Attorney General handed over to the Minister of Justice (who is also his brother and looks very similar) and the whole thing was repeated. The president also gave a speech and by the end I felt I knew everyone.

Amazingly for this event and for events in general in Vanuatu, it finished before the scheduled close, and so we had an interesting hour where we all stood outside waiting for the food to arrive: never a more appropriate time to wander up to the two most important people in the country and have a quick chat. Whether they understood what I was saying in my broken bislama – which I guess you could probably call pigeon pigeon – I will never know, but they both smiled nicely and nodded and said welcome (mo mises).

tanna and the toka

Time, to a large extent, is a moveable feast in Vanuatu. The Toka festival on the island of Tanna is a serious kastom festival. It doesn’t happen every year and when it does happen it is a big event on the island. When and where it happens is decided by the ‘paramount’ chiefs. How you find out about it if you are not from Tanna was, as we found out, pretty tricky. There are some kastom festivals in Vanuatu where tourists are welcomed and the dates are given out in advance to tour companies but the toka is different. We had heard that it might be happening and it took us 4 weeks to find out the right date having been given a series of wrong dates beforehand. We did however have some help thanks to Lawrence who is a Kenyan VSO volunteer on Tanna – he has been on Tanna for two years and appears to know everyone. Even then, he only found out the date a week before it was due to happen. In the end we took a bit of a gamble booking the flights for when we thought it might happen, in case they sold out if we waited for absolute confirmation.

Lawrence had said he would take us to the Toka. We arrived on Tanna on Monday and all afternoon and all night there was heavy wind and rain. This meant that Lawrence who is in Tanna as a road maintenance engineer had to spend all of Tuesday organising trucks to be driven to the bits of road that had been washed away to be patched up with large piles of gravel. So we spent Monday and Tuesday walking around Tanna. I spent most of the time commenting on the numbers of mangos in the trees – hundreds of them. We kept passing groups of people with giant sticks trying to knock mangoes on to the ground.
When we met Lawrence on Tuesday morning he said we would leave for the Toka at 9am on Wednesday. When we went for kava with him that evening he said we would leave at 12pm on Wednesday. On Wednesday morning he said 3pm. We eventually left at 4.30 stopping for kava on the way. On Wednesday morning, which was a beautiful sunny day, we rode around in the back of Lawrence’s truck (which is now my favourite way to travel if its not raining) seeing how the roads were looking and driving through the incredible lush green landscape in Tanna. We drove half way across the island into Middle Bush and from one of the highest points in the island we had an incredible view of the volcano, Yasur.

We were getting a bit nervous about getting to the Toka because it really doesn’t happen very often and not many non-Tannese get to go. However at 4.30pm we were finally underway, riding in the back of Lawrence’s truck with four Peace Corps volunteers who are living on the island, and Moses, another VSO volunteer. The peace corps were much better prepared than us with rucksacks full of the ubiquitous peanut butter sandwiches, biscuits and warm clothes. The toka began on Tuesday with some of the women’s dances and I think various small-scale dancing had continued until Wednesday when we arrived at about 5.30 in the afternoon. We were pretty apprehensive riding up to the festival as we had heard a couple of stories as to what goes on. The main one being that it is a ceremony where, from dusk until dawn, anything goes with no questions asked. So old scores can be settled and assignations in the bushes can be had. Then, at dawn a large number of pigs are killed and life reverts to normal. Apparently it was originally a way for the chiefs of different tribes to try and bring peace to the island.

As it turned out any apprehension about the Toka was quickly replaced by apprehension about just getting there. The Toka was taking place in a large nakamal (village meeting/ kava drinking area) in a village in the south of Tanna. The drive in itself was quite an experience, once we turned off the main road (“main” being a relative term here as there are no sealed roads in Tanna) which circles the island we were driving up a steep, muddy track, Lawrence’s colleague Nixon from the public works department was doing some expert off road driving. The rain had made this track into a bit of a quagmire and we slid and lurched our way up the steep slope, trying desperately to ignore the sheer drop on one side. I was inside the truck for this journey, it was even more exciting for john and the peace corps who were outside hanging on to the edges of the truck bed as the truck slid across the road. (Lawrence had done some repair work on the road to the toka, apparently the village chiefs had said that if he sorted out the road they’d sort out the weather and stop the rain!). We eventually made it to a house (which appeared to be the only house in the area) where one of Lawrence’s colleagues had said we could stay and dump our stuff. We walked on up the muddy track for about 10 minutes and then came out into a large grass clearing on the side of the hill that led onto an area of packed mud that was surrounded by huge banyan trees. All around the edges of the open space were small wooden and mat huts selling lap-lap, kava and meat stews.

We could hear the loud chanting of men and the sound of their bare feet pounding the ground. As we walked up close to see them there were a hundred or so men all with large sticks walking forward and back and occasionally running to different ends of the nakamal. It was a fantastic sound and there was a strong sense of excitement. Some of the boys taking part were really young, probably the youngest were about 7 or 8. At this stage the men involved were just wearing standard Vanuatan dress which is basically board shorts and some kind of slogan t-shirt (including several Barcelona football shirts, auzzie rugby shirts and bob marley t-shirts). The nakamal itself was surrounded by trees all of which had treehouses and platforms in them from which people were watching. After a couple of hours the men ran out of the nakamal in a big whooping crowd and were replaced by groups of spectacularly dressed women and girls whose dancing was also far more disciplined and better choreographed. The women were wearing banana leaf skirts and brightly coloured wraps of material, and head dresses made from flowers, leaves and that old Melanesian traditional accessory, tinsel. Their faces were painted bright red and yellow. Rather than banging the ground with their feet like the men the women had small woven mats in their hands, which they smacked in time with their singing. By this time the moon had come up, an incredible full moon, which as I looked at it I realised wasn’t just a lucky coincidence. Gradually over the next few hours more and more groups of women filled up the nakamal until it was just one moving mass of dancing women and girls. I was surprised that such young children were taking part. One of the peace-corps girls who is working as a tourism advisor in tanna said that they got the children involved really young so that they grow up knowing about the dancing and traditions to ensure their continuity. After a while, at about 11.30 the men came back and circled the women walking around and making sure that nobody else got into the nakamal. I think there must have been about a thousand people now dancing. The singing was loud and it was quite a hypnotic atmosphere. There was probably a crowd of a thousand people around the edges, very few non- nivan people there, probably only about 30 foreigners. But impressively given the difficulties in establishing when the toka would be happening this included a bbc cameraman and sound man. I spoke to them briefly; they looked knackered having been up at the village for three days. They said they were filming for a series on the south pacific to be screened in 2009.

We walked back to Robert’s house for a couple of hours to lie down although I couldn’t sleep because of the distant noise of the chanting and the immediate noise of a houseful of people snoring. We went back up to the toka at about 2.30am, everyone in the nakamal was still dancing and singing with as much energy as ever. We watched them for the next few hours, it was incredible as the dancing got more complicated. At about 4.30am the chiefs from Tanna took over the nakamal, they were wearing tribal dress which consisted of a leaf skirt and headdress and danced a complex sort of war dance clashing their spears. Just before sunrise at about 5am a large group of men carried in the kweriya which was a woven post about 10 metres tall with a load of feathers on top. Thursday was another absolutely beautiful day and the atmosphere was fantastic, everyone looked delighted and there was a lot of laughter. The children who had spent the night singing and dancing were still running around. We had to leave mid-morning for our flight back to Vila. The dancing was coming to an end and we had to miss the last part of the ceremony, which is when the pigs are killed. Apparently over 200 pigs had been assembled; each pig was to be killed by a club to the head. I had mixed feelings about having to leave at this stage, obviously it wouldn’t have been pleasant to watch but it’s a crucial part of the ceremony. The killing of the pigs represents the communities wiping the slate clean: once the pigs are killed all wrongs are forgiven. We flew back to vila filthy and knackered but pretty excited to have had the privilege to see such a special event.

Three months in

Apologies for a bit of a delay in posting another blog entry, we have settled into a pretty regular life of going to work and the days seem to have flown by. However, rest assured that over the next couple of weeks there should be some good entries as we are off to Tanna (an island to the south of Efate) for a festival at the start of next week. Most of the islands of Vanuatu are unique, with their own cultures and languages, however Tanna is possibly one of the most famous (apparently Channel 4 will be showing a documentary about a group of people from Tanna at some point soon). It fought for independence back in 1980 and still maintains quite an independent mindset from the rest of the country. The very mention of 'ManTanna' seems to have people fidgeting nervously as befits the reputation of the toughest men in the country. The island is famous for its volcano, the John Frum cult and the Prince Philip cult - hopefully we will be able to report fully on our return next week.

And so to life in Vila. The weather has been amazing for the last week although we are both a bit concerned that we might already be heading into summer as it is getting pretty hot. We generally get up about 6 and go to the small shop near our house to get some bread for breakfast (or at least one of us does - the other one appears to have some problems getting out of bed - plus ca change). At about that time of the morning it is the sort of heat you get on a nice hot august afternoon back home. Our walk to work is therefore pretty melting, but this is compensated by the fact that we can see the lovely blue sea for most of the journey. The other indicator that the seasons might be changing is the market which is now absolutely stuffed with produce. We appear to be entering tomato, pawpaw and carrot season - the carrots are so big you feel a bit like you're in Wallace and Gromit and the Curse of the Wererabbit - oranges, mangoes and avocados are on their way. There continues to be a plentiful supply of coconuts, island cabbage, sweet potatoes and yam - we both try to ignore the odd bound coconut crab or chicken that tends to be lying around slowly suffocating.

The 'mamas' come to the market during the course of the week, bringing their produce from all the different islands and will then stay for a few days, sleeping in the market. They never seem to get bored of us asking "wanem emi ia" although we both felt a bit stupid when we asked "wanem emi ia" and the reply came back "brocolli" - it was pretty bloody obvious to all of us that it was brocolli. The only part of the market we haven't tried is the area at the back where they serve laplap - maybe later!
And so, three months in we are feeling pretty settled; playing a bit of scrabble without seeming to get any better at it and trying to find different ways to cook yam and pumpkin.
Three cheers to the Vanuatu football team who took the bronze medal in the South Pacifc Games which means they get to enter the regional qualifying competition for the world cup. Having predicted that the Soloman Islands would win they failed to even get a medal.

namele leaves

I thought I would share with you an ingenious invention that, if ever discovered in the UK could bring the whole country to a grinding halt and pure pleasure to all those with the drudgery of 9-5 work: Namele leaves.

There has been an ongoing saga in the Lakatoro province on the island of Malakula - its about halfway up the chain of islands and looks a bit like a dog (on the map obviously) - and it involves the family of the former minister of foreign affairs. Like quite a lot of things here it is quite convoluted but as far as I understand it, all the government buildings in Malakula - including the provincial headquarters, the police station and the courthouse - are on land which is owned by the family of the former minister. That family became disgruntled with the government who have (allegedly) not paid any rent for some time and resolved to do something about it. However, such tactics as legal proceedings or even sending in the heavies were not considered an option, they instead decided to place namele leaves on the buildings.
In Vanuatu namele leaves have a very ancient and powerful tradition. They are the leaves that you can see on the Vanuatu flag and they symbolise peace. However, they are also traditional "tabu" signs. Often you will see them placed on the beach to signal that fishing in that area is tabu for a period of time to let the fish restock. In the case of the Malekula government buildings the disgruntled family placed namele leaves all over the buildings. As a result the buildings became tabu and no-one can go into them until the leaves have been removed by whoever put them there. That was about 6 weeks ago. So for that period of time no-one has been to work in any of the government buildings, no one has cut the grass round the buildings and by all accounts the place looks like a ghost town - which I guess to a certain extent it is.
The matter was taken to the Appeal Court last week and is being appealed to the Supreme Court. However, an interim order has been issued to try and resolve the matter so that people can go back to work. The interim order states that the government must provide a tusked pig to the family immediately and in return the family should take down the leaves. So far no tusked pig has appeared and those workers affected have expressed their disappointment at the unresolved issue (whilst stuffing more namele leaves into their pockets and sipping a shell of kava). So along with the fraud trial (which has been adjourned for a month) we are also awaiting the outcome of the namele leaves case. If anyone wants to put in an order for namele leaves please let us know. (come to think of it there are a couple of local authorities in London who probably already have their own supply)
SPG Football Update - Vanuatu 15 (thats fifteen) - American Samoa 0

Fingers crossed for the SPG

I know you will all be desperately wanting an update on what has been happening in the news and in particular in the fraud trial - well, here it is: rumours abound that the fraud trial is due to start on the 31st August, with several more people having been arrested. However neither of us are quite sure where this trial might take place as someone rather inconveniently burnt the courthouse down just before we arrived. There have been rumours that it might have been burnt down by those connected with the civil unrest in March as papers relating to that were allegedly kept there, althought there is no evidence to support these rumours. There was also talk that it might have something to do with the people who were recently arrested in relation to growing large amounts of dope on one of the outer islands, but the only evidence supporting this is that someone thought she heard some people near the court house giggling and saying "sshhh" very loudly. So, we await the start of the trial with baited breath - wherever it might be held.

In sporting news, the rugby world cup is not getting much of a mention but the South Pacific Games have just begun and Vanuatuan hopes are high. There was a parade of the athletes in the town centre before they left for the games which are being held in Samoa, although there didn't seem to be any publicity about this and we missed it unfortunately as normally such things are pretty well celebrated. Forgetting to announce things and invite people to events seems to be quite common here. There was recently a large public opening of an event that had been organised by the Ministry of Sports, unfortunately someone forgot to invite the sports minister who was not best pleased. The annual horse race (which was sponsored by the local abattoir!) was publicised by a large banner that appeared to go up after the event itself. Anyway, the SP games have started and Vanuatu are hoping for medals in table tennis, netball and possibly football. Fiji seem to have the monopoly on the track events and the Soloman Islands are nailed on favourites to win the football (If that prediction doesn't kill their chances I don't know what will.) Some countries have slightly lower expectations: American Samoa are hoping to improve on their world cup qualifying result against Australia when they lost 31-0 (this is football not rugby). So, good luck to Vanuatu. After what happened with the Under 12 football team who knows what sort of celebrations there will be if a few medals are won. No wonder Reuben is advertising "big fella pigs" for sale almost everyday in the newspaper. If I was a pig I'd be planning my escape.

typing nomo

Well this week I am mostly doing a lot of typing, its been raining tumas so its been easy to spend a lot of time in front of the computer. I am writing up the research that i've been doing for the past few weeks - hopefully into something approaching an accurate and useful report...this is a photo from the focus group which Moses and I ran in Luganville. The girls were very accomodating; we had finished and were packing up when we remembered we hadn't taken any photos so basically the photo here is a staged one (you can tell because when we were looking at the questions for real the girls looked far less happy and interested).

I am typing with background music courtesy of Vicky. She gave me an ipod shuffle as a leaving present with the most ridiculous selection of music on it, all of which I love - it ranges from kate bush, babyshambles and the pixies to wham, take that and freddie mercury doing opera. (This other photo is me with Frank and his colleague Marina from the ministry of health in Frank's house in santo)

smalfella plen

This is the plane which brought me back from Tanna, there were about 12 passengers. I didn’t really enjoy being able to see the pilot about a metre away flying the plane (or rather not flying the plane most of the time, rather reading and filling in forms). But this is the amazing view as we flew back over Efate; if you click on the photo to make it bigger you can see our flat which is almost in the centre of this photo, just off the main road and down from the big red and yellow building.

Island visit nambatu

On Monday this week I went to Tanna, which is very nearly Vanuatu’s most southerly island, for two nights. It was a really great trip. Again I went with Moses, the Ugandan VSO who is working with the Ministry of Health here on developing an STI/HIV strategy. He is a lovely guy and because he has been in Vanuatu for over two years he knows how everything works and seems to know most people. We also spent an afternoon with Laurence, a Kenyan VSO who has been living in Tanna for almost two years as a road engineer advisor, who really did seem to know everyone on the island. Driving around Tanna with Laurence meant we would stop to discuss the road we were on every few hundred yards with the locals.

Tanna is famous for the active volcano Yasur, and the John Frum cult, and is also the island where Captain Cook arrived (in Port Resolution) when he decided to call the country the New Hebrides in 1774. (Apparently there is going to be a documentary on Channel 4 quite soon about a bunch of Tannese men who came to experience how life in London differs from life in Tanna. I imagine they had to make a bit of an adjustment). Tanna is pretty incredible; Kastom (i.e.custom - the traditional culture and practices) is very strong in Tanna and the western influences which are everywhere in Efate are very slight in Tanna. The main town, Lenakel is little more than a village and the guesthouse where I was staying had intermittent water and electricity (I also had a complimentary gecko under my sheet which was a nice surprise when I went to bed.)

Everyone I met was incredibly friendly which isn’t unusual in Vanuatu but it was pretty funny in the Nakamal (Kava bar) in the evenings when we pretty much shook hands with the whole place. I felt conspicuous not because I was the only white person there but because I was the only woman. The kava was very fresh and pretty strong. I had two shells and immediately after swallowing, my teeth and gums felt fizzy and my tongue went numb – obviously good shit. A couple of times sitting in the dark (kava makes you very light sensitive so there is minimal lighting – usually just a lamp in a tree near the bar), listening to the hacking and spitting of the men, I did wonder where the hell I wasI!

There was, not surprisingly, another side to Tanna. The poverty was pretty apparent the next day when we visited the hospital. I don’t know anything about clinical practice but the place was filthy; there was a bit of a clue about the hygiene standards when a friendly dog came along the corridor to say hello when we arrived. The hospital is one of 5 hospitals in Vanuatu and is meant to serve the 32,000 people who live in Tafea province. It has about 50 beds and 1 visiting volunteer doctor from Canada (a hospital in Victoria, BC send a series of doctors over on six month stints). There are about a dozen local nurses but no local doctor and not much prospect of one arriving any time soon. And the youth centre we visited was a concrete room with nothing in it to attract any young people. Being a Tannese woman doesn’t hold much attraction either, some of the kastom practices here include having to give birth in the bush and not being allowed back in the house for a month after the child is born, getting special cuts around your torso as a kind of tattoo when you first get your period (although boys get circumcised with a sharp bamboo, so its not all one way) and the guy who runs the youth centre told me that the week before three women in the village had been whipped with bougainvillea branches for attending an independence day dance...and as with much of Vanuatu, husbands (and his family) will pay a bride price giving him ownership of his wife which is interpreted pretty literally.

The photos are of me with one of the nurses from the hospital called Ruth in the back of a truck, and Moses with Laurence with his tomato plants in his garden, the other photo is me with Lawrence and his Tannese counterpart, Tom in a banyan tree.

I didn’t see the volcano or meet the John Frum gang but I am hoping to go back to Tanna with John at some point because it was a really fascinating place.

Overseas trip

Earlier this week I went to Luganville in Santo (Espiritu Santo), Vanuatu’s second biggest town on its biggest island. I went as part of the research project I am doing. It was a pretty funny 3 day trip. I was slightly apprehensive about going because I didn’t feel that well prepared in terms of the people I was meant to meet, I had the squits, and there was a 7.2 earthquake in Santo last week! I travelled from Vila with Moses, a VSO volunteer from Uganda who has been in Vanuatu for 2 years, and Marina, the Ministry of Health HIV coordinator (and the only full time member of staff working on HIV in the Ministry of Health) who were lovely and showed me around and made introductions.
The first day started well when Moses and Frank (the other Ugandan volunteer who is based in Santo) picked me up from my hotel at 7.15 to go to the Provincial Health Office and we all happened to be wearing white shirts and sandy coloured trousers (them) skirt (me). We looked like a bunch of bible seller which wasn't really a problem as the working day starts at 7.30 with devotion - a member of staff reads a passage from the (Bislama translated) bible and discusses it a bit before everyone starts work...
The trip went well, I met various people from the provincial health department and NGO clinics to talk about the research and Moses and Marina helped me run a focus group with 12 girls at the youth centre in town. I'm not sure the girls really understood my bislama or indeed what exactly I was doing there but they smiled at me kindly. Everyone I met was very friendly, open and helpful especially considering my bislama is so rubbish and the meetings had only been set up a week beforehand. The funniest remark was in a discussion of family planning which apparently doesnt really exist in Vanuatu, sex was described as more often like a 'hit and run.'

If I just add a couple of zeros onto this...

I thought it might be worth giving a small overview of the political situation in Vanuatu as it currently stands as, like a man who has eaten too many coconuts, things are a bit fluid.

We arrived to find the papers covered with news of a motion of no confidence against the prime minister (the sixth of his tenure). It was signed by a number of MPs and headed up by 5 prominant opposition MPs. Although Vanuatu has a Westminster style system the role of parties isn't quite the same - they appear to be there pretty much in name only and it is more a system of every man for himself. However, everyone was very relieved 3-4 days later when it was announced that the motion of no confidence had been withdrawn and the PM could get back to running the country - with the aid of his 5 new ministers who were no longer prominent opposition MPs!

Things remained calm for several weeks and then it was announced that there was to be a cabinet reshuffle. So, I returned to work on the Tuesday after Independence Day to find that the minister of foreign affairs, who was also the deputy prime minister, had been relieved of his posts, along with several other ministers. The headlines in the papers talk of an ongoing fraud investigation which led to the headline in today's paper "Police arrest first MP in fraud probe" and the comment that he was being held in the "notorius cell number 6" which, depending on who you talk to is either an orwellian style room 101 or something a little more luxurious. Or, as someone said to me in a rather mysterious tone, "its notorius because its actually cell number 5"! Anyway, this fraud investigation appears to involve a number of MPs, some government cheques, some in-the-know bank tellers and a fijian man who promised that if you gave him the government cheques he could double your money. The Sting it was not. But according to one newspaper it has to date cost about 40million vatu.

So we now have a new minister of foreign affairs, and a whole new ministerial staff as, when the minister goes, all the staff go aswell! The prime minister - who in a country that is obsessed with pigs appropriately has the christian name Ham - has stated that if there is a further motion of no confidence lodged then he will almost certainly dissolve parliament and we will face an election. So watch this space. However, if the government can stay in power until the official election time next summer, they will be the first government in the history of independent Vanuatu to have served a full term. How many started in opposition and vice versa is not yet known.

Nambatri

I realised we hadn’t said very much about where we are living. We have a one bedroom flat in a small peach coloured block called flamingo apartments. Our flat is in the part of Vila called Nambatri, it took me until I saw our local shop (pictured) down the road to realise that nambatri follows on from numbatu and nambawan - don’t you love bislama? These parts of town are named after world war 2 US radar stations.

Our flat is fine, basically like a holiday flat with tiled floors and wicker furniture (and very blank walls). For the first month we didn’t have hot water which wasn’t much of a problem as we are hot and sticky most of the time and it also made us feel like we didn’t have it all so easy and we could share a bit of solidarity with our VSO friends (and John's sister in gloucestershire) who don’t have electricity and are having to filter their drinking water. Anyway now we have hot water which is rather nice. A plumber came round last week and fixed the boiler. He is from Leicestershire (obviously!). He came to Vanuatu with VSO in 1985 to do water access projects, fell in love with a ni-van woman and married her. It made me quite jealous to be a plumber – what an evidently useful thing to do and how much easier to explain than being an advocacy adviser! Our neighbours include a fijian indian couple on one side who arrived from Fiji about the same time as us (and are lovely they stop and pick us up when they see us walking anywhere!), a ni-van family upstairs and a couple of north american mormon missionaries on the other side. I am a bit offended because they havent been round to proselytise yet.

what are we doing cont...

It is nice to have finally got started, although as hannah said there are a number of frustrations that you have to studiously try and ignore. I had been informed that a computer would be waiting for me to use at the Department of Foreign Affairs and rightly enough it was, although it was unplugged and sitting on the floor. I was informed that I couldn't set it up and that something would be sorted out. Two days later a brand new computer arrived and was placed on my desk, however they did not have the right lead to plug it in (rather worringly the "IT" guy called it a "rope"). So, for the next three weeks I stared whistfully at the computer on my desk and then at the computer on the floor and then went back to good old pen and ink whilst numerous people stuck their head round the door and said "hi, I've sent you a quick e-mail, let me know what you think" and before I could explain, they were gone, and as I am new I don't know their names yet or where they sit. I'm just hoping that one day I can read their e-mails and track them down. Anyway this last friday action finally took place - after two days of drilling, banging and hammering it started to look as if I would be plugged in and ready for action. By 4pm, 12 holes in the wall, one lost screwdriver, one broken printer (someone dropped a hammer on it) and one big electric shock for the guy doing the drilling, my computer was up and running. Unfortunately I have been out of the office all this week so haven't been able to use it, but I am looking forward to getting back to work next week.
In terms of what I am doing, I am effectively advising the department of foreign affairs on international law with a particular focus on human rights, with a view to developing a specific department that will be self sustainable over time. Having been there for a month it would appear that a lot of the initial work is organising processess for complying with international commitments and trying to set up some sort of system of understanding of international human rights with a view to focusing on the main international conventions. For those of you who are still awake, I will provide more details later.
The only thing to add is the working style - somewhere between laid back and didn't quite make it into the office today!

So what are we actually doing??

Well after over a month here we are beginning to know a bit more about what we are meant to be doing. VSO in all the pre-departure training do really try hard to explain that the placement documentation you get in the UK may bare little or small resemblance to what happens once you arrive in country. They also try and prepare you quite a lot for all the possible frustrations you may face; from practical issues like a lack of computer or electricity etc to a lack of support or interest from your employer, colleagues. Quite a few of the volunteers we've met here are pretty cynical some legitimately so, some not. Anyway at the moment we are feeling very excited and enthusiastic - long may that feeling continue...
What I will be doing as an advocacy adviser is working with various different groups (women, youth, rural groups etc) to help them change/ influence policy, increase funding.. that sort of thing but I think it might be a bit of a case of making it up as we go along... The first project I will be working on is a short ActionAid funded project to work with local women, women's groups and health professionals to see how vanuatu could better focus its STI/HIV work to better serve/protect women. There's only about a 25% rate of condom use here, a masssively high STI rate and at the moment an almost non-existant HIV rate but its not clear if thats because of lack of testing or they are just lucky.... I think it will involve research, interviews, focus groups etc with a view to influencing the activity of the department of health...Im having to get to grips with a lot of HIV related acronyms. I'll let john explain what he thinks he's doing...

island life

OK this is me rocking the Vanuatan 'island dress' look kindly given to me by our lovely host family. This is me with my 'pappa' who also happens to be the chief of the village. Below is a photo of john in his new 'island' shirt with our village 'momma.' Contrary to how it might look I am not pregnant and John has not become a pimp.

We got back on sunday from a 4 day trip to the island called Pele on the north coast of Efate. The village stay is part of our induction activities to experience life in the way that 80% of ni-vans live, eat, socialise etc. It was a pretty amazing trip. John and I were staying with the chief and his wife, son and daughter in law, three grandchildren and a couple of randomly selected cousins. The island is barely two miles long, it took about three hours to walk around it and i think there are about 400 hundred inhabitants. I think there are about 40 villagers in our village Piliura but it was hard to tell because all the islanders had congregated in Woliaru (just down the beach) because of a death the day before we arrived. The other reason it was hard to tell is that my bislama is rubbish and I'm not sure I understood what was going on most of the time. I can identify the nouns in most sentences (when they are the same word as english) but other than that I didnt have a clue. So someone says something about kakae (which I know is food) but i had no idea whether what was being said was, do you want some? will you make some? have you had some? we'll be eating over the road...you get the picture. I am pleased to say that not only did I 'scratch some coconuts' (thats a food preparation thing james), i also helped make lap-lap and tuluk (dont bother) - about three hours of work to make something which makes a veggie burger taste like a steak.

Anyway we had a fascinating time, it was a real privilege to experience life with a ni-van family who really couldnt have been more welcoming. It gave us a lot to think about..for example understanding the gender roles which we had been told are very prescribed in vanuatu and the women did spend a massive amount of time making lap-lap, and the men made the trips to town, did a lot of sitting around talking to each other, but at the same time the men also got involved in the domestic tasks helping to prepare fish, looking after the children etc. And the question of poverty is really difficult...on one hand the island has an amazingly plentiful supply of bananas, paw paw, clementines, yam, fish, a few chickens and the ubiquitous pigs for special occasions, the children (from about 2 upwards) have the safety of a whole (beautiful desert) island to play in... on the other hand they have to cook on wood fires, the children run around with gashes in their legs being feasted on by flies (the little girl who became my best friend on the island had to spend two weeks on a drip a couple of years ago after her leg got infected from a small cut) and they have very little access to cash when they need to pay for school fees and medical equipment. We didnt see an awful lot of the ceremonial/ kastom side of life as we werent invited to the funeral feast (quite glad as that would have meant watching a pig being battered to death) although the chief did make a speech when we left, I am very proud to say that John gave a smallfella speech (in bislama) in return. It was a really beautiful place and the people were lovely - I'm hoping we might be able to visit again at some point.

Night-time celebrations

Last night, just before 2am I was woken up by the sound of dozens of cars driving past, honking their horns, full of people shouting. We live by the main road into town which can be quite busy but tends to be pretty quiet after about 7 or 8pm. I woke John up in a panic and went to look out at the road which was almost a traffic jam of cars going down the road towards town. A couple of police cars with their sirens blaring and lights flashing drove through the traffic. It went quiet after about ten minutes leaving me awake for an hour or so imagining scenes of fighting and civil unrest and a repeat of the state of emergency that took place in March.
Anyway this morning I asked Juanita, a ni-vanuatan woman who works for VSO, what had happened. Last night at about midnight the Vanuatan under-12's football team arrived back from France where they had been taking part in the U12 'Danone' football world cup. The team are being treated like conquering heroes after beating england, brazil and germany, finishing 19th out of 40 teams. They were greeted at the airport by the President and the foreign minister who made speeches. Then the crowd who had been at the airport took off around the town in a victory parade. Hard to imagine a less sinister reason for celebration...

Mi mo man blong mi lanem bislama

We've finished the first part of our ICT (in-country training). We've had a week of briefings from a range of people; Ni-vanuatans and ex-pats, and then this week three mornings of Bislama lessons.

The briefings last week were really excellent. Its fascinating to see how such a small country works (or doesn't work). At the moment the government relies for about a third of its budget on outside aid/ donors. Currently the country is unable to create an economy big enough to sustain the needs of a population spread over 83 islands covering over 400 miles of sea. The infrastructure costs are massive and GDP is tiny as 80% of the population live by subsistence farming and use the 'kastom ekonomi' where pigs, yams and woven mats take the place of cash. There's not a lot of income for the government to tax.

We had briefings from officials from the economic planning department, the department of health, the clerk to the Malvatamaouri (council of chiefs), the Ausaid project officer (all Ni-van) and the Australian embassy. They were all excellent and we learnt (and probably have already forgotten) a huge amount about Vanuatu. The only glitch came in one of the briefings with a fairly senior official when he punctuated a description of the budget planning process with a massive burp. John and I had to studiously avoid looking at each other...

The Bislama lessons were very funny, Bislama (from the beche de mer (sea -cucumber) industry) is mostly english vocab reduced to its most basic phonetics, but then arranged around Melanesian grammar. It sounds easy, its not. well not so far. Some of its obvious "nem blong me Hannah" some of it isnt "kakae ia emi gud tumas" (this food is good). While I'm being childish the best word we've learnt so far is titti- basket. (bra)

Brief leg

Vicky you’ll like this. The other day when I arrived at the VSO office I was taking my shoes off on the mat and Frank, the other volunteer who arrived with us, looked at my shoes and then looked at my feet. Then he looked at me and said “Hannah you have a brief leg?” By which I took him to mean, ‘my what delicate pretty feet you have’ rather than ‘your legs are a bit stumpy.’

Frank is from Uganda, as are three of the other volunteers here, as well as 2 philippinos, 1 kenyan and 3 other brits. I think Vanuatu must be one of VSO’s highest ‘south to south’ volunteer destinations. Its great; lovely to meet people with very different experiences and makes VSO feel far less imperialist than Peace Corps (whose american volunteers have to go through a swearing in ceremony at the end of their induction). In this example you might wonder at the logic of sending a Ugandan doctor to Vanuatu but I think VSO would argue that a big part of VSO is about sharing experiences, as well as skills, across cultures, developing international understanding etc. I would agree with that and also the African doctors have sadly, got extensive and expert knowledge about treating and preventing HIV/ AIDs. HIV is not a big problem in Vanuatu …yet. It is however thought to be a potential nightmare because of the combination of unprotected sex, with lots of partners, from a very young age (teenage pregnancy isn’t really the problem here, its pre-teenage pregnancy that’s the real worry.) HIV/AIDs rates in nearby(ish) Papua New Guinea (where they actually test for HIV) are very high. Frank also reckons that the severe lack of skills makes his placement necessary - 8000 children start primary school every year in Vanuatu but only 150 graduate secondary school...There arent a great deal of Ni-vanautan doctors around.

Tufela drink kava

We have had our first taste of it and believe me for those of you back in the UK you are missing ...nothing. Imagine a bowl full of liquid that looks like china clay and tastes like ten day old washing up liquid and you are part of the way - you go into a dimly lit nakamal (bar) and buy your bowl of kava and then rather than sitting down and drinking it all together, you go off on your own into the bushes, neck the kava as quickly as you can without tasting or smelling it (you then appear to have to spit copiously) and quickly eat something to take the taste away. You then go back to your friends - the more you drink the quieter you become until you are surrounded by tables of people just sitting and staring.
Apart from the kava we have also started learning bislama. This saturday we decided to do some food shopping in the big open air market in the middle of Vila. The only two problems we had were that we didn't recognise what anything was and once we had decided to buy something we didn't know what to do with it.

We are working on the pictures and will hopefully have some up later in the week.

(For those of you who were giving us a hard time about our destination you will be pleased to know that it rained all day on sunday!)

Blong Vanuatu!

We're here! We arrived safely on friday night and it really does feel like a really long way from home. It took ages. We flew in over Efate which is the island we will be living on, the island looked beautiful, its almost completely covered with dark green trees and hills with a few houses close to the coast. It didnt take long to go through the passport control as we are Vanuatu residents(!) and there werent many of us on the little plane from sydney.
Our first couple of days have been very positive, our VSO person met us from the airport, and after a couple of nights in a hostel we have moved into our flat. We havent got internet at the flat so this is just a quick one until we find somewhere cheap to email from. This week we have ICT (in-country training) where we are learning all about Vanuatu and living on the "pacific ring of fire" and the VSO programme here: lots about the focus on capacity building!Lots of love.

twelve days and counting

We leave for Vanuatu in less than two weeks... we still have a bit of a to-do list to work through but basically we're feeling ready to go. Its been a long time coming and I think we're in danger of doing a bit of a tony blair style farewell tour and people thinking 'havent they gone yet?' We applied to VSO in november and got the placements in Vanuatu confirmed in April so we've had quite a lot of time to get prepared.
We leave on 13th June and arrive in Port Vila on 15th June losing our first wedding anniversary sometime between departure and arrival. I think our first week will be the VSO organised 'in-country training' where hopefully we will find out a bit more about our jobs, where we are going to live and how to basically sort our lives out in Vanuatu. I think we will also get some language training, apparently Bislama is reasonably easy to pick up...