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.