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.