lukim yu

This is our last post as we're flying out of vanuatu first thing tomorrow morning. we're really going to miss the place, not least the view from the top of our road over erakor lagoon and the pacific. we've had a fantastic time here since last june and hopefully we'll come back and visit before too long.

last kava binge

I cant believe we are leaving vanuatu in just a few days, i feel sad about it. I think i might actually miss kava and wish we could bring some home to share, although its more the quiet, friendly atmosphere in the nakamal (well, and the background of spitting and groaning) that i'll miss. Because Vanuatu is such a bloody long way away its going to be a while before we'll be drinking fresh kava again.

Yasur

We flew to Tanna on Thursday to visit the volcano. The volcano is called Yasur, which means 'old man' in the local language. Tanna is an incredibly beautiful island; it is dark green and the highlands, called middlebush, in the middle of the island look like somewhere in central america. Tanna means earth and the island produces delicious organic coffee as well as the ubiquitous coconuts and kava. It took a couple of hours to cross the island, it was slow going, because of all the rain we have had in the past month the road was a bit non existent in parts, and we also had to stop when we came across a group of men playing petanque in the road. Halfway across the island the volcano came into view and the ash plain looked incredible, like a desert because of the contrast with the lushness of the rest of the island. This is Willy who drove us to the volcano, he is wading across the lake to find the best route for the jeep.

We got to the top of the volcano about an hour before sunset. I was quite nervous, it didn’t seem entirely sensible to be standing on the edge of an active volcano. There are two craters with three vents in each crater. They took turns to blow out smoke and molten lava and the sound was like standing next to a 747 taking off. Occasionally one of the holes would send out an enormous gust of magma and you could feel the ground quake. As it went dark and we could see the fireworks it was really quite spectacular.

Knowing what to expect doesn’t really prepare you for standing on the edge of a volcano.

leaving kakai

I was obviously pleased to be invited to VNCW for a leaving lunch although slightly worried about the possibility of having to eat some island kakai. Ive really got to the stage where I have tried it enough to know i find it bland at best and more often than not its disgusting. Eight of us had lunch in the office (not including Priscilla's new baby Sylvie Latifah), it was also the leaving lunch for the CEO who has been at VNCW since 2001. We were both given a present, mine was a lovely woven bag from Futuna and I think I did rather better in the present stakes because Jenny was given a very kitch framed picture of Jesus complete with 1970's style dreamy hair. We all gave a 'smol tok tok' before we ate, most of the women started to sob when they spoke (I think that was due more to Jenny leaving than me). Many Ni-Vanuatu I have met seem to hold their emotions very close to the surface and its not unusual for occasions like this to end in tears. I managed to hold it together though and even managed to swallow a fair bit of lap-lap.

South pacific paradise?

As we are leaving in less than a month I thought I’d write about the beauty of Vanuatu and some of the issues facing people here. Our local beach is about a mile away about an hour’s walk south of our flat on a peninsula called Pango. After being here for a while now we have to make sure that we don’t start taking the stunning natural beauty for granted. Walking along Pango point reminds us how lucky we are. Some days the sky is bright blue and cloudless, the dark green trees hang with ridiculous numbers of coconuts, pawpaws and grapefruit; frangipani, bougainvillea, hibiscus line the hedges visited by giant butterflies, and birds and geckos provide the only noise. The beach is called honeymoon beach, it has a much nicer name in the local language, epangtuei, it’s a pretty perfect pacific beach. There is even a blue hole with a beautiful ring of coral and fish and an incredible drop-off a hundred metres off shore.

So why are we leaving? The main reason is that whilst we have hopefully both been able to provide some support and expertise to our colleagues - sharing skills in VSO parlance - we are not sure how much we would add by staying on for a second year. It’s a beautiful place and the ni-vans are lovely people and whilst it’s a pretty great place to spend some time we didn’t volunteer to sit under a palm tree (nice as it is). We’re not sure VSO would be getting the best return on their investment by continuing to fund us being here and personally for us am not sure remaining here is the best use of our time. Its been a fantastic experience and I would recommend doing VSO (and might do it again at some point) its been a joy and a privilege to experience life in a country I’d never even heard of and where some of its people are still living in the same way they have done for hundreds of years.

Vanuatu’s development is complex because whilst it is relatively not that poor, its classed as 120th on the UN Human Development index (just below Guatamala and above South Africa) as a middle income country but confusingly it is still a member of the world's 50 Least Developed Countries because of its extreme physical vulnerability on the pacific ring of fire(ie earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanoes) and remoteness from large markets (and expense in accessing them). The super fertile land means hunger (although not malnutrition) is unknown, but its geography (83 islands) means it is difficult to develop any decent infrastructure and very expensive to deliver basic (health and education) services (a quarter of 6-13 year olds are not attending school and a quarter of heads of households have received no schooling) and the small population means there is a serious shortage of human capital (only producing a handful of graduates a year). Vanuatu has the same problems as other pacific island nations and Australia, New Zealand, China, USA, Japan and the EU all have their own development agendas in place to support Vanuatu with varying levels of self-interest. It’ll be interesting to watch what happens to Vanuatu in the next ten, twenty years maybe slightly anxiously. In so many ways its not really ready to join the rest of the world with all the preconditions that requires but global trade, increasing tourism, and a growing population who are more and more aware of the world beyond Vanuatu are forcing its hand. I feel like I’ve learned a great deal about development particularly in the context of small island nations but still don’t have any idea about the right answers for Vanuatu, and feel like I have seen starkly how western ideals of progress might not be so appealing. Vanuatu is already struggling to protect itself; most of the coast of Pango has now been sold to Australian developers who are gradually building their houses obscuring the beach from the locals. Its true that the crap infrastructure has done a great deal to impede Vanuatu’s development but its also probably true that improved air, boat, road transport will be exploited as much by ex-pats and tourists than will bring benefit to the average ni-Van.

There’s also the small matter of being 10,000 miles away from all our friends and family, (so far we've missed 4 weddings and 1 funeral) which did slightly influence our decision to come home…

underwater life

This is a lionfish. we saw a lot of lionfish last weekend when we went diving off moso island. we had bought an underwater disposable camera and took a lot of photos (of a moray eel, a stonefish, beautiful bits of coral) that all look like the photo below, so I have to admit to this not being the exact lionfish we saw but one belonging to another google user with a better camera.

The reef and the fish were beautiful but maybe the best thing about the dive was the water - it is so incredibly clear (not to mention warm) that it does actually look like the top photo, the visability was so good you could almost forget you were underwater. We also dived off Eretoka known as Hat island. A very important chief called Roi Mata was buried on hat island about 400 years ago but unfortunately it is tabu to step on the island without permission from the local kastom chief so we couldnt look around. Vanuatu are hopeful that the island might be listed as a world heritage site in the next couple of years.

meet judy...

...our new dog! no not really. We are house sitting for three weeks for some friends shaun and whelma, and Judy comes with the house.

She is in Shaun's words a daft dog but she is very sweet, with a slightly out of proportion head and tummy (rather like annie). I think she was partly acquired as a guard dog, a role in which she is useless, but she and the house are very nice. It is lovely to be living like real grown-ups (rather than volunteers) with a house with windows we can open, a garden, a proper shower and a TV. The TV is currently not working, it is meant to start working tomorrow, Shaun mentioned that ESPN sometimes screens champions league games which was enough to convince John to move in. I think if the football appears he wont be moving out.

Full House (almost)

Well, after three months of preparation here we finally are: parliament is sitting. Courtesy of my counterpart I have the luxury of listening to it on the radio in my office, or at least I have the luxury of listening to a large amount of French easy listening music which is played in between the official and unofficial breaks in the parliament schedule. And here is the rub when trying to get things done. Parliament sittings are like the snow leopard. Officially parliament sits on two occasions each year, each of those for two weeks. So a mammoth four weeks a year are taken up with parliamentary business. But don’t panic because its not all work, work, work: they don’t sit on Wednesday mornings and they finish early on Fridays and start late on Mondays and there is a two hour lunch break and by the amount of French easy listening music a bountiful supply of weak bladders. And so getting anything done can be somewhat difficult. Last November Vanuatu signed the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the work since then has been to prepare things for the presentation of the domestic bill in parliament by the minister of foreign affairs and the full ratificaiton of the convention. The only problem: the Minister of Foreign Affairs went awol. Apperently he went to his home island last week and has gone to Turkey! this week. So with no Minister of Foreign Affairs we thought the bill would not go through and then, lo and behold, whilst we were sitting in our office listening, the Minister of Trade stood up and started presenting the bill. No-one knew that he was going to do this so it came as something of a surprise. So, despite strong opposition from a member of the opposition (who, just out of interest, was a former Prime Minister of Vanuatu who was jailed for corruption and then pardoned and released by the President) the bill was voted through by parliament. The French easy listening music doesn't sound quite so bad now.

as i bagarap

Mitufella jus bin gat wan gudfella wiken. Yumi gat fulup ren long Vanuatu kasem closup tu wik be wiken ia yumi gat fulap san. Long Satadei john mo mi wetem tufella frenis, Sam wan man VSO, wetem Patrick wan Ni-van, bin makem wan bigfella trip ron islan lon baskel. Mifella bin go long eton, wan nambawan sanbij long is saed long efate. Olgeta i pikem ol bikes long 8 long moning. Go long 3 hours long eton mo 3 hours bakagen, me ting se taem yu go long eton mo kambak long vila yu gat closup long 100km. Be yumi gat wan smol problem nomo - rod emi no gud tumas, no gat tumas tarmac be yu gat plenty hol mo ston. Olsaem yu gat wan nara problem forum long rod ia yu nat gat sam sed, forom se yu nu gat tumas tri closup long rod, so emi hot tumas.Nos blong me emi red mo as blong mifela emi bagarap big wan nao.

Mo afta long sundai mitufella wetem ol man VSO bin go long sanbij closup long Vila blong wan piknik. Foto emi wan smolfella pikini blong frenis blong yumi, Frank. Olgeta bin kakai, mo swim long solwota, mo plei plei volibol...wan gudfella dai.

another island dress to add to the collection

I gave my workshop again last week. This time it was in Vila so was a lot less exhausting and as I was staying at home didnt necessitate the enjoyment of village hospitality (i.e. eating lap-lap for lunch and dinner). The women who attended the course seemed genuinely enthused about the need to get more women standing for election and actually elected, hopefully the workshop will have some impact on that happening if not in this year's elections then at least getting organised for those that follow.

Ni-Vans take the ceremonial aspects of workshops pretty seriously, in fact I think the certificate and closing refreshments are in many ways more important than any of the content of the course. So a three day workshop ended up with an almost two hour closing ceremony which included speeches from me (smol nomo), my boss (and co-facilitator), a representative of the participants, the President and Vice-president of the board, two songs dedicated to me and my boss and a presentation of gifts. My boss was given a large woven mat which I had had my eye on when it was brought in to the back of the room. My gift was a giant island dress which I of course had to put on to appreciate fully. Everyone was very pleased as apparently it fits perfectly i.e. there is room for me to grow into, get pregnant a few times plus some space to smuggle a couple of small friends around in.

I'd thought (for about a second) about including a session in the workshop to discuss 'the island dress as an effective form of female oppression and subjugation' (Mother Hubbard dresses were first introduced by missionaries to cover up the modesty of women who had otherwise been happy with a few well placed leaves and grass skirts, now the island dresses as they are called are a pretty useful way of enforcing the gender stereotypes of women as well as anonymizing women, younger women who happily wear close fitting western clothing appear to don the island dress as an unwritten rule of marriage, although i should admit that they are quite cool on a hot day and give you no excuse to turn down the odd doughnut or seconds of lap-lap).

wan gudfella taem

We said goodbye to mary and george yesterday, it seemed like we had only just said hello. They were here for twelve days but we managed to pack quite a lot in and i think they were able to see why Vanuatu is such a fantastic place to spend a year but also why a year might be long enough.

We visited a couple of local villages, tested out pretty much all the resorts on offer in Port Vila, tried lap-lap and kava, swam in some waterfalls, saw some baby turtles, snorkled with a reef shark, got very hot (all the time) and very wet (once or twice) and drank a lot more wine than we are used too.

It was a fantastic couple of weeks and went far too fast.

twofella oldfella in Vanuatu

Mary and George arrived here a week ago, we're having a lovely time, its brilliant to be able to share some of our vanuatu experiences with them including kava...The photos are actually from the second time we went for kava but the reactions are much the same...I actually thought Mary was going to cry after drinking her shell, i think her face gives a better description of kava than words ever could, but George actually voluntarily went for a a second shell.

We went to a nakamal called seaside which is a bit of a tourist nakamal in the sense that it has a beautiful view of the lagoon (real kava drinkers dont need anything but kava for entertainment). We watched the sun go down and an amazing full moon come up. I dont know if it was the kava or the incredible view but it was a pretty relaxing evening.

blackbirding

A few weeks ago one of the board members (I'll call her Marian) turned up at the office with a middle-aged white australian guy who had a couple of young daughters with him. I thought she introduced him to me as her cousin but really cant ever be completely sure what people are saying to me in bislama so I just smiled and said hello. A few days later I asked her who he was and she said again that he was her cousin. I felt I knew her well enough to comment on the fact they didnt share much family resemblance, most pertinently he being white and she being black. She explained that one of her grandfather's brothers had been out fishing in the solwota off the coast of Pentecost one day and had gone missing. They initially thought that he had drowned but as a number of other local men had also gone missing they soon realised he had been stolen.

In the second half of the 19th century Australians (basically still pretty much brits i guess at that time) carried out a (semi-official) policy called black-birding. Ships cruised around the pacific islands picking up men who were then taken back to Australia to work in bonded labour. It wasnt quite slavery but in terms of brutality and forcing people against their will its a pretty close approximation. (bislama evolved on the plantations as the pacific islanders were forced to develop a language enabling them to communicate with the plantation owners and other islanders with different native languages).

Marian's uncle was taken to Brisbane where he worked on a sugar plantation. I'm not sure how long after he arrived he escaped, running across fields until it was light when he hid under the foundations of a wooden house and went to sleep. He was woken by the owner of the house who happened to be an english nurse in need of some help in her garden. She employed him and some time later they married. The middle-aged australian who came to visit was one of the blackbirded man's grandsons who had recently rediscovered his family in Vanuatu.

happiest place on earth....my arse

I’ve been meaning to blog about the whole happiest place fallacy for ages. In 2006 the new economics foundation came up with their Happy Planet Index; Vanuatu came top of a list of about 180 countries. nef said the HPI was a global measure of progress and measured environmental impact (carbon footprint)and well- being (life expectancy + personal satisfaction). The valid point they were trying to make was that increasing consumption doesnt necessarily lead to greater well-being. So Vanuatu coming top is basically an indicator of how much the country hasn't been physically developed (i.e. i'd have thought a pretty good indicator of a distinct lack of progress - a massive percentage of the land is pristine and untouched, the interior of most islands look like this photo of efate), coupled with reasonable longevity (68.6 years). A hint about the report's credibility is that Colombia came second.

Vanuatu has wilfully misconstrued the actual findings of the survey so that no government announcement, marketing, tourism opportunity is complete without mention of Vanuatu as the happiest place on earth. More seriously the report has given the government a strong defense of its achievements, "yes we might have failed to provide decent basic services for the vast majority of our people, but hey these are the happiest people on earth they're ok without much in the way of healthcare, education, communications etc..."

Just a few days in Ambae was enough to dispel any romantic myths about the reality of life in Vanuatu. It was a really fascinating few days and a really good reminder of how tough rural life is for most Ni-Vans (80% of the population). The village was a mile up into the bush off the one dirt track road that encircles the island. The truck that was meant to come and pick me up on the Friday afternoon didn’t appear because of heavy rain that meant the road was impassable except by foot. So the next morning a village woman called sarah and I walked down to the road for almost two hours until we came to a village with a truck who agreed to drive me the ten or so miles to the airport.

Clearly I am completely soft and westernised and although I felt incredibly isolated and claustrophic in Ambae the villagers who knew no different didn’t miss the radio, newspaper, possibility of a phone call and I guess if John and I had been based on one of the outer islands we’d have got used to it too (maybe). But its not just modern conveniences; its essentials like schools (one of the daughters of the woman who was looking after me was having her school fees paid for by an Australian woman who'd visited ambae the previous year, her older sister didn’t get to finish school because there was no one to pay her school fees); and healthcare, there was a dispensary in the village but the nurse left last year and as yet there is no replacement... Im not trying to say Vanuatu is a really unhappy country but that it has its fair share of particular problems and although its true that people are generally very friendly and happy I'd argue that their contentment is more about lack of opportunity than anything. Certainly the women in my workshop whose husbands voted on their behalf during election time and the woman on my return journey to efate who was leaving her husband with her baby and a small bag of possessions after having been beaten with a stick one too many times might have a couple of reservations about nef's pronouncement...

Supportem oli women lidas

Last tuesday I flew to Ambae, one of the most northern islands in Vanuatu, to do a workshop with women from the province. I’ve been writing the workshop for the past couple of months so it was really good to be able to finally put it into practice although it was a pretty knackering experience. The workshop is about supporting women to become elected leaders at village, area, province and national level, and is the main part of my work with VNCW (Vanuatu National Council of Women).

I flew to Ambae with Jenny the Director of VNCW and Elizabeth a woman from Ambae who has some experience of training. There were 21 women in the workshop aged from about 20 to 60. I think it went pretty well despite my (still) rubbish bislama. There were quite a lot of occasions where the women got pretty animated and excited although they usually saved their real enthusiasm for the opening and closing hymn… The funniest thing about the week was Elizabeth telling me that while we were all in the workshop in the school room, the men had gathered in the nakamal (village meeting place aka the kava bar). Apparently they were discussing how unfair it was that the women had the opportunity to attend the workshop and learn about governance and leadership. I said, yes but the point is women are excluded from decision-making and politics which is why they need the workshop, the men are already actively involved in politics. Elizabeth said yes I said that to them and they said yes we’re in politics already but we don’t know what we’re talking about…

I was pretty tired from running the workshop all day and having trouble sleeping because of the heat. The first morning I woke up to jenny and elizabeth chatting at about 5.30am, they looked worried when i came out of my bedroom and said I must be careful at night and if i needed the loo i should tell one of them to accompany me. I asked why (having been out twice in the night) thinking this isnt going to help me sleep well. They told me that despite the village being a community of the Church of Christ Mission that the villagers still practiced black magic and might turn themselves into dogs or flying foxes in the night and cast spells on us. I was quite relieved i didnt need to worry about watching out for dodgy men on the way to the loo quite happy to take my chances with the mangy mongrels lying around.

bigfella ren

We have had a bucketload of rain over the last few days and apparently tropical cyclone Funa is west of the northern islands in Vanuatu. Although it is very wet and windy in Vila apparently we should miss the brunt of the bad weather which is likely to pass through pretty much the middle of the Vanuatu islands. The radio is telling people who live on flat areas or near rivers in SANMA and TORBA provinces to move away. We've brought a few extra tins of food and bottles of water as instructed by our cylone preparation guide. In Port Vila we are currently at a cyclone situation graded yellow (so not very much risk of a cyclone). The best line in the guide is what to do when a cylone hits your house (a situation coded red), it says, "if your roof blows off, anchor yourself to the ground and keep very, very calm." (a very useful instruction)

The BBC 5-day forecast for the rest of the week is "Predominant weather is forecast to be heavy showers." That’s with an average top temperature of 30° and minimum temp of 28°, humidity today is 82%. Lovely. Apparently this is what it'll be like for the next couple of months. (anway the good news with the bad weather is that it means Zac's still here!)

guess who popped in to see us?

My cousin Zac is here in Vila - it is so exciting to see some family here, seems quite amazing that we have managed to bump into each other in Vanuatu. Zac is working on a boat, I should probably say superyacht, a J-class called Endeavour and because of a bit of lucky bad weather they are stuck in Vanuatu for a week on their way from Japan to New Zealand. We were really worried they would leave before we got back from our trip but luckily a dodgy weather pattern meant they stayed a bit longer than planned.

Its been so lovely to see him and he has taken us on a tour of Vila's nightlife which up to last Friday we had managed to avoid. We spent sunday afternoon on the boat with him and I went up the mast in a sort of sling seat, I didnt get quite to the top of the 140 foot mast but close enough to be worried I'd get stuck on one of the spreaders (one of the horizontal bars on the mast). It was fantastic and we quite enjoyed sitting on the deck drinking wine and jumping in the sea, (we were hoping some of our volunteer friends might see us from shore). And last night we went over in the dinghy to pick him up to take him home for dinner and the dinghy engine failed so we had to spend the evening on the boat again which was a shame. Its quite tempting to stowaway on the boat back to new zealand.

back to being sweaty

We arrived back in vanuatu on wednesday to a tropical downpour and a wall of heat. We had a really great trip to New Zealand and my camera is now full of a stupid number of incredible views and nearly as many photos of the lovely ella, here are a couple of both.

The climate, countryside and comforts of modern life all seemed like such a treat. We had a lovely few days being looked after by kate and grant and really felt quite spoilt. Then we had about ten days in the south island which wasnt nearly long enough; we usually had a day in places where we could have easily spent a week.

We spent a few days walking the Queen Charlotte track and in the Abel Tasman national park, because these are such popular places to go in the kiwi summer holidays we'd been warned they might be really busy but we ended up seeing a couple of people an hour at most and loads of the time it felt like we had the place to ourselves.

kia ora

Happy new year!
Just a quick one from New Zealand. We arrived in Auckland on the 22nd December to spend Christmas with kate and grant. We had a fantastic time with them; Ella was the perfect baby and auckland was sunny and gorgeous. we can see why kate and grant have decided to make it home for a few years. As a christmas present kate and grant took us to Waiheke - a little vineyard island in the bay which was beautiful and very hot. It was so lovely to spend christmas with friends (and also we hadn't realised how much we had missed tasty food, good wine, not feeling sweaty the whole time, carpets and sleeping under a duvet.)

We've been in the south island for just over a week having a great time. We've been whale watching (and throwing up on the boat), wine tasting, and we spent a couple of days over new year's kayaking and hiking in the Abel Tasman national park. We are currently in the northern most point of south island on the edge of Farewell Spit which is a 30 km sand bar bird sanctuary. We have another few days on south island before heading back to Auckland for two nights with kate and grant before we head back to Vanuatu next wednesday.