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.