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.