TravelStream™ news feed for member jackc on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/jackc en-us Copyright ©2009 TravelPod.com Sat, 08 Nov 2008 15:02:07 -0500 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jackc/vanuatu/1223032680/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jackc/vanuatu/1223032680/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jackc/vanuatu/1223032680/tpod.html Sat, 08 Nov 2008 15:02:07 -0500 Peace Corp service in Vanuatu

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lamap, Vanuatu

I have gotten so lazy recently that I don't even want to write anything, but it's been a year since I came to Vanuatu so I thought should reflect on some things.

I am absolutely having the time of my life. Mostly good times. But even the bad moments serves meaningful purpose.

Weather was beautiful the last few months. Mosquitoes weren't as much a problem as they were back in Jan-Apr. Loved the fact that it didn't rain as much. It's such an irony that rain is the source of life but too much of it is just annoying.

We got cell phone coverage in my area now. That's huge. It was >1000 people sharing 3 public phones that didn't always work.

Hiked the interior of Malekula bush for 42km. Doing the hike in flip-flops was just dumb and paid the price of various cuts on my feet. There were some seriously isolated and inaccessible villages along the way. Those people live a TRULY hardcore life.

Learning to play the ukulele makes me realize I am over analyzing it. It's an engineer's habit that's hard to break. Artistic stuff needs the subconscious part of the mind to steer the fingers.

It's a myth that doing workshops and awareness talks constitutes good efforts for development work. There is no quantifiable result to speak of.

I caught a huge pelagic fish (don't know the name of it) on an 80lb handline that was enough to feed 15+ people. To be honest I couldn't reel it in on my bare hands because I felt like the line was going to cut my fingers off. A ni-van on the boat reeled it in for me with his 'seasoned' hands.

Read lots of books, some very interesting.

Attended some sort of custom dance. Real neat. Maybe the culturally defining moment of my service so far!
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lamap, Vanuatu

I didn't intend to be away from my site for this long. But the Fijian vacation and the extra time that I was stuck in Vila made me realize I was away from my site for a little over a month. First impression after stepping out of the airplane in Lamap: someone turned on the AC and killed all the mosquitoes. Wow the weather was nice, about as nice as it can be. I went on a few days w/o having to use bug sprey every 2 hours or light a mosquito coil continuously. And I felt cold and had to put on a long sleeve shirt (it was 24 deg C) It was weird. Then after about a week it started raining, then the humidity shot way up, then came the 'buzzzzzzzzzzzzzz' sound when I am chilling on my hammock. Ahh it's good to be back in the familiar surroundings! I came back to Lamap fully loaded with stuff to keep me entertained. I bought a full fishing tackle set and I am commissioning to have my dug out outrigger canoe build. I bought a portable dvd player and stocked up on enough dvd movies to last me through the rest of my service. I bought a short wave radio so I can keep up with world news. I bought a ukulele. I printed out enough sudoku puzzles to last me a while, and also IQ tests just to see how stupid I have become. I stole enough books from the PC resource room to last me a while. The funny thing is: I enjoy doing absolutely nothing. Yeah, just sit there and do absolutely nothing.
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Nadi, Viti Levu, Fiji

I highly recommend Fiji for any beach loving budget traveller. Super backpacker friendly transportation and accomodation infracstructure. Island hopping in the Mamanucas and Yasawas will not disappoint!
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Lamap, Vanuatu

There are often different fundraisers for different causes across all the villages here in Lamap. Some are church related, some are school related, and some are project related. Or in one instance my RTC manager's little brother is going to school and they don't quite have enough money to pay for the school fees, so they do a fundraiser. Basically they prepare donated kava and all the mamas cook some simple dishes. The dishes are sold by the plate, usually with rice or laplap, for either 50 or 100VT which is about usd$0.5 or $1. The kava is sold by the shell, usually 50, 100, 150, 200vt depending on size. Often they raise enough cash for their respective purposes. I usually like to go to different fundraisers just to taste different food. Tonight my host mama has a fundraiser for her school. I didn't bother asking what exactly the fundraiser was for and just got a plate for 100VT. My host mama asked me if I like bullock or chicken on my rice, I told her with great anticipation, chicken please. So she scooped ONE SMALL chicken drummet (you know, the small drumstick on the other side of the wing) and about 2 cups worth of rice and handed the plate to me. I don't get to eat chicken much so my heart beat raised when she asked me chicken or bullock. But then when I saw that she only put one small piece of chicken (and about half it is bone) on the plate, I wanted to cry. There was a time when I frequented this really great restaurant in good old US of A, called Hooters, that specializes in wings, among other things. I would get 3 plates of wings, 10 wings on each plate. That's 30 chicken wings I used to eat at one sitting. I reminisced Hooters when I savored every single little bite of my chicken drummet tonight. One thing I have discovered living in Lamap. When you bite small, it makes the meat appear bigger.
PC is sending all the volunteers back to Vila for all-volunteer conference and some in-service training next week. I don't really give a rat's ass about any PC conference or in-service-training. But I promised myself to go from the Vila airport straight to the island chicken fast food take out place. And I will fuckin get at least 20 pieces of FRIED chicken.
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Lamap, Vanuatu

Rain
For the month of April it rained pretty much everyday except for 2 days so far. This is way more rain than I would like to deal with...actually I found out that it's not the rain that I hate, it's the two main end results that rain causes that I absolutely can't stand. First, no electricity to charge my laptop. I have a small solar system and when it rained for 2 straight weeks the battery doesn't get enough charge. So I have no power on my laptop. Now that pisses me off. Second, when it rains so heavily, the mosquitoes are having wild sex parties, without condoms. That means many, many new mosquitoes will soon be around. There are days when I have a mosquito coil lit, and saturated myself fully with bug spray, and still get mosquitoes buzzing around me. I use about a bottle (~usd$10) of bug spray every 10 days and 2 mosquito coils every day. That's unacceptable. In some ways I miss the concrete city jungle. Because when it's all concrete there is no place for the mosquitoes to breed. Some days I wish it was negative 10 degrees C. I hate the cold but I would trade a few days of freezing cold to kill all the fuckin mosquitoes, flies, cockroaches, etc.

Appetite
Recently I have developed incredible appetite. I really truly enjoy eating. Everything just taste so good! This is probably what happens when you eat the most down to earth, simply prepared food. You get to appreciate the rawness and the profound flavor of food in its most original form. And also that everything is pulled out of the ground or killed just hrs earlier or the day before. In some ways I do wish that they bio-genetically alter some of the fruits so I can have them year round. Vanuatu's pineapple is absolutely world class. But the season is only about a month long. So for 11 month out of the year you fuckin crave pineapples but nothing you can do about it. Same thing with mangoes. This year with the abnormal amount of rain that Lamap got, the mango season DIDN'T happen. I asked the locals what does that mean? They say oh you'll just have to wait for next year's mango season. FUCK THAT!!!!! I am only here for 2 years and I only get to eat the freshest tropical mangoes for a month out of that?! God damn fuckin climate change.....
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Lamap, Vanuatu

When you live in a rural area like Lamap sometimes you develop complacency. There are things I want to do, but I am just incredibly lazy to start them. I feel content just lying in my hammock (a must have for any PCV), read or do absolutely nothing. This is truly the ultimate luxury. Not having to do ANYTHING, with no consequence WHATSOEVER.

I have taken numerous vacations in my life. But all vacations eventually come to an end. During a vacation I am not obligated to do anything either, but you know you have to go back to work or school or something after the vacation ends. The feeling is quite different.

There is some sort of joke from other PCV's. When you are in Vanuatu, you've got to lower your standards, and lower, and lower, and lower......I have experienced the lowering of standards firsthand as an instructor at my rural training center. Basically it took me pretty much 6 weeks to realize that some of the students in my class does not know the answer to a simple math questions such as 19-12 or 5+9+8 or 9x7. This is not some 7 year olds that doesn't know basic math. This is 13-16 year olds who have mostly completed grade 6, while a few did not complete grade 5. Just what the fuck have they been learning in 5-6 years worth of math class? I looked at the math textbook from the 4th grade at a local primary school. A huge cluster fuck is what it is. It's in French but the English version is not much different. They just jump from one topic to another in seemingly random fashion. There are some problems that I find semi challenging. Maybe I am just an idiot with close to 3 post graduate engineering degrees, but if I am finding some of the problems challenging what are the odds of a Vanuatu 4th grader being able to understand and solve the problem?

I have repeatedly gone over some of the most basic math concepts with plenty of example problems in class for my students, but some of them just don't seem to get it. It makes me want to give them some sort of IQ test to weed out the students with learning disabilities. I did give my students samples of questions of number sequence and spatial intelligence type of question, and almost none of them know the correct answers to the problems.
Sometimes you just have to admit to the most fundamental social-cultural differences between developed and the developing world. The PCV is a fuckin retard with regards to how to use a bush knife for everything, how to shell a coconut, how to weave bamboos walls for your house, how to pull up a yam from the ground, as a Ni-van is a fuckin retard with regards to how to add 3 different numbers, multiply, and divide without using a calculator. The concept of negative numbers is particularly hard to teach. None of my 25+ students knows the concept of negative numbers. And some of them have completed grade 10, 11, and 12. Even the smart students in my class have a hard time understanding it after 4 repeated classes worth of negative numbers. During PC training they were telling us how the Ni-Van's don't have business sense. That if they sell 500vt worth of bread but spend 700vt making it, they would still think they made a profit of 500vt. Well if you don't have the concept of negative numbers of course you are not going to realize that you have lost money. I seriously doubt the number of Ni-Van adults who understand negative numbers.



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Lamap, Vanuatu

Yes with the humidity constantly over 70%, and often in the 80's and 90's, salt in the salt shaker is sort of all clumped up together. The humidity also ruins anything leather. Anything with leather will grow mold. Amazingly my body has somehow adjusted to the humidity. High humidity feels okay to me. My cloth and bedding feels like they are wet though. And if you don't wash off the salt water on your hair it will never dry.

I have been fortunate to satisfy some of my meat cravings recently. Usually when I go to my host family's kitchen someone is there to scoop food from the pots to my plate. Even if there are meat dish they usually put only a little bit of it on the plate. The standard serving proportion is 80% rice or other starchy vegetables or laplap and 20% meat or island cabbage with tin fish or tin meat in there. I can have meat everyday but it's just that the serving proportion bothers me a little. But a few times when they slaughtered a bullock and made bunia (huge chunk of meat and veggies wrapped in banana leaf and baked on hot stone for >6hrs) they just let me in the kitchen to serve myself. Those are the times when I grab at least a kilo worth of meat, and usually not much else. I would then devour huge chunks of fatty meat down like I have never had meat before. In one instance I had bunia for 3 days in a row. And to my surprise I actually didn't care for the meat on the 3rd day. I think the Taoism belief is really making sense to me now. Just like everything else you crave in life, the more you try to satisfy your craving the less satisfied you become each time. Applies to alcohol and drugs and relationships too. Moderation is key. But self control is not easy. Who can resist when there is all-you-can-eat meat?
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jackc/vanuatu/1205981700/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jackc/vanuatu/1205981700/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/jackc/vanuatu/1205981700/tpod.html Mon, 24 Mar 2008 22:57:27 -0400 Peace Corp service in Vanuatu

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Lamap, Vanuatu

Settling in



I joined PC because I don't want to live the 'routine'. It's
ironic because I am finding myself settling into a 'routine' here in Lamap. My
RTC is finally open. And I just realized I have to prepare for lessons, and come
up with homework problems. They seem trivial until you have to do them. Days
just flew by in between preparing class, preparing homework for the students,
and not much time is left to read or to retrospect. I did get a chance to go up
to Lakatoro, the provincial capital for St. Patrick's day weekend. As it turns
out almost every PCV on the island
of Malekula was there.
There is definitely a drinking culture parallel between the local Ni-vans and
the western Caucasians. Both cultures have this ridiculous tendency to consume
unhealthy amounts of mind altering liquid. I fail to see the point of all this.
I feel nauseated when I consume even slight amount of Kava or alcohol. I love
the effects of Kava, but the taste is really getting to me. It actually gets
worse as time goes on.

The level of education or abilities of my students are
shocking. I am teaching electrical wiring and solar systems. Actually before I
go that far they need to demonstrate that they can do simple math, like
subtractions and additions and multiplication and division. Well not all of
them knows how to do that. The fact that some student didn't know how to fill
out the simple application form (write your name, age, grade level, ..etc)
should have clued me in. This is definitely a monumental failure on the
education system of Vanuatu.
No wonder one of the two main projects that PC does in Vanuatu is
education, and I am part of that project.
There are plenty other things that are monumental failures in the Vanuatu
government. Sometimes I wonder if it makes sense for them to be independent.
There are plenty of people in Lamap that has told me Lamap was a better place
before independence. You have a whole bunch of political idealists that got Vanuatu separated from Britain and France. But what the fuck do they
know about running their own country? Nothing. Vanuatu is a perpetual aid
receiving country. Just about every infrastructure improvement is done with
international aid money. The only way I see them out of the perpetual aid
recipient role is if they develop some serious tourism and agricultural
exports. In terms of tourism, the outlook isn't so great there and let me
explain. Vanuatu
is located in the south pacific, which means it's far and expensive from most
northern hemisphere countries. Does it have anything special to lure the
tourists from afar? I am afraid not. Most north American tourists that are
interested in a tropical beach vacation in the pacific will go to Hawaii or Fiji
or French Polynesia. For the asian tropical
beach tourists there is Thailand,
Indonesia, and Philippines.
Sadly almost all the above destinations have beaches that are just as nice or
nicer than Vanuatu with WAY
BETTER accessibility than Vanuatu.
That leaves only Australia
and New Zealand
tourists. Another important aspect of tourism that Vanuatu is lacking; almost all
bigger resorts are developed and owned by foreign companies. The family owned
hotels lack the understanding of minimum acceptable standard of hospitality and
tourism industry.

In terms of agricultural exports, Vanuatu can really do well there if
they have the political will to do so.


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Lamap, Vanuatu

Wow I miss drinking cold water and being inside an ac room! When you get back to Vila after 2 months at site it makes you appreciate the stuff that you normally take for granted.
I also miss Chinese food and fried chicken dearly, so I gorged on both. One afternoon I went to Iririki resort just to hangout. It's unreal to be in the infinity swimming pool looking at the turquoise waters of the bay.
I got the word that the chief of my village died. They don't know what happened but they suspect food poisoning or heart attack. I am quite shocked at the news because the chief is only in his early 40's and looks just about the fittest as anyone can be. I see him and say hello to him almost everyday. My RTC's opening date will be delayed because of the death of my village chief.
After almost 10 days in Vila I still can't get everything done. I flew back to Lamap passing thru the northern provinces. The view from above is just amazing. I have no idea how pretty Malekula is.
My village buried the chief about 20m from my house. It is sort of like a cemetery next to my house. It's mostly old graves from the previous generation. They found a human bone when they were sweeping the ground the other day. I thought that was interesting. So they finally opened the RTC after numerous delays. They are so into 'talking' ceremonial procedures......which I find unbelievably boring and fuckin meaningless and counter productive. They slaughtered a bullock, a pig, and involved many man-hrs to prepare for the opening ceremony.....why don't they instead spend all that money on school supplies and toilet paper and notebook for the students? This has to be a cultural difference....
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Lamap, Vanuatu

Wow I miss drinking cold water and being inside an ac room! When you get back to Vila after 2 months at site it makes you appreciate the stuff that you normally take for granted.
I also miss Chinese food and fried chicken dearly, so I gorged on both. One afternoon I went to Iririki resort just to hangout. It's unreal to be in the infinity swimming pool looking at the turquoise waters of the bay.
I got the word that the chief of my village died. They don't know what happened but they suspect food poisoning or heart attack. I am quite shocked at the news because the chief is only in his early 40's and looks just about the fittest as anyone can be. I see him and say hello to him almost everyday. My RTC's opening date will be delayed because of the death of my village chief.
After almost 10 days in Vila I still can't get everything done. I flew back to Lamap passing thru the northern provinces. The view from above is just amazing. I have no idea how pretty Malekula is.
My village buried the chief about 20m from my house. It is sort of like a cemetery next to my house. It's mostly old graves from the previous generation. They found a human bone when they were sweeping the ground the other day. I thought that was interesting. So they finally opened the RTC after numerous delays. They are so into 'talking' ceremonial procedures......which I find unbelievably boring and fuckin meaningless and counter productive. They slaughtered a bullock, a pig, and involved many man-hrs to prepare for the opening ceremony.....why don't they instead spend all that money on school supplies and toilet paper and notebook for the students? This has to be a cultural difference....
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