Let’s get this party started!
Getting to Vanuatu takes a lot of effort. I had the shortest travel of all of the incoming PC trainees in my group (as the only one starting on the west coast) and it still took me over 24 hours of straight travel to get here. I did get handed a fresh coconut by a Peace Corps staff member before I even made it out the airport which was awesome. The first few days were a bit a of a blur between time zone changes and travel exhaustion, not to mention the culture shock. For some of us, the transition has been easier than for others. There are six Peace Corps Response* volunteers training together in this group, though we won’t all be doing the same projects while we’re here. In a few days we will have split up between different islands, but for now at least we have some company to help us adjust to a new place and a new job.
*A brief description of what PC Response means: Peace Corps positions usually run 2 years plus 3 months of in-country training. That’s what I signed up for last time. PC Response positions are a little different. Instead of more generalist positions like regular posts, Response positions are specifically looking for volunteers who already have work experience in a particular field and are more targeted toward a specific goal. They are shorter contracts, usually between 6-12 months. As such, they have much shorter training periods, only 2 weeks instead of 3 months, since they assume you don’t need training on the job itself, just country specific information like language, culture, and Peace Corps policy and safety trainings.
Learning Bislama has made up a huge portion of our training. Bislama is a pidgin language made up of 80% English, 15% French, and 5% of all sorts of other languages. It takes some getting used to but it’s definitely the easiest language I’ve ever tried to learn. At this point, I can listen to it and get about 3/4 of whatever someone is saying. Not bad for someone who’s only been learning for a week and half! Speaking back on the other hand takes a lot more thought and effort. Good news is that if I don’t know the word, I can just say it English and there’s a good chance someone will know what I’m trying to say anyway. It’s been fun to learn.
The rest of training has been informative, if not quite as fun as Bislama lessons. We do get to punctuate safety and policy trainings with walks around the town of Port Vila, Vanuatu’s capital, with our language/culture teachers. That’s been very helpful for learning about how things work here. We also spent a weekend in a training village, staying with host families and learning to cook the local “kaekae”. The training village felt very familiar to me. In so many ways, the more rural areas here are very similar to the more rural areas of Lesotho. The feeling of walking through the village, hearing children and dogs and chickens, smelling the cook fires (and burning trash), and learning the local language with my host family was very comfortable. The main difference is the climate. Where Lesotho was high and dry in the mountains, Vanuatu is by far the most humid place I’ve ever lived. The vegetation is very different too, with a large variety of tropical plants growing in dense jungle. It kinda felt like my village in Lesotho got dropped in the middle of Hawai’i. I’ll get used to it, I’m sure, but right now I am struggling a bit with always being hot and sticky.
The most fun thing about the training village was our tour to the “garden”. One of the host families showed us around their section of land, where they grow bananas, papayas, yams, and coconuts, among other things. We got to help dig up yams. We learned how to use our bush knives (read: machetes) to chop down plantains. We watched a little boy climb up a terrifyingly tall coconut palm to chop down coconuts; then we got to learn how to husk, clean, and open the coconuts. Fresh coconut water is nothing like the stuff from the store in the US. It was very refreshing, as was the coconut meat which we ate after. Also discovered the naus fruit- never had that before and I love it! It’s somewhere between a mango and an apple. Delicious.
Fun as all that was though, my favorite training day was the Water Safety session. The island nation Vanuatu, it should not surprise you, has a lot of boats. If we volunteers want to get on a boat we have to know what to do if it sinks. We all went out to the Blue Lagoon, a stunningly beautiful blue hole, to practice wearing life jackets and setting off flares. If you google Vanuatu, I bet you one of the first 5 photos will be of the Blue Lagoon. It’s a very popular tourist destination and it is exactly as pretty as it looks in the photos. The small lagoon is made up of brilliant turquoise water surrounded by banyan trees. It’s about the same temperature as a pool, made up of fresh water from springs and salt water from the nearby inlet. We did all of our safety training first (including a run through of the supplies on a life boat, very interesting) and then at last we got to just swim around and have some fun! There were two massive rope swings that launched off of platforms built straight onto the banyan trees. Staff would even help explain how to hold it best and make sure you didn’t fall in before you were ready to jump. It was so fun! After swinging around like Tarzan, a few of us swam into the quieter section, heading toward the ocean. The tide was really low, so jagged black rocks stuck out, creating a channel for us to swim through. Crabs scuttled every which way, parrots and myna birds cawed from the trees. Banyan roots and vines hung down into the turquoise water. Swimming out through the channel and into the empty lagoon where the ocean met the fresh water was a truly magical experience. It was exactly how I pictured Neverland looking. Right where the lagoon ended and the reef started, the low tide revealed an arch in the rocks, so the crashing waves looked like they had a frame. I could so easily picture a mermaid or a pirate ship just around the corner. I’ve never seen anything like it. It is now one of my favorite places on Earth.
In other news, ni-van are VERY into football (soccer for my American brethren). From the first glimpse of Vanuatu flying in on the plane, I could see flags of all different countries flying high. There are flags on buildings, cars, petrol stations, tied to the tops of super tall trees- you name it. Flags everywhere. Everyone in Vanuatu has their favorite team and they want you to know about it! Friday, June 5th basically became a public holiday to celebrate the opening of the World Cup. Hundreds of people in Port Vila came out in their jerseys and support shirts, waving their favorite teams’ flag, and building floats for a parade. I thought we were going to watch the parade… turns out we marched in it. The US Embassy and Peace Corps staff made up the bulk of the American contingent, representing the hosting nation for this year’s championship games. Mixed in amongst the massive continents for Argentina in front (last year’s winners) and Spain behind, we were dwarfed in a sea of color and music. Every float had their speakers on high and it basically turned into one massive, moving dance party. And then it started to rain.
Yeah, the people of Vanuatu are not the type to let a little rain get in the way of their fun. Or a lot of rain. Like… A LOT of rain. Though it started out sunny and hot, about 10 minutes into the parade it started dumping. I got so soaked through that I gave up on any attempt to stay dry and accepted the inevitable. I literally could not have been any wetter if I had jumped into the ocean. It only rained for half an hour or so, but it was enough to send a river down the main street where the parade was. And yet, the parade went on. The field in front of the parliament building where it ended became a muddy mess, but one hell of a party. All the fans of the collective teams gathered and danced and cheered on their teams (and specifically Messi and Renaldo, lotta cheers for those two). Brazil is the clear favorite here though. The contingent for Brazil made up at least half of the many hundreds of people who came out for the event. It was very memorable. I have never cheered so loudly for a sport I don’t really watch. I was definitely in it for experience and what an experience it was!
Anyway, I’m enjoying what Port Vila has to offer before I head the outer islands. I’ve been indulging in slightly more expensive foods that I doubt I’ll have much of for the next year- mostly pizza, lattes, and pastries. It’s been very informative being here, but I am looking forward to getting to site. I want to actually do the thing I came here to do. I’m sure it will be different from what I expect and exactly what I suspect at the same time. There will be challenges. But there will also, I hope, be a lot of joy and satisfaction in the coming months. I’ll keep you posted.
Cheers!
Mountain Tales 