More news from paradise!!

Another two weeks has raced by…we are finishing our fifth week of training, more than half way through. We have our swearing-in ceremony on Thanksgiving Day; it will be a VERY big deal for us and for the village…it will be a ceremony attended by some higher-ups in the Vanuatu government as well as the entire village and many current volunteers who will come from their sites for the event.

These weeks have, as usual, been packed with lessons and trainings. We have been assigned several projects to work on. In my last blog, I forgot to mention another natural disaster here, tsunamis, which is the topic of a group report I am working on. Not to alarm you, but the “Ring of Fire” that we are sitting on is not the safest place in the world to be!! We will soon present our report plus reports on cyclones, volcanos, and earthquakes to the community in hopes of helping them with disaster preparedness…if nothing has occurred in a long time, then the Ni-Vanuatu tend to forget about the possibility. We are required to develop an “Emergency Action Plan” as soon as we get to our site and will each have a communication device…yes, it won’t be long until I have a mobile phone, thanks to a new company here that has built towers all over these islands. When I leave here for my site in early December, I will have a phone with me and a number to give you! I can’t wait!!

Speaking of my site…that has been the topic of all conversation for two weeks now and is a heavily-guarded secret, where we are all going to spend the next two years of our lives. Our Country Director and trainers have been interviewing us and getting to know us better in order to match us the best they can with a good site, give us the best placement according to our stated desires, our skills, and our personalities. I most likely will be at a Provincial Center on one of several of the larger islands as they want me working with the educational advisor for several schools (while some of the less-experienced teachers will just be assigned to one school) I have said I do not want to be out in the bush so I expect to have some amenities…possibly, only maybe, electricity (in the evenings from a generator) a flush toilet, a shower (cold), good drinking water, a little store not too far away with cold beer and M&M’s…dream on!! We will see, or as Peace Corps is famous for saying, “It depends.” It’s funny how wonderful just a few simple things sound right now, with my “long-drop” outhouse and kerosene lantern!!

We have been visiting schools in the area and especially enjoyed the visits we made to two schools by boat (of course toting our required life jackets…you can see Peace Corps volunteers coming a mile away because of their bright red life jackets, grounds for termination if you don’t have them with you on any boat!!) When you hear the world “school” think very small, very rustic, probably crowded but with very irregular attendance, very little, if any, children’s work on the walls, very few materials and mostly teacher-centered though they are working to make some changes with Peace Corps's help. Each village has its own school which is why a school, like one I went to last week, might only have 2 classrooms, one with grades K-2 and another with grades 3-6. We all know how hard that would be even with wonderful resources and US well-trained teachers.

My entire village is very involved with the upcoming wedding of one of its girls; the term “It takes a village” has new meaning to me now! It’s wonderful to see how everyone comes together to help and participate. I have been involved every night at the bride’s house, mostly eating the incredible island food that the mamas spend each day making to feed the big crowds. The big occasion is tomorrow when the “bride’s price” is going to be paid; the whole community will come to her parent’s house to watch huge amounts of food (taro, maniok, yam, bananas, and, probably, a dead cow), firewood, fabric, woven mats and I’m not sure what else be delivered. And now I am off to class under the mango tree…though sadly we are about at the end of the season though we have plenty of papaya still and watermelons will be harvested soon. Afta skol, they say in Bislama, I will go swimming as I do every day for about an hour, a little snorkeling, a lot of swimming and cooling off…yes, it is hot and humid but we have not reached the HOT season yet!!

Thanks to my friend, Nick, you can email me now from this blog site…and regular mail is: PMB 9097, Peace Corps, Port Vila, Republic of Vanuatu. Hope all is well!!