Rats, Snails, and Worms

First a technical message:
volunteer@vu.peacecorps.gov
Rachel Meiste in the subject line . . . . will get to me on a weekly basis. (The medical team is going to come out once a week for training sessions and they said they would bring our mail.)

We’ve had two more days of training/classes and most of them were spent on medical issues. One afternoon, we packed and discussed the contents of two tool-kit type medical containers. We have several kinds of pain killers, several kinds of antibiotics, several kinds of washes or creams or ointments, bug spray, sun screen, cotton balls, band aids, steri strips, gauze pads, oral rehydration tablets, water treatment tablets, even a malaria testing kit (lancet included). I had to keep reminding myself that this was all “just in case” something happened. We also received a handbook put together by the medical office to help us self-diagnose and self-treat and a book called Where There is No Doctor: A Village Healthcare Handbook that is designed for the whole world. There are some pretty interesting diseases and treatments in there, let me tell you!

And today we had a session on food and water safety and all the things you can experience if your food or water isn’t safe. The funny thing is that most of the diseases, worms, bacteria, viruses, etc that we may be exposed to all have similar symptoms and many of them (the viruses) just have to go through their cycle. There’s nothing you can do except treat the symptoms. Somehow that doesn’t make me feel better. But again, I am a relatively healthy person, not particularly prone to accidents, and most volunteers we’ve talked with haven’t been sick more than once or twice in the year or year and a half they’ve been here. Quite reassuring.

Everyone has been holding up pretty well so far, I think, though the ipods and books and journals are appearing more often. People come to sit in the communal area in the courtyard but they come equipped with signs that this is personal time. Probably a good thing. Generally speaking, we are with other trainees from at least 8 am to 5pm and usually much longer than that since we’re not encouraged to go places by ourselves. Most trainees do something in the evening--a trip to a nakamal for kava, a movie at a downtown restaurant, dinner at a restaurant or a trip to the market. It is rare that we have or take advantage of time alone in our rooms.

In the next few days, however, we’ll definitely be spending more time in our rooms as we unpack and repack all of our belongings. It is a matter of deciding what to bring to the training village, home for the next 10 weeks, and what can stay here for the time being. Some of our things can stay in storage here in Port Vila, but the suggested packing list is fairly long and it includes things we’ll need for our “wokabaot” to our permanent sites. It sounds like we come back to the capital city 2 or 3 times during training but I think they are scheduled outings. No telling how much free time we’ll have to unpack and repack the stuff in storage.

I’m also getting some more ideas for the wish list--things that I didn’t think to bring until I got here or things that I thought I wouldn’t need but have reconsidered. Things like Gatorage mix packets. After drinking the green coconut milk (a rehydration miracle fluid, according to PC nurses) and the rehydration solution provided in our medical kits, I will be happy to mix up some Gatorade instead.

Our first official Bislama lesson is tomorrow, complete with practice trip to the market to talk with the “mamas” who are there. The Peace Corps often uses the hotel where we are staying and the ladies who work here have begun to ask us more things in Bislama as well. They are really nice about helping us with our new vocabulary. “Olsem wanem?” (“How are you?”) “I stret.” (“I stret” translates something like “It’s all good.”) Bislama actually uses a lot of English words or words that were originally English, but they’re written phonetically so they look different, like “wokabaot.” “Yu oraet?” would be another example. Any guesses? (“ae” is pronounced long “i” like “sight”). They do have multipurpose prepositions which are confusing to me but the trainers promise to do everything they can to help us become conversant/comfortable speaking Bislama in the 10 weeks of training.

Friday, September 26
Opening your mouth to try a new language for the first time, outside of the safe class environment is a pretty intimidating moment. We went to the market today, a field trip, to try out our first Bislama. The lessons this morning were really interesting. We started with pronunciation and then some basic sentence structures. Susan S., you would LOVE the phonetics of this language! I kept wishing you were here listening in. The mamas at the market were very forgiving and I only tried out a few phrases--”Mi wantem wan raep mango, plis.” and “Wanem nem blong ia?”(What name belongs to this?) One group of ladies was laughing at my pitiful attempts to pronounce an unfamiliar fruit but what can we do but laugh at our neighbors and be laughed at in our turn (I paraphrase J).

Tomorrow is our cooking class in the morning and water safety in the afternoon. It is supposed to rain all afternoon so our water excursion should be interesting. Then we pack up and leave for our training village where we will be for the next 10 weeks. There was a possibility that our host mamas and papas would be at the market today, but I didn’t meet mine. That will have to wait until Sunday. We are supposed to come back to Port Vila a few times during training so I hope to be able to update again in a couple of weeks.