Life in PST

Me in my "aelan dres," a gift from my host parents. This is my host mother, Anies.

Two weeks in our training village have flown by. We arrived on a Sunday afternoon, quite anxious to meet our host families and get a first look at the village. And our first action was to walk back out of the village so we could be properly welcomed. The boys in the village had planned a traditional welcome and, as we walked back into the village, they stormed out of the bushes dressed in custom camouflage (bushes and twigs wrapped around their bodies) and brandishing sticks. It was a bit unnerving actually. After terrifying us properly, they led us to meet the chief. Our host mamas formed a receiving line and we all got bussed on both cheeks and a lei without knowing which mother belonged to which trainee.
The village itself is mostly corrugated metal houses or cinderblock homes with corrugated roofs. There are about 30 compounds and 260 people. My host family has been wonderful. My host father, Sael, is quite the entrepreneur. He owns a tour bus, a taxi, a stereo system that he rents out for parties, and is building a tourist bungalow on the beach nearby. We have electricity at night by generator and water in the house. He is working on an indoor bathroom, complete with flush toilet, but it isn’t finished yet.
My mama, Anies, has been really patient with me as I practice my Bislama. It takes me 2 minutes to figure out how to phrase my idea and several false starts to actually get it out. However, I understand most of what is said to me so that’s progress. What is need is a lot of written practice to get the words and rhythms into my head. Bislama is, in many ways, a very simple language. The vocabulary is fairly limited and many words have English roots or they’re exactly the same. The sentence structure is straightforward though it takes some getting used to. There are no possessives in Bislama. You have to say “the house that belongs to me” anytime you want to say “my.” “Haos blong me hemi naransaed long solwater.” It can make for some very long sentences!
I have three host brothers and sisters: Juliette is 13 and attends French school. She is quite bright and hopes to pass her examinations next year to get into secondary school. Places in secondary schools in Vanuatu are very limited so the 8th class year is known as the “push out” because many students don’t score well enough on their examinations to earn a place. Gloria is 8 and also attends French school, but in the village, and Micah is 4 and has a mind of his own. He will go to English school beginning in January.
It is hard to explain how quickly the extraordinary becomes routine but after two weeks, I am taking some things for granted. I still don’t like using the “smal haos” but I’m used to the food and walking everywhere and dodging the mangoes that are falling from the trees and sitting on the ground or hard benches (not many cushions around) and brushing my teeth at the outdoor spigot and waving the flies off of my dinner and the dogs and the chickens and the pigs and . . . . .
Actually, our village is pretty spiffy. I think every compound has a water tap so no hauling water. Lots of families have generators. There’s a wide variety of food available because the families have gardens, we’re right near the ocean for fishing, and the capital city is close by for any extras. During the first week of November, we will go on “wokabaot” to visit our permanent sites. It will be another transition, I think, to an even simpler way of living. It all depends . . . . Actually, it sounds like some of us may end up in slightly more developed areas because we’ll be working with provincial directors and not just with individual schools. The head honchos at Peace Corps haven’t told anyone their sites but we’re supposed to find out next week.
We have classes every week day--Bislama lessons first, then sessions on the education system in Vanuatu, presentations by people in the education ministry here, presentations about Vanuatu’s economy and areas for growth, sessions on how to write lesson plans J , disucssions with current volunteers about secondary projects, presentations about what to do in case of cyclone . . . volcanic eruption . . . . landslide . . . . bush fire . . . . etc, etc, etc. The best classes though are the practical ones. Yesterday, we learned how to make mango jam and coconut jam. We also spent one afternoon building fires, scraping and squeezing coconut for the cream, killing chickens, and making “simboro,” a traditional dish made from manioc.
I am getting more excited and more nervous about my permanent site--how will I be received (sometimes the village doesn’t know you’re coming!), whether it will be easy to find projects or whether I will have to invent them, what my village will be like. We visited two schools today and have talked with a variety of people who could offer us some insight on what the future might hold. The challenges sound enormous but there is also so much potential for growth and improvement.

I've got to sign off--time to head for the office and the bus ride back to the training village. I'll try to get more pictures on next time. Check again in two weeks!