Plenti sam samting

Well its been quite a while since the last blog and there is plenty to talk about. My walkabout went well when I finally got to my site. It took Dominique, my Peace Corps near island neighbor, and me four days of fouled up transportation to get out to our sites. First we were supposed to hitch a ride with the string band. That fell through followed by other frustrating almost-go-out-to-site instances culminating with a four hour wait for a truck that showed up and then the driver decided to not go to the promised location. Island time!
We finally got out there and met up with two current volunteers that gave us the run down on the truly screwed up situation with the Marine Protected Area right now. By the way this was not a shock to us as we were tipped off by a few volunteers a couple of weeks before we departed for our site visit. Where to start... the "praised" volunteer before me was a grant crazy individual who made this big conservation organization with tons of money coming in. Problem: he leaves, one-time grants end. Now what? A downward slope, here is where the current two volunteers and Dom and Seth soon come in to try to right this bohemith of a whale that is leaking blood quite profusely. The organization even has some of the staff being paid off of grants. So much for sustainability. The only income that the community creates to fund the organization (a meager 1/10 input of the current spending)is in jeopardy because the village I'm staying in wants the money. They get it from a sponsor-a-turtle program. Basically, tourists come in, pay a donation to sponsor a sea turtle that they assist in tagging and the MPA gets thrown some pennies.
There's plenty more going wrong over there and it seems that new failures in the system are being discovered on a weekly basis. But, it wouldn't be fun if it wasn't a challenge, right?
There are definitely some positives to the job though. First of all my village location is postcard picture perfect. White sand beach with aqua water, and an awesome reef to snorkel very nearby. We did the snorkel the first day we were out there. It runs between two islands and the tidal action pushes you right along, to the point where at times you feel as if you are flying underwater. Truly remarkable! The front side of the two islands is protected (that's the aqua side) and the back side has 3-5 foot breakers. Rob (one of the current vols) bodyboards out there but only during high tide (shallow reef break).
One day while storying on the beach we saw a dugong about 50 feet offshore, rare even for out here. I went to try to snorkel out to it but it swam away. Apparently you have to swim really damn slow to get up close to them. So not all bad huh?
Last weekend I got the privilege of accompanying a couple of current volunteers to go out to the mysterious island of Mataso. I had to get cleared with the director to go as it was a long boat ride trip and I'm still a trainee. I was able to go along because of my bird-nerdness as there was a bird rookery rumored to be out there with boobies and frigate birds. So at dawn on Saturday we embarked on our adventure and an adventure it was. The morning of, we told some villagers where we were going and got a few weird looks with some suggestion like, "Hey Dummy there's rough sea out there." When we arrived at the wharf we found our monstrous 12 foot aluminum boat packed with a fiery 25 Horsepower engine ready to take our crew of 8 and a good amount of cargo to Mataso.
The start of out trip was a little daunting as a trip across the protected bay (same trip as I go to my future site) that usually takes half an hour took an hour and we had to stop on Dom's future island. Apparently the spark plug was fouled and needed repair. So we waited a half hour and we were back in business. Great, we thought, the trip was already rumored at three hours and we're already behind schedule and you can't really trust Ni-Van time estimation. So we embarked to the sea. The average swells were 9-12 ft which tended to move the boat around quite a bit. Ben had had his head down for the entire trip, tossing some cookies at times. I don't think I've ever verped (vomit burp) so many times in my life but my stomach held strong. When our endless trip was about to end, we were about an hour from Mataso and it was so close, the fun started. We got one swell that was over 15 feet and the island disappeared. We had to steer into it like some "Perfect Storm" action. About 10 minutes later amidst 12 foot swells the spark plug caught on fire and the engine died. Time to fix it! Shit! I told Katie sitting to my right that it might be a good idea to move closer to the center of the boat as we no longer had propulsion or a means to steer. Boats with no engine motion turn sideways in swells which for obvious reasons is no good. We got rocked around quite a bit and in about twenty minutes of semi-chaos we were back on our way putting away towards Mataso.
So we finally arrived on shore 6 hours later for a trip that is about 30 miles as the crow flies. 5 mph just in case you wondering, traveling at "about half the speed of smell" as the comedian Ron White puts it.
Along the way we saw both brown and masked boobies fly overhead for those bird nerds out there that might be curious. The island itself was pretty bush. About 50 people, one village, and a whole lot of sea around it. The reef check we did out there was great but challenging, plenty of tidal action and the reef was about 15 feet below the surface. That meant plenty of diving down as part of the survey is identifying substrate at half meter increments along a 100m transect line. I got to see plenty of really big fish: grouper, trevally, etc. I also had a large octopus that went through the color phases smack dab on my transect line.
After reef check that night it was time to rinse off the salt water. So one of the village guys led me to the pump to get the water from a bucket to bathe with (yeah normal so far). "Wem swim haos?" I asked. "Lo pleis ia" He indicated. I was to bathe on the foundation of a house that was gone now, probably cyclone did it. So there I was butt naked, pouring water over myself in an open area while some guy waited with my towel. That's just how they do it out there. If it wasn't dark out it would have been a show for the whole village as the bathing place was not off the beaten path. We dined on fish and coconut curry and called it a night as we slept on mats in the community hall shelter. later that night we were awoken by some furious rain on the tin above us and some lightning and thunder entertainment.
Although, Mataso was a little different than what I'm used to there were some comforts from home. A kid, probably about 13 yrs old, was named Seth and we, everyone, got a kick out of it. Also on the first day I arrived I looked out and saw a baby no older than one and a half yrs sporting, of all things, a Cubs shirt with the big classic logo. I told her mama the importance of the shirt and when I went to take a picture the baby started bawling. So I've got a picture with a pissed baby in a Cubs shirt. Better get used to it kid, they aint winning it any time soon.
After another Reef Check survey the following morning we set sail for home with our boat. We were unable to go motor to the rookery because we didn't have enough gas for that and the return trip. I did however see some lesser frigate birds from the big island. The rookery, as it turns out, is a vertical boulder that was bombed for target practice in WWII by Americans. It's full of pockets from bombs and that is where the birds nest. In fact there is rumored to be a few active bombs on the island, doubt they'd explode at this point though.

So we depart from the island and head back. Ben and I are a little bummed that we didn’t get to check out the bird rookery but oh well. The swells are smaller this time ~3m. Things are going pretty well. Ben is sick again, bummer deal. About half way back we see a lightning bolt streak through the air horizontally. Pretty awesome but Katie reminded me that we were traveling in an aluminum boat. I couldn't remember the grounding scenario, whether a metal boat can get struck, but I was hoping we were grounded somehow. We were making better time on the return trip so all was on the up and up. We were about a half hour from Dom’s island (which promises a protected bay and a half hour more ride after you reach it) when the engine started to sputter. What now? “Enjin I kaekae tumas benzin” (Literally, “The motor ate to much gas”). So we proceeded to reduce our speed to an idle as we approached the island of Nguna. We were informed that we only had one oar so paddling in could be a problem. We toyed with the idea of putting on our snorkeling fins, holding on to the back of the boat, and kicking in to the island. As we approached the area where 6-7 foot waves were breaking on rock and reef, the engine was really started struggling. Kinda scary and thought about what would happen if we were to run out of gas right then. We were wondering whether it we better to abandon ship or chance the boat getting its ass kicked in the break zone. It was a mixture of laughter and a few concerned looks being exchanged.

As we cleared the break zone and putted towards the beach landing, the gas died, the boat now just about 20m from shore. Luckily we were in calm water now and one Man-Mataso jumped out and pulled us in the rest of the way. At that point two what-ifs came to mind. First, what would have happened if we would have run out a few minutes earlier near the break zone? Next, what would have happened if we had visited the bird rookery? Probably would have run out of gas in the churning sea and drifted far out to sea. What-ifs are fun aren’t they?

So they grabbed what they thought was an adequate amount of gas and we departed for our half-hour trip home through calm water. We figured we might just get back before it gets dark. Well…about half way back guess what? We ran out of gas again. Fuck! No security concern now just a big pain in the ass. So night fell as we were oared in, the two guys in the back trading off who paddled with our oar so that the boat wouldn’t go too much in one direction. When we started getting close to the mainland we saw that it was low tide which meant shallow reef and no more paddling. So for about an hour one guy walked along the reef and pulled the boat in.

We showed up tired but with a good story. One of the funniest things about the trip was that we were there to scout out possible tourism opportunities for the island. A guy that is from there but now stays in Vila wrote a small grant to pay for us to go out there, check the reef health and an Australian volunteer came along to talk about the business side of a possible project. Well, we told them one of the biggest barriers to success would have to be transport. I can't imagine too many tourists wanting to embark on half the craziness of our trip out there.

So that was fun. I'll try to blog again some time around the 4th of July...

By the way there's a great blog with info. on marine tenure and Vanuatu culture that a Jessica, volunteer that was on the Mataso trip, has made at: http://coconutcouple.blogspot.com