Cold Chillin’

(written Dec. 24)
Its Christmas Eve here (I’m able to write blogs in advance again as we scored a few donated laptops from the MPA project) and I’ve been back on my island for about a week now having come back from the wedding. Vanuatu is now totally in taem blong spel mode now which means that this last week has seemed like at least two. During taem blong spel people pretty much just chill out and don’t do a damn thing. I had heard many rumors of this and had tried to plan accordingly. I set out over the last few months to clear the only futbol field that has, over the last five years, been re-consumed by the unrelenting jaws of the jungle. The plan was simple and made sense: If we clear the field (one or two day’s work tops) we can have sports games and events during the holidays, especially nice as many youth come back from the boarding schools to be home for the holidays. All appropriate avenues to make this bush clearing program a success were made: meetings with the chiefs, meetings with village committees, rallying interested individuals.
A date was set by them (Very important! Never set dates here on your own), but unfortunately nobody showed up on the day in September to clear the field. I wasn’t deterred and tried repeatedly to get the issue brought up again in meetings and random conversations. In the end of November I asked the chiefs in a last plea to try to set a date before taem blong spel to clear the field so that during the one month of down time we would have something to do (and I could maintain my sanity). So a date was set in the beginning of December to clear the field, and this was the last chance before we moved into our month of nothingness starting in mid-December.
So the day came and I was pleasantly surprised to see about twenty people helping me clear the bush. We worked for about an hour and then someone’s cell phone rang. It was a guy from Vila saying that a group of people who rated tourism projects like restaurant critics do restaurants were on their way to the island now. Last year Pele had won “Best Day Tour in Vanuatu” and such an honor means dollar signs for the project and community. So… understandably everyone immediately quit work on the field and in a frenzy (for Ni-Vanuatu) went to work on the tourist area. Everyone knew how much I wanted to do the clearing and tried comforting me with the false promise that we would work on it again in the afternoon. They knew as well as I that this was not going to happen and didn’t, but at least they saw I was letdown. Maybe we’ll get rocking on it sometime in February?
With no sports area there really isn’t a whole lot do. Work really ceases here as people struggle to even get out to their gardens. I’ll sit down on the beach and storion with people gathered, but at a certain point conversation tends to run dry. You find yourself repeating stories or news or questions just to keep things rolling along. Another taem blong spel favorite activity is endless hours of “Seven Lock”, a card game that is equivalent to Uno in complexity and strategy. They love it and refuse to play it without gambling. Its usually about 10 cents a round and usually the demographic make-up consists of equal numbers of children and adults. I’ve played a couple times with marginal success, but I enjoy more watching them play as the shit talking and epithets used are amusing. One time I asked them if they knew any other games and they acknowledged that they knew a couple. “Rummy?” “Yeah, we know rummy.” I was excited, a new game! So we played a few rounds after which I realized they were just humoring me and were itching to get back to “Seven Lock.”
Other than conversation and card games I have been “killing books”, a phrase I borrowed from a volunteer who had just come into town from a remote place in Tanna, and thus had plenty of downtime to slaughter books left and right. I think I’m at a book and a half per day during spel time. Usually it takes me about a week to get through a book here as I reserve reading for evenings and Sunday. It’s good though, when else in your life are you going to have this much time to read and not get distracted by other things? Also you start to explore more with your reading tastes like for instance, I had never read Vonnegut before, but devoured Cat’s Cradle and Slaughterhouse-Five in a couple of days. I dig the dark satire style of his books and will have to look for some more in the Peace Corps library. I just read a book called The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen that made me think a lot about my family as it focuses on a mother trying to get her dysfunctional family home for one last Christmas. It also made me glad my family isn’t nearly that fucked up, but at the same time I think it really hits home how many families operate and roles we play within them.
Right now I’m working through a travel book about Kirabati, "Sex Lives of Cannibals", that describes some funny stuff that also tends to go down in Vanuatu. The author, Troost, also wrote one about Vanuatu, "Getting Stoned with Savages", which, before I came to Vanuatu, I thought was really good, but now have realized he exaggerates a little much and some his comments about Ni-Vanuatu are demeaning.
There are only a couple people on my island that read books (many are literate but could care less), and I was caught off-guard yesterday when, after I told my Papa I was retreating to the house to read, he said he was going to do the same. “I didn’t know you read books.” “Yep, sure do,” smiled, and walked away. I have no idea what kind of stuff he reads and I am curious to find out.
During spel time there’s also some DVD watching to be had. Some Pele natives who are now Vila residents (urban flight) come back to the island during the spel carrying flashy new DVDs and generators. Yesterday I conveniently showed up at my neighbor’s house as I heard the tell-tale sound of the generator firing up. I sat through a couple hours of a Vila primary school talent show video in hopes that a film was to follow. Indeed it did, as his son put in White Chicks where the Wayans brothers as FBI agents undercover dress up as white valley girls. Pretty stupid and offensive to both races at times, but I was amazed how much I laughed through it. Doesn’t take much when you’re starving for entertainment.
I think after New Years I’m going to go into town for a few days to feel like I am doing something and get my open water SCUBA certification done. Not a whole lot of Christmas-y stuff going down here yet. The Christmas program is to start this afternoon with music (not Christmas music) and food. The whole Christmas spirit has been damped a little by a series of three deaths in two days on the island. At least one was attributed to black magic. Speaking of black magic, my host brother, Noel, is unsure if he is going to come to the island for Christmas due to a large sore on his face evidently caused by him drinking a glass of something that an enemy had poisoned with black magic during the wedding reception. He is currently undergoing leaf treatment from a Vila kleva (medicine man) and this may take a few days.
That’s about it. By the time you guys read this it will be after the Holidays so I hope you had a good one and do tell funny or juicy stories. I already told you I need some good entertainment.