Written December 20, 2008
So it’s official now. Taem blong spel has officially begun with the year closing ceremony of the MPA that took place a couple days ago. I still have some work to do here and there, but mostly I don’t have to do a damn thing. I’ve just been hanging out with the village, swimming, and reading. It’s been really nice.
As part of the spel program my village has been hosting a group from a church in Vila to do a combined service, video, and health toktok every night. They’ve been at it for the last couple weeks, and have set-up camp at my host papa’s house. I haven’t really been involved with it previously because I was in Vila to plan the camp, entertaining guests during the camp, and then back in Vila for a couple days to see friends. Well, now that I’ve come back to the island I don’t really have an excuse not to go. It’s also hard to avoid as pretty much my whole village has been going and they are nice and loud with their amplified speakers. The first two nights back I didn’t go, but told myself that I would go to at least one service/ show.
Yesterday afternoon they said the health topic was to be marijuana so I decided this was the day to go. Marijuana lectures in Vanuatu are usually entertaining as they are akin to Reefer Madness-like explanations prevalent in the US in the 1920s and 30s of what the wacky weed does to you. One volunteer once explained that he sat through a marijuana lecture in his village where they said that a woman in Papua New Guinea had gotten stoned and baked her child. Hmmm… Now I’ve heard this happening before, but usually it’s associated with drugs like LSD or crack. Many people in Vanuatu are also convinced that marijuana makes people violent and commit crimes or it’ll just plain make you nuts. One time while riding in a bus in Vila two men, the driver of the bus and the guy sitting shotgun, pointed out a guy walking crooked down the street, swatting at the air, and laughing hysterically. Now, many people might assume this person has a serious mental affliction like paranoid schizophrenia or something. No. Not these two guys. They both proclaimed, “Marijuana” in chorus followed by a shaking of their heads. I, sitting close to the front, was baffled at this reasoning and asked the two guys if they really think marijuana did that to that guy. I got a response of something like, “Of course, I’ve seen many like him that marijuana has ruined there life like that. That stuff makes you go crazy!” I resolved to shut up and not try and fight that battle.
Now, I realize that marijuana is a problem in Vanuatu, and especially in Vila where large groups of boys roam the streets and just smoke all day. But, it can’t be ignored that there aren’t enough jobs or good youth activities to involve these guys. And yes it probably kills their motivation, and doesn’t help the problem of disenfranchised youth, but I feel too often marijuana is used as scapegoat for the reason these youth wander aimlessly. Why would you overuse a drug like marijuana if you had cool activities to do, a good job, or other things to eat up your time?
Anyway, so I went to see some more inflated stories on the wacky weed. No crazy baby baking stories. Just some really suspect ad hoc reasoning of crime rates going up in Vila due to marijuana use. Then the speaker went on to say how it makes you crazy and violent. What was strange too was that he didn’t open the forum for questions afterward. I’ve found that most adult Ni-Vans are very curious about this drug, and love to ask questions and discuss it. That could have been the best part.
Later in the evening, after the whole show was done I was talking to a member of the church about yesterday’s big Vila prison break. This is about the 6th or 7th break of the year, but this was a big one. A bunch of prisoners lit fire to the prison, requiring the police, to have to open the cell doors (as to not burn prisoners alive), and then with doors open about 60 prisoners made a run for it holding knives and big metal pipes they had hidden away. Not a good situation, and some police officers were stabbed in the process. Well anyway, the guy I was talking to said that these guys, being high on marijuana, are what caused the incident, and previous prison breaks. Some might think that inmates high on marijuana might actually keep them from, well, doing anything at all except staring at the wall. Oh well.
Once the health discussion was done it was time for the religion discussion. The preacher giving it had a power point discussion about the beginning of Christianity, its subsequent fall during the Dark Ages, and then its lift back up from enlightened thinkers. The Dark Ages part was pretty gnarly with four or five slides about how Christians were tortured by other people during that time. It was all in English so he read that first, and then translated some of it to Bislama. One of the slides said something like, “They stabbed their eyes and pulled the eyes out of their sockets!” Gruesome yes, but humorous when he misread the slide (in a serious appalled manner), “They stabbed their eyes and pulled off their socks!” Not the socks!! I’m glad I didn’t have anybody else there that noticed it too so I wouldn’t have a reason to laugh at something like that. I could have lost my socks. Wait I don’t wear socks.
He then went on to tell of the evils of the Mark of the Beast. Throughout the show this Beast was a current theme with some fiery lion continually popping up. The Beast, he was convinced was in the form of a religious sect that the maternal side of my family subscribes too. Now, I myself can’t say I’ve ever really been a follower of my maternal family’s religion, but I felt insulted as half of my extended family is in his eyes, “The Beast,” and that’s just not a nice thing to say about someone.
Sorry if this part on religious event seems like a cheek. I don’t mean it to be that way, and I try to go to religious events the community are involved in, but humor helps me sometimes get through long events that usually aren't that engaging to me. Also, I try to be as open as I can to different religions, but it is hard sometimes not to wince, as someone who doesn’t to subscribe to any church, when churches bash each other.
Today I think I’ll take a light day of reading, typing letters, playing BINGO, and maybe some fishing in the evening. It’s pretty appropriate when you think about how damn hot and humid it is. Oh, and yes I said BINGO. Instead of 7 Lock this year the craze is a modified game of BINGO where instead of using the letters there’s just numbers that go up to 90, and you have to get a horizontal straight of numbers to win. There are horizontal rows on your cardboard card with five numbers per row. Every card is 10 cents per round, and many people have anywhere from 2-4 cards going per round. I usually just play one as I’m more interested in just playing. I’ve won the jackpot of two dollars once so far. I like it more than 7 Lock as I feel I am not at an unfair advantage to the mama card sharks like I was in 7 Lock.
Well I hope you all are having a good holiday break. I think I’m going to do Christmas in the village again this year, although Christmas Eve I’m going to try to get into town to hang out with some friends, eat good food, and watch a couple Christmas movies we have on DVD. For New Years a few people are planning to come out to my island for some revelry, but nothing too crazy. Mainly counting down the days until New Zealand! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all!!
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Spel Time
Written December 19, 2008
I’m not going to lie. It’s been a while since I last wrote one of these. No point in lying as all you have to do is look at the last date of an entry and the date of this one to see that it’s been a while. Have I been lazy? Not particularly. Too busy? Not enough to not have time to write. Nothing to write about? Its Vanuatu, there’s always something interesting going on. What then? I guess I’ve really been inspired over the last few months to do what I need to do and let go of the rest as per the upcoming season: Taem blong spel or “do nothing for two months.” Therefore, blogging fell through the cracks. I apologize. Although, in my defense I’ve located other Vanuatu volunteers who have come down with the incommunicado sickness. I won’t name them, but they exist.
Last year as taem blong spel was approaching I was dreading it. I had only been out at site for a few months, didn’t have much work to do, was still trying to integrate into my community, and now it was time to do absolutely nothing. It was tough. I spent a lot of my time trying to make something from nothing. I would try to start-up conversations with people, but that was a bit of a wash as there’s not much to talk about when nobody’s really doing anything. I tried to get into the 7 Lock games that villagers were playing religiously. Basically, this is a card game that is much like Uno, but for every hand you have to toss in 10 cents, and the winner takes the pot. Now, you would think that there’s not much strategy in a game that resembles Uno, but somehow a couple Mama’s were straight sharks and seemed to always have a nice pile of change beside them.
I played here and there, but me winning seemed like something worthy of celebration as people were shocked with “Way to go white man” looks. So I gave up on my 7 Lock career for financial and pride reasons. Only problem was that this activity consumed everybody. Those that weren’t playing it were watching it. So I became a spectator. This, however, gets a little old after a while as an Uno-type game doesn’t quite captivate like a suspenseful game of poker might.
I would usually watch as much card games as I could take, and then go bury my nose in a book. I killed a lot of books last December and January. I would read until I felt I’d need a break, crawl out of my hammock, and watch more 7 Lock with very limited socializing. Once I felt recharged enough by human interaction it was back to the books again. That was life for a couple months with some spicing up here and there from activities like swimming and drinking kava.
So how does one look forward to this type of thing? Easy: live in Vanuatu for a year and a half. I guess I’ve gotten pretty used to the speed of life here and now it’s the time of year to relax. This may be an occupational hazard when I return to the US. Though, there are reasons besides becoming more like the people that surround me that have made me itch for relax time. My projects have made me a lot more busy than last year, and although we may work a lot less here than we do in the US, the frustrations and obstacles on the job seem to more than balance out the feeling of needing a break. Another reason I feel more welcoming to spel is that I have been here for a long time now, and feel I can fill my time a lot better (with what sometimes I do not know). The last and final reason, and most important one is… I won’t be here for half the spel. Vacation baby! I get to peace out of this sultry stagnate place for 3 weeks in January and go to New Zealand. This in the back of my mind helps a great deal.
In the last few months there hasn’t been anything too eventful that I can remember. I’ve been doing a lot of stuff with the MPA (workshops, meetings, etc.). Javi and I have been doing stuff for the sports project like planning next year’s events and discussing and working grants we will apply for. Another one of my brothers got married recently which involved drunk dancing in the middle of the road and one brother punching the other one. Good times. In fact, the latter happened while we were waiting at the wharf for a boat to go back to Pele. I was talking to a tour operator about the MPA when she added, “By the way what’s going on here? When we pulled up to the wharf people were fighting.” I answered, “No its just a wedding they’re not fighting.” Her: “Yes they were. I saw punches.” I was surprised. “Really!?” When I finished the conversation I went over to one of the guys from my village to find out what happened. I asked who was fighting. He replied, “Tufala brother blong yu.” Turns out my oldest brother punched a younger brother than my brother-in-law came to the younger brother’s defense and got punched as well. I found them all a little ways down the road laughing together, a couple with marks on their faces. “Nice one guys!”
Last week we held an environment day camp for the two islands I work with. About 8 Peace Corps volunteers turned out to pitch in and it was hard to tell if we, the volunteers, or the campers had a better time. We played a lot of games with environmental education mixed into them, there were art crafts, and snorkeling time with a snorkeling scavenger hunt in the end. About 35 kids from the two islands showed up which was a pretty good turn out for this time of year. We focused on the kids that were years 4-6 in school.
The kids especially enjoyed the games, and there were a couple games that volunteers made up on the fly that were a hit as well. For one of the crafts we did a trash-to-treasure activity where kids made Christmas ornaments out of beer cans. When we were planning this a few days before the camp I realized that rounding up that many cans from the island could be hard as many people flatten the cans or burn them in their trash piles. So we downed a case of beer a couple days before the craft activities so we could have enough cans. Yes, we produced trash, but it’s the concept that’s important here. The cans were even green and red, festive for the holidays. When drinking that night to produce the “trash” we liked to remind ourselves, “It’s for the kids.”
The camp went very smoothly, and it really helped to have a lot of volunteers to work it so some people could do behind-the-scenes stuff as other volunteers were doing activities with the kids. We also had a couple MPA staff help out, and they both did an excellent job as well. A beauty part of the camp was that it was a day camp so every night we did not have to worry about the kids or baby-sit. Instead we retired to my house on Pele (the camp was on Nguna), hung out, and made really good food. Then the next day the MPA boat would take us back to the camp.
The plan is to keep doing variations of the camp and at different volunteers’ sites so the camp keeps getting better. It also is a great way to see someone else’s site and hangout with friends in the evening. Javier summed it up well one night when he said how lucky we were to be doing something that’s meaningful in a beautiful place, having fun doing it, and then coming back to hang out with good friends when we’re done for the day.
Sorry I don’t really have pictures of the camp. My battery died early on, but a lot of other volunteers have good pictures, and I’ll post those when I get them.
I’m not going to lie. It’s been a while since I last wrote one of these. No point in lying as all you have to do is look at the last date of an entry and the date of this one to see that it’s been a while. Have I been lazy? Not particularly. Too busy? Not enough to not have time to write. Nothing to write about? Its Vanuatu, there’s always something interesting going on. What then? I guess I’ve really been inspired over the last few months to do what I need to do and let go of the rest as per the upcoming season: Taem blong spel or “do nothing for two months.” Therefore, blogging fell through the cracks. I apologize. Although, in my defense I’ve located other Vanuatu volunteers who have come down with the incommunicado sickness. I won’t name them, but they exist.
Last year as taem blong spel was approaching I was dreading it. I had only been out at site for a few months, didn’t have much work to do, was still trying to integrate into my community, and now it was time to do absolutely nothing. It was tough. I spent a lot of my time trying to make something from nothing. I would try to start-up conversations with people, but that was a bit of a wash as there’s not much to talk about when nobody’s really doing anything. I tried to get into the 7 Lock games that villagers were playing religiously. Basically, this is a card game that is much like Uno, but for every hand you have to toss in 10 cents, and the winner takes the pot. Now, you would think that there’s not much strategy in a game that resembles Uno, but somehow a couple Mama’s were straight sharks and seemed to always have a nice pile of change beside them.
I played here and there, but me winning seemed like something worthy of celebration as people were shocked with “Way to go white man” looks. So I gave up on my 7 Lock career for financial and pride reasons. Only problem was that this activity consumed everybody. Those that weren’t playing it were watching it. So I became a spectator. This, however, gets a little old after a while as an Uno-type game doesn’t quite captivate like a suspenseful game of poker might.
I would usually watch as much card games as I could take, and then go bury my nose in a book. I killed a lot of books last December and January. I would read until I felt I’d need a break, crawl out of my hammock, and watch more 7 Lock with very limited socializing. Once I felt recharged enough by human interaction it was back to the books again. That was life for a couple months with some spicing up here and there from activities like swimming and drinking kava.
So how does one look forward to this type of thing? Easy: live in Vanuatu for a year and a half. I guess I’ve gotten pretty used to the speed of life here and now it’s the time of year to relax. This may be an occupational hazard when I return to the US. Though, there are reasons besides becoming more like the people that surround me that have made me itch for relax time. My projects have made me a lot more busy than last year, and although we may work a lot less here than we do in the US, the frustrations and obstacles on the job seem to more than balance out the feeling of needing a break. Another reason I feel more welcoming to spel is that I have been here for a long time now, and feel I can fill my time a lot better (with what sometimes I do not know). The last and final reason, and most important one is… I won’t be here for half the spel. Vacation baby! I get to peace out of this sultry stagnate place for 3 weeks in January and go to New Zealand. This in the back of my mind helps a great deal.
In the last few months there hasn’t been anything too eventful that I can remember. I’ve been doing a lot of stuff with the MPA (workshops, meetings, etc.). Javi and I have been doing stuff for the sports project like planning next year’s events and discussing and working grants we will apply for. Another one of my brothers got married recently which involved drunk dancing in the middle of the road and one brother punching the other one. Good times. In fact, the latter happened while we were waiting at the wharf for a boat to go back to Pele. I was talking to a tour operator about the MPA when she added, “By the way what’s going on here? When we pulled up to the wharf people were fighting.” I answered, “No its just a wedding they’re not fighting.” Her: “Yes they were. I saw punches.” I was surprised. “Really!?” When I finished the conversation I went over to one of the guys from my village to find out what happened. I asked who was fighting. He replied, “Tufala brother blong yu.” Turns out my oldest brother punched a younger brother than my brother-in-law came to the younger brother’s defense and got punched as well. I found them all a little ways down the road laughing together, a couple with marks on their faces. “Nice one guys!”
Last week we held an environment day camp for the two islands I work with. About 8 Peace Corps volunteers turned out to pitch in and it was hard to tell if we, the volunteers, or the campers had a better time. We played a lot of games with environmental education mixed into them, there were art crafts, and snorkeling time with a snorkeling scavenger hunt in the end. About 35 kids from the two islands showed up which was a pretty good turn out for this time of year. We focused on the kids that were years 4-6 in school.
The kids especially enjoyed the games, and there were a couple games that volunteers made up on the fly that were a hit as well. For one of the crafts we did a trash-to-treasure activity where kids made Christmas ornaments out of beer cans. When we were planning this a few days before the camp I realized that rounding up that many cans from the island could be hard as many people flatten the cans or burn them in their trash piles. So we downed a case of beer a couple days before the craft activities so we could have enough cans. Yes, we produced trash, but it’s the concept that’s important here. The cans were even green and red, festive for the holidays. When drinking that night to produce the “trash” we liked to remind ourselves, “It’s for the kids.”
The camp went very smoothly, and it really helped to have a lot of volunteers to work it so some people could do behind-the-scenes stuff as other volunteers were doing activities with the kids. We also had a couple MPA staff help out, and they both did an excellent job as well. A beauty part of the camp was that it was a day camp so every night we did not have to worry about the kids or baby-sit. Instead we retired to my house on Pele (the camp was on Nguna), hung out, and made really good food. Then the next day the MPA boat would take us back to the camp.
The plan is to keep doing variations of the camp and at different volunteers’ sites so the camp keeps getting better. It also is a great way to see someone else’s site and hangout with friends in the evening. Javier summed it up well one night when he said how lucky we were to be doing something that’s meaningful in a beautiful place, having fun doing it, and then coming back to hang out with good friends when we’re done for the day.
Sorry I don’t really have pictures of the camp. My battery died early on, but a lot of other volunteers have good pictures, and I’ll post those when I get them.
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