April Blog

(A couple cool April sunsets taken from my island)
Written April 27, 2009
So after the Pentecost trip I kind of dove face first back into work, as there was a lot of it to be done. This, while I caught some mutant form of Dengue fever that has been going around. I guess something like 30 volunteers have caught it in the last 2 months. It pretty much sucks as it saps your energy, you get feverish, and then when it’s done it gives you a full body rash for a couple days. Lot of fun. Looks like I’m almost out of the woods now though, as the rash is clearing up and my energy is coming back.
One of the cool things, work-wise, that just happened was our Village/ Beach/ Sea/ Forest clean-up campaign that we held a couple days ago. It was supposed to be every village (there’s 15 of them) on Nguna and Pele cleaning up their village areas (including surrounding forest and shoreline) on this day. The MPA is providing prizes for any villages that took part, and there are prizes for men and women as well as kids. There were about 5 villages that took part and we’re giving the other 10 a month to get their act together and do a clean up or their prizes will be forfeited to villages that carry out the clean up campaigns.
I was on-hand to watch my village do theirs, and they did a great job. They separated trash, broke down tin (to fit better in their landfill hole), and collected a good amount of trash from a wide area of the village's land. Another high note is that they said that the trash they collected was a lot less than what they collected in a similar campaign a few years ago. They said they may have even expended more effort to capture trash this year too, which is a nice sign in that they are not littering as much.
They divided in teams mostly dominated by women and children to pick up the trash. Some men assisted with the picking-up of trash while many others dug the big landfill hole, compacted trash, and organized things.
In the afternoon I lead some kids in snorkeling in the nearshore reef and grabbing some of the trash there too. Here’s some pictures from the event:
(some kids and mamas setting out to pick up trash)
(Davis grabbing a plastic bottle)
(Maninga tossing some trash and rocking a Bears jersey)
(People dropping off trash at the collection site)
(The reef clean-up kids)
So other stuff going on…
I’m pretty excited that the weather is changing here to my favorite time of year in Vanuatu (May- August) where the rain stops, the humidity drops substantially, the trade winds start blowing again, and the nights are cool. If Vanuatu were like this year round you might have to beg volunteers to leave. As it is I’m glad I get in almost another full cold season before I leave.
It looks like all is go for the sports training workshop next week and I’ll be in Vila in a couple days here polishing off the finishing touches with Javi.
It looks like our Conservation Management Plans that the MPA and I will be doing are shaping up nicely and I’m looking forward to those in mid-May and throughout June.
I’m super stoked that my sister Hannah is coming in less than a month here, and that we’ll be headed to Tanna for a little adventure for a few days.
In some bummer news it looks like I’m going to have to postpone my US road trip I wanted to make as low funds will be prohibiting that one. But not to worry friends and family, I’ll be seeing a lot of you at Todd’s wedding in August, and I’m still thinking of a road trip some time in the future to visit some of the rest of you guys. Looks like I may be spending some time in the East coast for a bit.
Some things are winding down and it’s nice to be spending some quality time with friends and my host family in the village as I know it will be a long while until I see these guys once I’m out of Pele in July. In the end of July I’m still hoping to run the round island relay again, and am gradually getting a team together again. Oh, speaking of sports, the baseball carnival in late March was a huge success. We got a lot of new faces to show up and the games went well. Also the Vila vs. Ekipe showdown reconvened this time with the kids pitching. It was great as some of these kids can really hurl the ball. I was glad that I had a mask on as I was definitely taking some foul balls of the body as umpire. Ekipe ended up winning, but it was a great game. Sorry, no pictures yet as someone was in charge of photography for the day, and we have yet to compile the pictures.
So that’s most of what’s going on. I hope you all have a great Cinco de Mayo celebration out there and be safe. I myself will not be reveling as I’ll be in workshop mode on North Efate (I know boo hoo). But, eat some fish tacos and drink some tasty margaritas for me!!