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.