Stories To Come

Saturday, March 31, 2012

Good morning,

We are finishing our twentieth month in Vanuatu with about seven more to go. It was time for my business group's second round of mid-service “training”. Last August, we gathered in Port Vila for a few days, went through our successes out at our respective sites and took care of administrative stuff. It seemed that the biggest benefit to our training was just hearing what other volunteers were up to, sharing tips, and talking. Since we can do that anywhere and we are supposed to be helping people, we decided that our March 2012 training should be in a rural village. We would still be able to see each other and share, but we might be able to help someone else while we're at it. I am now on my way back to Epi from Quatangwele village in a removed and remote part of Northern Ambae.

Quatangwele (quah-tahng-way-lay) is one of those villages that even people from the island of Ambae consider to be remote. We only spent five days there, but I feel it was one of the highlights of my two year service. I'll be sharing stories about Ambae later.

After Ambae, I flew to Santo island for a one week vacation. Yes, Peace Corps gives us vacation days just like at any other job. We also receive a modest living allowance deposited into our Bank of Vanuatu savings accounts every month. Since I don't spend much of that money on Epi, I was able to travel around Santo a bit, get some good meals, and relax. It may seem odd to take a vacation from one undeveloped tropical island to visit another, slightly more developed tropical island, but I wanted to get away for a little bit more than anything.

So, it's been two weeks since I've last been on Epi. I'm now working my way back and have booked passage on a ship leaving on Monday, but there are predictions of a major storm coming through this weekend and I may be stuck. At least I'll have time to share stories. What would you like to here?

-- Daniel --