Sorry, I can't get any more pictures up.

I think we find out what our site assignments will be on October 28. I'm hoping for Tanna as I've taken a liking to bush life.

On my first day in Takara B, I sat down with my host Papa and had a long chat in broken Bislama under his large mango tree. I learned more of the language and maybe more about Vanuatu in that one evening than I had during the week before. Twice a week I travel to Epau for technical training which just happens to be under another mango tree. That's not uncommon for Vanuatu so I've decided to use that concept for my web-log title.

Technical training is vague for business volunteers. Vanuatu is in a unique situation in that while it suffers from "poverty of opportunity" it also benefits from "subsitence oppulence". You can't starve on Vanuatu. Food, clothing, and shelter, are readily available and if you can't manage on your own, your extended family or village will take of you. If your a local with your own garden, a few animals, and access to the abundance of the sea and the bush, you don't need much cash just to live. If you do want or need some money, however, there's not much opportunity to make it. Money is needed to pay school fees to educate your children, to pay doctor bills at the clinic, and to buy fuel for your kerosene lamp or diesel generator if your well-to-do. There are also all sorts of nice consumer goods you can "pem" (buy) from Villa or your local store, but you can live without instant coffee and canned meat.

I think we are helping people with their business largely so they can afford adequate medical care and send their children to school. With that said, we business volunteers have been discussing a bit of a philosophical problem. Port Villa is experiencing a host of social problems that are facing Ni-Vanuatu for the first time. As young people come to Villa to make money and live the "flash life" they leave behind any community support and their own rural self-sufficiency. Some of them don't make it and fall in to poverty, prostitution, crime, or other problems.

We business volunteers are going to into rural communities and introducing efficiency, sometimes at the cost of self-sufficiency. It's sometimes hard to see why they even need us. We Americans have a had a few revelatory conversations with the Ni-Vanuatu and discovered that in rural Vanuatu, there isn't poverty as American's know it. Like I said, no one starves, no one freezes at night, and people get by. The surveys say this is the happiest place on Earth. They could benefit from some schools, inoculations, and knowledge about dengue and AIDS, but the case for the business volunteer is less concrete.

Okay, back to facts. I've started taking to local business people like the store ownere, the kava bar operator, and the bread maker. These businesses make your American Mom & Pop shop look advanced in some ways, but the Ni-Vanuatu I've met have the basics down. They have shown an understanding of basic accounting and margins, but don't seem to mind having a strained supply line or having to shut down for a few days because they just ran out of flour and haven't purchased any more from Villa yet. It's only been a few weeks though, so I am by no means an expert on Vanuatu enterprise.

My time is almost up. I've doing very well and adjusting to island life. Miraculously, we haven't lost any volunteers from my group yet, which was unexpected for a group our size. My fellow volunteers seem upbeat and happy and our biggest gripes are only that we can't get ice cream and sometimes creepy crawlies get into your room at night. We'll be fine. I'll stay in touch.

Lastly, the Ni-Vanuatu now call me Taewia. the emphasis is on "Thai", like Thailand, followed by "wee-ah". It means "good brother" in the language of Emau.

-- Daniel --

Training in Takara

My room.

The coconut trees at the edge of the yard at the Faratia household.

My daily commute to town takes me through the dry, flat grassland of the "American Airport." I live part way up the hill on the left.

Good Morning,

It is 9:30 in the morning and I am sitting in a French cafe by the bay watching the yacths sail through the bay by Port Villa. There's an Australian crusie ship here today so Villa town has s few red-lanyered tourists milling about. I have a short amount of internet time so excuse me if this is messy. Also, I'm probably going to stick to facts for now (where I am, what I do...). The gushing about how nice everything is will come later.

After a week at the IDS camp in Pango near Port Villa, the 41 Peace Corps Trainees of Group 23 were wisked away to five seperate villages in North Efate. I am staying in Takara B while the rest are in Takara A, Epau, Paunangisu, and Ekipe. There are five of us in Takara B which is the smallest of the villages. It is probably also the most remote. Last year, Efate island completed the Ring Road which runs all the way around the island. If Port Villa, the capital and urban center of the island is the start and end of the ring, Takara B is the middle. There is a sign in town indicating the middle of the ring and telling passers by that the project was funded by the US Millenium Challenge Account. For what it's worth, the locals here are well aware of which projects where funded by what countries.

I live in a farmhouse uphill from Takara B in what even the villagers call "the bush". I was confused at first as they would often ask if I was going back "antap". "Antap" (on top) is the Bislama word for not only the top of something like a hill or table, but also more generally refers to uphill, inland, and sometimes up.

My host parents are Thomas and Fatima Faratia. Papa Thomas is 65 while Fatima is somewhat younger. Sometimes Anthony (13) is around, but usually he stays with his sister on the nearby island of Emau, where he goes to school. The people of Takara A and B orginally come from Emau, a smaller island visible from the northern tip of Efate. Takara A is a well established community while Takara B probably has only 80 people and still has a transient look to it. With the exception of my Papa's house, the rest of the homes in Takara look like they where recently built with whatever metal sheeting and wood was available and aren't meant to last.

This is partly because Takara B is actually a rather new settlement. So new that is is not even getting a proper name until this Saturday when it will be rechristened as Natakoma Komuniti. There's going to be a celebration coinciding with the opening of the new road-side market this weekend.

Each morning I wake up under my mosquito netting sometime between 4:30 and 5:30. That's when the sun comes up and the birds go crazy anyway, so there is not much chance of sleeping late. My host parents are often up a little earlier. In the morning gray, I wander over the "smol haos" for my morning "swim" or bracing bucket bath. Gently chilled, I breakfast with the parents and whatever children are visiting for heading "daon" to "taon" for class at 7:30 or 8:00. At the bottom of the hill, past Uncle Simon's homestead is the "Amerikan Aepot", a flat expanse of grass land that Americans denuded of tress and buldozed during the second World War to build an airstrip. Simon's house is built on a flat slab on concrete left by the Americans.

After the "airport" which the volunteers have named "the Serengeti" is the town proper, starting with the village nakamal and a church where we have class. Bislama is going fairly well, which is mostly due to how easy the language is for English speakers. We take occasional trips to the other villages for technical training with our program groups. I'm with business.

My pictures loaded so I'm going to post this while I can. More to come soon.