Going back to site

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Good Morning,

I’m in a hurry so let’s get my excuses and apologies for writing quality out the way right now.

There’s this thing called “aelan taem”. It’s not what I was told it would be. Arriving in Port Vila over two weeks ago, I had a list of little things to take care of in my spare time; pay taxes, send letters, load photos, talk to business owners, tell the world I’m all right. Some of those things didn’t happen.

There’s this thing I was told before joining the Peace Corps. Everyone said I should bring lots of books and that I would have lots of time on my hands. Service is not what I was told it would be. Lest you think I’m complaining, let it be known that I’m thriving in this and much of it is by choice. Vacation time will come later. I blame it on not having a well defined job description and being allowed to let my imagination dictate my goals. The result is running around Vila for two weeks talking to shop owners, visiting libraries, and getting dictionaries from the Rotary Club. Sorry if I’ve neglected you.

In the villages on Epi, there is always time enough for talking, but not necessarily for work. “Aelan taem” means I can’t rush the projects I think are important. It means I can’t work at my own schedule because I need everyone else involved. It means I wait for the locals. It does not mean islanders sit around eating fruit all day (even though I’ve done that a few times). The villagers make me feel lazy. My work gets pushed back not because we’d all rather rest just another day, but because the villagers are already working. I’ve never seen such a hot bead of activity as a tranquil island village, but it took me a month or two to see it. How can my little savings account workshop compete with yam planting season or filling the next order of hand woven mats?

It’s infectious. So, when I come to the capital I don’t see why I should stop trying to help just because it’s the weekend or the sun has gone down. Papa is still up at five AM moving cattle around. Island time means it takes half a day to wash clothes and another half to gather firewood and food for tomorrow so my crazy Peace Corps ideas like lessons on price setting or value-added goods will just have to wait.

Now, on to some of the questions and comments I’ve gotten. I’m more or less fluent in Bislama as are many of the volunteers. This is a pretty easy accomplishment for English speakers. Unfortunately, it doesn’t always make communication entirely transparent. Bislama is everyone’s second language and sometimes their third or fourth. It’s a language of necessity, born out of trading and slavery and it does not carry the nuances of English, French, or the local languages of Vanuatu. I suspect it never will except in that it seems to be adopting more English words like “profit”, “vaccine”, and “how”. So, I may be speaking Bislama, a language of maybe a hundred words with innumerable combinations. The other conversant may be speaking it back. But it will still take a long time for us to understand each other. We use a lot of metaphors and analogies. We talk in circles around a subject so that everyone eventually gets it. We have to be patient.

Epi has about five local languages, two of which are present in my village along with a language from Malekula spoken by some of the mamas who married into the village. I’ve picked up greetings, questions, and some basics from one of the local languages, but I’ll probably never be very conversant. People just switch into Bislama for me so I lack an incentive.

The biggest challenges to communication are those related to culture and background, though. “Sharing” means something slightly different here, but I can’t figure out what. Teaching for the sake of teaching also seems to be a little different. I was given a few fish by different people before finding someone willing to teach me how to catch them. Asking what time I should plant my corn resulted in word getting out and corn arriving at my house. Then, there’s “business”. I think I’ve figured out the thought process that goes through people’s heads when they ask me what kind of work I’m supposed to be doing. I say that I’m on Epi to help with business. “Business” seems to equal retail store, which equals community cooperative project. Farming as a business, handicrafts, value-added goods, corpa, kava, and the host of other products and activities that make up the majority of people’s meager income are not considered “business” no matter how much I try to argue. When I finally do that management workshop they’ve been asking for, it will be a challenge to get people who don’t own shops to show up, much less realize that things like scheduling and cash flow apply to farming as much as selling peanut butter and soap at the village store.

Yes John, it’s my island. There are other volunteers there, but it’s mine. You can visit if you’d like but please bring tribute. No pigs.

The villagers love to see me attempting to integrate and do work. I love that they no longer think I’m the frail waetman who will collapse if he walks around to much. Now that the canoe is finished, the garden is planted, my skin is a little darker, my clothes are stained and I eat a steady diet of aelan kakai, I get jokes that other Americans won’t recognize me. They say I’m “man blong ples” or “man Epi” now. I doubt I ever will be nor is it my intent to become completely integrated, but it’s nice to hear regardless.

When two or more volunteers, be they Peace Corps, VSO, or otherwise, gather in the name of international development, the specter of development philosophy seems to appear. Those sentiments have crept into my scattered messages before so I won’t belabor the point for long. Some volunteers feel that we are on the opposite end of the development spectrum from USAID. Both parts seem necessary if for no other reason than that aid agencies seem to like it when local volunteers are involved with grants and projects. We volunteers (perhaps with just a touch of arrogance) think we’re so special because we live in a village for two or more years, speak the language, make friends, and go out of our way to get the locals to announce what they really want. I wish USAID or AUSAID or NZAID or JICA would pave the road on Epi and fix the old wharf. The impact from that would be immediate and beneficial, but I think my inexpensive, personal approach helps too.

So, what’s new with you? What did you do for Thanksgiving? Christmas? New Year’s Eve? Shrove Tuesday? Is it true that North Korea launched missiles at a South Korean island and Justin Bieber one some sort of celebrity basketball event? Is Virginia the same as ever after two monstrous winters? Is North Dakota tut-tutting at those silly Easterners who can’t seem to handle a few inches?

My flight to Epi is at 12:30 today. It’s back to bananas, roosters, my family, my counterpart, and bucket baths. There hasn’t been any word yet on whether cyclone Atu did any damage to the island, but the mere fact that flights are going there so soon is a very good sign. The roof of my house was still weighed down with heavy coconut leaves before I left so it should be fine.


- Daniel -