Back to Epi

Saturday, August 20, 2011

That's it folks. A small airplane will be taking me back to Epi at noon today. I think I'm ready. After two weeks of either training or running errands around Port Vila, it's time to get back to work. Truth be told, I think I've been in the capital too long. I'm starting to get used to it. While it's nice to have a shower, Internet access, and cups of flat white with Kiwi tourists, I'll have to say goodbye to all of that for several months.

This is also goodbye, again, to all of you. Before it's back to the bush, a few housekeeping details. Firstly, thank you once again to everyone who has written letters. Some of you know that I sometimes take on the role of area postal agent because if I don't open those incoming mail bags, no one will. It's always a delight to see a letter from the USA. I get something to brag about and a few of you are minor celebrities on my island. And I've been slowly going through a stack of e-mail over the past two weeks. I should be able to finish responding to them this morning. If you'd like to send me a letter, please send it the Peace Corps office private mail bag at:

Daniel Gerszewski, PCV

Peace Corps

Private Mail Bag 9097

Port Vila, Vanuatu

Some of the more assiduous readers may have noticed that I've never mentioned the name of my village on this page. This is a publicly accessible web-log and I'm not supposed to do that. If you send a letter to the address above, however, it will be forwarded to me. The return letter will have my super-double-secret Epi address. I believe I have written back to everyone who has sent me a letter or even a Christmas card. If you haven't heard back from me, odds are a dolphin ate it in transit over the Pacific.

Alternately, you can send messages to volunteer@vu.peacecorps.gov and put my name in the subject line. These will get to me with the next mail bag to the island. Be sure to include your return address. Ten months ago, I packed all sorts of unnecessary gear, but I didn't include something as simple as an address book. So, I only have addresses for people who have written to me.

Now, I've tried not to bore everyone with my work on these pages, but I remember when I was a prospective volunteer trolling through people's journals trying to find out just what the heck people do in the Peace Corps. To anyone who is really interested, here is what my “job” has consisted of:

• Work with four Area Secretaries and the island's District Administrative Officer.

• Build up the capacity of these SHEFA provincial officials on Epi.

• Wrote and began conducting a handicap persons survey of the entire island with the Area Secretaries.

• Provide small business advice and assistance to villagers.

• Help small business owners to create documents, spreadsheets, accounting sheets, and other business artifacts.

• Explain business concepts like profit versus revenue, the break even point, and money management.

• Be a good American abroad and answer lots and lots of questions.

• Do the stereotypical Peace Corps stuff you see in the brochures like helping kids read, talking about health and disease, and generally trying to be helpful.

Very exciting, I'm sure.

I've got some plans for the next few months. First, I'm finally going to catch a saltwater fish. It's easy enough to go to the stream with a coconut shell of worms and my soda bottle fishing rod and catch a small bucket of little fryers. Heading out in my outrigger canoe to the edge of the reef has been less productive. My host “uncle” has even taken me out a couple times and I still haven't landed even a long-mouth, much less a tuna. We use these little hermit crabs as bait and try to stay just at the edge of the reef where the fish congregate, but I've yet to snag one. Having just finished Hemmingway's The Old Man and The Sea, I'm eager to get back out there. I hear you can catch the occasional salmon nearby.

We've also got to finish this disabled people survey we're working on. I'm planning on visiting the rest of the island in the coming months. There are a few Peace Corps volunteers on Epi and I'm starting to learn that we each have our reputations on the island. I'm apparently “man wokbaot”, which either means I've been seen traveling around on foot or that I can't keep still. It's the nature of the job for me. Go where the people are.

Then, I've got to see if I can finally coax some tomatoes out of the garden. So far, only the sweet corn and bok choi have been much of a success. The carrots, lettuce, beet root, red onions, and bell peppers didn't pan out. I can't even seem to get peppermint to grow, though my basil and parsley have come up nicely. These tomato plants, though, are confounding me. I've got beautiful, thick vines on bamboo stakes, but after six months there's still no fruit.

Lastly, I've been working with bamboo a little. It's time I finally make some musical instruments. If I get a new camera, hopefully there will be pictures next time.

So, until that next time, ta-ta, leme lawo, poko lulan, pongwio, and good night.

-- Daniel --

On Cursing

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

On Cursing:

What's the first thing you want to learn in a foreign language? The swear words, of course! Sorry, but I haven't been able to expand my vocabulary much in that direction. Epi seems to have appropriated American cursing, though they seem to lack our creativity and vigor in telling someone just how, why, how long, and how thoroughly he can go f*** himself. It's a shame really. I should make a village-wide training class on the subject.

People largely use the words you've already heard in the US, but there are a few hilarious exceptions. Well, I think they're funny, anyway. The first word I heard during a game of cards. We play a game called seven-lock that's sort of like Uno. Now, it's rare to play with a full deck of 52 cards so you can be waiting a long time for that much needed eight of spades. My opponent was getting increasingly frustrated but didn't want to curse in front of me so when he yet again drew a useless five he caught himself mid-cuss and instead let fly with the name of Epi's favorite legume. I've heard it on dangerous truck rides and when people drop a sauce pan. Try it yourself: “Oh, peanut!”

The second one makes me laugh every time, but no one else on the island can fathom why. We have a dugong / manatee that visits Laman Bay from time to time and draws in tourists. It's the closest thing the island has to a mascot, but there's no reason that when you're mad you can't shout the Bislama equivalent of dugong: “Cow-Fish!”

Sorry to the more juvenile readers out there, but that's it. I'll keep my ears open.

-- Daniel --

On Books

On Books:

While I can't say that everyone in the village is an avid “reader”, I can claim that most of the locals are at least avid lookers at books. Literacy is low. It seems common for the children in sixth grade or at least high school to be better readers than their parents if their parents can read at all. That generation gap and the fact that this reading is almost all in English rather than Bislama probably means big changes are coming to Epi and Vanuatu.

I get copies of The Economist and they are a hot commodity among the villagers. Some read through the brief bits of world news at the very beginning, some read the headlines in the rest of the magazine and then ask me questions, while some just like to look at the pictures in the adds for fancy watches, banking services, and Chivas Regal. When a sign is posted in the village, a crowd gathers. When a pamphlet is handed out, it is handled carefully and studied thoroughly. It seems that people are thirsty for words.

Deciding to do something to help, I went to the local primary school and Epi High School. Both schools have surprising libraries stocked with donated books. There are new Encyclopedia Brittanicas, text books from New Zealand, donated stacks of fiction, and the Harry Potter series. From what I can tell, however, these mostly just collect dust. I got permission to borrow some and bring them back to the village. I thought getting the kids to read after school would be difficult, but all I really have to do is put a stack of books out and the children swarm. They read them out loud, by themselves and to each other. Sometimes they ask to read them to me so I can tell them what an Egyptian pyramid is and what “Pharaoh” means. All these books were sitting there and all it took was for someone to check them out.

My favorites have been a series of children's encyclopedias from Golden Books. They are hilariously out of date and politically incorrect at times, casually referring to China as a land of peasants and Bosnia as “the most backwards country in Eastern Europe”. The map of Africa we looked at was unrecognizable except for the outline of the continent. What's a “Boer” anyway? So, while I don't expect to spend much time discussing the geopolitical realities of the 21^st century, the B book had great entries on beavers, buffalo, and bubble gum, complete with pictures. Unfortunately, someone must have absconded with a few of the books from the library. I think E was missing. So, if you ever come to Epi, please be patient if you encounter a family that knows about America, Beethoven, Chemistry, and Damascus, but not much on Elephants.

-- Daniel --

Grapefruit Bowling

Friday, August 12, 2011

More often than not, when I'm coming back from *ahem* “the office”, some kid bowls a giant grapefruit at me. The grapefruits (“pampelmuse”) are a little bigger than the American variety and this time of year they're all over the ground. Most are hard enough to chuck down the road where they bounce along. The goal is to roll one between the other kid's legs, but you want to make sure your tossing it to someone big enough to send it back. Ever since I managed to perfect my full-roundhouse-backhand-ultra-spin-throw, I've been a big target for rolling fruit. My record is rolling a grapefruit through the legs of two unsuspecting children before it bounce off the road into the bushes.

Despite my obvious skill, I've yet to be invited to join a game of coconut stacking. The village is littered with the dry halves of coconut shells. A mob of pikininis will stack about a dozen of these into a small tower in the middle of a yard. They scamper off to two opposing sides and each team takes turns chucking a ball or (more often than not) a softer grapefruit at the stack trying to knock it down. As soon as one team manages to send shells scattering in all directions, they charge out and try to re-stack them. The other team races after the ball/damaged fruit and starts pelting it at members of the stacking team. If you get nailed by the grapefruit, you're out. Somehow, miraculously, amidst the chaos of scrambling children, screaming, squealing, and flying fruit, the stack of coconut shells usually gets rebuilt and the game starts again. Why I'm encouraged to take part in bowling, but not stacking is yet another cultural mystery.

When kids aren't throwing things at each other or being harassed by their mothers for not bringing water or wearing pants, they play “truck”. Take a long pole, put a cross stick or some nails in the end, and preferably attach some wheels. You're now free to vroom it around the village all day. Since abandoned Tonka trucks are in short supply, kids use old water buoys, tin cans, or anything else that will roll. The cutest thing is to see a little pikinini just pushing a stick along, leaving a long gash on the ground because he couldn't fashion some wheels. It's downright sad, however, when that child is fifteen years old.

Now, my host sisters Melanie and Josephine are a bit too sophisticated for that little kid stuff. Inevitably, after I've put up my freshly washed underwear to dry on the line, it's volleyball time. There are volleyball nets on the island, but drying clothes work just as well. They were also big into marbles for a time. It's seasonal, though, since they use these little round seeds that fall all over for about a month.

I suppose the overall theme here is that even play time follows the seasons. I just hope no ever tries to instigate a game of tag by hurling a pineapple at me.

-- Daniel --

On Sustainability

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

On Sustainability:

It doesn't take long in Vanuatu before you notice that some odd words have crept into the language. Bislama is starting to sound like a combination of local words, French, English, and NGO-ish. I've had subsistence farmers with elementary school educations toss out terms like “grassroots level”, “economic development”, “stakeholder”, and of course “sustainability”. Just like most buzzwords, it doesn't seem to have taken long for these terms to have spun around the island and been used often enough dilute their meaning. Sustainability, though, is something you can see with your eyes.

First, the story of the grass cutting. I can get a pretty good idea of feelings of ownership on Epi by just looking at the grass. The grass around family homes is cut the most often. Next come the churches and nakamals. In my village, the churches are maintained almost better than the homes, while the nakamal is looked after when it will be needed in the next week or so. That's not surprising since in my villages the churches seem more important than the village council or the chiefs. If you ask who owns what or just take a guided tour, you'll here people say “that's my house, our church, and the village's nakamal.” They all look like someone cares about them and looks out for them to varying degrees. Then there's the road. It's just the road, not the village's or ours. It was built by the French before independence and now as far as most people seem concerned it belongs to the Shefa provincial government. When the rains come and ruin the road, the villages ask why Shefa doesn't send someone to fill the holes in the village road with sand and coral.

There are other stark examples. Laman island has a few Australian built water tanks. There is a sense that AUSAID built them and gave them, but it's not the locals business to deal with them. Four of the five are broken and will probably never be repaired. There's a cooperative store that everyone is happy to tell me was started by a former volunteer. It's empty and abandoned. I've given up trying to find out whose store it is, or who was responsible for it. It's the Peace Corps' store, I guess.

So, I could probably restart the store. I could probably get new water tanks. I could probably even build a tiny bamboo library. But, I probably won't. They'll just fall into disuse, disrepair, and be yet another unfinished or broken monument to some visiting do-gooder. Unless, that is, the village wants them. That's not the same as wanting a new shirt or thinking “gee, I want a solar panel”. That's freebies. That's charity and I'm not here to do charity. They have to want to own the project. So, the trick for me is to help people get what they really want, not just the fleeting idea of the moment, and to make absolutely sure everyone has “skin in the game” so to speak. That's the challenge for year two.

-- Daniel --

On Cat Tossing

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

On Cat Tossing:

We are continually surrounded by animals. Just my little corner of the village has two to four dogs depending on the day, probably twenty chickens, and one recalcitrant cat. My neighbors Robinson and Sesie adopted a small black cat a few months ago and gave him a name that in local language means “up” or “on top”. He's a climber you see. His name is Mao.

The little chairman is a worthless ratter, but he likes people plenty, especially when you're eating. Once he even climbed onto my shoulder while I was having lunch and then just took a nap there. Not everyone takes to his antics as kindly as I do. It's fortunate for little Mao that he's such a climber, because the easiest way to get rid of an obnoxious cat is to fling him onto a roof or into a tree. He'll land up there perfectly every time and then whine at you for several minutes until finding his way down. It's gotten to be a bit of a game.

Papa Daniel, however, is not a patient man with the stupid cat. After eating supper one night, he was laying on his back on a mat on the ground and we were all talking. Mao, for some reason, kept pacing in a wide circle around Papa. After his fourth circuit or so, when Mao was just passing the man's head again, Daniel snatched out his hand and catapulted the furry bugger out the open kitchen door, narrowly missing a post, and into the dark bushes. We were cat free for the rest of the night.

-- Daniel --

On Funerals

Monday, August 8, 2011

On Funerals:

A funeral, or “ded”, is perhaps the most emotive occasion I've witnessed in Vanuatu. Some of our volunteers think they are false showings of socially mandated grief while others talk about legitimate and culturally appropriate expressions of communal loss. Maybe. Here's what I've seen.

The first was in the village of Malvasi. That was close enough to my village to make attendance a social obligation for me and my host family. The church's elder had died the night before and word quickly spread. He had died at the hospital on the North end of the island and the body was taken back to Malvasi by truck in late afternoon. I had seen a truck loaded with crying people pass by, but at the time didn't know what to make of it. That evening we received word about the death of the important man from Malvasi and we knew that we would be going over there in the morning.

After breakfast, people in the village put on their nice church going clothes (trousers and collered shirts for the men, island dresses for the women) and we started a small parade down the road. Most people, including me, carried a folded pandanus mat or some cloth that would be given to the family of the deceased. We walked over to the other village, our group growing a little as we went and based on the chatter and even laughing you wouldn't have guessed we were headed toward a mourning ceremony. As we got closer to Malvasi, I began to hear the wailing and the talking in the group from my village died down.

We arrived at about the same time as the delegation from another village and began to walk towards the back of Malvasi were the wailing was coming from. There is sort of a “zone of mourning” at these events. As we began to approach the house of the dead elder, we saw small groups of people, mostly men, not too distant and it was only polite to shake hands with them. The body was wrapped in mats and cloth and laying on the ground just outside of the dead man's house. A tarp had been erected for shade and underneath was a swarm of seated wailing women.

You would have thought it the end of the world, the racket that was raised. Our visiting group and the delegation from the other village approached the body and the circle of seated mamas when people just started crying... loudly. Loudly enough, in fact, that anyone nearby would be sure to take note of just who had come to pay their respects. The mats and calico were placed on a growing pile of gifts for the family or sometimes into the hands of a crying mama seated near enough to toss them onto the heap. After five to ten minutes, most people, especially the men, peeled off from the group and sat around the village. Their crying ceased, but the general tumult at the house of the deceased continued.

Then, we sat aound, which I'm getting increasingly good at. I talked with men who were perfectly affable now, having finished shedding tears and crying out loud just a few minutes prior. So, we chatted and waited.

Eventually, we moved to a crowded church where the crying ceased long enough for the minister to give a sermon. The crying and wailing promptly started again and the body was carried to a recently dug grave on the edge of the village. The man's brothers, uncles, and other male relatives buried the mat wrapped body and family members each through in a handful of dirt before the men set to finishing the job with shovels. By now, the crying had mostly ceased with the exception of some very earnest and heartfelt crying from the widow.

We went to the village nakamal were food was to be distributed to the village delegations. First, the burial squad had to march down to the ocean to wash their hands, feet, and shovels in the saltwater. After, thanks were given to those who had traveled to show their respect and piles of food given to them to see them on their way.

With minor variation, that's the pattern I saw a few more times. Having arrived to the office one day, my counterpart told me that a woman about forty minutes' walk South had passed away. The morning's work in the office would have to wait until after we had gone to “show our faces”. We did and my counterpart managed some spontaneous tears for a few minutes near the body, but then we headed back to the office in time for lunch and started our work.

In case I sound a bit unfeeling about all this, let me tell you what it was like when someone in my extended host family died. I had an “apu man” or grandfather in Wenia. When passing by the village, I would try to stop by and say hello to him and we got along well enough. Although I didn't understand enough of his language and he didn't know enough Bislama for us to converse much, he had heard that I was to be his grandson for two years and treated me like one. He was a nice man who took the time to see any visitors despite being sick and always liked to give his grandchildren roasted peanuts when he saw them.

I was sad to hear one day that he had died. My host family and I walked the hour and half to Wenia on top of a steep hill and this time we were the one's under the tarp receiving visitors. Of course, I wouldn't be going to work for the next five days as I would be making daily trips to Wenia. My host father would spend the nights there with some of grandpa's other closest relatives. Although Apu was burried the day after he died, for five days villages came to pay their respects and cry at the man's house. For my own part, I tried to be respectful, but unobtrusive, trying not to be a tourist intruding on my host family's grief, but also fully aware that this man I liked was not really my grandfather.

Five days having passed, we were allowed to shave and wear clean clothes again and my host papa returned to stay with us. He had been busy cooking, seeing to visitors in Wenia, and taking care of the surprising amount of details that attend any funeral. On my daily pilgrimages, the most I could really do to help was fetch water for the cooks.

After thirty days, there was one more trip to Wenia, but mourning is finished. There will be a last visit at the one year mark and that's it.

On the occasion of a funeral, things just stop. There was a death of an important minister in Northern Epi and the opening ceremony of a new nakamal in a nearby village was postponed so as not to conflict with the dead man's five days. A cooking competition in Laman Bay was canceled because everyone would be too busy attending the mourning of a boy who had died. He died on far off Tanna, but was from Laman Bay and had family members there so locals came to them to cry. Mourning may be compulsory depending on distance and importance of the dead person. But, after the designated time, it's finished and life moves on and everyone smiles again.

-- Daniel --

Hello World

Sunday, August 7, 2011

Hello World.

After six months at site, I've been called back to the capital. Airplanes only come to the Laman Bay Airport on Epi twice a week so while I had to get here yesterday afternoon, I have a couple days to rest before our little conference begins. That means there is time to see the other volunteers trickle into the motel. It turns out that most if not all of them have been back to Port Vila since my last trip in February. Some make the trip regularly. So, I get the privilege of being a rather exotic item, the possibly crazy volunteer who disappeared into the bush.

The kava bars, restaurants, and especially the grocery stores all seem tempting, but I fell “funny” in Port Vila. After just a day in “town”, I already feel used to taking showers and having electric lights, but I'm frustrated at having to pay so much money for everything. Indeed, paying money at all is a little different. More than the money though is the anonymity. Since arriving at site last November, I've been a very different, colorful fish in a very small pond. It's gotten so that I now have to travel a few villages away to meet a stranger and even then they aren't a stranger for long. With only a few thousand people on the island, word gets out about the visiting white man fairly quickly and there's little fear in asking me just who the heck I am and what I'm doing.

There will be time enough to get reacquainted with being treated like a stranger, a customer, or someone just not worth talking to. There was time this morning to have a cup of tea, some bread with marmalade, and get good and clean. It's time to let my family and friends in America know just what I've been up to.

Firstly, I'm well. Little sicknesses come and go and there are work and personal frustrations, but I'm finding that the things that really bug me in Vanuatu are generally to be found in North Dakota or Wahington, DC as well. Generally, physically, emotionally, and mentally, I'm fine. With that out of the way, though, I'm not sure what else to say. Over the next few days in the capital, I'll try to write a little every day. About what, I'm not sure yet. If there's anything you'd like to know, please ask.

Before getting into all that, though, I would like to thank those of you who have written to me over the past year. I've enjoyed writing back to you almost as much as reading your letters. Through my friends and family I've been kept abreast of happenings in the world and I've received pictures and stories to share in the village that make me seem a little more human and less like some alien fallen from the sky. And I've been able to know a little bit about what you are all up to, whether it's what you feel about a book store closing, who's writing a new baseball web-log, who got or is getting married, or what you had for lunch. It's more interesting that you may suspect and it is greatly appreciated.

As far as I know I've written back to everyone who has sent a letter. Sorry to the rest of you, but I don't have your address. You'll have to satisfy you interest for all news Daniel through this log for the next few days.


-- Daniel --