Sandei afta Nguna

Well it is Sandei (Sunday) night here and I am lying in bed typing another email. There has been a lot going on since my last entry. I had written my last entry while sitting in the Pis Ko office. I always feel rushed using there computers, because there are only 5 of them and a whole lot of volunteers waiting to use them. As I left you last time, I was just heading out the door to go to the “Saloon.” We were told about its great American style food and beers, and that they would have the series on. Well we piled into a taxi van, which gave us bus fair prices, so we were pretty stoked. This place is on the outside of town.

As I walked through the old saloon style doors, I could not laugh to myself as I thought what in the world is this place? It was about as cheesy as it comes. The bar stools were saddles and they have a talking fish on the wall (rolling… rolling…. Rolling on the river!) Turns out that they do not serve food and do not even have a TV! So we stood in the road for a bit till a bus picked us up and took us into town to Shooters. The buses here are just mini vans and they cost about 100Vatu to go to most places. We had a good lunch at Shooters. The food is okay, but the company was great! We ate with several current volunteers who gave us some valuable insight into what life is going to be like in our villages.

On Thursday we were divided into groups based on our language skills. I am in the intermediate group. A couple days earlier, when Bob from DC was here he told about how he hated all the people in his group that picked up the language like they were natives. Well I fully understand what he means now. It actually put me in a bad mood and made me a little antisocial that day as I buried my head in my Bislama books to study. I know it is just an ego thing and I needed to get over it. The nice thing about Vanuatu is no matter how bad of a day you are having, you are still in Vanuatu!!

Well Friday did not start off much better for me. During my first session of the day I found out that I will most definitely not be going to South River, Erromango. The day before Kevin George (Country Director) met with the village and they are going to wait till the next group of volunteers, so they may have some time to grieve. They also have a custom where they will have to burn his house down. I understand that this is probably best and I knew the entire time that there was a chance of me not going there. But mentally I was already there. I had been researching the island, preparing myself for the 8 hour walk and so forth. So when I got the news I felt a little deflated. As of right now I do not have a site. Wokabaot is in 2 weeks, so I imagine I will have one by then.

Friday night we went to the local public school here in Mongaliliu for a fundraiser event. It was a 200 VT to get in, 100 VT for a shell of Kava, and 200 VT for some aelen kakae. They had several performances by the pikinini and from some villagers from the island of Lelepa. Even the rain did not stop us from having a great time. The kids sang songs and did various local dances. The adults from Lelepa did a song that they acted out, about Father Christmas. (A littler early I thought for Christmas stuff, but then I remembered that Halloween is next week and you guys probably already have Christmas crap on sale at your local retail store!) We danced with all the pikinini in the rain for about two hours. Besides the fact that everyone was fully dressed, and the music came from a keyboard that made everything sound like a 80’s Nintendo game, and there were no hippies or drugs, it really felt like it could have been Woodstock. Dancing in the rain must have some therapeutic benefits. I felt like one of the little pikinini. The Mamas loved it! They are still talking about the white men dancing. The next morning it was the first thing I heard from Mama blong Elin, is oh you must be tired from dancing all night. Well I was a little tired and the fact that it was 0600 when I was talking to her did not help.

We had to be up early so that we could catch a truck to the Nuna Island. The truck was to pick us up at 0700 and with all the rain I would have been fine if we had just cancelled. Why is it raining so much? Well there was the first Cyclone of the season up in the Banks (the most northern islands in Vanuatu.) It apparently dissipated before getting to far south, so our trip was still on.

Well the truck did not get here until about 0830. This is standard around here and to think that anything is going to happen on time is a waste of frustrations and emotions. We loaded our gear into the back of the pickup and climbed inside. We were piled on top of each other and because they had covered the back with a tarp to keep the rain off of us, we began sweating instantly. Luckily they pulled over about 30 minutes into the trip and took the tarp off. The rain was way better then sweating, plus this way we got to see where we were going.

We arrived at a small wharf about an hour later where we all piled into two small boats. These boats took us across the sea to the island of Nguna. We were heading there to go to another fundraiser put on by the volunteer in that village. Once we got to Nguna we had to hike up hill into the middle bush for about 45 minutes. Her village was incredible. They had a small prayer and toktok when we arrived and then gave us lunch. Mmmm… I love the aelan kakae! We then headed down to the tourist area which is on top of some very steeps cliffs that head straight down to the breaking waved below. It was beautiful. It reminded me of the northern California coast like, except for the sea foam green colored water.

Later that night they had a BBQ and a string band came and played for us. Ahh…. BBQ. We had BBQ chicken and Steak! The steak was so good! We looked like a pack of starving wolves taking down a baby lamb when they brought another plate of steak in for seconds! Mmmmm…

After dancing and sitting by the fire for a while we all retired to our nice comfy concrete floor that we were sleeping on. We are required by Peace Corps to take our government issued life jackets with us anytime we get on a boat. It is kind of a pain, but they double as a great pillow for occasions like this. When we woke up in the morning it was still raining and about half of the group opted to stay at the center while the rest of us hiked up to the top of Nguna.

Nguna is a inactive volcano. They told us it was an hour hike. Wrong! The trail was up a bush road. If you asked me what a bush road was yesterday, I would of told you it is just a trail. Well that would not do justice to what a bush road really is. A bush road is a path that goes in the most direct route from point A to point B. It does not matter what is in between. There would never be a switch back on a bush trail. If you want to get to the top of the mountain you walk straight up it. This is exactly what we did. They had just cleared this trail for us a few days before we arrived. The hike started off in the heavy bush which is rain forest like conditions. Every once in a while we would come across a volcanic rock wall. These walls have been here for who knows how long. We believe that they were once used for terrace crops by the early NiVans.

Because the trail was freshly cut there was cane stalks sticking up from the middle of the path, about 4”-5” high. I was worried the entire time about slipping on a wet rock or grass and having one of these stalks pierce part of my body. Well after about an hour of walking through the jungle like conditions we ended up out into the tall grass.

The grass was taller then I am, but every once in a while the wind would blow it down and you could look out and see the ocean and other islands. Did I mention there is was a cyclone in the northern islands? This is the worst weather Eddie (the current Mongaliliu volunteer has seen in his 18 months here.) Well after the 2 hours we finally made it to the top of the hill. The sky was grey and raining pretty hard, but the first of us that made it up there got a chance to look inside of the crater.

The crater looks like something straight out of Jurassic Park. There were huge palm trees and thousands of floral plants. It was truly beautiful. I took a couple of pictures but I am not sure how they turned out yet. Well the last half of our group showed up about 6 minutes later. Now I feel bad for this group because even though they were just 6 minutes behind, they only saw grey clouds in any direction. Visibility changed from a ¼ mile to about 20 feet! I made every ones day when I pulled out some starburst gummy candy. After a good hike everything just tastes better!

Well we spent about ten minutes there before we turned around to hike straight back down. Well some of us hike others I think slipped and fell there way down most of the hill. By the time we got down to the village it was time to get straight on the boats and head back to Mongaliliu.

Well, this email turned into five pages so I cut it in half and turned it into two attachments too hopefully make it easier to read. I hope all is well back home.

Ale, Lukem Yu

Christopher