Swearing in and saying goodbye

Well training has come to and end and we are all now official Peace Corps Volunteers. We had to go through a swearing in ceremony which seemed to take forever. I heard from the staff that this was the longest swearing in ceremony that they could remember. All in all it was a great day.

The day started by Mama blong mi gave me a new island shirt. I was confused as it as different then all of the other swearing in shirts and dresses I had seen. Well it turns out there was some confusion among the Mamas and some used one pattern of calico and others used a different one. I like mine the best! It is bright orange with a map of the Vanuatu islands on it. I then found out that my tarti (grandmother) had made me a custom, ceremonial mat to wear. We were all supposed to wear these and do a custom dance with Chief Mormor, but again there was confusion so not all the Mama’s made the mats. I felt like my Tarti had put all that work into making it I should wear it. I do not know how to really explain what it was. I guess you will have to look at the pictures online for this one. Otherwise, just think grass skirt.

At the beginning of our ceremony we all walked down to watch some kustom water dance. This was performed by a group of women up in The Banks (northern islands.) It was absolutely awesome!! Again this is going to be hard to explain. So the women who are wearing traditional mats around there waists, yellow leaves around there biceps, and a green lei of leaves around there neck. Kustom ceremonies always look straight out of national geographic. The women walk into the ocean and form a horse shoe looking circle. Then, one woman starts the beat by moving her hands through out the water. She is then joined by all the women doing the same rhythm. Swoosh… Boom… splash… splash… splash… swoosh… boom… splash… splash… splash… It reminded me of the Broadway show Stomp, where they use all household items to make music. The music made by these ladies was awesome! It was truly amazing to see and hear.

They do dances that celebrate various things in the sea, including dolphins. I am not joking that in the back ground of them making this dance, there was about 5 spinner dolphins doing double flips and jumping in and out of the water! This is the same spot that we swim in everyday, but this is the first time I have seen dolphins there!!! Truly amazing!!!

After the dancers were finished we headed back to our seats to begin the long line up of speeches. There were speeches given by the Chief, the Chairmen, our Country Director, local dignitaries, and U.S. Ambassador to Vanuatu, PNG, and the Solomon Islands, Leslie Rowe. Through out the speeches we had some entertainment provided by my group of trainees. We made a little skit about survivor. Then we did superlatives, i.e. Most likely too… I wont go through them all but my two were: Most likely to have his feet look like Dan’s at the end of service (Dan is in our group and has the grossest feet you have ever seen, and with all my feet injuries mine are on there way!!!) The other was most likely to show up at ALL VOL (all volunteer conference) with my beard braided into a Namba. We then sang parody of the 12 days of Christmas, which was the 12 days of training. It was pretty funny.

At the end we stood up and put our hands on our hearts and gave the swearing in pledge. It was official, we are no longer trainees!!! We then headed down to have kava with the Chief. By the time we had walked down to the kava there was already a full line of PCVs waiting for Kava. Now luckily I had been given advice from a volunteer who swore in six months ago that the old volunteers had drank all of the kava before any of the new volunteers could have any! Well that was not going to be acceptable to me on our swearing in day, so I had talked with the Chief and the Chairmen the previous day and told them that I thought that was rubis fasin, (Rubbish Fashion.) So we decided that the kava was to be Tabu until the new PCVs, the chairmen, and our language trainers had a toast of kava with Chief Mormor. A few old volunteers were like hey the line is over here. Ummm… yeah sori fren (sorry friend) new volunteers drink first in this village!

We then had a big kakae with all types of lap lap, yams, beef, pig, fish, pumpkin tops, cabbage, and a bunch of other goodies that I can not remember now. After we finished eating we put on a little fire show for everyone and then a group of young men from a nearby village performed a ceremonial war dance which was pretty awesome! Very intense! I think I may have been a little scared from their intensity. That is until they finished the war dance and then grabbed pompoms and started line dancing. It looked like they should have been an opening act for the Village People or a cabaret in the Castro. This place never stops amazing me.

Well once the pompoms were put away we fired up some tunes and started dancing. When I say some tunes I am referring to the five songs that they all love, Babylon, Akon, island paradise, Hips Don’t Lie, and string band! All night long was the same song over and over. But what ever, we danced our hearts out. So our dance floor is just crushed coral about 25 yards from the salt water. Now there may have been some tuskers that helped motivate us to dance until 2 or 3 in the morning. The little kids out lasted all of u volunteers. I think they were still dancing when I got up at 7.

At one point I started pushing my friend Liz. I was trying to grab her arm and push her to the side. She was getting irritated thinking that I was just being mean. But I swear all I was trying to do was move her out of the way of the sea snake that was slithering through the middle of the dance floor. These things are very poisonous! It was probably not the best idea for me to try and pick him up from right behind his head. As soon as I touched him he flipped around towards me. At this point a Ni-Van saw what was going on and came over to help me get him off the dance floor and back to the ocean. Only in Vanuatu can a deadly snake slither through the dance floor and not disturb the dance. Everyone just kept on dancing while we got it out of the way!

The next morning was a little rough. We had to load our gear up at 0700 and then say goodbye to everyone in the village. They lined up and we gave hand shakes, hugs, and kisses all the down the line. I think the entire village was there. I got to my Mama and she just had tears running down her face. She was absolutely the best mama in the village. I am really going to miss her a lot. If anyone ever comes and visits me here we will spend a couple days in Mongaliliu so you can meet them. I picked up Asana my little sister and threw her in the air trying to break some of the sad tension. It helped a little but man; even right now I can feel the sadness from missing them. When we got to the end of the line we climbed into the bus. As we drove away the Mama’s, Papa’s, and all the pikininis followed the bus and waved until we were out of sight. It was like straight out of a movie. I mean things like this just do not happen in real life. I tell you what, you want to feel loved, then come be adopted by a Ni-Van family!!