The Close of Pre Service Training
It seems like just yesterday I arrived in Vanuatu and could barely speak a word of Bislama, but alas Pre Service training is coming to an end. Time here on the islands, and especially while spent in the Peace Corps, is a very funny thing. Sometimes it’s hard to believe things are moving as quickly as they are and that I’m now speaking semi fluent Bislama and leaving for another island soon, but at the same rate it seems as though the past few months have absolutely dragged by because of the drastically slower pace of life here. Nonetheless, a whole hoard of funny and interesting things have happened over the past month.
I experienced my very first Vanuatu earthquake. Luckily I was sitting down at the time. I was sitting outside a school talking with another volunteer when a roaring sound came out of the hills and suddenly the ground was shaking. Earthquakes are a lot different here, they’re nothing to make much of a fuss over. We sat and there and turned to each other to ask, “Is this an earthquake? Once we had established a definitive yes and the ground finally stopped shaking we went about our day and no one really said anything about it. I could be wrong on this one, but I remember reading somewhere that Vanuatu is the most disaster prone country in the Pacific. Which makes a lot of sense, its specific position on the earth makes it extremely prone to earthquakes and tsunamis, and on top of that it’s host to several active volcanoes.
Speaking strictly another language for the past few months has been tricky. I can’t help but feel like my English is slipping away from lack of use and I keep finding myself wanting to interject Bislama words when I do speak/write English. I’ll most likely come back to the states interjecting words like this without realizing, which should be pretty entertaining. Here are some of my favorites:
-Singaot: to say/shout.
-Klosup: physically close, almost, or near.
-Flas: cool, fancy, or very nice; most used in conjunction with tumas, meaning very. “Flas tumas” is one of my favorite things to say in Bislama. If someone is wearing a really extravagant island dress, you might singaot, “flas tumas!” Said with lots of sass, naturally.
-Stret: fine or it’s fine. Ni Vans use this one all the time, if someone says thank you it’s appropriate to respond with “stret”, if someone asks you how you are it’s appropriate to respond with “stret nomo”, meaning just fine. It’s used similarly to “chill” or “cool” in English as well.
-Storian: to chat or talk with. A favorite pastime around here.
I’ve noticed recently that I keep saying things in Bislama that I have no English translation for and can’t pinpoint where I learned. Meaning I learned these phrases strictly in Bislama with no prior English translation. Apparently this is how babies learn to speak, by hearing things said in a certain context and simply repeat them. So I suppose I’m on the right track. I’m able to storian with people in the village with ease now and it’s really nice to be able to talk and laugh with people without feeling like an outsider or being confused as to what’s happening. Learning another language is a lot easier once you stop trying to translate things directly and realize that a lot of the time there simply isn’t a direct translation. This is particularly true with Bislama, which has very few adjectives, much unlike English. There are no words for beautiful, frustrating, nervous, excited, and so on. Instead you have to describe things in as much detail as you can and hope you’re understood. Much of Bislama is also contextual so a lot of what you’re saying is conveyed in your tone, expression, and body language. That being said, speaking Bislama on the phone is difficult.
We had our final Bislama exam this week and we had to create a presentation on some part of Vanuatu’s history to present to the community. My topic was the eruption of a volcano called Kuwea that created several small islands (the Shepard Islands if you look on a map). I told a “kastom story” or legend of the people of Kuwea as to why the volcano erupted, and the crowd went wild, if you will. The audience was roaring with laughter and applauding throughout, although personally, I don’t think it was that funny of a story. This is the first time this village has hosted volunteers for training so I think they were just really entertaining by my ability to stand in front of them and deliver a presentation in Bislama. The story is basically that a village tricked a boy into sleeping with his mother and he got really angry with them, so he spent six years collecting pig bladders and then climbed a tree, threw all the bladders down which broke on impact, and the volcano erupted. Going into the capitol and ordering food at a restaurant or talking with a store clerk in Bislama is also quite fun. Vanuatu has very few American tourists (most are from Australia or New Zealand) and so Americans period is something, and Americans speaking Bislama? Well, that’s just crazy!
And speaking of crazy, black magic is an extremely prevalent part of culture here and quite frankly blows my mind. Many deaths in Vanuatu are said to be the result of black magic and likewise if someone dies mysteriously (most likely due to something that’s not easily identifiable like cancer) often someone in the village is blamed for that death, accused of practicing black magic, and tried accordingly in a fashion I can only liken to a witch trial. There was an incident like this recently where two men where accused, and instead of facing trial they fled to another island. Apparently the villagers followed them to this other island and hacked them dead with their bush knifes (machetes) on the beach while another village, full of women and children, watched it happen unaware of the situation. Suffice to say black magic is taken very seriously here. Lucky for us Peace Corps volunteers though, white men/women are not thought to be capable of black magic. So no witch trial for me.
Cannibalism is also an interesting part of culture here, although thankfully, an outdated one. I believe the last incident occurred in the sixties. Still a little too klosup for comfort though, if you ask me. According to the history books the first wave of missionaries that came here from Europe were quite simply, eaten. After that missionaries from other Pacific nations were sent with the rationale that perhaps since they weren’t white they would be able to do some work. But alas, they were eaten as well. I’m not sure at what point missionaries came again, but they did and did so congruently with a famine that in conjunction with the missionaries’ vivid depictions of hell scared the would-be cannibals into a more… civilized way of living. So no ending up on the menu for me either.
Yet another interesting part of Ni Van culture is “creeping”. Dating is kept very secretive here since there is so much pressure to get married quickly so creeping was developed as a way to court someone in some semblance of secrecy. Creeping is essentially a man showing up at a woman’s house late at night and either whispering her name, scratching at her window/door, or simply watching her hoping to be invited in. Can you see where it gets its name from? I suppose creeping would be all good and well if both parties involved were interested, but often times the woman is not which I’m under the impression creates a semi stalker type situation. Usually you can ward off a creeper by telling that you’re no interested and so forth, but if you’re not firm enough or don’t say anything the situation has the potential to escalate into something a bit more dangerous. That being said, Peace Corps has put us through quite a bit of safety training regarding this. So much training, in fact, that they sent someone to creep us late one night in order to “gauge our response” or “prepare us”. I was not amused. I woke up around midnight one night to someone pounding on the window right above my head whispering my name over and over. My relentless creeper would not leave after I shouted, “you go!” about ten times, so I finally had to scream, “yu wantem toktok wetem busnaef blong mi?” (Do you want to talk to my bush knife?) That seemed to work and I got pretty good markings saying that I sounded “quite angry”. Apparently if they don’t get the picture after that, dragging your bush knife alone the ground so they can hear it usually does the trick. I’m really hoping I don’t get creeped for real when I go to my permanent site. Although if I do, it’s comforting to know that I can still spit some pretty menacing Bislama while half awake.
My host family was very entertained by my response to this and lately I’ve received a lot of comments like “yu gel Vanuatu nao! Yu nomo gel US!” Meaning I’m a girl of Vanuatu now. I’ve got about a hundred mosquito bites and a lovely farmer’s tan to prove it.
My host family has also been using the snorkeling mask I brought since they do not own one (they are quite pricey here) to go spear fishing on the reef for our dinner. While out fishing the other day my uncle and a friend he was fishing with speared a shark that was coming at them. It wasn’t a very big shark but shook me up a bit nonetheless. I was asked about seafood in my diet and why I didn’t mention that earlier, and that was mostly because 1. I wasn’t getting very much seafood because my family doesn’t have a mask for fishing and 2. the seafood I was getting I didn’t like. The fish we eat here are usually very small and full of bones as they aren’t filleted. It took me awhile to build up to eating a fish head and I was constantly getting mouthfuls of tiny bones when I tried to eat the actual body. I was also given a giant sea snail that the Ni Vans eat by picking it up with their hands and simply gnawing on it. It’s very, very chewy and salty and trying to eat it in the same manner was not pleasant. I mean, this thing was a beast. But since I’ve gotten the strategy down for eating the little fish with bones and when they’re made with coconut milk they’re really delicious. You have to pick these up and eat them with your hands as well but it’s worth it. One of my favorite foods here is pumpkin boiled with coconut milk, it’s like island style pumpkin pie.
I recently just returned from a short trip to the island of Epi to visit another volunteer working in health as a part of training. The highlight of this trip was having a cockroach fall from the ceiling and hit me in the head. The fun part about this story is that the cockroach sat in my hair for awhile before one of the other volunteers noticed it and swatted it out. Epi is a beautiful island though, hair inhabiting cockroaches aside.
We’re leaving our training villages for our permanent sites soon and I have mixed emotions about it. I’m going to miss my family here a lot and am nervous about integrating into a new one. Takara has been a great host village and I’m going to miss having the ocean as my backyard and chatting with the women on the beach as they weave mats and grate root crops for laplap. The people of Takara also really want a health volunteer so they frequently ask me to stay. It’s been difficult to explain to them that in order to receive a health volunteer a community must have a preexisting health facility. Even though I know I explained this in perfect Bislama, I was still asked “what if” the Peace Corps came out and looked at a house the community has built that would according to them be perfect for a new volunteer. It’s really kind of heartbreaking, but I got them all of the paperwork I could about requesting a volunteer and the health program.
It’s been an interesting journey getting to know the people in Takara. The village seemed so overwhelming at first and now I can walk around and chat with people with confidence. I brought a few tourism type books full of pictures of Seattle/Washington and it’s been a blast showing people those. They especially get a kick out of Pike Place market and the Space Needle. My grandpa (the Chief) asked me in all seriousness if the Space Needle was dangerous because planes fly into it. The only thing that kept me from bursting out laughing at this question was the blatant concern written all over his face.
While I’m definitely going to miss this place and am a little nervous about getting thrust into the unknown again, I’m also more than ready to finally settle in and stop living out of a suitcase and begin my work. Site announcements are next week and I’ve spent awhile talking with the program managers about what I’m hoping for and so on, so my fingers are crossed!
I experienced my very first Vanuatu earthquake. Luckily I was sitting down at the time. I was sitting outside a school talking with another volunteer when a roaring sound came out of the hills and suddenly the ground was shaking. Earthquakes are a lot different here, they’re nothing to make much of a fuss over. We sat and there and turned to each other to ask, “Is this an earthquake? Once we had established a definitive yes and the ground finally stopped shaking we went about our day and no one really said anything about it. I could be wrong on this one, but I remember reading somewhere that Vanuatu is the most disaster prone country in the Pacific. Which makes a lot of sense, its specific position on the earth makes it extremely prone to earthquakes and tsunamis, and on top of that it’s host to several active volcanoes.
Speaking strictly another language for the past few months has been tricky. I can’t help but feel like my English is slipping away from lack of use and I keep finding myself wanting to interject Bislama words when I do speak/write English. I’ll most likely come back to the states interjecting words like this without realizing, which should be pretty entertaining. Here are some of my favorites:
-Singaot: to say/shout.
-Klosup: physically close, almost, or near.
-Flas: cool, fancy, or very nice; most used in conjunction with tumas, meaning very. “Flas tumas” is one of my favorite things to say in Bislama. If someone is wearing a really extravagant island dress, you might singaot, “flas tumas!” Said with lots of sass, naturally.
-Stret: fine or it’s fine. Ni Vans use this one all the time, if someone says thank you it’s appropriate to respond with “stret”, if someone asks you how you are it’s appropriate to respond with “stret nomo”, meaning just fine. It’s used similarly to “chill” or “cool” in English as well.
-Storian: to chat or talk with. A favorite pastime around here.
I’ve noticed recently that I keep saying things in Bislama that I have no English translation for and can’t pinpoint where I learned. Meaning I learned these phrases strictly in Bislama with no prior English translation. Apparently this is how babies learn to speak, by hearing things said in a certain context and simply repeat them. So I suppose I’m on the right track. I’m able to storian with people in the village with ease now and it’s really nice to be able to talk and laugh with people without feeling like an outsider or being confused as to what’s happening. Learning another language is a lot easier once you stop trying to translate things directly and realize that a lot of the time there simply isn’t a direct translation. This is particularly true with Bislama, which has very few adjectives, much unlike English. There are no words for beautiful, frustrating, nervous, excited, and so on. Instead you have to describe things in as much detail as you can and hope you’re understood. Much of Bislama is also contextual so a lot of what you’re saying is conveyed in your tone, expression, and body language. That being said, speaking Bislama on the phone is difficult.
We had our final Bislama exam this week and we had to create a presentation on some part of Vanuatu’s history to present to the community. My topic was the eruption of a volcano called Kuwea that created several small islands (the Shepard Islands if you look on a map). I told a “kastom story” or legend of the people of Kuwea as to why the volcano erupted, and the crowd went wild, if you will. The audience was roaring with laughter and applauding throughout, although personally, I don’t think it was that funny of a story. This is the first time this village has hosted volunteers for training so I think they were just really entertaining by my ability to stand in front of them and deliver a presentation in Bislama. The story is basically that a village tricked a boy into sleeping with his mother and he got really angry with them, so he spent six years collecting pig bladders and then climbed a tree, threw all the bladders down which broke on impact, and the volcano erupted. Going into the capitol and ordering food at a restaurant or talking with a store clerk in Bislama is also quite fun. Vanuatu has very few American tourists (most are from Australia or New Zealand) and so Americans period is something, and Americans speaking Bislama? Well, that’s just crazy!
And speaking of crazy, black magic is an extremely prevalent part of culture here and quite frankly blows my mind. Many deaths in Vanuatu are said to be the result of black magic and likewise if someone dies mysteriously (most likely due to something that’s not easily identifiable like cancer) often someone in the village is blamed for that death, accused of practicing black magic, and tried accordingly in a fashion I can only liken to a witch trial. There was an incident like this recently where two men where accused, and instead of facing trial they fled to another island. Apparently the villagers followed them to this other island and hacked them dead with their bush knifes (machetes) on the beach while another village, full of women and children, watched it happen unaware of the situation. Suffice to say black magic is taken very seriously here. Lucky for us Peace Corps volunteers though, white men/women are not thought to be capable of black magic. So no witch trial for me.
Cannibalism is also an interesting part of culture here, although thankfully, an outdated one. I believe the last incident occurred in the sixties. Still a little too klosup for comfort though, if you ask me. According to the history books the first wave of missionaries that came here from Europe were quite simply, eaten. After that missionaries from other Pacific nations were sent with the rationale that perhaps since they weren’t white they would be able to do some work. But alas, they were eaten as well. I’m not sure at what point missionaries came again, but they did and did so congruently with a famine that in conjunction with the missionaries’ vivid depictions of hell scared the would-be cannibals into a more… civilized way of living. So no ending up on the menu for me either.
Yet another interesting part of Ni Van culture is “creeping”. Dating is kept very secretive here since there is so much pressure to get married quickly so creeping was developed as a way to court someone in some semblance of secrecy. Creeping is essentially a man showing up at a woman’s house late at night and either whispering her name, scratching at her window/door, or simply watching her hoping to be invited in. Can you see where it gets its name from? I suppose creeping would be all good and well if both parties involved were interested, but often times the woman is not which I’m under the impression creates a semi stalker type situation. Usually you can ward off a creeper by telling that you’re no interested and so forth, but if you’re not firm enough or don’t say anything the situation has the potential to escalate into something a bit more dangerous. That being said, Peace Corps has put us through quite a bit of safety training regarding this. So much training, in fact, that they sent someone to creep us late one night in order to “gauge our response” or “prepare us”. I was not amused. I woke up around midnight one night to someone pounding on the window right above my head whispering my name over and over. My relentless creeper would not leave after I shouted, “you go!” about ten times, so I finally had to scream, “yu wantem toktok wetem busnaef blong mi?” (Do you want to talk to my bush knife?) That seemed to work and I got pretty good markings saying that I sounded “quite angry”. Apparently if they don’t get the picture after that, dragging your bush knife alone the ground so they can hear it usually does the trick. I’m really hoping I don’t get creeped for real when I go to my permanent site. Although if I do, it’s comforting to know that I can still spit some pretty menacing Bislama while half awake.
My host family was very entertained by my response to this and lately I’ve received a lot of comments like “yu gel Vanuatu nao! Yu nomo gel US!” Meaning I’m a girl of Vanuatu now. I’ve got about a hundred mosquito bites and a lovely farmer’s tan to prove it.
My host family has also been using the snorkeling mask I brought since they do not own one (they are quite pricey here) to go spear fishing on the reef for our dinner. While out fishing the other day my uncle and a friend he was fishing with speared a shark that was coming at them. It wasn’t a very big shark but shook me up a bit nonetheless. I was asked about seafood in my diet and why I didn’t mention that earlier, and that was mostly because 1. I wasn’t getting very much seafood because my family doesn’t have a mask for fishing and 2. the seafood I was getting I didn’t like. The fish we eat here are usually very small and full of bones as they aren’t filleted. It took me awhile to build up to eating a fish head and I was constantly getting mouthfuls of tiny bones when I tried to eat the actual body. I was also given a giant sea snail that the Ni Vans eat by picking it up with their hands and simply gnawing on it. It’s very, very chewy and salty and trying to eat it in the same manner was not pleasant. I mean, this thing was a beast. But since I’ve gotten the strategy down for eating the little fish with bones and when they’re made with coconut milk they’re really delicious. You have to pick these up and eat them with your hands as well but it’s worth it. One of my favorite foods here is pumpkin boiled with coconut milk, it’s like island style pumpkin pie.
I recently just returned from a short trip to the island of Epi to visit another volunteer working in health as a part of training. The highlight of this trip was having a cockroach fall from the ceiling and hit me in the head. The fun part about this story is that the cockroach sat in my hair for awhile before one of the other volunteers noticed it and swatted it out. Epi is a beautiful island though, hair inhabiting cockroaches aside.
We’re leaving our training villages for our permanent sites soon and I have mixed emotions about it. I’m going to miss my family here a lot and am nervous about integrating into a new one. Takara has been a great host village and I’m going to miss having the ocean as my backyard and chatting with the women on the beach as they weave mats and grate root crops for laplap. The people of Takara also really want a health volunteer so they frequently ask me to stay. It’s been difficult to explain to them that in order to receive a health volunteer a community must have a preexisting health facility. Even though I know I explained this in perfect Bislama, I was still asked “what if” the Peace Corps came out and looked at a house the community has built that would according to them be perfect for a new volunteer. It’s really kind of heartbreaking, but I got them all of the paperwork I could about requesting a volunteer and the health program.
It’s been an interesting journey getting to know the people in Takara. The village seemed so overwhelming at first and now I can walk around and chat with people with confidence. I brought a few tourism type books full of pictures of Seattle/Washington and it’s been a blast showing people those. They especially get a kick out of Pike Place market and the Space Needle. My grandpa (the Chief) asked me in all seriousness if the Space Needle was dangerous because planes fly into it. The only thing that kept me from bursting out laughing at this question was the blatant concern written all over his face.
While I’m definitely going to miss this place and am a little nervous about getting thrust into the unknown again, I’m also more than ready to finally settle in and stop living out of a suitcase and begin my work. Site announcements are next week and I’ve spent awhile talking with the program managers about what I’m hoping for and so on, so my fingers are crossed!
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