Welcome to Lovunivili village
Lovunivili is a fairly small village of about 19 households (comprising around 80 people) in a much larger area referred to as Longana. Longana is essentially every village "antap" (on top of the mountain/really big hill) past the airport, which is also called Longana and which was very confusing for me at first. I'm not sure exactly how many villages there are antap, they all seem to blend into one another and it took me a very long time to distinguish between them. The total population for the area is about 1,000 and the dispensary I work at provides medical services to this entire area.
It's also a pretty new settlement and the dispensary and school were both founded by my "booboo" or one of my grandfathers, Marcel Tari, who looks like he's pushing his 90's but still lives in the village. After receiving his formal education in Nduin Ndui on west Ambae, he carried medicine and teaching materials back to Lovunvili and ran an informal clinic out of his house while recruiting teachers for the village school. He's nearly lost his hearing and doesn't speak a lot of Bislama so we can't communicate a whole lot, but I've got a lot of respect for him.
Our welcome sign and the first thing I saw upon reaching Lovunivili
Quatui Centre School, home to about 150 students years 1-8 in the area
The dispensary and my house behind it
Inside my extraordinarily nice house
My bedroom and walk-in closet (I've always wanted one) that doubles as a guest room from time to time
My bathroom, where I dump buckets of cold water on myself until I'm clean. Toilet is on the other side of that wall. It doesn't have a toilet seat and I have to pour buckets of water into it to flush but it's not a drop toilet, or "bush toilet", so that's exciting. My mom has no good excuses not to visit now.
Some of the village kids playing in the church extension after the most recent cyclone. The village tried to extend the pre-existing church but ran out of funding
Some of my neighbors' houses, made out of local materials
One of the village woman cooking by wrapping food in banana leaves and placing it over hot stones (this is the finished product)
The view from the dispensary, I don't have sunsets because I'm on the wrong side of the island but I've got sunrises. This is the sun rising over Maewo
The view from my bedroom window, sometimes I lay in bed and just stare at this upside down trying to let it sink in that I'm actually here, doing this
More of the village kids playing with marbles on the road, this is our "nice stretch" of road... the whole thing definitely doesn't look like this
The Mitz! She's a doll, no?
My booboo woman making laplap in her kitchen
The work of Hurricane Vania, RIP banana tree. Also a good shot of my bush kitchen where I can cook over open fire if I'm feeling really ambitious
Tiny leetle pig. Most of the livestock runs around unrestricted like this, which gets pretty annoying (especially with the roosters that like to hang out by my bedroom window in the wee hours of the morning), but when they're this cute I don't mind
The soccer field for the school, this game was one of the first things I experienced in my village and left me a pretty big fan of futbol (only Americans call it soccer) as it's a compellingly universal sport
Our fancy community hall where I'll be holding a lot of workshops in the near future. Rumor is that dish used to pick up Australian TV but broke during the "excitement" of the most recent world cup
It's also a pretty new settlement and the dispensary and school were both founded by my "booboo" or one of my grandfathers, Marcel Tari, who looks like he's pushing his 90's but still lives in the village. After receiving his formal education in Nduin Ndui on west Ambae, he carried medicine and teaching materials back to Lovunvili and ran an informal clinic out of his house while recruiting teachers for the village school. He's nearly lost his hearing and doesn't speak a lot of Bislama so we can't communicate a whole lot, but I've got a lot of respect for him.
Our welcome sign and the first thing I saw upon reaching Lovunivili
Quatui Centre School, home to about 150 students years 1-8 in the area
The dispensary and my house behind it
Inside my extraordinarily nice house
My bedroom and walk-in closet (I've always wanted one) that doubles as a guest room from time to time
My bathroom, where I dump buckets of cold water on myself until I'm clean. Toilet is on the other side of that wall. It doesn't have a toilet seat and I have to pour buckets of water into it to flush but it's not a drop toilet, or "bush toilet", so that's exciting. My mom has no good excuses not to visit now.
Some of the village kids playing in the church extension after the most recent cyclone. The village tried to extend the pre-existing church but ran out of funding
Some of my neighbors' houses, made out of local materials
One of the village woman cooking by wrapping food in banana leaves and placing it over hot stones (this is the finished product)
The view from the dispensary, I don't have sunsets because I'm on the wrong side of the island but I've got sunrises. This is the sun rising over Maewo
The view from my bedroom window, sometimes I lay in bed and just stare at this upside down trying to let it sink in that I'm actually here, doing this
More of the village kids playing with marbles on the road, this is our "nice stretch" of road... the whole thing definitely doesn't look like this
The Mitz! She's a doll, no?
My booboo woman making laplap in her kitchen
The work of Hurricane Vania, RIP banana tree. Also a good shot of my bush kitchen where I can cook over open fire if I'm feeling really ambitious
Tiny leetle pig. Most of the livestock runs around unrestricted like this, which gets pretty annoying (especially with the roosters that like to hang out by my bedroom window in the wee hours of the morning), but when they're this cute I don't mind
The soccer field for the school, this game was one of the first things I experienced in my village and left me a pretty big fan of futbol (only Americans call it soccer) as it's a compellingly universal sport
Our fancy community hall where I'll be holding a lot of workshops in the near future. Rumor is that dish used to pick up Australian TV but broke during the "excitement" of the most recent world cup
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