Woman Ambae:
A Tale of Peace Corps in the South Pacific

The PHAST workshop came to a successful end last week, which is a big victory and an even bigger relief after four days of waking up before the sun rose in preparation and falling asleep long after the sun set in the same manner. This is a unique workshop in its participatory nature, which I’ll touch more on in a minute, and I’m happy I gave it everything I got (or, had? My grammar is going out the window I fear…)because it proved to be a classic “you get out of it what you put into it” type situation. I believe this is largely true for a volunteer’s experience as a whole as well.

I’ve explained the PHAST workshop in previous entries but I suppose I’ll summarize again. PHAST stands for: Participatory Hygiene and Sanitation Transformation. It’s a seven step workshop, with each step building on the previous. The activities are participant led and allow for individualized learning for many community members that would otherwise not have a voice in community proceedings and community leaders alike. It’s based on a series of drawings depicting different behaviors and facilities related to hygiene and sanitation, everything from photos of a contaminated water source, someone washing their hands to an ill constructed and mismanaged pit latrine. The workshop runs as follows:

1. Problem identification- community led discussions of existing health problems

2. Problem analysis- community mapping of water and sanitation facilities, good and bad hygiene behaviors and disease transmission routes

3. Planning for solutions- selecting potential barriers and discussing gender roles in sanitary practices

4. Selecting options- choosing sanitary improvements and improved hygiene behaviors

5. Planning for new facilities and behavior change- who does what, budgeting, etc.

6. Preparing for monitoring and evaluation- implementation of various committees to oversee project success

7. Evaluation- this last step takes place after the workshop is finished and the subsequent project is complete

The objective of the workshop is to improve hygiene and sanitation behaviors for the prevention of diarrheal diseases and encourage community management of water and sanitation facilities. The participatory method, in theory, “leads to increased knowledge, empowerment and responsibility on part of the community” (verbatim from the guidebook). This workshop was originally developed by the World Health Organization and a similar version called WASH is sometimes used with other organizations. I believe it was developed in Latin America but am not entirely positive. I do know that Peace Corps volunteers from several different host countries around our respective regions have tried it, although I’m not sure at what level of success. Because the workshop was designed to be universally applicable for most rural communities, the aforementioned photos are not included with the workshop, but rather just the guidebook and recommendations. Two volunteers from group 22 (the group from the year before me, I’m part of group 23) on Pentecost got their hands on a copy of the guidebook and worked together with another volunteer from Epi that happens to be particularly gifted at the arts to develop the first set of PHAST drawings for Peace Corps Vanuatu. After many long hours of coding and copying and a number of paper cuts we duplicated the sets and the rest is history. We’re still working on improving the sets and streamlining the process more so that volunteers from incoming groups can run the workshop as well but I think this progress is pretty exciting, albeit I jumped on it halfway through. It’s a testament to the hard work and dedication of so many volunteers- this was not originally a Peace Corps provided workshop but came to be through the hands of some extremely motivated individuals with a passion for grassroots development. This is also a great example of the manner in which Peace Corps operates, in my opinion. Peace Corps is a support organization, development comes at the hands of the volunteers working with their communities and the ideas sparked from that. Mind you, Peace Corps offers many resources to support almost any kind of development project, but the idea, the motivation for it and the follow through to make it happens lays with the volunteer.

As I’ve mentioned before water security and sanitation was the most frequently identified need I discovered in my village after surveying the area. It’s also blatantly obvious after spending any amount of time in the village. It’s an interesting issue because it’s also one that affects me on a daily basis in collecting water, falling prey to my own ailments from contaminated water and witnessing a heartbreaking amount of traffic at the clinic for entirely preventable illness related to water contamination. Although water related issues definitely make my life in the bush that much more difficult (you can’t imagine the comfort a legitimate shower offers after a hard day’s work until you’ve lived in the bush, in the dirt, and gone without said shower for nearly a year) it’s an important aspect of my service in the intimate understanding it provides of the daily life of the people I hope to help. There’s no better way to experience a community’s, or any body of people’s struggle until you’ve lived it yourself.

Since virtually my first day I’ve heard murmurs amongst the village about a water project and since have received many formal and informal requests from the women, the teachers, the elders and every other character imaginable. That being said water and sanitation rapidly become my priority since my arrival at site and naturally has drive most of my work to date. As I also mentioned I recently conducted a sanitary inspection of the area’s primary drinking sources using H2s tests provided by Rural Water Supply and discovered seven of eight are highly contaminated and unsafe for consumption. Using the results of this announced the PHAST workshop, which is a great way to launch any kind of community led environmental health project as that’s what it is designed to do. Using this workshop as figurative building blocks, my community planned an impressively ambitious water project. It was incredibly rewarding to watch this unfold the last day of the workshop and proved that this method is indeed very effective in achieving what it aims to accomplish- community empowerment and a shared responsibility of sanitation facilities and practices.

The workshop had about 25 participants representing 15 households and five different villages throughout the week. The plan they developed to improve the area’s sanitation is as follows:

Provide one 1,100 liter rain water catchment for each respective household in attendance, as well as one for the clinic and one 1,600 liter catchment for the school.

Each small tank is $52,000 vatu (about $500 USD) and with ship frieght, transport to the village and building materials for the catchment housing comes to about $109,410 per household (about $1,100 USD). By a stroke of luck one of the village elders got called to Port Vila for a church meeting and was able to negotiate with the company that makes the catchments for a 10% discount and discovered that in buying in bulk it’s possible to fit up to four tanks together, dividing the cost of freight per household by four. Originally freight was $19,000 vatu per tank, which is just under half the price of the tank itself and gives you an idea how difficult it is to get things out here. This knocked about $350,000 vatu off of the overall price, making the total $1,388,160 (about $10,400 USD) including all 15 households, the dispensary and a large tank for the school. As I said, it’s an ambitious plan. The community, the school and the dispensary have all pledged to raise half of the funds, setting a monthly goal of $7,000 per household per month for five months and having the project end in December. This is a major contribution on their part and speaks volumes about their motivation, and also means that I need to find donor funding to match their contribution at about $700,000 vatu. I’m not sure if this is possible, I might have to find several donors over a longer period of time, but I’m going to try my best. Getting 17 rainwater catchments, which are by no means small, to the outer islands and then getting them up the mountains to my community would seem to me a modern day miracle. Here’s to making a believer of me, and improving the daily lives of a community I’ve come to call home while I’m at it.

In other work related news, I’m wrapping up term 2 at the school as I’m heading to Port Vila next week for our mid service conference and afterwards taking two weeks of annual leave in New Zealand to celebrate. It’s hard to fathom that my service is halfway over, it seems like my work is finally getting started. I suppose that’s why it’s a two year contract rather than one. Anyway, with the beginning of term 3 I’m launching an environmental “green” club at the school. I’ve been mulling over starting some kind of after school program with the students but wasn’t sure what sort of angle I was going to take until just recently, and this seems to fit perfectly with my pre existing curriculum, the community’s needs and my personal interests. My official proposal is as follows:

Quatui Centre School Environmental “Green Club”

Objective: Foster environmental education for sustainability with global and local significance and encourage increased personal environmental responsibility leading to activism.

Additionally, seek to improve students’ overall knowledge of the English language through discussion, easy access to a wide variety of print resources and video documentaries of the aforementioned topic.

The club will accomplish this with weekly meetings in which the natural world and its modern issues will be explored through:

-An environmental “library” or resources with information ranging from plants and animals to biology to climate change and beyond

-Videos to increase topic retention and illustrate global significance and connectivity

-Activities that encourage environmental responsibility for activism and civic engagement including trips to observe local habitats and ecosystems, letters to government officials and other organizations to raise awareness, debate on current issues and more.

I’ve secured a small space at the school I’m going to turn into a club house and I’m really excited to see where this goes, particularly the library. If anyone reading this has any old National Geographics or anything of that nature laying around taking up space, donations would be much appreciated! Anything helps as it’s more than what the kids have now. Please see left side bar for shipping details. The fact that I’m a health volunteer serving as a teacher and working with the kids about the environment testifies how flexible our job descriptions are. Initially the vagueness of this frustrated me to no end, but since I’ve come to embrace it as it allows me so many different opportunities. A volunteer’s vocation seems to be limited only by one’s imagination.

In other, non work related news, living on an active volcano just produced its first scare since I’ve come to call Ambae home. What seemed to be a little thunder and/or small earthquake last week was actually Manaro shaking a tail feather or two, which produced a large, quite ominous looking cloud over the island and dusted the villages of West Ambae with ash. Other than humbly reminding all of us out here of the power of Mother Nature, life has proceeded as normal with no evacuation or real chaos and a level one warning. Nonetheless, I am, at all times, Red Cross ready… not to worry, mom.

Photos from the workshop:

Presenting small stories reflecting current health problems in the community

community mapping

choosing good and bad hygiene behaviors

identifying disease transmission routes

choosing improved sanitation facilities

ranking improved sanitary facilities and behaviors between easy, difficult or very difficult to do and effective, moderately effective and very effective.

the community with their finalized plan. please note a small addition to group on the right hand side...

Just for kicks:

The results of newly introduced catnip- Mitz kickin it with the produce

Sunrise the morning of my birthday

A birthday party I hosted for twins in my village, Sandra and Sandrine, complete with pink cupcakes, nail polish and people magazine- style watch. What else could a girl want on her special day?