Vila and Back

Things that caught me off guard in Vila…

- I was walking down the street when someone shouted, “Good Morning!” in the local language of Mota Lava. I didn’t recognize the guy who was waving… in fact I would have told you I’d never seen him before in my life. But apparently I had, because he knew me!

- “Tiun blong Bankis! Yu harem?” The Ni-Van women in the Peace Corps office. Essentially: “Listen to her voice, she has the Banks accent!”

- The culture shock I felt sometimes with my family. Now I’m almost afraid to go back home.

- The fruit at the market seemed so unripe… I used to think it was tropical fruit paradise! I can’t even imagine what the Meijer produce section would look like to me now.

- Green olives. When I come to town, I buy and eat a jar of green olives. Did I ever eat green olives at home? No. So why now?

- “Um… are you eating… a block of mozzarella?” –a Shepherds PCV who frequents Vila on weekends. What if I am?! (Good with green olives…)

- I didn’t get sick. I’ve been told it’s because I use enough powdered milk at site that my body doesn’t go into shock when it gets real cheese in Vila. Good thing.

Coming back to site is a really interesting experience. Since I had only been away from site once, when I left in July I still felt like I was new. It was a weird feeling, because I’d been in Sola for eight months and I’d been the most senior volunteer in Sola for a month… I hadn’t even left Sola for over five months! But I still felt new. It’s like you lose track of time so much here that it didn’t feel like I’d been there for 8 months… it felt like I’d only been there long enough to have gone to Vila once.

Coming back changed that. When I got back I felt like I just kind of squeezed right back in. I realized that I actually DID know people’s names, and I actually DID remember who was related to whom (to the best of anyone’s ability here), and that I wasn’t a newbie but the accepted PCV. It was a really great feeling.

I’m sure Independence week really helped out too. It was nice to have everything going on in the field right next to my house. And Mother Hubbard day there were people in and out of my house all afternoon like Grand Central Station. Before leaving at the beginning of the month, I could never have predicted that weekend to go as it did, but I’m really glad it did.

Granted, the month of August didn’t end up being all that fantastic. I was sick for pretty much all of it… first with strep, my 3rd since leaving home, second in 8 weeks. Then I caught a cold, my second in 5 weeks. I realized at this point that I hadn’t had a piece of fruit since I left Vila (almost three weeks previously). But there wasn’t any at that point! It was pretty ridiculous. I started asking everyone for pawpaws or any other kind of fruit, but all I ended up with was island cabbage and a cucumber. I had to satisfy cravings with orange pop and Crystal Light (which I actually already did anyway, but now I’ve been desperate), and I started making an effort to remember to take my daily multivitamin. The only actual fruit I had was a bag of raisins I brought back from Vila… and I’m not sure that counts. This time in Vila I’m going to investigate preserved fruit possibilities. Cans are really heavy to transport, but it might come to that. I’m hoping there are some plastic packaged fruits like back home. The good news is we only have about two more months to go until mango season fires up, and I did end up with a watermelon and a couple of grapefruit right before I came to Vila.

THEN, I got this horrible rash that Brenda thougt was impetigo! It was horrible. It’s the second time I’ve had this thing here, but the first time it wasn’t very bad and we actually thought it was heat rash. This time I knew it wasn’t, because it’s only just started to warm back up from winter. This time it was WAY worse too. I had one large patch on my upper arm, and a string of blisters on my wrist, some small patches on my left leg that looked like I had 30 mosquito bites, but my right leg took the cake. The patches on my knee got so big they ran together into one big patch, my whole knee swelled up and got puffy, and the big patch ended up being eight inches across, starting at my kneecap and stretching about five inches up the front of my thigh. For three weeks I’ve been waking up scratching at least two times every night and have had to get up and bathe in the middle of the night. I was washing with chlorohexadine and then putting bactroban (later switching to iodine) on the spots. I was out of antibiotic from my latest strep, but it ended up being bad enough to need one, so PC freighted some from Vila. Of course the package didn’t actually end up being put on the plane, so after walking an hour to the airport and waiting two hours for the plane to come, I headed back toward Sola empty handed in the hot sun and stopped at the clinic. I wasn’t sure if I’d get any help because I live in a place where they still solve 99% of medical problems with penicillin. Not good for people with –cillin allergies. However, I was lucky enough that they had another antibiotic in stock that would probably work for the “impetigo,” but from which I had a history of bad digestive side effects. So I finished out the month feeling like crap. Still. And THEN I got here and Brenda looked at it and decided it’s not impetigo. So now we have to find out what I’m allergic to, because that’s the next probable cause. Basically, my health sucks.