The internet is back!

HI!!! We have internet again!!! It’s possibly a secret (here) but Lucy and I are sneaking it for now. The people who were angry with each other a few months back are still slightly angry and are discussing options with all the “big men” in Vila that should be controlling the internet rules. We’ll see what happens.

So I’m definitely glad that I took that extra week of me-time in Vila. I came home to find…

- Something went wrong with my solar system and I had no lights.
- A lizard died in my water tank so I had no water. (Well, I had 1,100L of stinky infected water that I had to let run out).
- My bottle of gas ran out so I couldn’t cook.
- My cat was sicker so I gave him to my neighbor to take to the bush and kill. (Don’t judge, it’s the same as putting an animal down in America, we just don’t have the medicine to do it with here).

But everything worked out…
- The boat driver (who built my house and installed the solar) replaced the car battery that runs the system, so I have lights again.
- My host papa and sister helped me find the lizard (I just knew it smelled, I wasn’t sure what was causing it), then my neighbors Annie and Nicole helped me tip over the empty tank to clean it out and set it back up right before a big storm hit.
- The store still had extra full gas bottles from the last ship, so I was able to replace it same day.
- …yeah, the cat is dead. I guess that’s not positive. But at least I don’t have a super sick cat anymore.

That first week back was ROUGH though. I think leaving Vila I was ready to come back to site, but I still wasn’t ready to be back at work. At least once a day I had the thought: Why am I here? What am I doing here? I should just pack up and go home.

To make it worse, it seemed that everything I had planned was cancelled or postponed. There was a problem with the budget for the Diocese workshop, so it has been postponed but not yet rescheduled. The trip to the west side (for a workshop) was postponed because of a death, also not yet rescheduled, but hopefully soon. Leslie went to Santo, then to Gaua, then got sick, so I didn’t have logistical information I needed to continue planning my Camp GLOW. Basically everything went to crap. I had the feeling: Every single thing I planned gets postponed or cancelled. Every single thing I could do relies on someone else. Not one thing I do is under my complete control, so I can’t MAKE any of it happen. Which helped circle to: What am I actually doing here? Nothing. Because nothing gets done. Why am I here? I should just pack up and go home.

Kerry was here that week, and it was good to have someone to talk to, even if I was just whining the whole time. Toward the end of the week she helped me make a list called, “How to be Happy.” It basically involved ways to get out of the office. Actually a major new project has come out of it – I offered to do some one-on-one reading intervention with the lower elementary classes during the afternoons. For my own sanity, I need to get out of the office and I need to be teaching kids. This seemed like the perfect way to do it.

Then it blew up into something even bigger – remember a few months ago when I complained about the teacher that had NO IDEA what she was doing? Well, she got replaced in July. The good news is the teacher that replaced her is TOTALLY competent; she’d just been on maternity leave so they kept her long-term sub for the rest of the year and stuck her in the lower class instead. The bad news is that since the previous teacher didn’t actually teach the kids anything, she’s starting at square one in the last term. The class is grades 1 and 2, and she’s knocked most of them back to grade 1. Most of them don’t know the alphabet yet in Term 3. So she asked if I could work with ALL of the kids (roughly 40). I’ve pretty much managed to split them into groups of 3-5 by level, and I’m pulling them out every afternoon to play games with letter squares and do some phonics.

The problem with doing groups is that attendance is SO BAD I can never have the same group twice. Right now I have a list of the kids, basically in order by skill, and I just go down the list calling names until I have a group of 5 kids that are actually at school that day. Hopefully I’ll figure out a better way to do it or a better system, maybe for next year. I do my small part with attendance by going to school immediately after lunch and collecting children on my way. I usually start out walking alone and have 3 or 4 kids tagging along beside me by the time I get to the school. If I hadn’t called out to them on the way, they probably would have just gone on playing in the road or on the beach. I’m also putting a sticker on the shirt of every kid that works with me in the afternoon. Heh heh… bribery.

It’s good to have a pet project like this, even if it isn’t necessarily what I’m supposed to be doing on paper according to Peace Corps. It’s not capacity building… I’m not teaching teachers how to do anything; I’m teaching the kids how to read. And it’s not in the office, which is technically my site. But it’s satisfying, and maybe I need to think about what I want to be doing rather than focusing 100% of my energy (and anxiety) on being “the perfect PCV” according to my assignment.

As the Mefloquine has slowly left my system, I’ve noticed the change. The paranoia was the first to go. I’m not afraid to be outside after dark anymore! I’m also not terrified of my neighbors’ dogs anymore (unless they bark at me, which they haven’t done since June). Anxiety was naturally next… I’ve felt it turn into positive energy and productivity instead of just freaking out. I haven’t missed a Doxy yet, which is a good thing since the mosquitoes are out in full force and four people that I know came down with “fever” last weekend. (They’ve all initially tested negative for malaria, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything).

As Lucy and I sat back and relaxed in a nakamal one night, she put it perfectly: “As much as life here sucks sometimes, just think of all the places we COULD have been sent. And we got sent to a tropical island where it’s a cultural expectation to sit back, drink a narcotic, and stare at the stars for hours. We HAVE to consider ourselves lucky.”

HEY GROUP 24!! If any of you are creeping on our blogs (no worries, I did it to G21 and G22 too!) then GET EXCITED!!! We’re excited to welcome you to Vanuatu on Sunday! Welcome to the PC/Vanuatu family! I’ll meet two of you in November, and a bunch more in February!

And for everyone: here is a public link to new pictures, especially if you don’t have facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10100257483468070.2519471.20919298&l=9d44801971&type=1