Narasaed

So much has happened in the past week I’m not even sure what to begin with! But most of it was my trip to West Vanualava, or “narasaed” (the other side). Stanley and I headed over to do a two-day workshop on Classroom Management that I wrote using some materials Peace Corps had provided us at one of our trainings. I wrote it way back in February, and it’s been sitting there getting moldy until now. And I finally got to use it! And got to feel useful! Yay!

So we left on Tuesday morning by boat. It took about 90 minutes to get to Vureas Bay, and Sanlang School is just at the top of the hill. We got settled in – I stayed with one of the teachers and Stanley stayed with the headmaster. I visited classrooms in the afternoon with the intention of getting a feel for the existing classroom management, forgetting that although the teachers already knew me the kids didn’t. So the classroom management (or lack thereof) that I saw was not necessarily that of a daily basis, since the kids were so distracted by some strange white lady in the back of the classroom.

The male teachers took me up to the village for kava just before dark. Vetimboso is the largest village in Torba province, boasting 700+ people (over twice as big as Sola). I met one of my grandpas by accident… we were waiting for Stanley outside a store and a really old man walked up to me and asked if I was Welevia’s girl, then shook my hand.

Slight detour now from my description of my trip because I have to tell you all about the CRAZY dream I had on Tuesday night. I dreamt that I was on Tanna, seeing the volcano. There was an observation deck (which is an absurd idea… there’s nothing at the top of Tanna but smoke, ash, and a lavabomb every few minutes) and I was standing on this deck when there was a giant earthquake. Now, the Banks was the epicenter of a 5.2 earthquake on Monday (36 hours later, the Gaua volcano let out a big ashy burp and was upgraded to the next warning level), so it sort of makes sense that I had an earthquake dream. But anyway this observation deck starts falling into the volcano. Everyone’s trying to run up the incline to get out… people’s shoes are melting and the deck is falling and then suddenly I’m in a Visitor’s Center (what is this, a US National Park?!?) and then I woke up after that. I didn’t die. Good thing. Okay now back to my trip…

My workshop was Wednesday and Thursday, and it went really well! I was actually surprised with how smoothly it went. Eventually Stanley will run it after I leave, so he acted as a participant for most of this first one, and then he’ll start taking sessions as we repeat the workshop at other schools.

Thursday night we had a closing kakae, and the teachers gave me a Vanualava basket as a thank-you gift. I’ve been waiting for one of those… haha! Most baskets in Vanuatu look fairly similar, all made out of pandanas leaves and used as purses. Vanualava baskets are different, being made from a twig-like material, and they’re very stiff. They’re more what you and I picture a basket to be. But anyway, it’s weird, because it’s one of those things where you have to leave someplace in order to be given one. But I haven’t left anywhere yet… I’ve been in Sola the whole time I’ve been here. So now I finally have my basket. (I know this basket-business probably sounds really trivial from a different perspective… but it’s actually kind of a big deal here).

I heard all sorts of Peace Corps related stories, all beginning with the phrase, “The two Peace Corps that were here before, Dennis and Sandra,…” They miss you guys!! It was nice to be in a village setting for a few days. I’m sure I’ve written this before, but Sola is weird being a provincial center; there’s not much of a sense of community, everyone is from a different island, everyone speaks a different language, and everyone has a day job. Also lots of people work for the government so the whole atmosphere tends to be political. Villages are not like that (well, they’re political, but not in the same way). People are much friendlier and more welcoming in the 95% of Vanuatu that is made up of villages like Vetimboso. So that was nice.

Friday they opened the new Vetimboso Rural Training Centre (vocational school) so Stanley and I represented Torba Education at the opening. This RTC is the 38th(?) in Vanuatu, the 2nd in Torba province. It was built using funding from New Zealand. It took a year to build, running a carpentry class simultaneously. The students built the building, learning carpentry as they built!

The boat should have come on Friday afternoon to pick us up, but after sitting on the beach all afternoon we decided at 4:30 it wasn’t coming. Only 90 minutes till dark, and 90 minutes to get back to Sola is pushing it. So, remembering the paradox of Vanuatu (“nothing will ever go as planned, but everything will always work out,”) we headed back up to the school for another night. I woke up at 4am Saturday morning to the wind howling through the house. I’m usually not afraid to go in the boats (PCMO sent me some great prescription-strength Dramamine after that first awful trip) but I knew the waves were going to be interesting.

We still weren’t sure if the boat was coming, so we decided that if it didn’t come before 2pm we’d start walking. If you walk at a slow, leisurely pace, it takes between 3 and 4 hours to walk from WVL to Sola. Stanley was convinced I couldn’t do it, which was really irritating. Basically, the reasoning was, “You can’t walk 4 hours because you’re a white woman. People don’t walk in your country, they drive.” So we discussed hiking and backpacking and what it means to hike and backpack. So then the reasoning became, “You can’t walk 4 hours because you’re a woman.” After we dealt with that issue, “You can’t walk 4 hours because your legs will get tired.” Alright. Done arguing. Le’go.

Unfortunately I didn’t get to prove him wrong, because the boat showed up at 9. We hopped in, then idled in the bay for 10 minutes while Robert (our “captain”) pondered over the great decision: Do we go around the island to the South over extremely rough sea? (Robert had just come from that direction and was really worried about going back the same way.) Or we go around the island to the North, doubling our time and risking running out of gas? I feel like they were more worried about the white woman getting wet, whereas I was more worried about us running out of gas and floating out into the open sea. But my opinion doesn’t count.

They finally settled on North. The nice thing about going around to the North is that I got to see the Twin Waterfall, Vanualava’s claim to fame. So that was pretty cool. I got Robert to slow the boat down so I could take a picture. The sea was pretty quiet until we hit the northern tip, at which point it became a salty waterpark ride (and I got soaked anyway). It took 3 hours to get back to Sola; my skin is red and toasted, my tailbone is bruised from slamming back down on the seat after being thrown out of it so many times, and my knuckles are sore from gripping the side of the boat. I was slightly nauseous there at the end, but I made it. Good job, stomach.

I saw my favorite old man on my way to the store in the afternoon, and he said, “Amanda! Where have you been?” When I told him, he said, “Yep, I could tell you’ve been in a boat. Your face is all red.” I promise I wore sunscreen, guys. No lectures.

Pictures of the trip can be seen by clicking here.

Stay tuned for next week’s blog: Religion and Politics. (Oh yeah! Get excited!!)