Politics and Religion

The blog everyone’s been waiting for!!

Disclaimer: I’m really trying hard to present all these facts as an unbiased story. I’m posting it because it is a completely different perspective than how I would have ever looked at anything, which is not saying that it is right or wrong. Take everything as you will. I hope I don’t cause offense to anyone of any opinion. But here’s what happened:

Several months back, Torba’s Secretary General got caught up in a minor scandal of some sort (I believe it involved a lawsuit, but I’m pretty sure he wasn’t the one being sued) and got a new job with the National Disaster Unit in Port Vila. By the time the news about the scandal came out, he was up and gone already. The Assistant Secretary General became Acting Secretary General while the “big men” in Vila started trying to figure out what would happen.

Background information: SG is similar to a state’s Governor in the US. The big difference in who gets the job is that it’s not by election, it’s by appointment. The difference in the actual job is that the SG has less power than a Governor, because he has to work alongside the Provincial President, who is the President of the Chiefs’ Council. Every community has at least one chief. Then one chief is taken from each island (or probably each area, in provinces with larger islands than Torba) every few months to meet in the provincial center for the Council meeting. One of these chiefs is the President of the Council, and therefore the President of the Province. The Chiefs’ Council and the Provincial Government rule over different issues and work together at the Provincial level. I suppose it’s kind of like Governors with state congress, but not quite the same… The importance of chiefs in the culture here is way more important than a state congress. On the outer islands, I think people don’t care about government outside of their own communities; the chief is the only person that really matters. With Sola being the provincial center though, provincial government is obviously very important here.

Okay so back to my story, but fast forward 3 or 4 months. The SG job had been posted and three men had applied. These men were waiting for an interview, but the committee was taking its time getting to that point, and still advertising the position. The Provincial Education Officer (my boss) took a trip to Vila for a meeting. While there, he met a man on a bus who knew a bit about the political situation in Torba. He asked PEO why he hadn’t applied for the position.

PEO (we literally call important men by their titles here, not their names, thus his name was PEO, or “Peeiyoh”) responded that education was extremely important to him, and he’d put a lot of work into the development of Torba’s education. He explained to the man that we had just begun a fairly large reform in our education system, following guidance from the Ministry of Education, and that he was excited about seeing all the new projects through.

The man told him that although all of that may be true, he would be an excellent candidate for the position of SG, and he should consider applying. Here’s where religion comes in: PEO interpreted this man as a messenger from God. God was speaking through the man to tell him that he should apply for SG.

“I applied for the position and went to the interview. If I was appointed to the position, then it was really God speaking to me that day on the bus. It meant that God knew I was going to be the next SG. If I wasn’t appointed to the position, then I would know that it wasn’t really God on the bus; that He wanted me to remain with the education office.”

He was appointed. (Name changed from Peeiyoh to Essjee.)

“So I am very sorry to leave you all and move my office to the Government building, and I’m very sorry to leave education and our province’s children, but it was God’s wish.”
He was crying when he said all of that. Ni-Vans generally only cry when someone dies. I can’t decide if he was just sad to be leaving us, or if he’s really that bummed about having to take the job.

When I got to West Vanualava, the news had just reached them. Different people had different reactions, of course, but the general consensus was: the government has taken a great asset away from education.

“He was a really good teacher, then the headmaster here, then they made him PEO and he’s been a great PEO. Why is he turning to government now?”

“At the education office you all work together for the good of the schools and the good of the children. The Government office is too political, they don’t work together. Why does he want to get involved with all those big-headed men down there?”

So we don’t really know what’s going to happen next. In the long term, the Ministry will appoint an Acting PEO, then will post an advertisement for PEO. In the meantime, Leslie is the “caretaker” of the office.

So that’s my Politics and Religion story. Back to news and things of a personal nature:
Honestly, the whole thing appears to be a nice change for me. Leslie is in favor of using me for trainings until I’m exhausted (which is preferable to being bored and useless) and has already plotted with Stanley to get me at least to Gaua by the end of the school year (6 weeks left), then Mota and Motalava first thing next year.

SG (Former PEO) was GREAT, don’t get me wrong, but for all those times I’ve complained in the past year, and especially recently, about not being used for my actual job, teacher training, the cause was often red tape. I said something to Stanley back at Sanlang about how happy I was to feel useful and not just be doing busy work in the office, and he came back and has been preaching in my favor. “She is a Teacher Trainer. That’s her job. She should be out training teachers. Not sitting here at her desk typing the provincial exam or printing your reports or writing workshops that don’t get used. We’re wasting her, she is only here for one more year.” And Leslie is in 100% agreement, “as long as there’s extra money for boat fuel.” Thanks Stannnnnn. (This could be nothing against Former PEO… I believe he might have been of the same opinion if it had been brought up like this before now. But as it was, no one was actually listening to me, and it took Stanley repeating my argument for people to notice.)

At first I was really nervous about the idea of the office without a head, but everything appears to be going smoothly so far. Leslie knows what he’s doing, and the others have continued work as usual. It may get interesting when we get to projects that have to be approved by a PEO (of which there are quite a few) but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

The other way this affects me is that the family will move from one of the 3 education houses to the SG house in the provincial center. This means I lose one of my 7-year-old gardeners, my 5-year-old friend who appears in my doorway when he’s bored (I have crayons), and possibly my guard dogs (though Nicole thinks they might be leaving the dogs, in which case we will feed them so that they continue to guard my house).