Condoms, Cats, and Christmas Carols

December 1 was World AIDS Day. Lucy had a great program lined up, opening with a parade through the village, continuing with sports events, a community feast, and all sorts of entertainment, and concluding with a Mother Hubbard dress/dance contest. Lucy and I entered under one entry.

We decided to be a little unorthodox, and really go all out with the World AIDS Day theme. Lucy doctored the dresses. Each one had about 30 condoms pinned to it in various places. I made the salusalus (Vanuatu’s version of a lei) out of condoms, and the signs, which said: Kipim Torba fri from HIV (Keep Torba free from HIV) [which was the slogan of the day] and Yusum kondom evri taem (Use a condom every time)

We choreographed the dance together including the signs and salusalu-ing with condoms. WE WON FIRST PRIZE. We rule. There’s this one old woman who practically runs town, is involved in every committee ever, and is always a judge at these things, and she tends to be quite serious. She was seriously falling over laughing. It was AWESOME. Some yangfala was being “cheeky” according to Lucy, so she chucked a condom at him. I pointed out that that may not have been the best response… but neither one of us has been accosted yet.

There is a full-length video, but unfortunately with the speed of our internet I may not be able to share it. But there are pictures. There will hopefully be more as Maggie, a VSO Vila-Volunteer who’s been visiting, tags the pictures she took.

Second interesting event: The following situation would never happen in America. But of course it happened here:

At the end of the night on World AIDS Day, I’m sitting in the grass waiting for the speeches to be over. Two boys I recognize from Class 3/4 walk up to me with a kitten. “Miss Amanda, we found your cat.”

“I don’t have a cat… where did you get that cat?”

“It was wandering around the field. Someone said it was yours.” It does look exactly like Neko (may he rest in peace).

“It’s not mine, my cat died a long time ago.”

“Well, take it anyway!” The cat is tossed into my lap. And just like that, I have acquired a kitten.

Since she became mine on World AIDS Day, I have named her H. Ivy, but I call her Ivy for short. I’m not sure what the H stands for – I’m wavering between Henrietta and Harriet. Before you groan about H. Ivy, Lucy wanted to name her “AIDS.” So come on, who’s more creative?

Finally, for your enjoyment: “It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas” when…

• school is out for the summer.
• everyone else stops showing up to work, even though it’s not their annual leave time yet.
• cows are killed for community feasts on a weekly basis instead of every 3 months.
• you get lobster for lunch at a community feast.
• you have to choose between pajamas and a bed sheet, because it’s too hot to sleep with both.
• you start eating peanut butter and bananas for breakfast and lunch because you can’t stand the thought of cooking at lunch.
• there’s pineapple! And watermelon! (And usually mangoes, but not this year because there was a storm the week the trees flowered. Ruined the season.)
• you open your front door at 7am and have trouble breathing in the rush of hot air that comes in from outside (if you have a thatched roof. If you have a tin roof, you couldn’t breathe all night anyway so I guess it doesn’t matter.)
• you change your clothes three times a day. You get your clothes straight off of the line, because they never really dried after you washed them three days ago, but any dry clothes you put on would get wet with sweat anyway, so you might as well put them on while they’re damp.
• the thunder sounds like gunshots and feels like a 4.0+ earthquake.
• your entire tub of “vegetable oil spread” (aka butter) which is normally “no refrigeration needed” melts.