Alligator Hunting

Saturday my papa took us alligator hunting. Vanualava is the only island in Vanuatu with alligators – they were brought down by Bishop Patteson and live in a river (Alligator River) and a swamp near Port Patteson (settled by said bishop). Sometimes they sunbathe on the beach, sometimes they swim out to the tiny uninhabited island Ravenga. I have never seen them. There are supposedly four of them, but we always just refer to “the alligator.” Michael really wanted to go, so we convinced my papa to take us, and then Lucy and Yasuko came along.

Alligator River comes out just north of the bay. To get there, you leave Sola and walk about two miles to the airport, where the road stops. Then you walk another mile or so along the beach to the Selva (Sulphur/Silver) River, which you have to ford. The water gets about waist-high. Less than five minutes later, you then ford the Tidy River, which is more than waist-high… you have to hold your bags over your head as you cross – it’s a good idea to leave things like cell phones at home on this adventure; we only took food, water, and cameras. After the rivers, you’re back to beach-walking for another two or three miles.

Just before you get to Port Patteson, you turn up into the bush and eventually find the swamp, or tidal marshes I guess (someone more versed in ecology could probably explain it correctly). At the swamp there’s this terribly rickety bridge made of tree branches that leads to the next village. Supposedly, if the tide is in you have to swim across the swamp, so we were lucky it was out when we got there.

We sat on the bridge for a while, and when it was clear that the alligator was not going to make an appearance, we ate lunch, took a nap on the ground, and wandered back the way we came.

The next day, I was told (by several people, and that’s how I know it’s true) that an alligator had in fact swum out around the reef and ended up very close to Naruwe, a village out the long southern point of the bay. MY HOUSE IS RIGHT NEXT TO NARUWE. Seriously. My site is “Sola,” but I actually live closer to Naruwe than Sola. And the alligator was there. The day we were looking for him.

Legend is that if you plan your trip to see the alligators, they will never be there. But if you just happen to be in the area on different business, you will probably see one or two. We asked my papa to take us on Thursday, then invited Lucy and Yasuko on Friday, and went on Saturday. The alligators had too much notice.

There are pictures of all of this on Facebook, FYI.

My papa seemed to enjoy having Michael around for that week and a half. He’s one of those typical patriarchal-culture-men who doesn’t know what to do with a white female, much less a Ni-Van one, but is quick to overcome his shyness with other men. (Sidenote: he admitted to me once that before I came he was terrified of white people.) Both my host parents took both of us out for kava, and when Michael said something about his apartment in college, Papa Moses said, “alé, stori long hemia,” – “ok, talk about that.” Michael said he felt like he was being interviewed. But Papa Moses was very excited to take us to Mosina (he was even the one who suggested it), and even though he wasn’t too keen on Alligator River at the beginning, he still agreed to it, and then looked as if he was genuinely having a good day by the end.

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At End blong Fild, my little neighborhood at the end of the field, things are interesting in the animal world (even without the alligator as our guest). ZCA Stanley has moved into Former PEO’s old house, and brought his dog with him. Two of the three dogs left behind by SG/Former PEO have disappeared (presumably killed) and one very skittish female left behind. We’ve all been taking turns feeding her. Smith’s dog has taken over as the alpha male, even though he’s mostly blind. Ygit’s dog Flame is still around, plus Stanley brought along a relatively unsocialized male dog. Unfortunately for us humans, that dog is slow to learn the rules of the dog world, and even worse, the female is in heat. For the past week the neighborhood has just been constant growling and dogfights. It’s getting pretty ridiculous.

My cat, H. Ivy, is a social butterfly and has found a number of ways to get out of my house when I’m not there. She’s taken to following Unity around, which is fine, but then Unity gives her fish so then she stays there all the time. I’m trying to make it clear that I’m okay with my cat being shared during the day, but she stays in my house at night (otherwise I have a terrible rat problem). I’m not sure how well I’m getting that across. Part of it may be my fault… she’s more likely to spend the night at someone else’s house when I’ve locked her in my house for any portion of the day. It’s like she’s getting her revenge. Or maybe I’m just a Peace Corps Volunteer on a remote tropical island deprived of social contact who reads too much into the feelings of her cat. Probably that.

Ivy has also followed people she doesn’t know, and managed to get herself about a half-mile away last week without my even noticing. I went into Sola to get a loaf of bread and was told by several people, “Your cat went that way. She’s following Pupu [grandfather] Magran.” Then I saw the old priest Magran, who told me she’d followed him from the government offices all the way to the stores, but then he’d lost track of her. But within ten minutes she reappeared on the road. One of the storeowners gave me an empty cardboard box to put her in, and I walked the ten minutes home with her in a box and the loaf of bread. When I reached the door, Michael said, “How many loaves did you buy?!”

She’s done this a second time since I originally wrote this blog. Don’t know who she followed, but found her in generally the same place.

In the people world of End blong Fild, I had a minor confrontation with my neighbors over water last week. Ygit and her family don’t have a drinking water source. They usually have mediocre running water, but nobody should drink that stuff, so they fill buckets from my tank for drinking water. Which is fine. I don’t need the whole 1100 litres for myself; I can afford a bucket or two a day to keep a family hydrated. The problem came up when a small boy was visiting them – I guess he’s somebody’s nephew – and they kept sending him with empty plastic bottles to fill. The mouth of the bottle, though, is smaller than the faucet of the tank, so every time you fill a bottle you’re wasting about three bottles worth of water. To make this worse, it was an 8-year-old boy doing it, so he was wasting closer to 5 bottles for every one he filled, plus he kept getting distracted and staring at me and Michael with the water running. The water would be pouring out of the tank and he’d just be staring at us open mouthed. Now, I understand that it was pretty strange for a 24-year-old man to be washing his own clothes (women’s work) but seriously, turn off the water to stare!!

We went through over 500 litres in two days. I usually use 500 litres in a week if I’m not paying attention – two weeks if I’m being careful. So I had to talk to my neighbors and be like, “Look, the tank is half empty and the last heavy rain was only two days ago. You can take water, but please come to get it yourself, don’t send the boy to do it, because he wastes too much. And bring a bucket, or we can use my kettle to fill the bottles.” It was a gamble – when you talk to Ni-Vans like that there’s a good chance they’ll be afraid of you forever and never talk to you again. But Ygit only hid from me for about three days before coming over herself with a bucket, so I consider myself successful.

In other news, I deleted my “Day in the Life” section a few weeks back because my daily life has actually changed a lot in the months since I wrote it. I’ve written a new section that’s sort of the same. It’s under the “About” tab at the top of this page. Feel free to check it out and tell me to add more. The other reason for adding this section is I realized that not everyone is a faithful reader (like my mom) and probably hasn’t been reading since the beginning. And that would be confusing. So now I have a very detailed “About” section. No worries, it is not detailed about my pets. That was special for this post.

Funny quote of the week:
“It’s 2012 now… you’re leaving in ten months! Wow. We need to start feeding the pig.”
- Mama Welevia, meaning fattening the pig for my last feast.