blog blong jon
frustrations, juxtapositions, banana cakes, malaria, whatnot & sea snakes
Well – one frustration is my English. One only has to read a blog by mamma Vivienne, read her flowing style with broad vocabulary and then read a blog by myself, with its jerky style, lack of finesse, and many mistakes. Vivienne should be the English Teacher and Pasta. Some of you reading this are already aware that lack of eloquence in my writing and speaking is a source of frustration for me. I tend to speak (and preach) with a street language vocabulary when at times I would like to be able to use words that convey deeper meaning. I am a philosopher of sorts – with at times quite deep insightful thoughts – yet all too often I can’t get them down onto paper. By the time I am writing they are gone, or to blurred. Perhaps it’s lack of discipline instead of poor English, perhaps its just life!
I do enjoy reading (but have thoughts and feelings of jealousy) when I read a book by someone who has penned the same or very similar thoughts to me and penned them well. Outlining the pros and cons of a thought or concept. I enjoy seeing how ponderings similar to mine maybe do make sense – perhaps I did have it right – even if I couldn’t get my thoughts as clear. (By the way - my understanding is a blog can be anything – including rambling on like this, letting my thoughts, my natural Stream Of Consciousness style go wherever it takes me). A book I have been reading lately which I recommend (I have only read the first few chapters) is A Generous Orthodoxy by Bruce Mac Clearen. (I like his style of writing as much as his thinking). If you are a thinking kind of Christian, read it.
Other frustrations I have here at Talua – which in a way connected to the above frustration of not being able to pen thoughts clearly – is, one has, or I do anyway, have so many new experiences – some of them seem surreal full on weird juxtapositions of sights, smells and sounds, that at the time they happen I wish I could stop, and blog them – or get them down on paper – not to brag, but to keep them in the memory of being, that is – my memory but also for other people to be able to enjoy.
For example – last Friday I was a passenger in the new Talua Training Centre Bus. The bus goes into town twice per day as a commercial bus (seats about 14 people), picking up people from Talua and the surrounding villages, taking them on the 45-minute drive to The Canal (Luganville, aka sometimes as Santo). At one moment in time we turned a corner and were looking down towards the blue sea, at the same time the sun popped out as the clouds hid away and hence the view was made more spectacular. Only seconds before this Pasta Frank (our driver) turned the bus CD player on and this sensual French voice was singing in the background – I have no idea what she was singing – it was in French. The air conditioning was on – I could feel the cool air trying to reach me, not quite making it, it was still warm in the bus as I was sweating just from sitting. In that instant, there was a momentary impression of this is sweet…this is wow. I am not sure if my thinking was this is almost modern – western, I think it was more this is just beautiful, this is pleasant (capture this moment was another thought), I struggle to pen what it was like – but it was good whatever it was. I then looked to the left and saw in a coconut plantation with piles of coconuts in various places ready for husking for copra harvesting, and in the same paddock, an old, totally rusted out, tractor with a group of people loading an old trailer, again, rusty in colour and condition, and I was brought back to the world of Santo.
So the mixture my senses were taking in was the enhanced beautiful view, the sitting in a brand new bus that still had the brand new smell, the sensual voice, whiffs of cool air adding to the newness of the bus, and then clang of the rusty tractor and piles of coconuts.
It is good to be here. The experiences we as a family are sharing make the harder times worth it. An example of a harder time could be last night sleeping, waking up sweating and sticky. Not from sex or from a fever, but from the fact it was humid. Then the air booms with amazing thunder – a sound like a jet fighter flying overhead very fast with the difference being it keeps flying over again and again. The sounds of bats outside talking to each other, loud insects and thunder are interesting, the stickiness – that is when trying to get back to sleep – is a tad unpleasant.
Other nights the temperature is quite pleasant. The rain cools things down as well. On a hot day the temperature inside our home gets to around 31. 32 being the maximum so far on the tiny digital readout. If we get no rain, it remains 31 until 7pm or later. If it rains say mid afternoon, the temperature inside drops to 29 within a matter of minutes, and sometimes it remains cooler for the rest of the day.
About the kaleidoscope of sights, sounds and smells. There have been other moments I have forgotten that at the time had a magical feeling to them. One I do remember is from the week before – coming back from town on the back of the Talua truck. A big earth moving truck was going the other way – totally chocker of people heading into town late on a Friday. I doubt there was any room left for another person to stand or crouch on the truck. All smiling, laughing and waving, yelling out to our truckload of people, although we were not as full. The memory to hold onto from that snapshot was the people – that is the faces, the white teeth, the smiles, the happiness, a simple lifestyle that rewards individuals with a happy and contented life. Is this an oversimplification? Perhaps. But it is one worth pondering about as we in the west rush around as quickly as possible so we can relax for our annual 3-5 weeks per year.
A gadget magazine that I subscribe to turned up the other day. There was an article about what cable should one use when connecting the various components of their home theatre sound system together. Prices for cables varying from $20 or so per meter to over $350 per meter – does the expensive cable ensure the plasma TV signal is clearer? From a simplicity of lifestyle perspective, it is not the issue of having a Plasma or LCD TV, if one is blessed with enough money to have one, have one – just share it! I think it’s the issue of complicatedness. A cable is just a cable – there are more important things in life. Here at Talua, I am thoroughly enjoying the simplicity of lifestyle.
Yes – we all miss things. And yes some days we splash out to make things more enjoyable. Like today’s lunch – to make it a more special meal, Viv cooked pizza (the bread maker made the dough while we were at church), I iced the banana cake I baked last night. For the meal we also ate a packet of chips and a Paw Paw – almost party food! A comment made at the table – when next at a eat-all-you-can pizza restaurant, we will only need two pieces each instead of the usual as many as possible. The two pieces being enough! (Perhaps only a Parkes can understand what is involved here as genetically it would seem we have big appetites, too big for our own good).
This reminds me of what someone in NZ said to me before we came here “you will loose weight with the heat”. Another person said they only know one person who has gained weight while in Vanuatu, most people loose it. Well for me – I will probably put weight on – we eat a lot of bread. I do sweat a lot but we have plenty of food.
We can buy meat in town for a good price – so far the quality has been OK. We do eat plenty of fruit - currently in the kitchen there are four pineapples (waiting for them to come ripe), some oranges, two paw paw’s and we have nearly finished the latest bunch of banana’s – we buy a huge bunch and tie them to a rafter on the veranda, picking off the bananas when we eat them. The only problem was this time the whole bunch came ripe at the same time. So I baked 3 banana cakes this week.
Last year many students got Malaria and so we are careful. We have not too many mosquitoes buzzing around inside our house and if we see them we try to squash them. On Thursday we had a tour of Navota Farm (I will blog my thoughts about the farm at a later date. At the moment there is too much info to process) and by Friday afternoon I had heaps of mozzie bite spots on my legs. For whatever reason they came up quite red – not too itchy - so yes we all get bitten. Apparently the Malaria carrying mozzies have clocks in their nests cos they don’t come out until 6pm. Anyway – the reason for this paragraph is I am very grateful that none of us have reacted badly to Lariam! An expensive but effective Malaria prevention medication (250mg Mefloquine) we take once a week. For some people it can cause major psycho problems but none of us have had nightmares, or hallucinations. So we are grateful.
What not. It might seem strange that I am teaching English at Talua when I struggle with penning thoughts and ideas clearly and eloquently. Yet, with teaching English at Talua, it is not eloquence that is needed. In both the Diploma class (D1) and the Certificate class (C1), they have basic English – perhaps around year nine in NZ. Rather it is things like the use of the verb “to be” and ‘tenses’ they get really mixed up with. So I am covering some of the following topics:
- nouns (especially plurals such as children, sheep, fish and things like hair which do not end in 's' but in English mean more than one.
- pronouns (I, me, my, mine, etc.)
- tenses (present, past, perfect, and later continuous.
- regular verbs and irregular ones
- comparisons (big, bigger, biggest; some, more, most; bad, worse, worst, etc.)
- direct and indirect speech.
One of the things I am looking forward to is helping them to argue, to disagree, to have a different opinion. Read Viv’s blog about how they often say yes or answer saying what they think you want to hear.
I have also been teaching them basic down to earth stuff on how to use the library and basically survive and do well in a theological course. A Jon Parkes How to Survive Theological Studies and Do Well 101. This includes giving them a theological vocabulary so they can read and comprehend the NIV Bible and the books in the library.
On Friday I spent some time talking about the single and plural of sheep, and how cattle is always plural (somehow I had been talking about bulls and cows etc). At one stage I was asked a question something like “what is a cow?” – in context of cattle I guess – perhaps they call a paddock of cattle a paddock of cows even if there are bulls etc.
So this was my answer. If Father Bull eats 3 bales of hay per day (I explained what a bale of hay is, and wrote up the amounts for them to calculate the answer), and Baby Bull eats 1 bale of hay per day. How many bales of hay per day does Mother Bull eat? After some thinking the answers varied. Some said 4. Others said 2. I explained that they were wrong – as there is no such thing as a mother bull – she has to be a cow!
They understood straightway and there was plenty of laughter.
So I enjoy teaching. I try to be interesting and have jokes. Sometimes I get carried away and start preaching instead of teaching – say if explaining the meaning of a theological word. So yes – it is rewarding.
So that’s my blog. If you read it all – well done (its over 2400 words). When reading through the above I noticed I didn’t mention God. Well as God is already fully in my life – he is in the lines above as well. As to how things between him and myself are at the moment – I need to give that some more thought. I think they are OK. There have been times I’ve prayed so desperately – more than ever before. Has he answered? I guess he has - on something’s I have yet to see!
I will say hearing his voice is strange at the moment and perhaps I need to stop and ask him why. Perhaps there are so many new things happening I am experiencing my ears are a bit blocked or just hearing too many things – perhaps in the silence of Talua it is really noisy.
Anyway. God Bless you.
Jon
Oh, about the sea snake. We saw our first one yesterday when swimming in the rock pools on the reef. The sea was too rough to swim out from the reef so the kids swam in the rock pools. After about an hour (Phillip and Simon had gone back home), Connie and William and I were in the water, looking at a sea cucumber some of the local kids had got out of the water when one of them said, “snake, snake”. We all got out of the water to see a sea snake swim by and spend a few minutes hovering in the rock pool before heading further along.
The theory (so it seems) is when you see one. You get out, go home, let the snake swim away and swim in the reef the next day. So we will see. As it’s been pouring rain all afternoon today and so we have not ventured to the reef for another swim.
