Monday, October 30, 2006

blog blong viv

PWMU and the end of the year.

 

 

Yes, you know that you are getting close to the end of the year when you begin to have breakups and end of year feasts (that’s if you happen to live in Vanuatu!) These have started this week for me with the PWMU closing service. Vanuatu loves acronyms - PWMU stands for Presbyterian women and mother’s union (I think that’s right). I haven’t been to many activities with the Talua PWMU because they usually meet on a Wednesday afternoon when I am teaching at Tata School. I missed this week’s lesson so that I could attend this special service.

The service included all the obligatory elements of a normal Sunday service including Bible readings, a number of hymns and choruses (including a couple of hymns performed by special ‘choirs’ pulled together for the event), numerous prayers and a mini sermon slot. In addition to this, the women students/student’s wives/ staff wives who will be leaving at the end of the year were specially welcomed to the service with salusalus (floral garlands given on special occasions and worn around the neck) and sat at the front for the proceedings. They were also given special leaving gifts from the PWMU.

The next part of the proceeding was an end of year exchange of gifts. Some months ago all the women were given a name drawn from a hat of a ‘secret friend’ from among the women on campus. This was the person that each one was to give a gift to. I found out some time later, but fortunately before the actual event, that the way things work here is that you are expected to actually give 2 gifts. One to the person whose name you drew from the hat and another as a thank you to the person who drew your name!! It seems in this culture it is impossible to just receive without giving something back in return.

Another part of the proceedings that I found out about only shortly before the service, was the tradition to give a salusalu as part of the gift. My usual source of information on events such as these is my Australian neighbour, Rachael. This time, however, she wasn’t able to give me a full picture as there hadn’t been a gift exchange at last year’s closing service. She gave me a couple of hours warning about the salusalus but as the real, handmade flower version is rather time consuming to make, one of Connie’s friends who was home from school that day, made 2 for me. Unfortunately, I put them down beside some others when I entered the room and they disappeared! They were used in the opening welcome for the leaving women!

So that left me without anything to give, and as the gift exchange got underway, it was soon obvious that everyone was exchanging salusalus. Rachael whispered to me to get Connie (who had snuck into watch the gift giving) to run home and get some that we had there. These are the artificial variety made from what looks like shredded plastic bags,  ones that we had previously been given and fortunately it is ok to recycle them!!. So I was saved from a cultural blunder! Not a too serious one perhaps, but when you operate in a world where you only understand half or less of what is going on, you probably make blunders all the time without realizing it. Therefore it makes sense to avoid making any extra ones if you can help it!

Another interesting component of the gift exchange was the use of powder and perfume. Not everyone did it, but most women, in addition to giving their partner a salusalu and a gift, also showered her with baby powder. This was usually done by pouring a good handful into one’s hand and then smearing this onto the cheeks of the recipient. Sometimes powder was also shaken around head and shoulders a bit and sometimes even wiped on the lady’s feet. We have seen powder used before on a couple of occasions. One was when we were guests at wedding feast, when it turned into an all out powder fight! And other times when special guests were honoured or farewelled from Talua. I have never found anyone to really explain to me why it is done, but I like to think of it as visible demonstration of showering someone with blessing.

The perfume was similarly used by some women on their secret friends. This was usually sprayed in a few points on the recipient’s body. Interestingly, these usually included in the general underarm area! Rachael and I commented that this would never be done in either of our countries. Can you imagine someone you hardly knew smearing your face with powder, or spraying your underarm area with perfume?! What an invasion of personal space, and what are you really trying to say to me?!! It was fine and even enjoyable in this setting, though and added to the general atmosphere of fun and celebration of the day.

My secret friend gave me a new island dress in shades of bright pink and mauve ( a bit nicer than it sounds!) and a wok - type fry pan ( These are usually used here for cooking a deep fried, 8-shaped,doughnut type bread called gateaux - pronounced cato). The other friend gave me a set of nice glasses. I gave (thanks to Granddad’s recent visit) some NZ tea towels, a NZ pen and some biscuits I had baked. Other gifts ranged in size and probably value, and included lots of handmade dresses, hand woven baskets and mats and plastic bowls. I imagine that lots of the students have very little spare money to spend on gifts and it could have been quite embarrassing, except that no one actually opened their gifts in front of anyone else. This is done later in private. All except for difficult to wrap things like baskets and mats, and dresses which are usually put onto the recipient when they are given.

As you can imagine with a room full of people this all took quite a long time. There were also a few awkward moments when someone forgot or didn’t know who they were to give to. Hopefully a master list will be kept next year!

The next part of the afternoon’s activities was refreshments - a range of snacks and a drink served to everyone by the executive, followed by a bit more singing, a bit of dancing and general hilarity, and a couple of skits. A skit here is usually a song performed with actions to the words, done to a tape. The whole afternoon went off very well, although it did take the whole afternoon - over 4 hours! We will have to wait and see how many more feasts and gift exchanges we will have before the end of the year. Fortunately Granddad brought plenty of tea towels!!

 

Friday, October 20, 2006

excitement walk more walking vsa variation

over the past week the children have been getting more and more excited in anticipation of granddad visiting us. Last Wednesday evening at the airport we had an almost surreal experience of watching him walk off the plane, carrying two suitcases, one filled with goodies for us. We had dinner at a local Chinese restaurant before the 45 minute drive back to Talua. There were big smiles all round.

The next day on I decided to show dad around Navota Farm. Thinking it would about 2 hours to go up to the middle of the farm and back, we ended up walking for 5 hours. When we got to the first terrace on the hill, dad wanted to get to the top. It took a while but we got there after walking halfway around the hill to find a sort of track up. Needless to say we were both a bit stiff and sore on getting back.

Last Friday we had another big walk. The family and I visited Madelyn’s home for lunch. It was a 1 hour walk to Najingo, a short canoe ride across the water to Tangoa Island. After arriving at Madelyn’s we spent about 1 ½ hours exploring Tangoa Island. We then had lunch – which included “Laplap Worm”. In October, about four nights after full moon many people in South Santo head to the sea when it gets dark, looking for sea worms that apparently only come out at this time of the year. Viv and I were relieved we ate them before seeing the left over worms in a sack - slimy and disgusting. As for the flavour, the Laplap took away some of the flavour and they were not too bad, not too strong. It was a good day, but we were all tired that night after three hours walking. On the canoe trip back, one of Madelyn’s sisters who was paddling our canoe, told us they have a shark following them about once a month - some big and some small – one never swims between Najingo and Tangoa Island.

Last Saturday Viv and I hired the farm Ute and picked up two NZ VSA representatives who were visiting Santo on reconnaissance work. They wanted to have a look at Navota Farm for possible opportunities. It was good to meet them and show them around and have visitors for lunch. I was impressed with their ability to quickly understand the issues for a particular area. They do their homework well before sending someone. If you have ever thought of spending two years on a VSA placement – don’t hesitate – give it a go.

My class topics have changed a bit over the past while - I do enjoy the diversity and variation. I have gone from teaching Lukan Christology to teaching the Navota students small business skills like receipt books, cash books and cash flows. I also continue with the English classes and on two evenings each week teach computer classes. So the variation is enjoyable and other things pop up as well. For example last Tuesday morning having just got home from teaching at Navota Farm, the Talua accountant Ps Frank arrived asking me to help him with the Talua Cashbook. (I had mentioned to him a couple of months ago I’d help him with the monthly financial reports for Talua). There were five months of transactions to process. After a while it was all sorted – except I will need to spend a lot of time reconciling everything. He did have a hand written running balance but the computer had a different result - this slowed my progress down significantly as I had to double check each transaction. I have yet to discover how he came up with his balances cos they don’t add up.

In general we are all well, and are enjoying having granddad been here with us.

God Bless
Jon

Sunday, October 08, 2006

note to the photos

Hi all, there are a few photos below, the relate to Vivienne's blog. So enjoy, have a look and a good read. I am feeling a bit tired - the water pipe line we fixed today is about 6km. But at about 8pm tonight the water started to flow again.
cheers
Jon


William investigating flight - school work.

Finally the road is a bit smoother from Canel to Talua ... well slightly.

Simon being part of the marble craze.

Connie adopted by Shena, Georgiana and her family, wearing traditional Pentecost clothes and musical instruments.

Church service at BP Burn - World Communion Sunday

Ps Frank and Kalmara fixing the water line.

family happenings - blog blong viv

Family Happenings

October has arrived. We are into the down hill run to the end of the year.

Jon has finished lecturing on The Gospel of Luke. This course, for which he prepared all his own material, was for only half a term. He very much enjoyed it, especially the opportunity to lecture/preach on some of his favourite themes. Now that is finished he will have a bit more time to go up to Navota Farm and teach the boys there. There are prospects for a 2 years appointment for the farm from VSA. The NZ co-ordinator will be visiting next week to discuss this with the farm manager and Jon, among others. They need to ensure that the job is a realistic proposition and achievable. We get rather frustrated at times with the farm operations and what is or isn’t done around the place. The wild peanut weed problem is just shooting away again since we have had recent rain and the weather is warming up. Soon you will not be able to see the grass for the shoulder high weeds, as it was when we arrived at the beginning of the year.

We understand the farm will be visited by at least one NZ work party next year. Jon will be pushing for specific, achievable projects to be assigned to them. We would dearly love to see the farm run to meet its potential. It has a long history of NZ connections and investment – both of labour and manpower. It has the potential to be a very productive operation, a good witness and educational model to surrounding farmers, and the students who study there, as well as a good money earner for the Presbyterian Church.

Another side interest of Jon’s that he will be able to devote a bit more time to now, is running some computer classes. This year he has set up a small computer suite for students to use some second hand computers to type assignments, etc. Some of the lecturers also have their own laptops. He would like to help the lecturers to make the most of their computers and also give some students the chance to get to know the computers better. He has started a weekly class, but with limited facilities only a few can be taught at once. He has also enlisted the tutoring aid of the whole family (some of us being more useful than others!) Even Connie is helpful in putting some things into Bislama, and of course she knows her way around a keyboard and a mouse better than most of the students. After the first night we feel there may need to be 2 different classes as the lecturers know a bit more than the students, most of whom are at a very basic level. Jon, of course does not know how it feels to be afraid of the computer and doesn’t find it very easy to simplify it enough (this from my slightly techno phobic point of view!)

For the rest of us our correspondence work continues. NZ schools have just had 2 weeks break, but as we work to the local school timetable, to enable our kids to be on holiday when their friends here are also around, we are well into the 3rd and final term of the year. The kids have been running low on booklets lately and the variety of work available to them to choose from has been limited. This has resulted in motivation issues for all of them to varying degrees. William had some more work arrive a few days ago, so he is set for awhile. I hope that Connie and Simon get some soon. Phillip will be right once the NZ term starts this week as he gets fresh tasks regularly over the internet. During the holidays he has to mainly do maths, which is just about all he does on paper. Last term most of his work had a food theme which was enjoyable and interesting. I hope that this term’s work will also have an interesting theme.

We are hopeful that when we leave here at the beginning of December, we will have done enough work to be able to stop for the year at that point. This will be easier than carting extra material around with us, and we will be travelling around a bit before we settle down in Blenheim for most of the holidays. The local kids have just had a ‘midterm break, around one of the many statutory holidays that Vanuatu has. We have also taken 2 days off and hope that we will all return to our work with renewed vigour and enthusiasm this week. Well, we can hope, anyway!

Kids are the same all over the world in lots of ways. The kids here are more easily entertained and find a lot of enjoyment out of simple things. Their game of the moment goes in cycles or crazes just like elsewhere. The current favourite is marbles, which the local kids are very skilled and competitive at. You even see little guys of 2 or 3 practising with rocks, so it’s no wonder they are so good at it. The game has a number of variations and is almost always played for keeps, so our kids have tried to come up to speed quickly! Sometimes the marbles are thrown at each other with so much force and accuracy that they smash!

Another recent popular activity was bubble blowing. While a couple of kids had ‘real’ bubble blowers, the majority used the ‘local’ version: pawpaw stalks. These are hollow and can be used to blow huge bubbles by a skilled practitioner. It was commonplace for a few weeks to see big groups of kids with 1 or 2 blowing bubbles from a container of soapy liquid. They would be surrounded by many others trying to blow the bubbles higher up into the air, or trying to catch them in their mouths!! Great simple fun.

For a wee while the game of choice was all out water fights. The weather has been warming up so this may have prompted this activity. These fights are usually boys against girls and involve lots of running, lots of yelling (most games here involve that!) and lots of water. Any plastic bottle or container may be used and it’s easy to see that a bucket can be a more effective ‘super soaker’ than any water pistol!

Speaking of the weather, we are pleasantly surprised how long the weather is staying coolish. We feel if anyone is thinking of visiting Vanuatu, then a good time of the year would be September. The weather has been very variable, however and you can never guarantee that it will behave for visitors as Bob and Barbara found out when they visited us in August and as a group of Australians here last week found out. We have just had a rather wet, miserable week, but yesterday the sun came out and it was again hot and clear. When the skies are clear it will be hot no matter what time of the year it is, but across the middle of the year there are a lot more grey days that keep conditions cooler. The main difference now compared to summer and autumn, when it seemed that the hot weather would never cool off, is the humidity. On the hot, sunny days the heat isn’t yet accompanied by too much stickiness. Even last week with the rain, there weren’t the oppressive conditions with heat and lots of thunder and lightning. I’m not sure when these conditions return but we are enjoying the temperature as it is at present. There are also plenty of gentle breezes at present to help keep us cool. These have kept us cool enough at night to keep our light blankets on the bed, as we have windows open to the predominant winds.

 

This year will be memorable in our family for many, many reasons. One more unusual one is that this is the year that Simon learnt how to whistle. He had been very frustrated by his inability to whistle, but then a wee while ago it clicked into place and he has hardly stopped whistling since!! I can always tell when it is him approaching as I hear him coming. Sometime we have asked him to stop whistling in school time as the others get a bit sick of it! He is becoming more tuneful with the practise. Sometimes he and I even whistle duets!! Lately he has been trying out whistling and humming at the same time. The results are not as pleasant sounding!

 

Life here can be very unpredictable as we have found out on the last 2 Sundays. Last Sunday morning Jon got up to a knock on the door at about 6.30 (this isn’t particularly early here where the bell goes at 5am!). It was the principal asking Jon to go and preach at a town church because it was World Communion Sunday. Why he didn’t know about this sooner, I don’t know, but Jon is able to pull old sermons out of the files for such an occasion so he was able to oblige. We enjoyed a change of scenes and the people were very friendly.

This morning(Sunday again) at 6 am there was a knock on the door and Jon went with others up into the bush to try and effect temporary repairs to the dam from which our piped water is sourced. The tap water had stopped late in the afternoon yesterday because of a leak in the dam.  So Jon accompanied a group of students and staff up to the dam and together they blocked the hole with some plastic and then followed the pipeline back to try and find the any other problems with the flow.  They got back about 12.30pm. Hopefully the tank will refill overnight and we will have some water tomorrow. There have been short interruptions to the water supply before.

We are not short of drinking water which is rainwater runoff into a tank nearby that we then bring to the house in containers, but we are now carting water for everything. The students are using bush toilets (long drops) and many people went down to the river this afternoon to wash. We usually live in 1st world conditions, even though we live in a 3rd world country, but we are occasionally reminded that this is the 3rd world! This is the way many people have to cart their water most of the time in the villages.

I am sitting here typing this in the half dark before the generator turns on, but we usually have enough power through batteries and inverter to have a light on when we need it and to keep the fridge running and the computers, of course! We are indeed privileged to have sufficient running water and electricity - most of the time! And we appreciate it a little bit more today.

 

 

Saturday, October 07, 2006

The Mangos are all go

The Mangos are all go. Viv came home from the market yesterday with a basket full. It’s good to have another fruit cos lately it’s been only bananas and grapefruit.

With only few months till spending Christmas in NZ - the kids are beginning to ponder that time and our return to Talua. Thoughts like ‘what DVD’s should we get for 2007’ and ‘what will be the first thing I do when back in NZ’. Phillip has been searching the net for the latest CD’s by his favorite music groups. Simon intends buying a 1kg block of Cadbury Chocolate as soon as we land. The first thing William wants to do it ring up some mates. Connie wants meet up with friends but first get some chocolate skittles and buy a certain book. For Viv it’s some new clothes (being sick of Island Dresses) and strawberries and apples (fresh fruit). For me, I am not sure what I miss as we can get most things here, there are times when we can’t get a good supply of fresh fruit, or fresh vegetables or something else. But most of the time we wait till going into town, we either get it or if its not there, we wait till next week when it might be in stock. One of the beauties about this is simple things have become special again. We can only buy small blocks of chocolate - so we only get a few pieces each, each piece becomes important. Perhaps for Christmas 2006 - the meal will be truly special, sure in the past it has been a good meal - better than normal but because every meal, every day of the year, is good - the Christmas meals (yes plural) loose their significance. So Kiwi food is one thing I miss, but most things are sort of available here. I do miss being able to blob in front of TV to chill out and slow my mind - some nights we watch DVD’s of TV programs we’ve never watched (Lost, 24) or old reruns (MASH). IN all thought, I think what I miss most is convenience. In NZ, we can just pop down to the supermarket and get whatever. We are never out of anything cos of the convenience and because of that, we never have to think much. Also there is a sense of security. Think to Christmas time and the supermarkets being shut for Christmas Day, “oh…we will have to stock up just in case”.  There are other ways at Talua we miss convenience; we had hamburgers last weekend. We had to make the patties, make our own buns, cook on a small fry pan etc. Not a meal of convenience whereas in NZ, if feeling knackered, we just pop down and get some Chinese or Turkish or Indian or burgers etc. So after giving some thought to it - I miss convenience most.

I finished teaching the Gospel of Luke yesterday. I really enjoyed it; found Luke very challenging (this is one of the reasons I like Luke). Today I mark the exam papers.

We are all well, it’s a bit cooler - I guess somehow linked to the blast of cold weather NZ just had; wore a shirt in bed last night and had two light blankets on the bed.

Take care and God Bless
Jon