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 3^rd 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 1^st world conditions, even though we live in a 3^rd world country, but we are occasionally reminded that this is the 3^rd 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.