Personal Acheivements :P
Some of my "acheivements":
- I learnt how to light a match!! I've been scared of fire and lighting matches since ever! On Wednesday, I realized that we have gas stoves right after deciding to cook instant noodles for dinner. Anyway, after much self-counselling, I was able to light my first match! :) Now, even if I don't have any thing to heat/cook, I still light the stove simply to boil water :P
- I'm not a big reader; in fact, I'm not a reader at all! I barely read my course books at school, let alone do leisure reading. And yes, all the time when I felt oh-so-very-out-of-touch when people would talk about Da Vinci or Harry Potter, I still did not succumb to the pressure. But now I have. I just finished reading three books: "The Zahir", by Paulo Coelho and "Haroun and the Sea of Stories" by Salman Rushdie and "The Life of the party", by Maureen Freely. I know it seems like something basic and miniscule, but really, to read (and not doze off as soon as I'm past page 10) is a VERY huge personal achievement:P
- I am ONLY eating fresh fruits and vegetables. Can you imagine? Me, somebody who ate bagels for an entire term because I was too lazy to cook anything at home, and who always has atleast 20 "instand noodles" packs is starting to eat fresh stuff! The amount of fresh fruit that is available around here is CRAZY! most of the stuff in the market square was picked the day before or, at most, 2 days before. And, it's the cheapest as well. So just bought about 6 corns, a dozen bananas, one papapya (call "popo") and 12 lemons, all for $1 each!!
- Alhamdulillah, I have been on a halal diet for the past entire week. I ate non-halal chicken for the first two days while here, simply because I did not know if there was an alternative available but after finding out about this fresh-market thing, will probably be on a completely vegetarian diet for the entire time here, as there is no arrangement for halal food around here. Or maybe will do one chicken/meat serving every 2 weeks, for the sake of keeping the body sane.
- For the entire past 14 days I have not been late *even ONCE*!! Some would argue and say that I it's hard to tell I'm late if the others decide to show up half an hour late. But I still mantain my claim that I was at the assigned place on the assigned time! I don't know how long it will last, but even if it doesn't, a week+ of punctuality is a record in Fatima-history :P
- I not only know the difference between a drinking and eating/coconut but ALSO, know how to open a drinking cocunot with nothing more than a swiss knife. So now, if I ever get deserted on a tropical island and there is no sign of humanity, I know I can reach the age of sanity since I'll have enough water/food to keep me alive till then! :P!
- I learnt how to wash clothes by hand - so now, whenever the washing machines organize themselves and strike back against the human opression, we know who's going to be well-prepared and well-trained to go cold-turkey on the addicting usage of these evil, manipulative machines (i'm sure everybody reading this spends atleast one hour a day just staring at the contents, watching the clothes go round and round, round and round, round and round, round and round, round and round, round and round,round and round, round and round, round and round, round and round, round and round, round and round, round and round, round and round, round and round, round and round, round and round, round and round, round and round, round and round, round and round, round and round*...........)
As they say, "small step for humanity, big step for Fatima" :P
* This is what happends on Saturday, when you have nobody to talk to but the (excellently-painted) walls and the laptop that I lovingly call "the brick", on account of its outrageous weight and its tendency to fail in doing anything but the creating of text documents :P
Torn
Once again, completey torn.. completely @ unrest emotionally and spiritually. Things have been great in Vanuatu; absolutely, positively great. No hurdles, no problems what so ever. Still, I have this nagging feeling.. of contempt for this experience.
CUSO's mission statement states that they work towards a number of famous causes, such as social justice yada yada yada but also, self-determination and cultural vitality. Sounds great, and as my supervisor likes to put it, "radical." But this is certainly VERY hard for me to come to terms with; am I necessarily arguing that all differences and diversity within cultures should be erased? Absolutely not! But what I am confused about is this: how can I, a Muslim who does believe in the fact that there is only one God and that other kinds of pagan religions are not an acceptable way of living, commit myself to cultural stability when a culture is built around witchcraft and the practice of black-bagic?
Oh, don't misunderstand me at all: I am, in no way, in favour of the extreme changes bought about by the missionaries in the colonized world, when they, themselves, were very inaccruate in their interpretations and application of the holy text. But, how do you come to terms and accept something as undoubtedly-unacceptable as pig sacrifice. Pigs are a VERY big part of the cultural tradition here in Melanesia: they are offered as sacrifice to chiefs and dieties, they are used as gifts and currency during feasts and marriages. At the same time, there is no doubt or disagreement between the Islamic scholars on the sin attached with consuming pig.
I can (and will) continue to not eat pig; but am I wrong to not be stopping others from this consumption? If yes, and if I do **try** to stop them, than won't I be becoming a cultural imperialist, the very thing that I have come to assist in resisting!
Our pre-departure orientation was full with loads and loads of info about cultural shock and the hurdles in cultural adaptation; seemed simple enough as, according to me, "I was constantly living that reality even while in Canada." But is this what they meant? Placements are supposed to make you re-think your past assumptions and beliefs, but can that ever *?*really** happen when I already have a belief system that I am strongly dedicated to?
Week 2
Person: "What is that in your mouth?" *pointing to my teeth*
Me: *confused* Umm, you mean this *touching the metal in my braces"
Ah, homesickness has already struck! I would've imagined that it would've taken me atleast a month to get to this stage, but I am already questioning the wisdom behind the decision to undertake this experience. Not that it has been bad by any standards, but makes you one wonder if the "attempt to make a difference" is really worth being away from family.
This week has been a bit less-intense than last week, thankfully!
- Monday, Nov 7: Bislama Training. I can finally say more than "Thank you" in Bislama, even though every time I seem to speak to a Ni-Van, I at once forget all my Bislama AND English, and can only remember French (which, btw, I haven't reviewed for the past 4 years!). Azkaa, ex-roomie, said the same thing happened to her while learning Arabic; the only difference being that she actually STUDIES french (as in, getting a minor in FR). After, we left to attend a few sessions at the Vanuatu Research Conference. Supposedly, it was the first (or second) of its kind in the entire Ni-Van history; it was simply a matter of researchers and current expats working in Vanuatu presenting their papers and thesis on different areas of research. Some of the stuff was pretty dry and repititive BUT very useful to learn, esp. for my job with the Provincial Women's Development Office. Other stuff, such as a paper on the folk songs sung in villages or the establishment of sand-drawing festivals were VERY interesting! Only if I knew Bislama I would've actually been able to *understand* rather than simply laugh and sigh when the rest of the attendees acted so (btw, it's tough work trying to remain on-cue, especially when you are in the front row :P!)
- Tuesday, Nov 8: Bislama Training, again. Seems like no matter how much we learn, my lack of confidence in speaking in front of locals is increasing by the second! We had a safety session with the Security Officer from Peace Corps. For those who don't know, Peace Corps is a program for American youth where they put you through a 3-month long training and then randomly assign you to a position (that too in a random country). In spite of the issues in the placement process, Peace Corps are very well-resourced when it comes to providing safety to all their cooparents (i.e. all of them have personal safety alarms!!). I've also heard that Peace Corps graduates (?) are given preference for any government jobs in the US, second only to war veterans. That, and they get $6000 once they've completed their placement! Anyway, as expected, the Safety session only worked to freak us out about all the possible things that can happen to us while on placement and almost bordered on how we should view most men, with great suspicion. As the saying goes, "guilty, until proven innocent" :P Maybe it's my bias but they seem oh-so-not-culturally-sensitive at all. For instance, their safety manual says "there is no doubt that Ni-Van women are considered secondary and subordinate to their male counterparts." Even if this was ALWAYS the case (which it isn't), I would still be a bit hesistant of putting things in an official document as ideas or beliefs tend to take on this legitimacy and sense of authority as soon as they are written down; so at the end, it's read more as a fact rather than an opinion of the author.
- Nov 9: Our Bislama teacher is great; really! He's super-fun to be around and he doesn't have a very academic-style of teaching the language; doesn't care much about grammer and so on. All he tries is to get us talking. But I'm starting to get tired of learning stuff during the day and successfully forgetting EVERYTHING by the end of the day; I'm just not good at languages I guess. We had another session on Health in the evening. My cousin, who got the bug spray for me, had warned: "don't use this too much, esp. don't fall asleep with it still on. The bugspray eats away on your skin!!" And now, the doctor was warning us about malaria and other diseases that we can contract by eating improperly-washed stuff like lettuce and fish. So now, I have a choice between dying because of malaria and dying because my skin was eaten-away :P This safety and health sessions always seem so senseless to me; really, if something is meant to happen, it will happen no matter how many precautions you take. Then, why worry and fret about stuff that was, is and never will be under our control. Meh!
- Nov 10: Bislama Training; I really don't mind having to wake up early because all we do while learning the language is go out and sit in CUSO balcony (which looks out to the a spectacular foresty-view, the see and the tourist-laden island, Iririki). Really, if we start learning like this in Canada I will make sure to not skip even one calss in an entire year! It's pretty hot already, but it's pretty windy because of all the surrounding water. So I don't really mind the humidity in the end. After, a guy who's initially from France but studied in Canada and is of Jewish descent** invited us to supper at another person's house. I was in no mood to go; I find this entire thing of "meeting people" very senseless when I don't know if I'll see these very people ever again in my life. The way I see it, I can get introduced to a gazillion-and-one people and still not have the social support a person needs for survival; on the other hand, you can know barely anybody at all but the few you know will always have your back (and you, always theirs); all in all, this business of having to meet new people really rubs me the wrong way. BUT, after our Safety-Security session, Dana wasn't feeling comfortable taking the bus in the night and so I went along, for the heck of giving her company. The people we met were nice; 5 of the others are fellows from UK, working here in Vanuatu. All of them were also of South-Asian descent (Gujju, Nepalese, Indian, etc) and VERY nice, but two big things that make it almost-impossible for me to identiffy with them: alcohol and partying. They were super-hospitable and nice, but me, partly because I didn't want to be there in the first place, partly because the French guy made us wait for half an hour before showing up and partly because I was sleepy, wasn't super-friendly with the new crowd and fear that left a HORRIBLE impression on them! :(
** It's hilarious; the first day in the CUSO office, somebody said: "We have a Jewish cooperant. And now you *pointing towards my hijab*. I love the diversity we have. Yes, it's a recipe:
Step # 1: put a Jewish male into the pot.
Step # 2: sprinkle in a little Muslim female for flavor.
*ta da* you've got diversity!
Tip: You can change the ingredients a little bit but as long as you make sure you have two historically opposite sides, you have, what we like to call, "diversity"! :P
- Nov 11: Second last Bislama Training, YES!!! instead of sitting in the CUSO balcony George, our teacher, decides to take us for a walk in the closest local neighbourhood (i.e. a neighbourhood with mostly average-earning locals, as opposed to fancy-shmancy politicians or do-gooder expats). He wants us to practice our Bislama with people we see sitting around in their gardens. First we talk to three guys who are run a kava bar, called a "nakamal", and are getting the drink ready for the evening. After the basic courtesies such as, "what is your name" and "what island are you from", we have run out of things to say and ask. George tells us to ask each of the men whether they are married or not!! After giggling, (yes, talk about being immature) I ask but still can't come to terms with how politically-incorrect the conversation is. Really, I can't imagine asking anybody in Canada, "do you work" or "do you go to school". I mean, what if they want to work but can't find employment; or want to go to school but can't afford to? But these are the very conversation-starters that we use in our meetings with the next two groups of people. I don't know if it's culturally appropriate to be so upfront in this culture, but I'm starting to realize how "safe" we play it in Canada; we never want to offend people and so we never ask things that we REALLY want to ask. The next two groups we visit is a bunch of kids and a bunch of women. The kids are shy in the beginning and in about 7 minutes, start telling their life stories. And then, ask me what it is that I have on my teeth! Imagine having to explain braces to people who have never before seen a person with braces; now, imagine doing that in a language you barely know. My explanation, "my teeth were going bad, and so my doctor put them right by putting something in my mouth"; at least this is what I was *trying* to say; I have no idea what I actually ended up saying! The second group of people, a bunch of women, were as inquisitive about my braces, and somewhat less about my eyebrow ring. When I thought I was finally done with Bislama (it's not the explaining that was torublesome; it was the translating that freaked me out) a guy of around 20 or so comes and starts asking questions about my religion. Now, how do I go about explaining why I wear the hijab and don't believe in "father god" when I know barely 20 words of Bislama?! But one thing I have to say, I really appreciate the fact that the locals will ask questions and be VERY upfront about their questions rather than the other expats/tourists, who upon seeing me, stop whatever it is they are doing (eating, talking, picking their nose, whatever) just to make sure that they can appropriately scan my entire being, make sure that they make me feel like a complete outsider and alien and then, start saying stuff to each other. And I know this definately counts as stereotyping, but a lot of these surprised tourists are from Australia! You want to be racist and discriminatory in your own country; fine! It's not acceptable but I'll still put up with it. But when you start doing that in somebody else's country, I'm sorry, I just don't understand that!
Tried kava for the first time today as well; infact our language teacher, George, took us since both Dana and myself are wimps :P No really, neither of us drink alcohol and so kava was not on the top of either of our "to do" lists. Turns out kava has no alcohol; it's simply a drink produced by grinding the roots of a special plant and adding water; no additives nothing. But it's a depressant and puts you to sleep, so while it doesn't necessarily mean that you lose control of yourself, it also means that you are unable to make the most of your time due to laziness... definately something I don't need more of :P But still tried it, for the sake of trying it just once.. 'twas alright and if I may, VERY horrible tasting. People usually drink half a shell or 1 shell; depending on the strength and type, it either has an effect right away, takes approx. 15 minutes to kick in or makes you slow till the next day. The real nakamals usually have a place where you drink, and then you go out and sit in the garden after to "storean" i.e. chat with other people. I guess it's sort of like the coffee-shop scene (or the bar thing, for those into alcohol) in Canada; people go there to meet people, socialise and catch-up with friends. We sat around to let kava kick-in; it didn't make me feel any more relaxed, just gave me a headache and made me sleepy 3 hours before my bedtime! Kava is also supposed to make you more acute to lound sounds and bright noises; something that I, again, was unable to notice!
After, we went to a concert by a some-nameless-Australian signer at a local nightclub. For those doing "tooba tooba" when I say nightclub, let me describe what happens at ni-Van nightclubs (atleast for as long as I was there for): there are chairs arranged in a very neat and conference-like manner; everybody is facing the stage and the lines are prefectly straight. The (expat) singer comes on stage, uses his 5-word-vocab-of-Bislama to say hello and thankyou and starts signing. And everybody, literally EVERYBODY, just sits and watches the singer. LOL! I sware, there is some applause at the end of each (stolen) song; not much laughter during the songs as to give full attention to the presenter; no teenie-boppers yelling "I love you Justin". nothing! All we had was a bunch of 4 female Australian volunteers, who have been in Vanuatu for way-too-long, getting up and "dancing" to a song or two. And that's the end of that! I heard that things get pretty nasty after midnight as the family-crowd leaves and the actual "party-ers" come, but we left way before then and so all in all, it was a good experience. That is, until we got onto the bus to get home. Since the buses usually drop you off right at the gate of the house, you have to ask if the driver wants to go to your area of the city. We asked; the guy said yes and we thought it was all good. Turns out it wasn't, because by the time we neared our house the guy was driving at a speed of 60 on sandy-roads; a place where you can never drive at more than 30! Was the guy drunk, angry that he had to take more passengers or simply a rough drivers?? We have NOO idea! Needless to say Dana and myself were freaked out of our minds and have decided to always splurge on a taxi during weekends! We met a bunch of really nice Australian volunteers while @ the club, one of them working with Youth Challenge International and the other with Oxfam; super nice and super-hospitable as we were the new volunteers in town.
I've been unable to write a blog entry, but please see a copy of the eamil I wrote to my parents. Has a rough update of my first few days here in Vanuatu.
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Assalam aleukum everbody!
firstly, extremely sorry for not being able to write any earlier! They had lots n lots planned for us since the time we arrived and am barely starting to unwind + catch-up with tasks right now.
So, a quick recap of what I've been upto for the past few days:
- Thursday night: got in @ 10:30 pm, and not only were the CUSO people there to welcome us but also my boss had come with her mom and stuff to introduce her self. That was VERYYY nice of them, since most people go to bed by 9 pm every night here (work starts @ 7:30 am, so people usually prefer to go to bed very early)
- Friday, we had to be @ the CUSO office by 10 am. From there, the local (ni-Vanuatu citizen) staff person @ CUSO took us to town, so that we could open our bank accounts and register with the Australian embassy. That took about 4 or 5 hours (we took the public transport, walked around town and had to wait in long lines @ the bank as it was pay-day). We were back @ the CUSO office by 3 pm where we had a quick session on cultural sensitivity till 4:30 pm. And @ 4:30 pm, all the other CUSO cooperants came over to meet us. There are about 8 other people from Canada (this is not including the 3 staff people who work f/t @ the oiffice). so alhamdulillah, we are in good comapny and there is tonnes n tonnes of support systems + resources available in case we are ever in need of anything
- Saturday, we had a walking tour of the town (downtown core, sort of) with a local Vanuatu person, who is also our langauge trainer. Than, we had a driving tour with another local person and my boss, who drove around the island to show us some of the closeby villages and touristy/enjoyment spots that can be reached by bus. Both of these were an amazing experience, as the tour guides gave us SOOOOO much info about the culture, place, history and so on. We came back to our guesthouse around 5 pm, at which point we met a couple from Fiji (girl is Fijian-Fijian and boy is Indian-Fijian). That was great 'cuz she invited us to have tea. After tea, we played cards (or semi-cards, sort of like ONO) and had banana-boats (choclate stuffed inside sliced bananas, all melted over bbq / charcoal fire).
- Sunday, our landlord took us for a picnic around 10 am. The landlord is the Minister of Finance for Vanuatu, and so, as expected has a lot of resources on hand and is very generous with everything as well. We went to a resort owned by the Minister's friend (some random French expat) and spent the entire day there.. they barbequed for us and people went in for a swim (I was wearing quick-dry track pants and so went into the ocean until the water was at mid-thigh and then played with the sand). After, they took us for a drive around the entire island. Turns out that the island is NOT as small as I thought.. it took us a good 3 hours to drive around the complete island, and we were able to see some REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY amazing stuff (inshallah will give more details in another email!). We came back around 6 pm, had tea with the Fijian girl, and then went to bed.. (I've started going to bed @ 9 - 10 pm, as that is what everybody ends up doing!).
- Monday (i.e. today morning) we had our first language training class, from 8 am - 11:30 am. It was an intense 3.5 hours but I have really learnt a LOT of Bislama. If we keep up the pace than I might be able to hold somewhat decent converstaionts with the locals in about 2 wks or so! After finishing up, we went to town again (costs 100 Vatu or $1 Can to go ANYWHERE in the city) and had lunch. The Minister's daughter accompanied us and showed us around town. CUSO gives all of its cooperants $250 (CAN) as settling-in allowance, to buy stuff to settle in. People usually buy all the stuff I bought with me (toileteries, bedding, some clothing, etc.) Nevertheless, there was stuff that we still needed to get (for instance, the $20 plug convertor I bought from Zellers was giving out sizzling sounds so had to buy a new one here for $7; the $40 digital compass+alarm clock phuphoo bought decides to be randomly moody so had to dish out another $12 on a new alarm clock). We also didn't have any groceries at home as the fridge wasn't working so getting food stuff took time as well. We were done by around 4:15 pm at which point Janet, the Minister's daughter, called a driver so we wouldn't have to lug our stuff back home by bus. Again, we got a tour of the city (it's amazing how different people will point out different places and thigns about the very same town!). We were home by 5 pm, at which point I washed my clothes (by hand! but pleasantly, a very fun experience :) ), had noodles with the Fijian girl and grilled cheese with Dana. And now, just finished my Bislama homework and was about to go to bed before which I wanted to write you guys an email and let you know that I am doing VERY fine alhamdulillah!!!
I can't begin to express how beautiful it is here, neither can I explain how nice and helpful the people are. you always hear that/ read that in travelouges and seems like a very cliche like thing to say, but really, the experience has been dreamy so far. This email has been pretty superficial / boring as I simply re-told the day's events, but Inshallah, in a week or two, will write something a bit more related to and expressive of the country I am in, of the people, of the current conditions and battles faced by the locals, and so on.
CUSO is giving me $1134 / mnth for living expenses. This monthly amount is seperate from our free boarding + utilities @ the Minister's guesthouse! There is really amazing, freshly-cooked meal sold in the market on a daily basis for only $2.50 for this REALLY big serving of rice with vegetables (or chicken / beef for non-vegeterians). The house is CRAZY safe; they have a night-guard on duty and four-dogs; ANDD I lock all three doors in my apartment. This, and the fact that people are VERRYYY nice here, only furthers makes me feel even safer than I sometimes feel in Canada. (yes mama, I will still take precautions though :P!). Travelling with Dana has been REALLY great; she's a VERY nice person and luckily we get along exceptionally well (she's sweet; anybody could get along with her!). As I mentioned earlier, the buses take you anywhere (i.e. drop you off infront of your house etc.) for only $1/one way. So getting around is no trouble @ all. It's pretty hot here (not as close to Pakistan, but a little bit more compared to Canada) and I've figured out the key to fighting this battle: SKIRTS :P! Really, I should've bought more skirts and only one pair of pants (instead of 7!!!) as there is no way a person can wear pants in this weather (besides, it is not culturally acceptable for women to wear trousers, esp. in the government work place). I just have to make sure that I go buy some cheap skirts in the next few days, because I don't know how long I can wear the same 4. The Kurtas get smelly after only half a day so I end up washing them as soon as I come home (more like, soaking them for the night and rinsing them / hanging them to dry before I leave in the morning). The only glitch in this entire expeirence so far has been this: my CD drive for the laptop is not working :( So, even though I have about 20 CDs with stuff on them, I can't use them at all as the CD drive can not open /detect them. I'm stupid; I should've checked before coming *DOH* Also, the sound driver isn't installed so I can't play any songs on the laptop; again something that I should have checked before coming but was stupid enough not to. This seems like a VERY easy problem to solve as I can install a driver from the net, only problem though is that the internet is very unreliable here a and it charges about $1 for every MB downloaded off the net.
I went around town to check if I could buy an external CD drive for my laptop but neither of the 2 computer shops in town carry that stuff (they've ordered it and should get some in stock sometime before Christmas I think). I'm pretty sure I can survive until then as I have tonnes of stuff to read thanks to the CUSO lending library, my study stuff for the 2 courses I'm sitll taking, the Seerah book + Quran and Dana, who bought about 10 - 15 books with her (and was STILL waayyy under the weight limit!!!). If all fails, there is the Vanuatu Cultural Centre and the Vanuatu Public Library in town; also there's Alliance Francais where I can take french classes if time permits. All that, and the fact that I REALLY want to get to know the locals here.. so all in all, the lack of a CD drive isn't really a roadblock in the way; more like a way to make sure that I don't remain in my own little world the entire time! :P
I'm sure I'm forgetting to tell you tonnes and tonnes. I've been writing a journal, albeit in point form and Inshallah, at one point, will type all that in paragraph format and email to you. But for now, I should get going as it is 10 pm already and I need to be up by 7 am).
As promised, I will inshallah try to make sure that I email you updates every week or 2 (seems like Saturdays might be easiest day to go to town to use the Internet Cafe). Please do not worry about me; this placement has truly been a blessing so far and inshallah things are going to go on like this. Please take care of yourself and make dua that I am able to make the most of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity!
Miss you like crazy and wish you were here! :(
Take care, W'salam, Fati *hugs and kisses* :)
