Vanuatu

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.

posted by faa-T @ 12:48 PM