Vanuatu

**Week 3**

- Monday, Nov 13: After finishing the last language training session, we headed over to the Vanuatu National Museum for a tour by another CUSO volunteer who's working on digitalising the media at the cultural centre and library. A lot of agencies seem to be doing a lot of good work around retaining and documenting the varying cultural practices from all the islands of Vanuatu. Our tour started off with a quick intro about sand drawings; how they are used as a platform to communicate news about important events or to tell stories to the rest of the people. We were only able to see three or four of the drawings, but certainly a VERY interesting experience.

- Tuesday, Nov 14: Today was supposed to be my first day at work; not exactly "intense" as I signed my job contract and then got to be in the staff picture, without having worked for Shefa for even a minute! After that, we had afternoon CUSO orientation session about the independance struggles of West Papua, an area colonized by Indonesia. Fuller details after, but needless to say that it was an embarrasement to find out that fellow Muslims were doing exactly what we are fighting against in Iraq, Afghanistan and all the other areas taken advantage of in the past; what's worse is that within the Muslim community, there is no awareness about the kind of atrocities being committed by the governement so there is no comdemantion from our side. Anyway, after that went to a place for Pizza, La Pizzeria, and have to say the food was extremely extremely extremely horrible. It took them a good 55 minutes to get my food and once it came, it was so bad that it was impossible to get it past my tongue even though I hadn't eaten the entire day. Somebody once said that the idea of Fast Food doesn't make sense here, and I have to completely agree: either the "Fast Food" has been pre-cooked the previous day and merely warmed when we order, OR, if they cook it, it takes them a good 40 minutes to serve.

- Wednesday, Nov 15: We only have to go to work for half-a-day this week, which is a good thing keeping in mind that my counterpart didn't show up to work today and so for the entire 3.5 hours, I was locked out. Not an entirely bad thing since I just walked around and chatted it up with people; I love the fact that people take the time to talk or "storean" with you.. says something about life priorities. Later in the evening, was invited for dinner to an Australian volunteers house who we met at Trader Vics. Super nice buncha girls!

- Thursday, Nov 16: work - did nothing, again. We're still having half-day orientation sessions and had one on women's issues at the CUSO office today. It's amazing the kind of similarities that exist between a south pacific country like Vanuatu and a South Asian country like Pakistan: in both places, custom or religion are used to justify such irrational things as domestic abuse and so on. And in both communities, the lack of women representation in leadership circles stems from the fact that the public sphere is considered the man's domain while the woman's domain is the house. However, an interesting explanation of how "kastom" in Vanuatu defends this: even if the men are the ones to speak and decide in the public domain, it is the women back at home that tell their partners, caregivers, etc what to say or vote against/for in the "nakamals." I'd be really interested in doing a compare-and-contrast between the following:
(1) chiefs (in Vanuatu) and feudel lords (in Pakistan)
(2) young women in pakistan and young women in pacific
(3) The struggles of Vanuatu, 20 years post-colonization vs. the struggles of Pakistan, 60 years post-colonization

- Friday, Nov 17: Some random guy at work came up to me and told me he needed help creating a budget; later I found out that meant "you go make my budget!" :P Either way, seeing as that I had already said yes, I decided to do it "just this once." Not such a bad thing, because making the budget consisted of merely getting quotes from around town and so, that's all I did in the entire day: window shopping. After, I went for jummah in a nearby village, Mele. It's got an approx. population of 50+ muslims on this island; the only two other islands with Muslim population are Tanna and Santo, the island with the second town. I'm told Santo has an approx. Muslim population of 200! Interesting fact: Islam was originally brought to Vanuatu not by Jamaat (aka Islamic missionaries) but was discovered by a local Nivan, resident of Mele village, who had gone to India for bible studies. This was all the way back in the 1970's and since then, Islam has spread through families and close acquantainces.. this girl told me that her *entire* family converted in 1998 and since then, they've been sending one family member every 1 or 2 years, to go to places like Malaysia or Pakistan, for their "New Muslim / Muslimah" courses. Keeping in mind that expenses are comparable to that of a small town in Canada, but the average monthly salary is only $250, this move to send EVERY member is a pretty huge commitment / feat!

In the evening, I attended a hip-hop competition, organized by Wan Smol Bag, the only organization that works to help the growing percentage of urban youth. It was a different experience, especially coming from North America, since the *entire* audience was just sitting and staring, and made sure only to clap at the end of each act. It's good that they take from the anti-opression background that hip-hop stems from, but sucks that the kids end up idealizing people like snoop dog, without acknolwedging their personal history of violence. All in all, the entire competition was amazingly non-vulgar and family-oriented for 99.9% of the time.

- Saturday, Nov 19: Went to Eton beach with a long-term CUSO volunteer; really nice and caring couple, who I earlier didn't have a very high opinion of because of their tendency to get over-defensive of their kid. It just amazes me how the best of people can become the worst of territorial and competitive beings when it comes to their children vs. another child of the same age. Either way, it was a great trip, white the whitest sand-beaches I have ever seen and *excellent* swimming. Later in the evening, we had invited the Australian volunteers (Post: Nov 15, 2007) over to our place for a small bbq. Unfortunately, the entire evening didn't go as planned as Dana and myself underestimated the amount of time kumalas and yams take to cook in the open fire (so should've bioled them before hand). Then, there were the dogs: these security dogs kept coming up to where the bbq was and me, being super-scared of dogs, kept leaving getting up and leaving my seat. By the end of the hour, I was annoyed because of the dogs, tired because of the swimming and definately not enjoying the not-so-much-cooked food. All that would've been fine had the guests had fun, but that wasn't the case: they obviously could tell that things weren't going as intended and ended up leaving early! :( To add to this, we had invited the landlord's daugther, Janet, to come and have dinner with us but there was some sort of communicatino breakdown because she ended up sitting *outside* and *alone* while we were eating/chatting it up inside. ARGH! This eternal state of confusion is getting a bit annoying!

posted by faa-T @ 6:32 PM