the everyday funnies

Throughout my everyday life I find myself wrapped up in many small yet hilariously unforgettable memories. These small instances often escape me when I go to write my blog posts so I wanted to take time to get some down now. This post is dedicated to cultural miscommunications, surprising amusement and the humbly unforgettable moments in Vanuatu.

*WARNING: MY SENSE OF HUMOR IS QUITE TAINTED THESE DAYS, SORI IF THESE ARE MOSTLY JUST FUNNY TO ME*

Parcel/parsol—A few months ago my mom had sent me two packages that I was really anxious to get a hold of. They contained my running shoes, more bras and about 50 of my favorite pens so clearly my attaining them was a high priority. The majority of my experiences thus far with the Lakatoro Post Office have been negative; however my relationship with the men who work there is slowly improving. Whenever I go in there I feel like they do their best to avoid eye contact because they know that when I have a package, I’m going to all I can to get my hands on it. There are been instances of them telling me they can’t find my package, and then me finding my name on a list and demanding (sweetly) that they find it. I’ve also waited over an hour for them just to come over and talk to me.

Anyway, this time I had tried to retrieve on of the packages when I was in town on a Friday but the guys said they couldn’t find it. Okay, I thought, no worries. My headmaster would be going into town on Monday and since I have my packages sent to the school post office box he would be able to grab it. Well, Monday came and when my headmaster got back from town he told me he was sorry but the guys wouldn’t let him take the packages because they couldn’t find the papers he had to sign to take the packages. Right…right…okay. Next I got Maureen to go to the post office for me. She was lucky the next day and they let her take the packages..unfortunately they had taken so long to locate them that she wasn’t able to pass them to a truck that comes by my house before they all left town for the day. At least now they were in her possession and all she would have to do was find a truck the next day.

Wednesday morning I got up at 5am to meet a truck on the road and ask them to grab the boxes from Maureen. With a confirmation from her before lunch saying the boxes had been picked up, I was excited to wait at the road that afternoon to grab them. (this is when the actual funny story begins). I made my way down to the road around 3pm. When I got down there, three boys—ages 11-14—from my family were building a small bench for people to use when waiting for trucks. They asked what I was doing and I told them that I was waiting for a truck to come drop off two “parcels” as we refer to packages in Vanuatu, except apparently they way that I pronounced parcel was more like “parsOl” and they three boys found this exceptionally hilarious. They hooted and hollered in laughter singing out “parsol parsol parsol” and also began caling me parsol. This continued for a few days and slowly died out…until I came back to site last week and all of a sudden they’re on the parsol kick once again. When I see any of them they sing out “hey parsol!” so I sing out “ooooo halo parsol” right back and they laugh uncontrollably.

The reason I put this here is because I didn’t realize how funny this little inside joke was until Kelsey came to visit and told me I should write about it. Although it might not seem all that funny to you, it’s a perfect manifestation of the simplicity of humor in this culture. Oftentimes “jokes” include straight up lying to someone about a menial topic, like telling someone you’re going to jump on a ship to Santo when you’re actually just going to Lakatoro. Sometimes the lying gets a little more involved and someone tells someone else that they just broke that person’s phone when they did nothing of the sort. I often get wrapped up in these “jokes” (lies) but am most often the one who ends up ruining the joke because I just can’t lie to someone and say that their phone is broken and they need to buy a new one. However, I love that a simple slip of the tongue became an inside joke which became a stronger friendship with these boys who are in that “too cool for school” or a crazy anti stage.

Night weeding—the other night I was getting ready for bed when I heard someone talking outside of my house. I could tell that they were taking on the phone and figured they came over here so that they could have a more private conversation. Of course this was no problem but I did go outside to see if they wanted to just come sit down on the bench outside my house. When I walked around the corner I saw my Tawi LItiean sitting on the coral underneath my clothesline pulling out the forest of weeds that had begun to grow there. She was talking on the phone but she was also vigorously pulling out weeds, cleaning my yard for me.

I initiated an awkward half conversation trying to tell her she didn’t need to weed my yard, she could just sit and chat but she wasn’t hearing it and continued to storian and pull my weeds. I had already showered for the night and was just waiting for my dinner to be ready but I couldn’t just let her sit there weeding my yard and not help so I sat down and started pulling weeds too. This continued for maybe fifteen minutes until she finished her conversation and I told her how silly she had been to weed my yard in the dark. I thanked her immensely, but told her I felt bad that she felt like she had to do that just because she was sitting there. She explained to me that it wasn’t even something she thought about, she sat down to storian with a friend and saw that my weeds were getting out of control so she just started pulling them, providing yet another example of how things that I consider work are just simple tasks to Ni-Vanuatu people. In no way did she feel like she was burdening herself my weeding my yard, she was just there and felt like helping out. 

Spin-kids—once in awhile I’ll come out of my house to find a group of kids just spinning in circles…literally just spinning in circles. Eventually they stop spinning and try walking, this is the truly entertaining part.

Samio the vampire—My sister’s 4 year old son, Samio, is a pretty wild child. From inside of my house I frequently hear people sing out “TABU SAMIO” and often this warning is followed by more warnings and sometimes tears. Other times, he’s just a little smart alec. The other day I saw him walking around wearing shorts that had one side totally torn up, as if the one side had gone through a wood chipper. When I asked him what happened to his trousers he turned to me and said, very straight faced, that he just felt like breaking them. Another time, he was running around with Ezra and a few other little ones and when I asked them what game they were playing Samio turned to me and said, “WE’RE VAMPIRES,” and showed me his teeth. I’m not sure where they even learned about vampires but I try to make sure they don’t catch me off guard.

*totally inoffensively, I find this hilarious because I watched an SDA DVD on the signs that the world is coming to an end and one of the warning signs is an increase in magical and vampire activity 

“NANI BAE HEMI KAKAI YU”—my tawi Ani (mother of smol Laura and Ezra) has one of my favorite Vanuatu styles of child management. Whenever Ezra sheds his famous crocodile tears, which happens often (usually if someone steals the rope he likes to hold when he sucks his thumb, or if he’s just tired), Ani likes to scare him into being quiet by telling him that if he doesn’t stop crying, one of our goats will come bite him.

NW Kula Famous—I recently learned that one of my host grandpas is the last man in Northwest Malekula to use a gun to kill a man. This happened about 30 years ago (of course actual dates are unknown), he served jail time and now he’s just living life like a normal elderly person. If you met him you wouldn’t think he had it in him to kill a man, mostly because he has a sweet little smile and can’t really talk. I’ve tried to get the details of the shooting from various family members but the story is still unclear. If I do find out, I’ll be sure to let you know. The funny part of this story is that my brother told me about our Abu killing a man about three separate times it seems to be a very important piece of family history.

Homeward bound, the solo mission—a couple of weeks ago the new group went out to their future sites for their walk about week just like we did. There is going to be a new volunteer in Womol, where Jasmine was and where I visited a couple of times, which means she will be staying over at my house once in a while. Since it was her first time hiking down from Womol, I walked to Espigel’s Bay to meet her at the bottom of the hill and walk back to Matanvat together. For my walk over to Espigel’s Bay, I didn’t want to ask any of my family members to join because we were in the middle of my Mami’s 10-day memorial so instead, I just made sure my dog, Spike, was up for an hour walk down the road.  

Spike and I had a great walk to Espigel’s Bay together. An hour later I sat down under a tree for some shade and Spike ran off with some dog friends. Before long the new volunteer, Jenny, came down the hill and we decided it was too hot to walk, we would find a truck to charter instead. A truck came pretty quickly and we hurried into the back and were off. Fifteen minutes later we arrived at my house and not long after that I realized…I completely forgot Spike. I went and told one of my brothers who just laughed and said Spike would find his own way back. Jenny and I went down to the ocean for a swim and by the time we got back Spike had returned! Numbawan dog right there