matanvat village, northwest malekula

1 March 2014

Just finished my “wokabaot week” on Malekula. I am currently enjoying the luxuries of Port Vila including a pressurized shower, a ceiling fan, a supermarket and most importantly a pizza with mushrooms and three different cheeses and a cheese burger. Tomorrow we will head to Epau Village to continue with the technical training part of our 9 weeks of training.

On the 26th of March–contingent on me passing a safety and security exam, health exam and Bislama exam–I will officially be sworn in as a Peace Corps Volunteer and be on my way to Matanvat Village in North West Malekula where I will serve for two years as an English Literacy teacher. This last week I was able to visit my site, meet my host family and co-workers at Matanvat Centre School and check out my house and community!

I am one of 5 new Peace Corps Volunteers assigned to Malekula. We are joining 5 current volunteers who have already been living there for at least a year. On February 22 we flew from Port Vila to Norsup airport in Malekula–about a 45 minute trip. We arrived in Norsup on a small grass landing strip and taxied over to the two small shacks that make up the airport. The airport was once a larger building but now all that remains is the skeleton of a cement building that was burned down years before.

             

My community on Malekula is a Seventh Day Adventist community which, among other things, means that no work is done on Saturdays besides going to church. So that means no trucks go between my community and the provincial center on Saturdays and because all other communities go to church on Sundays I was stuck in Lakatoro (Malekula’s provincial center) until Monday afternoon. But this was AWESOME because I got to hang with a current volunteer, Sara, and watch a few movies, eat and relax until my adventure on Monday.

Sara and I had a little adventure on Sunday too when we hopped on a bus to Lambubu to surprise Jon at his site. When we got off the bus the driver told us he would pick us up at 6pm to go back to Lakatoro……well, after surprising Jon, meeting his headmaster, touring his school and community and relaxing some more, we went to go wait for the bus. After an hour and a half…no bus. We decided to just spend the night because Jon has two extra beds and an awesome host family that was excited to meet us and feed us. We ate the most delicious homemade bread and Jon’s mama gave us some sweet woven bags! We just woke up the next morning and hopped on a truck back to Lakatoro and all was well.

Monday afternoon I hopped on a truck with Jasmine, another current volunteer, for a two hour ride down a bumpy dirt road up and around north Malekula. After crossing a couple shallow rivers and stopping for refreshments at a road market, we finally arrived in Matanvat Village.

My Mami and Dadi (as is custom to call my parents) are older so I am actually the youngest of 6 boys and 4 girls so I have more older siblings than I ever could have hoped for. Only three of my brothers currently live in Matanvat, one lives on an island just north of Malekula–Santo–another lives in New Zealand and the third goes to the University of the South Pacific. All three go fishing almost everyday so I ate fish multiple times every day I was there. I spent a lot of time with two of my sister inlaws, Trisha and Annie. Trisha is my age and teaches grades 5&6 at Matavat School. Annie has an adorable 1.5 year old boy named Ezra and taught me how to make the most delicious laplap. Lap lap is essentially grated root crop mixed with coconut milk, wrapped in banana leaves and cooked in an earth oven. Laplap is cooked all over Vanuatu but Malekula has the numbawan laplap by far. Before wrapping up the laplap you place a few big stones into the mush to create a bowl once the laplap has hardened in the earth oven. After the laplap comes out of the earth oven you remove the stones and squeeze fresh coconut milk into the laplap bowl . The milk is warmed by the heat of the laplap and becomes the most delicious dipping sauce for the laplap and tada! You’re in heaven.

Annie and my brother Mosley gave me a puppy! His name is Noa. My three year old niece, Sandrina, named him Noa after her dog who was actually named after a peace corps volunteer her papa used to know. So that’s pretty cool. I asked Sandrina to name him because she has named quite a few of the animals in my family. She named a female dog “Titti,” another dog “Loya” (lawyer), and a cat her mama bought at the market, “maket.”

I live in a big beautiful custom house made out of bamboo and thatch. My house is about a three minute walk from the ocean in the middle of a coconut plantation owned by my Dadi. I’m so close to the water I can hear the ocean from my bed. I’m pretty psyched about the whole living on a coconut plantation thing…not only will I be eating a ton of food cooked with coconut milk and be able to make my own coconut oil but my Dadi said he will teach my how to work the plantation–collecting coconuts, making coprah and moving the bulluk (cows) that are harnessed around the plantation eating all the grasses.

I can’t wait for everything that is to come once I get back to Malekula. Now it’s time to buckle down for three more weeks of training, one hectic week of swearing in and purchasing everything I could possibly need for my house and a few/many cold beers with good friends in Port Vila.