Escape Logistics

Feb 14th, 2020 (Valentine’s Day) – Lakatoro

So today I had my first day at work. It wasn’t too exciting, I just spent the day reading through dozens of policy documents, all of which will feed into the investment policy for Malampa province, which is one of my assignment goals.

In the above photo, that’s pretty much my entire office, which is across the entryway from Kevin’s (my counterpart). I’ve never had my own private office before, and quite like it, apart from the ants.

The office location is on top of a hill, and all the government buildings are grouped together in a sort of government compound. It’s no surprise that they are in the nicest part of town, and the grounds are well kept with some beautiful trees dotted around.

Then after work, I picked up a few more things from the market, which is at its busiest on Fridays, as most of the island closes for the weekend. I came home and hung my mozzie net. There was one here, but it didn’t reach to the ground, so I kept having to try to tuck it under the mattress, which wasn’t successful. My new one is great, though. And then I rose to my self-imposed ‘made in Vanuatu’ challenge, and cooked myself dinner using only local ingredients.

It was pretty successful, although those yams are pretty flavourless, and taste like great big blobs of dried starch – I think it would have been better if I’d diced them into much smaller cubes so they could pick up more of the lime flavour. Ah well, next time I’ll know. Particularly impressed with how spicy the fresh chilli was – I only used a single one out of my bag of about 50, and it was plenty hot enough. Don’t know how I’ll get through the whole bag before they rot! The green beans were the biggest winner of the day, tasting fresh and sweet.

Not too sure what I’ll be doing for the weekend, although missing my darling wife so much this Valentine’s Day, so tonight I’m going to extend my data allowance and see if I can stream a romantic movie, wishing she were here with me.

Feb 13th, 2020 – Lakatoro

Whilst here, I keep on venting my frustration to others that although the markets are awash with fresh produce, going into any store one is presented solely with processed goods (coconut oil, peanut butter, pineapple juice) which have been imported. It’s crazy to see the locals paying 600 vatu for a carton of Del Monte pineapple juice, when the mamas across the road are selling fresh pineapples for 50 vatu each. They grow coffee both on the islands of Tanna and Aore, a mere 10 mins flight away, a few hours by boat, and yet the only coffee you can buy on Malekula is Nescafé or some Indonesian brand called Indocafé.

So today, after witnessing this for the umpteenth time, I thought enough is enough, and I took a decision: whilst on Malekula, I’m going to try to survive purely on produce made/grown in Vanuatu. To that end, I went shopping at the market, and bought:

And I was pleased to track down a factory where they make coconut oil, along with nangai and tamanu oils (I hadn’t heard of these last two, and they were more expensive – I might try them some other time). All up, my shopping including the coconut oil cost me around 1500 vatu, or $15 USD. I don’t know whether I’ll be able to stick with this regime all the time, as honestly the economy is so ridiculously import-heavy here, but I can be pretty stubborn, and really want to make a go of it. It doesn’t seem right to be offering investment advice on how the island can produce and export more while simultaneously chowing down on Maggi Pot Noodles and Oreo cookies. It also should be beneficial for my health, and significantly cheaper. I’ll keep you informed of my success (or not) as the assignment progresses.

Separately, while I am trying to eat only made in Vanuatu goods, it turns out Vanuatu is trying it’s best to eat me. Those of you who follow me on Facebook will have seen my spider photo, so I shan’t reproduce it here. I also was bitten on the heel tonight by what I’m told by the cheerful neighbour was probably a Vanuatu Giant Centipede:

And then my left buttock is peppered with a few dozen itchy bites from some insect – I suspect bedbugs from one of the places I started in Santo. Fortunately for you, I’ll spare you the photo of them!

Feb 12th, 2020 – Lakatoro

So I’ve finally made it to the village of Lakatoro, on the island of Malekula, where my assignment is to be based!

It was a very sunny day, temps well into the 30s, but with all the water about after the last few days, I can honestly say I’ve had drier steam baths, and so the apparent temperature was well into the 40s.

I had a relaxed breakfast on the balcony of the digs I had been in for the last few days, and then Brigitte came to pick me up to take me to Santo airport.

This time, there was no stopping us! We checked in, weighing ourselves again, and after a few hot hours wait, we got to board the plane! A twin-otter, it was the smallest plane I’ve ever flown on. The flight was only fifteen minutes long, making it the shortest flight I’ve ever been on, too. So many firsts in one day!

Kevin is my counterpart. He works for the Provincial Government of Malampa, and it is therefore alongside and with him that I’m going to be working. He seems a solid chap so far, and I’m really looking forward to getting to know him better.

Kevin apologised, but he had to do some work, so he took us to my lodgings, and then Brigitte gave us a walking tour of the village of Lakatoro. I’ve taken quite a few photos, but the village is quite spread out through the jungle, so it’s not easy to capture in a single photo.

The road from the airport and through the village is tarred – it was sealed last year, apparently, financed and built by the Chinese.

After exploring the town, we went for a meal with the only other two VSA volunteers on Malekula, Dave and Andrea, wine growers from Marlborough who as I understand it are trying to help a farming project here on the island. I look forward to getting to know them, although after the coming weekend they are returning to NZ for a couple of weeks to attend a wedding, so I’ll be the only VSA on the island, which is both a touch scary and exhilarating.

Jen and H are leaving for a holiday with Nana and Grandpa in Cuba today. I’m missing them sorely. I guess I’ll be busy over the next couple of days settling in, so at least that will take my mind off them. Further blog postings to follow as I discover new things here!

Feb 9th, 2020 (7th Wedding Anniversary) – Luganville

Those of you who have been following closely may recall that today I was supposed to go to Malekula. Well there was a good bit of tropical rain yesterday, and this morning in particular the sheer volume of water falling from the sky had me pretty awestruck. There’s been a tropical cyclone, cyclone Uesi, brewing in the neighborhood – it’s forecast to miss most of Vanuatu and strike New Caledonia in the coming days. But while that means Vanuatu is by and large out of the danger zone when it comes to destructive winds, we are getting a dumping of precipitation from the periphery of the nascent cyclone like you wouldn’t believe.

So faced with this weather, I sent a message to Brigitte asking whether we were still due to fly out or not. She initially said not, as the plane had flown in from Vila this morning, had tried to land on Santo three times, then given up and gone back to Vila to refuel. But then she showed up at the front door, and said that the plane had refueled and successfully landed at Santo, so we were going to head out to the airport and load up the plane, waiting for a break in the rain to fly. The flight to Malekula is only 15 minutes, so we didn’t need much.

On arrival at the airport, we saw the plane was indeed on the runway.

It was going to be the first time I’d ever traveled in a light aircraft. At check-in, after weighing the checked baggage, the passengers then have to stand on the scales with their carry-on so the pilot can calculate the correct load!

Then we sat down at the airport café to wait for a break in the rain.

Alas, after a couple hours wait, we were told it wasn’t going to happen today, and that we’re going to have to try again tomorrow. On the plus side, I didn’t really fancy spending a night in the place I had been all week, as it isn’t really fit for spending more than a couple of nights, so I mentioned it to the programme managers, and they agreed to find me somewhere more pleasant to stay. I’m now at a place which is much less cell-like, and feeling much more human as a result.

And I’m told NZ won the cricket, so it’s all looking positive, despite the rain.

Feb 8th, 2020 – Luganville

So having received a couple of comments from the cheap seats about how cushy my travels are sounding (no finger-pointing, hey Aunt Lynn, Mother Dearest, and others…), I figured I’d use this post to describe some of the darker sides of Vanuatu which I’ve witnessed so far. Don’t get me wrong, it is a privilege to be here, and my overall impression so far is that this is a uniquely beautiful country, but my readers need to understand that it isn’t all sunset cocktails at plush resorts.

First off, climate. Thomas, a VSA volunteer at the Santo tourist office, said he found a brochure which describes the climate here as “oppressive”, which was hardly selling it. Maybe not promotional, but the word is very apt. The combination of high temperatures and extreme humidity means every waking moment is a shower of sweat, even in the middle of the night. aircon doesn’t really exist except in a couple of exclusive locations. I’ve been trying to capture the extreme rainfall in a photo, but it is tricky to do so with a phone camera.

Put it this way, though, everything I own is damp. Toilet paper lasts about a day before disintegrating. The Bislama photocopies my teacher Gaelle gave me this week are limp and ripped. I put some biscuits on a saucer to serve to Gael the other day, and within half an hour of opening the packet, you couldn’t pick the biscuits up, as they had soaked up so much moisture they would collapse under their own soggy weight.

The constant humidity results in another problem – the local fauna. Mosquitoes thrive in this environment, and typically for about four hours in the morning and four hours in the evening (so for half the waking day), the mozzies feast on my sweet pakeha flesh. I slather on the DEET, but the sweat soon washes it away. Despite all the jabs prior to arrival, and the daily dose of malaria prophylaxis there are a number of mozzy-borne diseases which could well get me before the end of the assignment (malaria, dengue, zika, to name but a few examples). Despite recent efforts to improve waste management, rats and vermin are ubiquitous. If you hear rustling in a tree, it’s likely rats gnawing the branches to get the fruit to fall to the ground. Ants are simply everywhere. If you leave any food or even other consumables (they were all over my toothpaste) on a countertop overnight, it will be swarming with ants by morning. When I lie in bed writing this blog, they climb into the bedsheets and up my body approximately every half hour.

On the social side, I’d barely been here 24 hours before I was approached by a prostitute offering me her services. And the other day I witnessed a teenage elder sister beating her approximately 1-year old baby brother with a stick because he had toddled off in the wrong direction. VSA policy is to not intervene when faced with such situations, but I nonetheless had an internal struggle with my conscience. The attitude to domestic animal care is similarly violent.

The above are just some of the downsides I’ve experienced so far. There are others which I’m told I’ll no doubt experience before I leave, especially as tomorrow, I’m due to fly to Malekula which is more remote and inaccessible, but I’ll wait until I see them with my own eyes before sharing.

As mentioned, I’m so privileged to be here, and I’m loving my time here. But it’s important to realise that it isn’t all fun and games, and there are some things they don’t mention at the tourist office. To end on a lighter note, here’s a selfie of me still enjoying myself, despite the downsides:

February 7th, 2020 – Luganville

So I missed sending an update to the blog yesterday, as it was Waitangi Day (NZ day of colonial significance), and Trevor and Michelle had invited all the volunteers round to their house to celebrate.

Trevor had cooked up a really good dinner, but before we plated up, some good formalities took place to mark the occasion. Firstly, Wayne, as most senior person present, was selected to read out the NZ high commissioner’s speech which the high commissioner was delivering simultaneously at the high commission in Port Vila. It was a well-written speech, although to my mind it focused a little too much on the difficulties and challenges that international diplomacy hopes to overcome. This meant there was quite a lot of doom and gloom before getting to the lighter stuff.

Then followed a couple of waiata (Maori songs) led by Thomas. After that, we tucked into the delicious food (coconut curry with paratha), followed by some tropical fruit for pudding.

I had bought a bottle of that Vanuatu whiskey (see previous blog post) as a gift to say thank you to Trevor and Michelle for having us, and I cheekily asked for a taste, as I was curious to know if it was any good. It was drinkable, but not in large quantities, and you’d want to mix it with something first. I felt it tasted weaker than the (handwritten) 36% sticker on the label would suggest. I suspect it is simply distilled sugar cane, cut with water and then with food colouring and caramel flavouring added rather than actual whiskey, but hey, I’m glad I got to try it.

It was while at the Waitangi meal that Brigitte told me I wouldn’t be flying out to Malekula on Friday as planned, but that the schedule had been pushed back a couple of days, and now the plan is to leave on Sunday. A tad disappointing, as I’m eager to get started in my role, but it allowed me to get another load of laundry done before leaving for parts remote.

During supper, the rain started to come down pretty hard (it had been raining on and off the last couple of days), and then throughout the night and most of the next day, it rained and rained with a ferocity unfamiliar to those of us who don’t live in the tropics.

Fortunately, there was a brief break in the rain around sunset, which meant all the volunteers once again gathered, this time at the Deco Stop resort, which I’m told is the usual Friday night hangout. I took my togs and went for a swim, which was most refreshing.

Now it’s started raining again. Things are getting pretty wet and muddy. The other volunteers are pretty blasé about it, recounting stories of heavier rain when in other tropical locations, but I think this is a pretty extraordinary amount of water coming down no matter where you’re from. The road through town is deteriorating at such a rate that there won’t be much road left if the rain carries on like this for another week or so. So long as the plane can take me to Malekula on Sunday…

Feb 5th, 2020 – Luganville

Gaelle came to my bungalow at eight o’clock and continued her teachings. I think I’m an alright student, but it’s a pretty intense (Bislama: “ful on”) course that I’m on this week, with four hours a day of tuition. My concentration starts to wane after the first couple of hours, but Gaelle is patient and we slogged through it.

During our lunch break, we went into town and chatted away in Bislama as she showed me round the market. At some point, she asked me whether I liked “germinated coconuts” (Bislama: “navara”, as pretty much the only Bislama words which don’t have English roots are the words for local foods and plants). My blank stares prompted her to buy a bunch (half a dozen for 100 vatu, about a dollar US). Borrowing a bush knife from a market lady, she cracked one open and showed me the insides. I was expecting coconut water to spray everywhere, but it turns out the coconut water gets used up by the germinating plant, and the nut is filled with a soft, sweet flesh, which I’d describe as a less sweet cross between a marshmallow and an apple. More information on this weird, but tasty, fruit can be found on Wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprouted_coconut

After that, the rest of the day has been uneventful (yet another unsuccessful trip to the bank followed – they want more paperwork and won’t accept any digital copies), so I think I’ll populate the rest of the blog post with pictures of the local drinks I’ve been consuming in order to start refreshed and rehydrated:

Cheers all!

Feb 4th, 2020 – Luganville

Today, in the early hours of the morning, the rain started to come down. This was a relief, as it lowered temperatures significantly down to a reasonable 25 degrees. Annoyingly though, I discovered I’d forgotten my travel poncho in France. I went across the road in the morning for a Bislama lesson, and the rain was spitting down every so often during the lesson.

Our lesson was interrupted by the arrival at the resort of a big tour group – apparently the Radiance of the Seas (one of those giant cruise liners) had docked, and the resort was a coffee stop for one of their excursions.

As I bid my teacher Gaelle goodbye, she confirmed that we would have the afternoon lesson at one o’clock in my bungalow, to avoid getting interrupted by the cruise ship tourists. Possibly my Bislama comprehension was at fault, because at one o’clock she wasn’t anywhere to be seen, although in fairness the rain had started coming down really hard. I waited half an hour, then went across to the resort to check she wasn’t there. I waited 20 minutes to see if she would show up, and then gave up waiting and decided to try to get into town to open a bank account with the National Bank of Vanuatu. The rain was still bucketing down, so I put my phone, wallet and passport into a drybag (good tip from Brendan to buy one in NZ) and went and waited for a bus/taxi (the distinction between the two is vague here). Got to the bank pretty wet, and after a few minutes of waiting, at about 2:05pm, I managed to ask a cashier about opening an account. He was apologetic, but said there was a cut-off for opening new accounts at 2pm. No idea why, the bank was open for another three hours, but he said the bank’s smaller branch 500m up the road had no such cutoff.

So I walked the 500m up the road, although the rain had intensified at this point, and in the three minutes it took me to walk, I was soaked down to my underpants. Filled out half a dozen application forms, but he wasn’t able to accept my application as I’d left my visa letter at home, so I’ll have to swing by again tomorrow.

A subsequent trip to the medical clinic confirmed that there is no HepB vaccine on the island of Santo, so for my third dose due in a couple of weeks I’m going to have to figure out a way to get it from Port-Vila to Malekula. The street the clinic was on seemed quite a posh part of town with some nice houses on it.

Finally, still with wet underpants, I got a bus home only to find the following note from Gaelle:

And so I did my homework whilst eating a supper I made of chilli beans on toast. All in all, the rain, the waiting and the missed timings has lowered my spirits a bit, so I might now go to the next door nakamal (thatched kava bar) to see if they’ll sell me a beer or some kava to cheer me up.

* I will learn Bislama

Feb 3rd, 2020 – Luganville

So today, the kids in Vanuatu went back to school after a long summer holiday. It was good timing, as I too went back to school – my Bislama lessons started today.

Before I enthuse about the language, allow me to appreciate what a privilege it is to be in a position to learn it – lessons are laid on by the VSA, which is a smart move on their part. And what a setting I’m being taught in! There’s a plush resort across the road from us, and the plan was to meet in their beachfront café. Nobody has actually asked the resort if it would be ok for us to monopolise a table for the week, so I better thank them by plugging their name in this blog – they’re called the Beachfront, and so far they are the nicest resort I’ve seen on Santo. Words can’t do the beauty of this place justice, so fortunately I had my phone with me to snap some photos:

The only shame is it was brutally hot today. Temperatures were I think up to about 33 degrees, but with the humidity the apparent temperature was 41 degrees or so. Even our beachfront classroom with its sea breeze felt too hot to think straight.

As to the Bislama language, it must be one of the easiest languages to learn. The vocab is pretty much just English, but spelled as if you were phonetically trying to write with a Jamaican accent (go figure – maybe it’s just the island way). E.g. flower = flaoa, culture = kalja, coconut = kokonat, butter = bata, man = fala. They do away with any of the silent letters in English, and any consonant pairs (th, ch, sh) are simplified to a single letter. Then verb conjugation is mostly contextual, so doesn’t really change from the infinitive (mi go, yu go, hem go), and there are no verb tenses with future being indicated with “Bae” (from the English “by and by”) at the start of the sentence and “Bifo” for the past. Possession is indicated by the seemingly interchangeable words “blong/long/blo/lo”, which is also pretty much the universal preposition replacing “from” and “to”. All this simplification does seem to mean that things can get pretty vague, though, with a lot being left to context rather than precise details. This sort of fits in with the Ni-Vanuatu way of life, where precise details don’t really matter. All in all, by the end of my first day, I was speaking some slow and basic conversational Bislama, albeit with plenty of errors. Compared to when I learnt French and it took me about six months full immersion to get to the same point, it feels like an absolute win.

After my lessons, I caught the bus into town to buy a snorkel (Bislama: “windpaep”) and mask (“diving glas”) and a blender (“blenda”), as I want to make smoothies from the delicious market fruit when I get to Malekula.

Found a cheap Chinese mask and snorkel, and a cheap Chinese blender in town. Figured I should go all in at this point, so went to a Chinese restaurant for supper, but not before getting a good picture of the sunset from the small park in the centre of Luganville:

More Bislama lessons scheduled for the rest of the week, but I’ll spare you the details unless something particularly amusing crops up. Which reminds me, to finish on a good bit of trivia, the word “Bislama” comes from the French “bêche-de-mer”, meaning “sea-cucumber”. Love it.

Feb 2nd, 2020 – Luganville

Today started off very well indeed with a mighty fine coffee from one of the nearby resorts.

And shortly afterwards, Trevor came to pick me up in the VSA truck. I still love this truck, and so while Trevor was taking some cash out of an ATM, I snapped a photo:

The plan was to pick up Michelle, Wendy, and Wendy’s daughter and proceed for a drive across the island to Port-Olry, 60km away, where apparently a postcard-perfect tropical beach awaits visitors.

The drive was very pretty indeed, passing through jungle, coconut plantations, noni plantations and grassland pastures with grazing cattle. I tired taking some photos from the moving car, but with the occasional rain shower the windows were streaky and none of my photos looked very good. Towards the end of the journey, the Blue Beast’s air-con conked out, but as we were nearly at our destination, we didn’t worry about it too much.

On arrival into Port-Olry, we drove past the lunch spot so as to get to the end of the village and see the coast. Port-Olry is a french catholic settlement, and right at the end of the village is a peninsula with a school on it with an incredible playground giving right onto the beach. Cattle were grazing in the playground, keeping the grass down ahead of the new term which begins next week (I’m not sure whether they leave the cows there when term starts).

And then, disaster struck. We all piled back in to the Blue Beast, Trevor turned the ignition and… nothing. Not even the beginnings of an engine turning over. It just wasn’t starting at all.

After some hum-ing and ho-ing, we walked to a nearby house to ask if they had any jump leads. They didn’t, but they had a truck with a pretty thin rope, and offered to tow us back to the place we had earmarked for lunch, where they thought the owner might have some jump leads.

Trevor, with his background in mountaineering, volunteered to tie the knots, and the rest of us looked on with suitable concern.

Given the thickness of the rope, we figured we may as well walk to the lunch place along the beach rather than weigh the soon-to-be-towed truck down. Turns out that wasn’t a bad decision, as one strand of the rope snapped during the tow. It took us exactly the same amount of time to walk as it took them to tow the truck, and we saw that as Trevor arrived into the restaurant car park, he got a bit of momentum on a small ridge, turned the key and hey presto the Blue Beast started! Trevor parked it at the top of a small hill, and with some trepidation turned off the ignition so that we could have lunch.

The lunch place was idyllic. Turquoise blue waters contrasted with fine white sand, with a backdrop of green jungle rising from islands all about. The lunch was served in palm shacks a few metres from the water’s edge. After drinking from a fresh coconut, the top chopped off and a straw inserted, I put on my bathers and jumped in. The water temperature was bath-like. School in NZ and Australia went back last week, so although typically quite touristed, we were pretty much the only people there today.

After lunch, we were all excited to see whether the Blue Beast would start again. Trevor tried rolling her down the small hill he pad parked on, and starting her then. She burst into life, and after some celebrations all round, we gathered our belongings and started loading her up. As we were doing so, however, she coughed, spluttered, and died. We then found someone who did indeed have jump leads. No joy. We had gathered a crowd of locals all willing to help by this point, so we asked them to help us push her this way and that, to the top of the hill and down again, but nothing worked. At this point, we gave up and decided to call our emergency support back in Luganville, a.k.a. Brigitte. Brigitte was unfazed, and said she would find someone with a truck to come and give us a tow. It meant we had a couple more hours to wait, but I’ve known worse places to be stranded.

When Brigitte arrived with her friend and her friend’s truck (and Max, a very cute puppy), it was decided that to tow us all the way back to Luganville would be a massive hassle, and instead we should all hop into the friend’s truck, leaving the car at the restaurant to be serviced at some point this week by a mechanic. This was a great plan, as it meant a couple of us had to ride in the back of the truck, which in this heat is infinitely preferable to sitting in the cabin even if it is frowned upon by the VSA safety policy. It had the added bonus of getting to ride with Max at our feet.

I start my Bislama lessons tomorrow, but at least I now know the Bislama word for breakdown: “Bugarup”!