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Month: February 2020

All the Vs: Vanuatu, VSA, and Volunteers

All the Vs: Vanuatu, VSA, and Volunteers

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Feb 1st, 2020 – Luganville

Today was an orientation day to help us new arrivals get our bearings on the island of Santo. Trevor, Michelle (Trevor’s wife) and Brigitte came to pick up Wayne (other Volunteer) and I in the bright blue VSA pickup truck. Trevor’s saying that as VSA Programme Manager, he wants to sell the truck and get something else, but I have yet to hear him give a good explanation as to why. The truck, a Toyota Hilux, is great – big and beasty, with enough ground clearance to be able to negotiate Santo’s dirt roads. I’m championing it, and have a week or so to try to change Trevor’s mind.

Brigitte took us round the different kinds of shops on Santo to give us a feel for the place – a French bakery, a cheap import food mart, a couple of local supermarkets and the fresh produce market.

The volunteer crew outside the LCM, Santo’s nicest (also priciest) supermarket.

I was pretty disappointed to see that the cheap import market was selling coconut cream made in Thailand and coconut oil made in Fiji. At the LCM, Santo’s most upmarket store, they had a section specifically for “made in Vanuatu” products, but it was prohibitively expensive. Seems such a shame that it is cheaper for them to import products. At least the fresh produce market was all local. The fresh market didn’t have nearly as much variety of produce as the one we had seen in Port-Vila, and I’m told the one in Lakatoro, where I’m going next week, is much better too. Having seen the beautiful avocados in Port-Vila, I was disappointed not to see any for sale here – I really hope there are avos in Lakatoro when I get there, as I was planning to eat them in abundance.

“Made in Vanuatu”. Great products, but at a prohibitive cost.
A view of downtown Luganville. Pretty sleepy. I’m told this is the only tarred road on the island, running through the town and along the coast

Then we went and visited the VSA HQ in Santo. It’s in a nice compound, along with a few provincial government buildings and the red cross HQ, but the office is in a pretty tiny room – it has served Brigitte well, but now Trevor’s arrived they’re looking for more space.

Trevor and Wayne at the entrance to VSA HQ.
Inside the VSA office. Not much room.

Then, at the end of the day, we met at a Thai restaurant with other volunteers on Santo: Tom, who’s doing work for the Vanuatu department of tourism, and Wendy, who I think was working on something education-related. They’d both been here a while, and had mastered speaking Bislama. I start my Bislama lessons on Monday – really looking forward to it!

All the VSA volunteers currently on Santo. For privacy reasons, I’ve obscured Wendy’s daughter’s face.

Wendy has an adopted daughter here who was also at dinner. She was really polite and well-behaved, and made me miss my darling sausage back home, so after dinner I snuck outside and took advantage of the good phone reception in the centre of town to videocall home, only to find H had gone and made himself popcorn for breakfast while mummy was in the shower!

A popcorn feast!