February 21st, 2020 – Lakatoro

Today marks one week since I’ve been on Malekula. It feels a lot longer. As if to make sure that my first week wasn’t too intense, today was a public holiday. Father Lini Day, in remembrance of one of the champions of independence. I was hoping for parades and festivities of some sort, but on Malekula it just meant everything closed.

Yesterday the council held its first tri-annual cabinet meeting, and as my counterpart Kevin was giving a presentation about some potential investors visiting the island next week to the council, and my assignment goal of writing the province’s investment policy was an agenda item, we were both invited to observe the cabinet meeting.

It was conducted in Bislama, the only common language of all the councilmen (a couple are francophones, most are anglophones). Shortly before lunch, we left the room to discover my office had been turned into a refreshment zone. I was pleased to see the refreshments were all local produce, not an Oreo in sight!

Unfortunately after lunch, it appeared that the refreshment ladies hadn’t cleaned much of the refreshment mess and then gone home, so my office was covered in fruit peels and fruit juice stains which had brought the ants back again (I had managed to get rid of them during the week with a liberal application of bug spray). Nonetheless I got a bit of work done and then called it a day. Walking back home, about a 10 minute walk from the office, I decided to go for a walk to see some new surroundings and stretch my legs, as I hadn’t had any exercise all week. I walked a couple of km only to Litslits wharf, hoping there might be a bit more to Lakatoro then I’d seen so far, but nope, that’s pretty much it, the rest is dense jungle.

This morning, after a few household chores – had to do my laundry in the sink – still feeling the urge for both exercise and exploration, I decided to try to get to the beach – it is back near the airport, about 7km away. I figured I’d wave down a passing truck, which is the way public transport works here, but it being a public holiday, there weren’t any trucks out and about on Malekula’s one road. So I ended up walking in the hot hot sun, and was very glad to finally get to the beach when I did. It was pretty spectacular, and I had my reef shoes (good tip, Brendan), and snorkel, so I went out snorkeling along the reef. Wonderful snorkeling, comparable to the Red Sea reef where I learned to scuba dive. My phone isn’t waterproof, so no underwater photos, I’m afraid.

On the way back, I was fortunate enough to not have to wait too long before a truck came, which I flagged down. Being the old man I was, I had to lower the rear tailgate to get in – the locals just vault over the side!

Once home, I decided to try to prepare some corn I bought at the market a few days back. Vanuatu corn is not like sweetcorn – it looks the same, but even if boiled for hours it remains hard and not especially pleasant. I had looked online and some suggested soaking it for a few hours with a spoonful of sugar might help. I didn’t have any sugar (only imported sugar can be bought here, despite cane apparently growing plentifully), so decided to crush a banana into the water instead. It didn’t soften the corn, but I don’t think sugar would’ve done either. Whilst threshing the corn, though, and removing it from the stems, I thought I might be able to use the stems and the husks to fashion coathangers. There is a long hanger rail along one wall of my bedroom, but I’ve checked every shop in the village, and none sell coathangers, so I am unable to hang my shirts.

I made three of them, and then ran out of corn stems. Have about 8 shirts to hang altogether, so might need to buy some more corn, although I wish it wasn’t so nasty to eat. The worst is that it looks like the most delicious sweetcorn – the disappointment reminds me of when they served us liver at boarding school, which looked like a delicious well-cooked steak but tasted instead like institutionally cooked liver.

Although I used sunscreen when snorkeling, I wasn’t able to reach down to my lower back, and forgot to cover the backs of my legs, so have a mild bit of sunburn. But I was able to lift my spirits with a long phone call with Mother, so that was a good end to the day, even if it does hurt a bit to lie down.