March 7th, 2020 – Lakatoro

So yesterday, the president had invited me to join him for an election rally this morning. He hadn’t told me precisely what time, but had asked me at what time I usually get up. I had told him 7am, and at 7:03am he pulled up in front of my house (not in his official truck, as that would be a breach of campaign rules, apparently) and honked the horn, yelling that we were running late for the rally. I was still in bed, and jumped up, got dressed and out the door in a couple of minutes, and by the time I’d rubbed my eyes and properly woken up, we were racing through the jungle in a pickup truck en route to an election campaign rally.

On arrival at the village where the rally was being held, a pretty remote jungle outpost, it turned out we weren’t late after all, everyone was just sort of milling around. They were all wearing the party colours (fluorescent orange) – I was literally the only one there not wearing orange. I asked one of the guys hanging about why he was a supporter of the party, and he said they gave him a joining ‘donation’ of 1,000vatu, which was more than the other parties.

Apparently, a young woman had died earlier in the morning, and so mourning villagers had little appetite to come and listen to a political rally. After about an hour of deliberation, the organisers decided that the rally would be postponed.

Getting back into the truck, the President told me not to worry, he had a contingency plan. Given we had come all this way, he would take me to visit the manager of a nearby cacao plantation, that way our journey wouldn’t be wasted.

And so we drove even deeper into the jungle, until we came across a substantial cacao plantation, which to my untrained eye looked like yet more jungle. Apparently it is the largest cacao plantation in Vanuatu.

We drove to the plantation farmstead, and met with the manager. My French was once again very useful, as the manager, although of Ni-Vanuatu descent, had left when young, gone to France, joined the military and then the special forces, and had now come back to settle in the islands. The president introduced me, and invited me to ask plenty of questions for the sake of the investment policy I’m here to help with. I hadn’t expected to conduct a work-related interview, but was able to improvise, and fired out plenty of questions over the course of a couple of hours asking him about his work on the plantation, which the manager responded to positively, I think mainly enjoying the way that he was having a conversation in fluent French for the first time in many months. Fascinating chap, clearly one of these ex-military men of action, apparently content to live in an exceedingly remote location, and exactly the sort of guy who could competently run a plantation business in the middle of the jungle. Although that is also the assessment of some of the island’s other plantation owners, so the President tells me he may well be poached and go to work elsewhere before long, which would be a shame, as he is doing good work where he is at the moment.

Leaving the plantation, the President asked me if I’d ever tasted raw cacao fruit, and when I said I hadn’t, he pulled over the truck and we got out to taste some cacao.

The beans are laid to dry ferment under polyethylene sun tunnels, and the slimy stuff gradually dries off, at which point the beans are exported off the island, and at the destination they will be roasted, ground and milled with sugar to make chocolate! The plantation’s biggest customer was up until recently KitKat (Nestlé), but they are very excited to have just signed a contract to provide cacao to Valrhona, which is testament to the quality of their beans.

Returned to the village, I invited the president back to my place for lunch. I reheated some leftover sweet potato curry, and we enjoyed it with some cool beers. I then retired for a nap, but got up to start cooking as I had invited Dave and Andrea (other VSA volunteers, who have been away these last couple of weeks) over for dinner. As I was cooking, I noticed a nasty smell in the kitchen coming from near the fridge. At first, I figured it was just the usual nasty smell wafting in from outside. The neighbour’s pig pen is only a few yards away, and the Chinese farmer behind the house often fertilises his vegetable patch with human sewage, both of which create interesting odours on any given day. As the smell didn’t dissipate when the wind blew, however, I started to think that it was probably something in my kitchen. Then, upon seeing a big fat fly buzz round the kitchen (even though the kitchen is reasonably well screened), I suddenly remembered the rat trap. I had set it and baited it a couple of weeks back, and although I had checked it the first few mornings, I had discovered nothing and seen little evidence of rats, so had paid it no more attention. Sure enough, there was a big one trapped in it, and he’d been there I reckon for about 2/3 days, and was starting to decompose in the heat.

The previous volunteer who occupied the house, Wayne, had had the foresight to tie the trap to a kitchen unit with a piece of string, which was necessary, as this guy had evidently put up a fight after he’d been snapped, and the trap had moved a couple of feet from where I’d left it. I disposed of the carcass, and bleached the whole side of the kitchen. Have now re-set the trap, awaiting its next victim.