March 9th, 2020 – Lakatoro

Back to work today after the batty excitement of the weekend. Started off with an unscheduled meeting with the civil aviation authority. This was a lady visiting from Port-Vila, and wanting to meet with the province, as there’s a plan to expand Norsup airport to allow ATR’s (75 seaters) to land on Malekula. Given that the 12 seater plane I came here on was empty apart from VSA staff and one other lady, and that seems to be the norm, I’m not sure of the immediate need for ATRs to land in the province, but apparently there is an allocation in the national budget for airport expansion, and I do concede that at some point many years in the future, more than a handful of people may wish to come to Malekula at one time, so I don’t see what harm it can do. A few interesting observations from the meeting:

Firstly, while I’ve been struggling with my broken Bislama here, this lady came from Port-Vila and gave her presentation in Bislama, and I understood absolutely everything! Apparently Port-Vila Bislama is much closer to the ‘correct’ Bislama I’ve been learning from the Peace Corps online course. I suppose it’s just accent with a bit of dialect, maybe a bit like learning how to speak English in the States and then suddenly finding yourself in Glasgow, but for me it was a bit of a revelation. I’m not as rubbish at learning the language as I thought I was!

Secondly, this civil aviation lady was tremendous at her job. She could’ve presented to any boardroom I’ve ever been in, and impressed with her competence. This too was unexpected, as a) she’s the only woman I’ve met at a senior level here so far (despite good progress in gender equity, Vanuatu is still very much a patriarchal society) and b) everyone else I’ve met professionally here has been adequate at their job, some moreso than others, but up until today no-one had that extra something which would allow Vanuatu to compete on the world stage. She did. She reminded me a bit of my sister-in-law Kaisu in that way. I made sure to go up after the meeting was over and tell her that I thought her presentation was terrific, as it’s always worthwhile to give praise when due.

Then we had a few more meetings, and spent the rest of the afternoon driving round Lakatoro stopping off at various businesses to schedule meetings for later this week (whereas last week was meeting the various government departments, this week the plan is to meet with the private sector industry participants). The good news is this meant we got to drive past a plantation-run general store out near the airport, where I’d heard from Wayne that they sell the cheapest beer on the island. It is indeed true, although they’re running low on stock since Wayne’s last visit, so would only sell me a case of 24 beers rather than individual bottles. I caved in to their strongarm sales technique, and picked myself up a case of Tusker beer.

Later on, as we stopped off at another store, I once again decried the fact that here we were standing in the middle of a coconut plantation, and they were only selling coconut oil imported from Fiji. We are in an island archipelago with some of the richest fishing waters in the world, and yet the shelves only stock tins of tuna from the Solomon Islands and Indonesia. The mamas at the market sell peanuts by the bucketful, but the only peanut butter you can buy on the shops is Chinese peanut butter, with extra sugar, salt and Palm oil. As I was ranting about the peanut butter, the driver looked at me, and said, “but it isn’t easy making peanut butter”. I gasped. I corrected him, telling him it was indeed very easy, all you needed to do was crush the peanuts in a blender. I carried on with my rant, saying how Vanuatu is worried about its significant unemployment rate – if someone wanted to set up a business, all they needed to do was buy a blender, stick some peanuts in it, and hey presto, peanut butter. The driver called my bluff there and then, saying he was tempted to do exactly as I was saying, could I promise him that it was really that easy to make peanut butter? I must admit, as you regular readers of this blog may recall, I had tried to make peanut butter early on in my stay on Malekula, and it hadn’t really been successful, so when faced with this guy seemingly wanting to jack in his job as a government driver to follow my advice and set up a peanut butter business, I started to think I may have spoken too soon. So I told him I would go back to my house tonight, I would shell some peanuts, put them in my blender and then tomorrow he could taste my peanut butter and tell me whether he thought it was a winning plan or not. The only slight hiccup is that a few days ago my cheap Chinese blender had sheared off the nut holding the blades to the motor, but I was hopeful a superglue repair job might hold up. I have also had a sneaking suspicion since my last attempt at making peanut butter that raw peanuts aren’t the right starting point, and instead I should get the ones from the market that the mamas have already cooked in their shells in a drum over the fire.

So I picked up a couple of bags of cooked peanuts this time, and set to work shelling them.

I added them to the blender, and started grinding them up. They made a sawdust-like powder, similar to last time, but unfortunately no peanut butter. I added a little coconut oil, and then a little more and carried on whizzing. I was just about to give up when suddenly, the peanut butter started to smooth out, and lo and behold, something resembling peanut butter was forming! I was just getting excited when the superglue gave way under the effort, and the blender malfunctioned. But I had a trick up my sleeve! I decided to use the coffee grinding attachment which had come as a freebee with the blender. It only has two blades rather than the blender’s four, but it wasn’t broken, so was worth a shot. After some messy transferring of half-blended peanut butter, I was able to finish grinding it. I’m pleased to say the result is two-thirds of a jar of mighty fine peanut butter. The taste is sensational.

Honestly, it feels really great to have had my bluff called, and then at least to have something to show for it. There was a bit of me that felt under threat, as in: Here I was telling these guys how they should be making money, and when called to prove it, I would actually find it was harder than I made it out to be, because I was just a desk-jockey who had never gotten his hands dirty and made something, so had no idea of what was actually needed. But now I have proven my case, my words aren’t just hollow. Should you see gourmet Vanuatu peanut butter on a supermarket shelf near you in the years to come, remember that it all started right here today!