Almost there...again...

So now that I'm an official volunteer it's time to head to my official site, where it's just me and a school and a village and eventually, as soon as they come back from their 2-month Christmas hiatus, a bunch of students. It is almost officially time for me to figure out what the next two years of my life are going to be like... I leave the capitol next Wednesday and then I head to the island of Tanna, home of the country's most famous active volcano as well as the nation's only coffee-growing operation. I will happily readjust back from the instant coffee I've become accustomed to over the past 2 months in training...

So Vanuatu is...beautiful. The weather is beautiful. The ocean is beautiful. The sunsets are beautiful. Yesterday afternoon my friend and I sat on the pier in Port Vila with our feet hanging over the water, watching the sunset while devouring the most deliciously sweet pineapple that came straight from the garden of my host family, and the whole moment was just so beautiful and also so typical. And then I came back to my hotel and had a moment of panic as I realized how much stuff I have to take with me to my site this coming week...and then I asked myself, of all the things to take, why did I buy myself a food-cover? If you don't know what a food cover is, it's like a little net to put over your idling food so the flies don't swarm all over it. I don't even have a pot to cook food in, so why exactly would I need this little net? I'm not sure yet, but I did buy it. And why did I buy a thermos? I don't know about that one either, but I found out that the chinese shops take returns... And I'm also pretty much out of money for the month...but the good news is that #1: I'm getting an advance on my next month's living allowance so I'll be able to make it to Tanna and #2: I'm getting a host family in my village in Tanna, which means that although I'll have my own house to sleep in, I'll get to eat island food with my family every day. And more importantly, I most assuredly won't starve. That is one wonderful thing about Vanuatu: there is no shortage of food. Hunger is actually not a problem here. I have never before heard of a country without a hunger problem, until I came to Vanuatu. And apparently there is more than enough island food to go around all 83 islands. 27 kinds of bananas alone. Lots of roots: taro, manioc, sweet potato, yam. Lots of fruits: November starts the season of mango and pineapple. And full up coconuts all year long. My favorite? Island cabbage (imagine a hybrid of spinach and chard) boiled in coconut milk. Delish. If anyone wants to come visit me, I can promise you that you will eat like a champ. Especially when every plate that gets returned to anyone gets returned full of food...And meat, when it's offered, comes directly from the yard or the field nearby. Unless of course, it comes from a tin, in which case it doesn't come from Vanuatu at all, but China or the Solomons or Papa New Guinea. I haven't really figured out why it is here that the only Walmart experience available when it comes to selection of shelf products, is that of tin meat. An average shop in Vila probably has about 30 kinds of tinned meat and fish; a village shop probably has about 5 or 10 (even though the shop might not have coffee or milk powder or flour or eggs...but you can bet your life that you will find tin meat). Needless to say, I am not exactly fond of the tinned meat options. On the the other hand, all the island food-- fruit, veggies, meat, all of it-- it's all 100% organic and delicious. At times though, I can't help fantasizing over my greatly missed dishes form home: my mama's baked tofu, Linda's kale cakes, “Jessica-style” mac n' cheese, It's a Beautiful Pizza, field greens, salsa, any IPA whatsoever...those are hard to come by so many miles away :)

So now as I prepare to go to my site, it feels like finally preparing for the real Peace Corps experience. Training in the village has taught me the language and a whole lot about the culture here, which could not be more different than American culture. In a lot of ways I feel like I have relearned how to live, and now I get to spend 2 years living that way here in a Vanuatu village. And that honestly sounds pretty good to me. I'll actually take the time to do all the things that really matter on a day to day basis when it comes to living- like eating and sleeping and cleaning, and all that goes into doing that when you don't have a stove or a shower or a sink or a washing machine or a refrigerator or a store or electricity. Actually, I heard my house WILL have 24-hour electricity...so that part I only got to experience in training. I'm pretty sure I'll enjoy my electricity. At any rate, it is a pretty liberating opportunity to live this way. And hey, at least I'll have my food net :) The people are pretty wonderful too. The saying about how it takes a whole village to raise a child comes from the fact that villages exist like those here in Vanuatu. I could not imagine a safer place for a small child to be raised than in a village here, where everyone looks out for all the children. The kids are so smart too. They learn early on, easily by the time they are 5 or 6, how to play safely in the saltwater, how not to burn themselves by a fire, how to use big knives, how to crack nuts with stones, how to go get something from the store for the family, how to feed the chickens and also how to get the chickens out of the house, how to climb a coconut tree to get a green coconut, how to stick a mango that's too high to reach...basically they learn how to be human children. It just blows my mind to see how smart and happy these kids are and how much they can do when they seem so small. And then when it comes to education in Vanuatu, well, that's a little bit of a different story. I guess you could say that's why I get to be here :) Because there's a whole lot of room for growth in Vanuatu's educational system...