Black and White

The islands of Vanuatu accentuate skin color like no place I've ever been. Everywhere I go, I am the "White Misses" before I am Laura, Naswayu (my custom name), the "Pis Kop long Loukatai," the volunteer, the teacher, or the crazy running woman. I am all of these things, but the thing that prevails in all of my interactions, is my whiteness. The distinction of white and black is made so readily on Tanna, and it used to startle my American-cultivated sensitivity to skin color distinctions reflecting underlying racism. But on an island where the commonly used name for the main town is "Black Man Town," I have gotten used to these simple distinctions that are never meant to be offensive. I find it endearing when people smile and laugh at me and say I am becoming a black woman, as they are appreciating my integration into their community. And at the end of the day, I will always be the one white girl in the village of black people.

I am not, however, the only white person on Tanna. There are now a total of 6 Peace Corps Volunteers scattered over the island. And for the past 6 months, there has been an awesome Canadian family living here. The dad has been serving as the one and only doctor, and the mom has been notorious for driving her 3 boys around in the blue truck. The only woman driving a truck on Tanna! The 3 boys have been heralded as Lion King stars, and have become favorites among the kids of my village. When the truck shows up at the school, kids appear from the bushes to gather around, and especially to swoon over the youngest of the trio. The girls love him. The 3-year-old gets smothered with kisses everywhere he goes. I don't know what he makes of it, and what he's going to think when he goes back to Canada and he no longer has girlfriends appearing every time he gets out of a vehicle. But I do think they will be legends in my village. And every time we see the Doctor's truck in the future, without 3 boys in tow, the local kids will come crying out the boys' names to me. And I will always be grateful for the times I got to go across the island with them to the best surf and sand beaches on Tanna, in a truck filled with kids from my village. The local kids struggle with English, but their friendships with this trio of white boys, shows that kids speak a common language with each other that surpasses English words, that embraces blackness and whiteness, and that finds joy in playing together, in exploring, and in laying smooches on the little ones. The blackness and whiteness of it all just makes it more beautiful.

The farewell cake was a big hit. Most of the kids ate 3 pieces of frosted chocolate cake made up on "hospital hill." The kids will all surely remember each other. They will remember their black and white friends, and they will remember their black and white cake.

Cyclone Vania

My return to Tanna Island has been a momentous one. I was welcomed back to the school by a wonderful group of 4 girls who had adorned my house, from door to roof to clothesline, with pink flowers. I was presented with my “first nawanagen” of 2011, my favorite local dish of greens rolled around grated cassava. It was all quite adorable and a pleasant afternoon. And after quietly going to sleep my very first night back, I was woken by a 6.6 earthquake. Startling for sure, and being in a coastal village where a tsunami threat is a significant one, I immediately tried to figure out if we had a tsunami warning or not. It was my lucky night- I had phone service! So straight away I did two things: get in touch with volunteers in Port Vila (to hear about any immediate warning) and send a message to Emily’s phone (to hopefully get some actual info on the earthquake, all the way from New York). The night continued on with a series of 8 aftershocks all over 5.0 and I think a few smaller ones. It was a shaky night to say the least. I always find it entertaining to hear more information coming from the US than locally from here, in the form of text message from Emily, which is how I now know the magnitudes of all the Tanna quakes of January 9^th. Fortunately there was no tsunami warning that I heard about that night, which meant I didn’t have to take off up the hills my first restless night back.

The 9^th of January was followed by two peaceful days of intense humidity, nonstop sweating, delicious pineapple, and the smell of bleach and pine sol as I tried to rid my little house of its layers of dust and volcanic ash. And then on Tuesday the 11^th I was informed of a “tropical depression” between the main island of Efate and the island of Tanna. The locals assured me a cyclone couldn’t happen. There is a “cyclone stone” in the village, and as long as they keep it clean and respect it, we won’t have any cyclones. Indeed, last time a cyclone struck the island two local men were fined for having “dirtied” the stone and causing the cyclone. Well I guess someone toyed with the stone. Sure enough on Wednesday morning, the winds and rains picked up like I’ve never seen before. Local men came at my house with cement bricks to secure my roof, and boarded up all my windows with sheets of metal.

The tropical depression developed into a Category 2 Cyclone Vania and passed from the northeast to the northwest waters around Tanna over a period of about 48 hours. The first day and night I had 2 small friends over at my house to keep me company and keep me sane. We played a lot of Uno. When a chunk of the boarding of my house flew off, it was 11-year-old Nerry’s idea to secure it back on with some logs. The winds and rains were so intense. At one point I was using an outdoor toilet that literally almost fell down on top of me. (After that I stopped drinking water for the rest of the day.) But luckily my house survived Vania. My outdoor “small house” (bathroom) and “swim house” (bucket bath stall) blew down. But perhaps the worst damage done by Cyclone Vania was to the crops. All the ripe and unripe fruits fell from the trees (including hundreds of avocados from the tree outside my house), banana trees fell down everywhere, and worst of all I hear there was significant damage to the cassava and yam gardens, which will ultimately affect the daily food for families and the custom ceremonies of later this year. But now that Cyclone Vania has passed on, I am just glad that for all it did, it was a mere Category 2. If it had been stronger, especially a 4 or 5, the damage to this island would have been devastating, as there wouldn’t have been a single safe place to hide out, the homes all would have been destroyed and probably lots of people would have been killed. I hope that Cyclone Vania is the only cyclone we see on Tanna this year, as the cyclone season continues until March/April.

As Cyclone Vania came to a close Thursday night, we experienced yet another earthquake, this time a 7.3 located 87 miles southwest of Tanna, followed by a couple of small aftershocks. And with that, I am now hoping to go back to the pineapples, the strong heat, the rebuilding of my small house, and the things I considered normal for small island life on Tanna.

(This house was strong enough to support itself against the fallen tree, but not all houses were. And SO MANY trees hit the ground during the cyclone.)

Holidays at Home

I am sitting in the Portland airport, finally headed back to Vanuatu after a wonderful month home for the holidays. I saw so much in my short time back. I felt like I was on vacation from my life of what at times feels like tropical paradise and at other times feels like the smallest, most isolated speck in the universe. And being home in the USA has been the biggest breath of fresh air and chance to reflect on my experience that I've had since setting foot in Vanuatu over a year ago. It is crazy how accustomed I have become to the life of living off the earth, pumping and carrying every drop of my water, squatting over a hole in a slab of cement, living and breathing the every day life of a small village where everyone's business is your own, especially if you're the white woman carrying a basket on your back or a mango in your hand. It has actually become my life so quickly and there was nothing like that first 24 hours in New York City to make me realize that. Or to realize how under-appreciated running water is, especially in the form of a nice, long, hot shower. I have really enjoyed just being my white-woman self without the spectacle aspect that necessarily comes with it in a place like small-village Vanuatu. That being said, I am really looking forward to being that very spectacle self once again back on Tanna Island. I am so grateful for the opportunity to be there with so many wonderful Ni-Vanuatu family who look out for me and welcome me into their lives with the utmost enthusiasm. And it turns out they have as much to benefit from another perspective as I do. So I will go back with a rejuvenated enthusiasm and readiness to tackle projects at my small school on Tanna. Perhaps one of the best things I did back home was to spend a number of days in some fabulous classrooms (thanks to the "other" Ms. Dodd), where teachers think it's unacceptable for low-achieving kids to be low-achieving; that a good education can actually change a person's life. I wish I could just bring that mentality to Tanna! And hey, it wouldn't be too bad if ALL classrooms in America had that mentality too!

There are so many friends and family I didn't see while I was home that I wish I could have. I will have considerable catching up to do with a lot of folks when I come home for good later this year. And for anyone wondering, there is zero chance of me running off (or staying put, rather) with Man Tanna. No chance in hell, to be more precise. Did I mention how much I love the women and children :)

In Times Square, on our way to see The Lion King on Broadway, after having directed a version of the very same show on an outdoor coconut-leaf stage at a primary school on Tanna. This Broadway show was incredible!

And this is what I'm going back to: my tiny volcanic, beautiful island...except Emily won't be there...Well I guess we can't have everything in the South Seas. Dammit.

The Never Ending WAKA WAKA

Just a quick look at my daily life at Loukatai... At the moment I am directing the first-ever school play of the Lion King Musical at Loukatai School. After a small group rehearsal yesterday, these awesome 5th and 6th grade girls begged me for a chance to practice "Waka Waka," which if you don't know already, is only the most important song in the world, at least if you're in Vanuatu. It's Shakira's song from the World Cup, and here on Tanna, it just can't get old. The song is like the best thing of the year for these kids. This choreography is from when Emily came to visit in August and we performed it with some 4th grade girls at the school's Talent Night. I have since performed it impromptu while running (when kids start singing it at me), after church one Sunday (when the whole community made me stand up in front and dance it with all the kids, again impromptu), at the beach with kids, and at other various locations. And I am resurrecting it for the finale to the Lion King performance, because it really only gets better and better (rather than older and older...). And these kids can sure shake it just like Shakira.

A Library in Loukatai

A small view of the small Library at Loukatai:

This weekend the one and only Doctor on Tanna (who is here on behalf of VIVA, a Canadian NGO that provides a doctor every 6 months to Tanna) stopped by Loukatai with his family, and asked if I wanted to join them on a ride across the island to a black sand beach. Of course I jumped on the opportunity, as transport here can be really expensive if you want to go to a remote spot and even after a year I had never been there. And honestly, it’s refreshing to hang out with some westerners every once in awhile. So we ended up going to see a great waterfall and then we spent the afternoon at the most incredible beach I’ve been to so far in this country. A great surf beach with sand rather than coral, and a river running right into it, and, aside from a few local boys on horseback, we had the whole place to ourselves all afternoon. A fabulous day.

(My little friend Nerry got to come along and try out the boogie board. She was so excited she even sprayed herself with perfume before heading out in the truck. And below, an awesome waterfall tucked into the jungle of Middlebush, Tanna)

On the ride back, I sat in the back of the truck with the Doctor’s 7-year-old son, Nelson. Nelson was telling me about his Magic Tree House books that he only likes reading by himself, and the “Pippi In the South Seas” book his mom had just read to all three of the boys, and on and on and on about reading. And it occurred to me that this kid was in fact a better reader than every single one of my 14 and 15-year-old students in Class 7 at Loukatai School. But of course it’s easy to understand that this has everything to do with all the exposure Nelson has had to reading, and the total lack of exposure all my students have had (none of them have had the experience of being read to by a parent; none of them have ever taken a book to bed at night; most of their teachers never did genuine read-alouds or gave them level-appropriate books to read). Which leads me to the library…

By far the biggest project I’ve been working on as a Peace Corps Volunteer at Loukatai School is the Loukatai Library. When I first arrived, the library looked more or less like a big rubbish room. A few books on the shelves, more books on the floor, a handful of books in the hands of children… Maybe we had about 30 reading books. We had a ton of “School Journals,” a New-Zealand-made reading magazine for kids, most of which were dated from at least a decade or two ago. We also had a number of copies of some small red books distributed by the Vanuatu government that tell stories written by local people. All of the books were battered and no one seemed to see any correlation between this and the fact that they were also thrown about, left on the floor, left on shelves frequented by the volcanic ash that flies through the air and settles on absolutely everything.

I knew the only way to really address the literacy issue at this small school would be to figure out how to get the kids stuff to read and more importantly, to get them and their teachers to look after whatever it is they’re reading, so maybe we could keep whatever books we had around for awhile. Library project: the kids needed books to read and a place to keep them and the skills to take care of them. The Principal cleared out a space and gave me the go-ahead to do whatever I wanted with it. Every step of the way he has been completely supportive, from getting fabric to line the shelves front and back; from getting mats for the kids to sit and read on; from allowing me to remove the Organic Chemistry and 18^th Century Australian Field Guide books from the collection. This last one may seem trivial, but I know another volunteer whose school council refused to let these books go and so they now fill the few shelves at a school where the kids can hardly read the sentence “I am from Vanuatu, not Australia.” More than 700 books have come from the US from so many amazing people. Another few hundred have come from Australian donors like Kiwanis. The students have gotten to open box after box and have written numerous thank-you letters. Every book has been labeled and then stamped with our official Loukatai Library stamp. The library has actual sections in it. There are reading folders that all books will go home inside to protect them from weather, dogs, dust, ash, and all those other tropical goodies. We have a check-out system in place. Fabric covers on the shelves will keep the dust and ash off the books when kids aren’t in the library. I even got a handful of walkmans and tapes to make a “Listen-to-Reading” section of the Library (my Class 7 kids have already tried this out and LOVE it). The Teachers’ Library Workshop took place just this week, and that officially began the use of the library. The kids are so excited! It has taken the better part of my whole first year here to get this going. Slow-slow, but I guess that’s why we sign on for two years. In 2 years this library should be running straight, and I’ll probably be the lead librarian for the better part of it. And so I still have the job of making it sustainable. And again I am so so so grateful to everyone that has helped by sending books or helping to have books sent. It has definitely made all the difference!

(checking out their first library books in their reading folders)

The general attitude toward education here is interesting. There seems to be some interest in change and progress, but it’s not a very prominent attitude at all. I have met only one person who I would say is really passionate about education change, and she’s now working for the Tourism Office, which on Tanna has nothing at all to do with education (before she was working with Unicef and did all sorts of work for education change). There are many villages on Tanna where the custom is so strong that people will not send their kids to school at all. And in a place where everyone has food to eat and a bed to sleep on, where there are no real drug problems, where crime and violence is rarely spoken of, where the life is pretty good pretty much all the time, change is a tricky thing to tackle. No one is really begging for change. And sometimes change isn’t such a good thing, which is why some villages hold so tightly to their custom and learn their children in it rather than in traditional schools. That being said, the value of an education here, just like anywhere, is so important. Everyone sees life here changing, as more land is leased by expatriates, and more people have money to spend from their government jobs, and more tourists are coming, and more goods from China are around (you want a pack of MSG? only 50 cents!), and there are starting to be some areas where the local population has grown such that the ground they own is no longer enough to sustain themselves as subsistence farmers. And to be honest, although you seldom hear of it, there is violence here, there are children who are neglected, and there are many, especially women and children, who could really benefit from having some options that only an education can provide. So the fact that no one is begging for change in education maybe means we just have to try and get the ball rolling as volunteers. And besides, everyone who has seen the change in the library is thrilled with it. Everyone is so excited to start really using it, kids and teachers alike.

(teachers and a baby waiting for the Library Workshop)

(reading some good ol' Mo Willems on Tanna)

(listening to books on tape and reading a pop culture magazine)

Ji-ho!

**I wrote the following blog in May, but had trouble uploading the video on YouTube. I was finally able to upload this 4 minute video (it took nearly 24 hours to do it!), so here it is in July.

One of the global initiatives Peace Corps has going is something called Camp G.L.O.W., which stands for Girls Leading Our World. It is an initiative to promote leadership among women and awareness of gender issues. Peace Corps volunteers typically organize week-long "camps," but on Tanna Island I have been co-leading a different sort of Camp GLOW. Every Thursday after school I gather with the class 7 and 8 girls from Loukatai and we wait for Hali, a fellow volunteer at a school about 2 miles away, to arrive with her class 6 girls. And to be fair, it is often Hali and her girls waiting for my girls, who are often held in-calss after the 3pm "school's out" bell, because, well, because that bell doesn't always mean what it is supposed to mean. And it doesn't always ring when it is supposed to ring. It appears that teachers are welcome to teach until they feel finished, and whether or not that correlates to the 3pm bell is just a question of luck. But on Thursdays, we like it when the bell rings and the students get dismissed simultaneously at the scheduled time of 3pm, so that we can then get our Camp GLOW's 30 girls started on the activity of the day. So far we've gotten together a number of times, to do art activities, drama games, and most recently, learn the moves to the "Ji-ho" dance. I proudly copied most of the moves from the modified choreography done last summer at Camp Jabberwocky on Martha's Vineyard, the greatest summer camp in the USA, where the dis-abled and the able-bodied get together for all sorts of wonderful madness and mayhem. So thank you Camp Jabberwocky, for the original inspiration to teach the girls on Tanna this spectacular dance. We worked on the dance for only a few weeks, just in time to perform it at a neighboring school's Talent Night. Both my school and Hali's schools had originally planned their own talent nights, which was why we had started working on the dance in the first place, but at the last minute both schools decided to postpone the event until further notice... But thankfully there was a Talent Night at the nearby Loanatom French Mission School. Not only that, but word was starting to spread about this little dance and we had been formally invited to attend and share our group's talent. It was a fun night to say the least, even if the girls were half-embarrassed and half-scared-to-death to perform in front of people. The group dynamic was great, as was the night's net effect of forming a great bond amongst all of us. I love these girls. And in a male-dominated culture, where the girls have already silenced their own voices by the time they are in classes 6,7, and 8, I love that maybe these girls' voices will grow. In fact I am sure that the strength of their voices will grow. They have already said a lot by Ji-ho-ing it in front of a crowd, especially because of how reluctant they were to stand up and shake it in the first place. So I hope this video uploads and I hope that it says more than my few words can about this awesome group of young women on Tanna. This is the dress rehearsal, so know that the girls were even more shy to dance during the real thing just 30 minutes later. Ji-ho! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7oWJJGkks8

A Birthday and an Ocean of Love

My nephew Carlos

I had the very best nephew in the world. His name was Carlos. And at the moment, to know he is here might seem tricky at first because he passed away in 2006. Just before his 5^th birthday. He graced this small world with his wonderful presence for just 4 years. He worked a lot of magic in those few years. He inspired so many people with his smiles, his contagious laugh, his playful personality, his peaceful grace and his charm. Carlos was a boy of few words, but he was also a boy of the ocean. He was known to celebrate the sight of the sea with his enormous, expressive eyes and the perfect words of gratitude to whoever took him by telling them “thank you” in the most meaningful voice. His gentle energy was inspiring. And I can still call to mind the delightful sound of him giggling; especially from those times he played a game that involved some great surprise or scare. He loved a good scare. He loved the ocean. He loved Cheerios. He loved his family. For such a small little guy, he had a whole lot of love inside of him. And there was something about him that made everyone around him, and even people who never knew him, give a whole lot of love to him. And that love is still here, growing, all around, every-present in the universe we feel. That is why it’s really not that tricky to know that Carlos is still here.

If I could point to one thing and say this is the thing that has been the single most influential thing in my life, it would be that I got to be Carlos’ auntie for almost 5 years. I would say that’s a pretty big deal, that I was Carlos’ auntie. One could say that I’m pretty proud of it. It is the reason that I found this passion for all children, and especially for special children, for those with special needs. It is the reason I love teaching, especially that one child who challenges me to see him or her in a new way that ends up giving me the opportunity to change and learn something that only a child can teach. It is the reason that every time I get to see the ocean, which is almost every day in Vanuatu, I feel a simple and full sense of gratitude. I want to thank someone. I want to thank Carlos.

I wrote my last post on this blog about birthdays, and how important I think it is to celebrate them. And this week is Carlos’ birthday. He would be 9, but in my mind he is forever-4. A timeless reminder of love and peace and gratitude. And a continual source of inspiration. Happy Birthday Carlos. I will celebrate your love and your memory today and every day. I will celebrate that I am still an auntie, and that I now have the best niece in the entire world named Sophia Moon, whose large eyes and expressive 4-year-old face bear a striking resemblance to her brother Carlos. And I will celebrate the way that you, Carlos, never let autism or epilepsy define you; these things were not you, even if you knew them to be an important part of you. But you were something so much bigger than them. And like your big spirit, and your big love, there is still a big love for you all around this world. And I love you Carlos.

“Love for a specific person is radiant when it arises in emptiness. It is still love, it is still intensely personal, it is still very specific; but it is a wave that arises from an ocean of infinity. It is as if a great sea of love brings forth a wave, and that wave carries the force and thrill of the entire sea in its every breaking crest. The sensation is like watching an early morning sunrise in the desert: a vast open clear blue spaciousness within which there arises, on the horizon, an intense red-yellow fire. You are the infinite sky of Love, in which a particular fire-ball of personal love arises. One thing is certain: infinite love and personal love are not mutually exclusive- the latter is just an individual wave of an infinite ocean.” --Ken Wilbur