Home

I've spent the past two weeks in Port Vila on the main island. Initially I was excited to come here. It was my chance to see other volunteers that I hadn't seen in a year, get clean and change clothes, and eat lots of food that is terrible for me. I stayed in a very nice resort for three days, with a jacquzzi, washer, and drier in each room. I also had a chance to go sailing on a small catermaran. After a few days of the good life though, I began to notice how tired I was becoming of city life. All I wanted was to leave and go back to my little village where I can live in peace and quiet. Unfortunately the airport lost my reservation for the day I was supposed to go back, and for the next few days all of the planes were booked full. Tomorrow I will finally be off though. I'm very excited to return to my bamboo house where I can fall asleep with the sound of the bush around me. I want to go back to hunting with my sling-shot with my dog by my side. I want to take in the rainforest while I cool off in a stream. I want to hop on my horse and take off to anywhere I please, and to do anything I want with out spending a dime. I want to climb a coconut tree and drink green coconuts as the sun goes down. I want to eat flying fox and tanna soup. I want to feel in my element. I want to go home. Go home to Tanna.

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As many of you know, the story of my life for the past three months has been rain, mud, and mold. The relentless rain turns meandering streams into roaring rapids, foot paths and roads into rivers, and everything else to sloppy mud. When hiking to a stream to get clean, you return just as dirty as before you set off. Every small scratch on your foot quickly becomes infected. Walking anywhere, which is what you must do to get everywhere, becomes an unpleasant task. I’ve spent many days stuck in a hut with nothing to do but stare, read, and think; think about how much I hate the rain. Give me desert, give me snow, anything but rain. As I sit inside, the rain joins me. The constant wetness has molded my roof, steadily drip dropping onto my bamboo and pandus leaf floor, which is now molding too. My clothes are never dry, but smell like some kind of wet animal. Mold has over taken photos from home, book, shoes, pens, shirts, anything you can think of.
To add to these already less than desirable living conditions is my work situation. With all the rain, everything is at a stand still. Scheduled workshops have been cancelled. Kids don’t go to school because they can’t cross the flooded streams to get there, and even if they did their dirt floor classrooms will be turned to mud. The only thing I was able to make happen in the past month was hold a meeting. I needed a chief and other villagers to sign a statement concerning the ownership of the conservation area I’m working with. I sat waiting for everyone to come. After nearly four hours of lying on the bare ground I decided to go ahead with the meeting. I asked them all to sign the paper, and then I was told that nearly everyone present didn’t know how to write their names, so I did it for them. Four hours for that. Only in Tanna.
Yet during these past three months I’ve learned to deal with the life I have chosen. Take it all in stride. Dirty? Don’t worry about being falling in the slimy mud. Hungry? Imagine that laplap you’ve eaten for the past 30 straight meals is pizza, a cheeseburger, chocolate cake, whatever it may be. Lonely? Talk to your dog. Sick? Be glad it’s not malaria. Bored? Read that magazine for the fifth time. Going crazy? Laugh at yourself. Laugh at the situation that you’re in. Why in the world am I living with a handful of people in the bush on a tiny island in the Pacific Ocean? Because it’s interesting, that’s why. And it’s challenging, and it’s different.
After so long the laughter stopped though. It’s not funny anymore, or entertaining. I just wanted to go home, see my family, see my friends, be clean, eat food, and be surrounded by a culture that I actually understand. And then suddenly things changed. Yesterday something remarkable happened. The rain stopped and the Sun came out! The world looked like a different place. Trees stood proud and green, birds sang and hopped from twig to twig, and flowers shown more vibrant than before. Nature and I rejoiced in the Sun. A tremendous burden was lifted, it is a feeling I cannot describe. The gloom was gone, crisp blue sky remained. It filled me up.
At first light I was outside. I began working in my yard, pulling weeds, shifting and planting flowers, and enjoying the heat of the Sun rising on my back. After a few hours I took a break. It was Sunday, time for church. I walked to an opening of grass and coconut trees to find my horse who neighed in greeting me. I leaped on his back, and off we were. Galloping threw a small winding trail through thick bushes and tall grasses, over a hill covered in red clay, down into a trail lined with hibiscus flowers, and there we arrived at church. It is a small bamboo house. Only a few men and women are present, along with their 15 or so small children. We huddle into the hut, and church begins. Everything is spoken in their native language, not Bislama, and though I am starting to learn their language, nearly everything escapes me. I sit and watch the children. They’re sitting just as impatiently as me. I can feel the fresh wind slipping through the bamboo walls and want to get back outside where everything is bright. An hour or so later and it’s finished. I lay outside in the grass, and try to eat my laplap. It proves to me unusually inedible. Normally I can choke down most of this revolting food, but even this proves too hard. I eat half, give the other half to my brother, and off I go. My horse rides swiftly back, always in a hurry to get back to his life of munching grass. When I return home, I continue to work on my yard. One of my sisters comes to keep me company. As I work, she sits and helps me practice speaking their native language. We begin to grow hungry, and she spots and hornets nest in a near by tree. I grab my slingshot and hit it on my second try. This does nothing but make the hornets mad. I grab a few large sticks and cut them into pieces two feet long. We often use sticks like these to knock fruit out of trees, or bats, and in the case, a hornet’s nest. A few well placed throws knocks the nest to the ground, and I run for cover, wait a few minutes, and then come back with more sticks. I hit the nest, run again, and then repeat, until finally only a few very angry hornets are left on the nest with many circling around. Slowly I approach their nest. My sister reminds me how bad these hornets hurt when they sting. I say thank you and let her know I am trying my best not to purposely get stung. Slowly I pick up the nest, shake out the last remaining hornets, and smash a few of them. To the victor go the spoils. We pull out the hornet larvae, throw them on a fire, and eat them like popcorn along with a kind of fruit called niətu in native language. I have no idea what it is in English, and have never seen anything like it, but I am beginning to like it as much as rosy mangoes and juicy pineapples.
We rest outside, and the day winds down. As the sun begins to cool, I go to fetch drinking water. I carry it from a spring at a neighboring village and hall the heavy container over my shoulder back to my village. It wares me down and makes me thirsty. I climb a near by coconut tree to get a sweet drink from above. Using my remaining strength I can just barely hang on long enough to get one down. I drink it as I watch the sun dip behind the hills edging the ocean. A grey blue sky with wisp of salmon is over head and a fiery orange glow to the west. A perfect ending to my perfect day.
I head back to my house and wind down in a book, when my younger sister comes to my house to let me know they had just killed a calf which was grazing near by. From what I could gather my papa decided the calf wasn’t going to make it much longer so it would be better just to kill it and eat it now. I came to the circle of huts to find my sister hack at the already skinned calf with her machete. Legs, tail, heart, liver, and all are thrown onto a pile of leaves and blood. I eat yam and watch her crudely slashing at bones, cutting off legs, breaking the spinal column, and throwing it into the existing pile of organs and flesh. Nothing will be wasted. She cuts me off a piece of the thigh, which I in turn jab onto a sharp stick and set it over a fire of wood and stone. She soon joins me with the legs and head, throwing them onto the fire. Occasionally she reaches in with her hand, pulls out a part, scrapes the singed hair off, and throws it back on the fire. The head is staring at me, eyes slightly open, tongue halfway out. After all of the hair is burnt off the head, she cuts from underneath the mouth to remove the tongue. She detaches it, but can’t seem to pull it out as the cow has a pretty good grip on it with his teeth. Comically and morbidly she pries its mouth open just enough to get the tongue out, and flings it back on the fire. After a few minutes she cuts up the tongue, and we eat it together with the sandpaper texture of it still unmistakable. I enjoy it none the less. I call it a night though, now it really is time to end my day. I walk back to my house under a full moon. It cast shadows all about my path. Dewey grass is bathed in silver, and the reflections of wet leaves in the surrounding bush seem to glow, almost as attentive eyes. Not of something terrible, but of something mysterious. The forest is looking out for us, sustaining us. I go to bed with the sound of insects chirping and flying foxes wooshing over head.

Sunday on a Sunday

Well, I can now say that I've suruvived my first quest on horseback, and I'm grateful not to be sitting on that terrible thing anymore. It may be another week before I am able to ride again. It all started last Sunday. After countinuous rain, we had a break of blue sky that looked like it was going to last all day. I grabbed a rope and bridle, broke off a stick for whipping, and hopped on Sunday, my horse. I didn't really know where I was heading to, I just knew that I wanted to go. I told my brother I would be back in a few hours, although I wasn't quite so sure about that. We started out slowly, winding through a relatively flat and muddy trail through the bush for about a half hour. We emerged from the bush onto the main road. The one and only road, corrugated and covered in mud. Certain areas were semi-dry and flat, which allowed us to run. We galloped for a few minutes, full speed ahead, before I would slow him down to rest and carefully navigate the muddy pools dotting the road. We ran past a school, where my horse decided to turn shaply into a fence that he didn't see. Luckily I did, so I braced myself with my legs. As he stopped quickly, I was flung foward and was able to catch his neck, wrapping myself around him. No harm done. I hopped off the horse, where he then stepped on my bare foot. Stupid horse. After a few minutes of yelling at the horse I hopped back on and continued south for another half hour. But by this time he had become pretty tired, so I decided to let him rest while I visited a near by Peace Corps Volunteer at his site. We storied for a while, and I contemplated just sleeping at his hut for the night, but in the end I decided to keep moving. I kept southward, going through an area of Tanna known as Middle Bush. Middle Bush is relativly heavily populated, and a fair number of men and boys ride horses here, unlike the North. Naturally every person I passed on the road stopped to ask me questions. 'What island are you from?' they'd ask. 'America' I tell them and they whistle in awe and approval. After some more small storian I would keep moving. As I ride on, kids on the side of the road are yelling to their friends in language. The only words I can ever pick out is white man and horse, and then packs of kids run to the road to get a good look at me. Some of the braver ones follow behind on foot. I gallop ahead, and after I stop I hear their barefoot running to catch up. We play this game until they are too tired to run any more. I come to a village centered around the road. Once again all eyes are on me and everyone is telling me that I must run. I whip my horse, but he has no intention of moving. They give me pointers like just keep whipping him, and so I do, enough to make the large animal that I'm sitting on rather mad I imagine. He starts fighting me, bucking, rearing, and then takes off galloping off the side of the road, sending a group of girls running for their lives. I get him turned back to the road, and with a few more bucks, I'm off again. The villagers shout behind, excited to see a white man ride like them. A few minutes out of the village and another boy on a horse comes and joins me. We ride together for a while, flying through winding trails not more than a foot wide. His smaller horse is in front and my horse is galloping behind him, without an inch between the two of them. I feel like were going 40 mph. The brushes are scratching at my shins and barefeet, and I'm squeezing my horse as tight as I can with my legs to hold on. We come to a large shallow puddle on the path. The first horse runs through it, but my horse decided to try and jump the whole thing. I'm sent off the back of my horse and somehow land on my stomach. I'm cut up by a few sharp sticks but nothing serious, and I find myself laying on the ground and laughing. I couldn't believe my horse just jumped this huge gap and I was so close to hanging on. My horse went ahead though, still following the other one. After 10 minutes of riding, the boy looked behind him and realzed I was no where to be seen so he came back for me. I of course hopped right back on, but this time a little bit sorer than before. I have now been riding my horse for three hours with absolutely no padding or cushioning and only wearing a pair of shorts. Sitting down was getting more and more painful, and now I had cuts across my arm and chest, but we kept going. At this point I figured I must be pretty close to Lenakel, the main town in Tanna. The other boy showed me which rode to follow to get there and then he left. I continued on my own, following trails that I had never seen before. I faced numerous Y's in the road, and often chose the wrong one. I ran into a man who corrected me, I turned around, and took the other path. After another hour I again came to a fork in the road. I saw a girl about my age and asked her which one would take me to Lenakel. She stared at me and couldn't manage to get a noise out. I asked her again, and then she ran away. I think she was afraid of me. I made a choice on my own which turned out to be right. I followed gardens, valleys, and thick bush. I followed a ridge top for a while, and could look down upon the many coconut trees dotting the flat coastal areas below. The sun was beginning to set, a bright red reflecting off deep blue waters and lavender skies. I didn't have time to stop and enjoy the view though, I still didn't know how long I had to go to reach Lenakel. A half hour later I arrived in the dark and stars. By this point it was pooring rain and I was exhausted. It had taken me 6 hours to reach town by horse thanks to my short conversations with everyone that saw me on the road. I started to head towards a Peace Corp's house in Lenakel to crash for the night, when I found out that my horse is afraid of truck lights at night. The roads were relatively empty, of course except for where I was at when my horse decided freak out. As the truck approached he began rearing up, and then he took off, as fast as he could in the pitch dark and I had absolutely no control of him. People were running and screaming, afraid of getting run over by my horse on a rampage. I was hanging on for dear life as I could see we were approaching a large pool of water at full speed. I thought for sure I was going to get laid out on the hard coral road, but he managed to stop at the last possible second throwing on the breaks. I quickly hopped off and decided to just pull him with a rope instead. I struggled pulling him for another half hour when I finally reached the Peace Corp's house. She turned out to be sick, so I had to walk to another Peace Corp's house. When I got there I fell on the hard floor and didn't move until the morning. When I woke up I realized there was no way I was going to be able to sit on the horse. I couldn't even sit in a chair. I spent the day around Lenakel, getting a little work down on a workshop I'm planning, and then I stayed the night again. I woke up at sunrise the next day, still in a lot of pain, but ready to go regardless. I taped up my backside, which looked like it had been rubbed with sandpaper for a few hours, and hopped on the horse trying to ignore the pain. I decided to follow a road near the ocean for half of the way back. I made good time and covered what would have taken 4 hours to walk in less than an hour. At the very end of this road I had my second accident of the trip though. While galloping, my horse shifted directions quickly and stopped and threw me over his head. I managed to do a front flip, landing on my back on the rocky road. Stupid horse. I evenutally pulled myself off of the ground and gave my horse a few good shots to the head, hopped on again, and then I turned into the interior of Tanna. By this point he was already tired, so the going was somewhat slow. My back was getting more and more sore, and my legs were getting rubbed raw from trying to hang onto him while running. My feet were also pretty bruised too. Everytime he ran, his legs would come back and his leg bones would catch my ankle. All I wanted to do was be home, but that was a long ways a way. Four hours later I was close though, still trying to keep the pain out of my mind. I began seeing people I know in my area, and of course all they wanted to do was see me run. I reluctantly would get my horse going, bouncing up and down on my raw skin. Finally, six hours after setting out that morning I arrived at my house. I slid off my horse and walked awkwardly to my house. For the next two days I laid there on my stomach. I couldn't sit down, sleep on my back, and walking around hurt just as bad too. I felt like a truck had run down the middle of my back. But it was completely worth it. I was able to take off on my horse on my own time, meet countless people around the island, see new villages, travel through lush valleys, have little children chase me on the road, and explore new places. Give me another week of recovery, and I'll be back at it.

Imayo

Earlier this week I took a trip to Imayo, a village located next to the volcano. Although I went for work related purposes, I had plenty of free time to relax. I had heard that there was a waterfall in the area, and I soon found a few men to guide me there along with two other environmental workers. In all there were six of us, hiking through the bush, up and down the narrow trails. I was in the head of the group, along with another local boy. We pushed the pace hard and soon found that the others could not keep up. We decided to go ahead, and the others agreed that they would just see us at the waterfall.
The hike took us through thick forests, covered in moss and ferns. An occasional opening in the canopy would reveal the steep hills around us, jutting up into the clouds. Occasionally we would walk across an area of bare dirt, previous landslides which had wiped out everything in its path. After about two hours of quickly scrambling through the hillsides, we came to a fork in the path. The boy was hesitant about which way to go. If we chose to sit and wait for the other’s to come, we might be waiting an hour, so we decided to push on. I trusted his decision, being that he lived in the bush his whole life. We went deeper into the bush. All signs of villages disappeared, and the trail was becoming less obvious too. After some contemplating, I realized that I was alone in the middle of no where with some one I had just met a few hours earlier, and I wasn’t sure if he knew where we were going.
We came to a river, quick flowing and filled with huge boulders. I crossed it cautiously as the water pulled at me legs and tried to drag me down. Once reaching the other side, we followed its bank until it became impassable. At this point we had to cross to the other side and follow that bank, until once again, it became impassable. Previously I had been able to keep up with him while hiking in the bush, but I couldn’t match his ability to move so effortlessly through the boulders. Pushing myself as fast as I could, I would come to a bend in the river and he would be gone. I had no idea which way to keep going, so I would shout for him. After hearing his voice I knew what direction to go. Ten minutes later he would be gone again, and I would be lost. I thought it was only a matter of time before this unknown person decided to just leave me where I was. I kept faith in him though. Man-Tanna are good natured people, otherwise I probably wouldn’t be in the middle of no where with this complete stranger who doesn’t speak English but carries a very large knife. At this point I just wanted to get to the waterfall and see the other members in our group. I knew that if I saw them at the waterfall, it meant that they had taken a different route than we had. If they were following the same path that we were taking, they had no chance of reaching the waterfall before dark at their pace.
After a few more hours of muddy, sweaty, river crossing hiking we reached our destination though. The bush opened up to an emerald pool being slammed by tons of water plunging down from above. The crashing water created waves at the shore. I walked behind the waterfall. A few small trickles of water fell on me, feeling like someone had aimed a fire hose at my head. I can only imagine that bearing the full force of the waterfall would instantly render you unconscious. I started making my wake back from behind the waterfall, very cautiously stepping on the stones. With all of the mist in the air the rocks were as slick as ice. I managed to fall, jabbing my toe into one of them, and breaking off the front of my big toenail. Just then I saw the other members of our group arriving. Wincing in pain, I couldn’t help but to be happy that they had followed an easier trail to get here, meaning the walk back would be much less taxing. After what seemed like only a half hour at the waterfall, it was time to head back before the sun dropped. But we were told that we would take a completely different way back this time, simply following the river the majority of the way.
Right on cue, the rain came. Being that I was already soaked from swimming at the waterfall, you would think that the rain wouldn’t bother me. But we were in the stream and valley filled mountains. A little rain can raise the main tributary very quickly. We started walking, my toe burning with every brush against a plant. This was going to be a long walk. Three hours of hiking on unsteady boulders and crossing a now roaring river, all in my flip-flops. Numerous slips, falls, and frustrations later we were still crossing the river, perhaps for the tenth time now. Ash from the volcano was continually falling from the sky, covering the plants and sticking to my wet legs and sweaty face. Crossing the river temporarily washed away the fine black ash, but it would quickly come back. Three hours and we had reached the trail heading up into the bush back to the village. My legs felt like rubber by now, but it had been worth it.
It’s easy to complain about the weather and other unfavorable conditions, but I can’t deny the fact that hiking through pristine forests, hanging out at waterfalls, and staring out at an ominously glowing red sky from a near by volcano at night isn’t enjoyable.