Weather, Weather and more Weather.........and a few shakes

We were told before coming to Vanuatu that May to November is the dry season! I think I can count on my fingers the number of days we have had dry since our arrival on the 8th of July – 3, maybe 4??.

Each day we rise to look at the sky and every day the clouds have been evident. If it hasn’t been raining outright then we have had a few showers in the morning, and a couple in the evening, and a bucket down over night just to make sure we don’t dry out and suffer dehydration! It is nigh on impossible to get the washing dry.........

Many of the roads are coral and soil and quite frankly it defies belief that there is still soil to be seen between the chunks of coral! The topography is quite hilly and how we haven’t ended up with a major part of the island in Port Vila harbour I have no idea.

Now rain has its attractions and if we could just send about half of this current lot over to the Central Coast of NSW we would have a segment of Australia totally in our debt for many years to come! I am told we are on level four water restrictions at home and that is pretty dire.

And now to add insult to injury a cyclone call Xavier is threatening to dump monumental amounts of water on us. The northern provinces of Vanuatu are already under heavy fire from Xavier which is described as a small but very intense weather system – winds of over 110knots and waves that threaten to reach 28 feet in height. Predictions are it may turn west before it reaches Port Vila BUT......

We will know by tomorrow afternoon whether we need to ‘standfast’, pop up the cyclone shutters and gather in food, water and batteries to ride out the storm. We have never experienced a cyclone so we are in fact just curious enough to hope one comes our way – so long as it is a little one that won’t do too much harm!

Ron has discovered the cyclone tracking service provided by the Fiji Met Bureau and he is tracking Xavier and keeping an eye on it for us. I hope we get more warning than we did for the tsunami a couple of weeks ago – we were in the pub the next day when we heard that there was a possibility a tsunami was on the way – YESTERDAY!

AND there have been 2 earthquakes in the last week. One on Tuesday afternoon – measured about 5.7 and was centered just off Port Vila. The other was in the islands north of us on Wednesday night measuring about 6.3. They give us a shake, but nothing much more.

Trevor (our resident expert on things Vanuatu) said that we should worry when the NiVans get a bit giggly about the earthquakes – it means they are nervous. Well you would have thought it a full on pantomime at our office on Tuesday afternoon. People had a weird response to me asking whether we should be ducking under the table – nervous laughter was all I got in reply!

With cyclones and earthquakes reminding us of our tenuous hold on the earth of Vanuatu I will sign off and sit back and pick up a book, knowing that I have no control over any aspect of either phenomenon and simply let fate take a course that I hope steers us through to finer skies, warmth and sunshine, snorkeling and swimming – and just a tincey wincey bit of the dry we have missed out on!

Life continues in paradise!

This week we took a very important decision in our life in Vanuatu. We decided to buy a ‘truck’. It is my understanding that the word ‘truk’ describes most modes of transport here – be that car or bus or, indeed, a truck. Our particular truck is a SSangYong Musso Sports 4 WD, green in colour and just a couple of years old. We know she is a great truck because she has the approval of our friend Trevor and he is an expert on trucks! Trevor is a connoisseur of the ‘back of the truck’. The one thing that is missing is a little bit of comfort, and something to hang on to, in the back. So Ron is now on a mission to fix up the tray area for the comfort of our external passengers (particularly Trevor and Paul!). Pictures of the truck will be forthcoming!

So a couple of us with trucks took a spin out to Eton Beach today. Two trucks can fit 14 people with room to spare for goggles, snorkels, flippers and picnic fare. Ladies take precedence for front row seats and the boys/kids are relegated to the ‘back of the truck’ where they revel in being in the dust and bounced until their bottoms go numb. It is some secret badge of manhood that we girls just have no appreciation of really!

Eton is about 20 klm out of town and that translates to about a 30 minute drive from our place – yep the roads ARE that bad! But the pictures will show you just how worthwhile it was. The beach is kitted out with huts with tables and benches and a sandy floor that is perfect for a locally made pandanus mat. There is even a flush toilet with paper included – and all for 300vatu per person!

We donned our snorkel gear and headed out into the small bay. Though not real deep it has an array of reef formations and plenty of tropical fish types to play with or feed. We swam around for a while, sat and nattered, had some lunch, swam some more and generally relaxed. At about 3 pm all the locals came down for a swim. The village is nearby and everyone came down to wash and have a game of footy on the beach. The kids were gorgeous – cavorting about in their knickers and less!

Yep – it was just another day in Paradise. Nothing special but splendidly remarkable… that truck is going to come in VERY handy over the time we are here!

Snorkelling in the harbour --WOW!!

Just had a ball out snorkeling off Ifira and Iririki Islands. (a paid jaunt -but now we know the spots and the technique, we can reach them by land no problem -wiff me new truk!) We got on board a "glass bottom” boat (-actually a normal flat bottom with a couple of viewing panels) and cruised out about 20 minutes from the wharf but still "in" the harbour and near to Ifira Island, an all Ni-Van island and the larger of the 2 islands in the harbour. The Captain anchored there and First Mate tossed a few stale bread rolls into the water -whoosh! gone each time.

Chez and I donned our snorkels and flippers and splashed in off the boat. The First Mate then tossed us a couple of bread rolls which we held in front of us --to be besieged by masses of fish! All sizes from a few cm to over a foot in length. All colours. Black & Whites, yellow striped, azure blue, purple, green, name it we saw it. But they stayed a respectable distance away. We had to release the bread before they'd approach.

Then, all of a sudden, a school of smaller (10cm) black coloured fish approached and got really game. Swimming all around, bumping into us, nibbling at the bread in our hand, nibbling on Cheryl's hair (thought it was seaweed I suppose). So here we are, absolutely surrounded by all sizes, shapes and colours of fish. A-Ma-zing.

Captain then called us in and said we'd move to a less windy spot. -Just off the back of the smaller Iririki (Resort) Island. And again, a few seconds after we hit the water, we're totally surrounded. And some also thought Cheryl's finger would make a tasty treat! (but then I've always known she's a tasty dish!). The Barrier Reef may have prettier coral, but the fish are more friendly (or maybe that’s assertive!) here in Vanuatu!!

Just WOW!

Our next purchase will be an instamatic underwater camera!

A Youth Challenge Experience

Tanna is one of the southern most islands in the Vanuatu. We thought that for this blog entry, we would share with you the experiences of one of the Youth Challenge International groups recently returned from Tanna. They had an amazing experience on their way there. The writer is one of the group leaders, Liesa. The photos are also Liesa’s……………

“Finally arrived back in Vila yesterday from 5 weeks in the remote jungle. It was amazing. We were in the middle of nowhere, in a mountainous jungle, next to a stunning black sand beach, not far from a rumbling live volcano, living in a grass hut with people that don’t speak English or Bislama - only their traditional language, and who have never seen white people before. And it was fabulous. We had no electricity of course, and no running water, and had to walk 10 minutes to a pipe that came from a river to have a bucket shower in a palm frond cubicle.

We organised a Youth Skills Summit that went for a week, and invited all the youth from surrounding villages. We had to do 9 hour hikes up and down ravines to deliver the information at the beginning, then they all came to stay at our village during the Summit.

They had never heard of HIV/AIDs, Sexual Reproductive Health, never seen a policeman before (who came to do a talk), didn’t know that you should wash your hands after going to the toilet or before eating, or anything. Quite amazing. Having said that, they are highly intelligent and extremely resourceful. No one has a job, they all just live off the land, build their own houses, raise chooks and pigs, which are wandering around everywhere. Skinny dogs and cats wander around too, but they don’t get fed because they don’t get eaten. They are all poster animals for the RSPCA. I kept sneaking one particular malnourished kitten and pup tinned mackerel (eeew...blah....spew) and tuna. The Ni Vans were horrified. They have no concept of being nice to animals - they are purely a resource to them.

After a horrific 24 hour boat trip on an overcrowded cargo ship to Tanna from Vila, we finally arrived at our destination at 9.30 at night, only to be told that the crew wouldn’t unload our equipment because they were too tired. What the? So the Captain agreed to let us sleep on the ship that night, sans passengers.

As it happened, we arrived on the night of the amazing Toka Ceremony, which occurs only once every 5 years. It is a 3 day ceremony where men and women from different tribes gather and dance for 3 days straight, then kill 200 pigs. It is where they find wives.

So my team of 14 headed up a goat track in the back of uts in the middle of the night. We drove up a steady incline in the middle of the jungle, which is very disconcerting when you don’t know your drivers and there are lots of strange people appearing from the bushes in the darkness, all heading towards the hill top. We finally arrive near the top of the hill, and climb out of the back of the utes to the sound of clapping and chanting and stamping. We looked up toward a spot lit clearing, dust hovering above a wall of dancing female bodies in traditional costumes (grass skirts and not much else) with their faces painted bright red. The atmosphere was electric.

After negotiations with 3 serious looking men (chiefs), we made our way up the road, when suddenly, about 100 men holding spears came running toward us, stamping and chanting. The group split in two and bolted to each side of the road. Our escorts dragged us over the fences on the sides of the road, out of the way of the men.

Apparently, if the scary chanting men grab you, they take you away and you don’t get seen until the next morning. I didn’t ask what happened to you in the meantime.....

The men stomped past, turned around and ran back up the hill, melting into the crowd on the clearing. We made our way back up the road, to the clearing in single file, holding hands. We pressed through bodies - between the dancers and onlookers. The scary men tried to grab some of the gals, but luckily the onlookers pulled them back again. We continued on and made our way to a temporary viewing platform built in a huge banyan tree, via footholds cut into the tree, using strategically placed saplings as handholds.

From the platform, it was like arriving on the movie set of a Hollywood blockbuster. An area about the size of a small football oval was packed full of dancing, stomping, clapping, chanting women in various custom costumes, faces painted, bright feathers sticking out of their hair, grass skirts whirling. The scary men formed a really wide congo line that snaked its way continually through the dancing women, keeping the different tribes separated. A huge cloud of dust hovered above the clearing. It was amazing.

There were only about 5 other white people there. It was a traditional ceremony - not staged for tourists. We felt like we shouldn’t have been there and were privy to a sacred, ancient ceremony. (There was me and 5 Aussie gals - the rest of our group were Ni Vans). We stayed a couple of hours but because we were underclothed, underfed and overtired, I had to take the gals back to the ship, although I would have loved to have stayed all night.

And that's just one of the fabulous stories to tell from Tanna. There are many more………….”