I am going to be living in East MAEWO (pronounced my-woe) island on Penama Province. My neighbor islands are Pentecost to the south and Ambae to the east. I’d say I got pretty lucky considering Maewo is supposed to be the most beautiful island, Pentecost has land-diving, and Ambae has a volcano you can climb.
This photo taken by former volunteer. Big Wota, Maewo
My island gets the most rainfall in Vanuatu. Which means super lush and beautiful. And super hot and loaded with blood-suckers.
The Kava there is stone ground, a method that apparently produces some of the best in Vanuatu. According to my site info sheet, women ARE allowed to drink Kava but I am unsure if this means I can actually drink it at the Nakamal or not.
There is no alcohol available.
According to a former volunteer on the island, he only found a cold drink once.
I will not have electricity. I will have hopefully reliable cell phone coverage (new this year). I will not have internet access on the island.
I will have to walk nearly 6 hours to pick up mail from West Maewo unless another village happens to carry it in with them. The bank is also 6 hours away, not that I’ll be spending much money in village.
I was super lucky and got placed in the same village with a health volunteer. It will be nice to see a familiar face fairly often and I have a feeling Nick and I will be helping each other stay sane, especially in the first few months.
So far I know that I will be living close to my host family and the primary school that I will be working at. The school has around 200 students and 8 teachers (not sure how up to date this info is). Only 1 teacher has had some sort of training. That is where I come in. My job will be to help train the other teachers. I’ll be observing classes, giving workshops, and possibly teaching a bit as well. I’m a little nervous, to say the least.
I will be living in a kustom house (meaning bamboo/leaf roof, possibly a cement floor), with a separate kitchen house and my own smal house (bathroom/shower house). I know that I will not have electricity and Nick and I are required to bring a Satellite phone to site for emergencies because we are pretty remote. I have two solar lanterns that will be providing me light at night, so long as the sun shines.
To get to my site from Efate I have a few options that involve boats, planes, ships, and trucks. But come Tuesday I will be taking a plane in to the Maewo airport. Hopefully Nick and my host families will be meeting us there. From the airport we will take a truck ride part of the way across the island (we will essentially be working our way from east to west maewo, over some “bigfalla hills”). The truck ride is supposed to last around an hour. After that the road ends and we walk down hill in to our site. There are no paved roads so you can only get to the village by walking or speedboats. Nick and I will be walking with all of our belongings- My info sheet says an hour and a half walk “depending on your fitness level”. Another volunteer took over 4 hours because it was raining and her dog threw up.
I am shipping half of my belongings on a cargo ship that will hopefully arrive in around a month to Maewo. That stuff will be delivered to another volunteer (also named Nic) who will be on West Maewo. When Nick and I go to pick up our stuff, we have to make a 5ish hour trek to naraNic’s site to retrieve our bags.
If you asked me last month if I’d be up for this, I might be a little hesitant. If you ask me today whether I’m up for this, I’m still a little hesitant. But I figure in time, those 5 hour walks will be something to look forward to, because they’ll be something different to do for a daily activity. Just as laundry is something that takes up a substantial amount of time and helps two days a week go by a bit faster.
The pace of life here truly is slower than anything I’ve ever experienced. Once I arrive at site the schools will just be letting out for summer holiday. Everyone will be traveling, new people will be visiting the site and it will be really hard to distinguish who I should be building relationships with. People will be ‘spelling’ (resting, generally doing nothing) a LOT. My job is simply to “integrate” until January. While this seemingly infinite amount of free time might sound just fine and dandy, it terrifies me. The past 7 weeks have been full of structure. Language classes, training sessions, trips to the other villages, visiting daily with the other volunteers in my village. All of that will be gone. It’ll be just Nick and I in our little village. And this is the first time our village has had a Peace Corps volunteer so I have no idea what to expect there, and there is a possibility that their expectations of me are extremely high. I just hope I will make the village happy, I hope I will connect with my new family, and I hope I will keep my sanity and perservere through these next few months.
The SHREP (Strengthening Human Resources through Education Project) group will be meeting back in Port Vila again for Phase II training on January 18th. This means 2/3 of our training group I might not see until mid-service or longer. I’m going to miss so many people from our group. It is certainly bitter sweet becoming a volunteer. I will be spending Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s and my 25th Birthday at my new site. It’s going to be a rough few months, but I hope to learn a lot about my community, myself, and make the most of the sun and fun.
