Farewell Naviso, Part 1

 

Naviso made Nik and I a farewell Kaekae. They killed a cow for us, gave us kava, and did several songs and dancing. Nik made this video which includes a lot of the dancing (we are dancing towards the end of the video).

It was pretty emotional at the end when as customary, the entire village lined up and came by to shake hands, kiss our cheeks, and leave us some mats and other presents.

The mama’s gave me a woven wall hanging that represents the many people (women) coming together as one to work together. Nik got a wooden staff used for killing pigs. I’m a little jealous of that. 🙂

This was just one of several emotionally draining goodbyes I had before leaving the village… More to come!

 

Bananas!

Created by a volunteer and used many times in the Gender and Development workshops, “Bananas”, is an energizer or ‘ice breaker’ dance to get people up, moving, and comfortable with the facilitators and each other.

Ni-Vans LOVE to go bananas.

The words go like this:

Bananas, Come together!

Bananas, Separate!

And then you GO BANANAS, Go, Go, BANANAS!

GO BANANAS, Go, Go, BANANAS!!

You peel ’em go lo left

You peel ’em go lo right

You peel ’em go lo middle, afta MM, KAE KAE!

MM, KAE KAE!

 

(Kae kae = “eat” in Bislama)

 

here is another fabulous video Nik made. he made it in the style of a Vanuatu String Band music video, basically using every filter and effect possible in the basic editing program to make it super “fancy”…. The villagers can’t get enough of it.

 

Sharing Is Caring, Continued.

The Vanuatu Gender and Development Committee is raising money for a training of trainers where Ni-Vanuatu youth will develop the skills to run leadership youth camps in their own respective villages. These camps cover everything from communication, public speaking, and trust and team-building to healthy relationships, sexual reproductive health, and decision making. Any and all donations go to developing the future youth leaders of Vanuatu. Thank you for all your support!

https://donate.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=13-461-003

 

http://vimeo.com/55756141

h2o….Finis!!

Nik is a superhero. he worked his booty off getting the water project finished. And when a water engineer from Vanuatu was not willing to come to our village to build the water system, another Peace Corps volunteer Lucas came to help out. Weeee! I can’t wait to visit next year and see all the working water taps and pipes. Eeeeeeee! ❤

 

http://vimeo.com/55660271