February 11, 2011
Pregnancy in Vanuatu isn’t like pregnancy in the USA. You don’t call your friends and family and announce the big news. Instead you wear your biggest island dresses and cover it up as long as possible. And even when you start showing, no one will talk about it in public or say anything on the subject. My neighbor and favorite teacher had a huge belly when I got back from holiday. She failed to mention her pregnancy all the times we chatted on the phone…style blong olgeta. Yesterday after sitting through our school teacher meeting, she took her bamboo stick and fished out on the reef for a few hours. Shortly after, a truck nonchalantly showed up and drove her to the hospital where she gave birth instantly to a little girl. Women here don’t spend hours in labor. They don’t spend days lying around and ordering their husbands around the house. The Canadian doctor at the hospital confirmed that most Ni-Vanuatu women pop out their babies without signs of pain in 10 to 15 minutes. Can you imagine?
The best part of the story however is what happened when the baby and mother arrived home. Most women take several weeks to name their new born child. It is kastom for others to come give names to the baby and the family then decides which is best. Following kastom, I offered up the name Eloisa after my newest niece born last September. A few weeks went by and I hadn’t heard a name yet so I went to ask. My neighbor told me that the baby not only was given the name Hali but also Eloisa. They combined the two to make Heloisa. Another one of their family members had a baby the next day on Santo and also named her little girl Heloisa. I now am proud to say that I have a “Namesake”!
February 7th, 2011
Under the Sea
Tonight I decided to take a break from Ratsville and get a full nights rest at my fellow PCV’s house. Sunday morning she went on her usual run down the beach but instead of her usual cat calls she got stopped on the road. A yangfala sang out her name and handed her a huge flying fish that he had caught that morning. While to most this fish might just look like lunch meat, it was probably more of an engagement offer. I showed my friend how to scale and gut the fish (that’s right…because I am now an expert) and we had ourselves a little fish fry. Let’s just hope that this young man doesn’t show up later expecting her hand in return.
As dinner time crept up on us we realized our food supply was a bit limited. So I went on a little walkabout around the village. Families are always generous with their root crops and laplap. Not expecting much on a Sunday afternoon, I went to visit one of my teachers from last year. We storied for a while and then she asked what dinner looked like. I told her honestly that I wasn’t sure yet. She jumped to her feet and grabbed some dishes and calico. We walked down to a few mamas who were having a fundraiser for school fees for their kids. One of the mamas piled a plate high with root crops and fish soup. The next mama whips out a huge lobster from her saucepan and throws it on top of the pile. Talk about ask and you shall receive. I proudly walked back with my incredible find and we devoured the lobster in record time. A day of sincere generosity!
February 4th, 2011
I came back to Tanna with a particularly bad case of the runs. Now I used to think they called it the “runs” because it ran out of your body . . . but now I think it’s because once you hear that grumble in your stomach, you better run. Unfortunately cyclone Vania did quite a number on my back yard area and a large coconut tree is now blocking my smol haos. Needless to say my “runs” to the smol haos have been pretty comic. To make matters a bit worse, at night I not only fell on the way to the smol haos, I also chased three rats. This was seriously straight out of some British slap stick comedy show. Please take a moment to picture this scene: me chasing 3 rats with a wimpy broom in and out of my room…all of the sudden my stomach grumbles…drop the broom, forget the rats, and run to the smol haos…trip and fall, run back to the house, grab the broom and start chasing again…and so on until 4:30 AM when I surrendered. And the worst part is that I didn’t even have any food in my house so the rats were clearly just after me. Welkam bak Hali!
