PAD Part 27

Left, the round building, is a nakamal. Right, the yellow building kind of in the background is my house. My friend Kwani often sells kava in this nakamal, and I often drink here. This also means that I'm friends with many of the people that drink here. Since you can see into my kitchen while drinking here, even if I don't feel particularly inclined to drink one night, my friends will often sing out to me to come, or just to say good night.

A visit from the DPT

And BOOM. There came the rain. We were so close. SO CLOSE. But no, now it was time to mentally prepare ourselves for a long, steep, muddy, rainy trek up the hill to Avery's site (a fellow PCV), because there was no way the truck could make it's way up the road now.
10 minutes after the deluge began, the truck dropped us at Amalu, pointed out the right path, and left. Already wet, and laden down with our overnight bags, 6 cans of tuna, and 4 kilos of chicken wings, we began the climb. Alternating between laughing and crying at how steep the hike was, we slowly made our way up the mountain. Finally arriving at Avery's site, we were greeted by a wet and muddy Studly Budly and an equally wet Kathleen (yet another PCV), who'd walked over from her site to see us. The rest of the night was spent with good conversation, good kava, and good food!
Waking up the next morning, it was raining again. Kathleen headed back early to make sure her village was ready for visitors, and we took our time over breakfast (Len, one of my bosses, brought Nutella, and I definitely ate more than my fair share of it!). Eventually, however, it was time to go. We waited for a squall to pass, and headed out again, carefully wading across the swollen creeks. When we got to Weinasasa, we weren't disappointed! They made us a delicious lunch, and that night, had a welcome ceremony for Kelleah and Len. People in Vanuatu are so wonderful and welcoming, I feel lucky to call this place home.
It was definitely a wet adventure this weekend, but I'm glad we got to give Kelleah an interesting picture of life here, and I'll leave this post with this: Kelleah, welcome, and may you have many more slippery adventures over your time here in Vanuatu!

PAD Part 26

Bianca and Rian

Time

I'm sure it doesn't come as a surprise to anyone that life here in the South Pacific is a little more relaxed than life in the US. "Black man time" or "island time" is definitely one of the perks, and one of the challenges of working in Vanuatu.
When people show up an hour late to work, then take a two hour lunch break only to duck out an hour early? Eh, sure. Why not? When they go to Port Vila for a week-long holiday that turns into a 3-week trip? Yeah, okay, no big deal. Walk four hours one way to go to the bank? A typical Thursday.
While sometimes it's nice, there are other times the American in me rears it's head, and I start to get a little annoyed. The time I really wanted to get to the Post Office, and my students showed up to class an hour late, making it impossible to do the class justice and make it there before it closed. Or the times I'm waiting to go somewhere, and dutifully show up at the appointed time, only to wait an hour or two before we actually leave. Or being told "i no long wei tumas" only to take on a grueling three hour hike.
Learning to adapt to a different sense of time has definitely brought its frustrations, but it's also helped me learn to be more flexible. I spend the extra two hours waiting for a truck making new friends; I take the afternoon off if I've got friends in town, or I'm just having a hard day; I bring my book to class so when I wait 45 minutes for anyone to show up, I've got something to do; whenever anyone tells me how long it takes to get anywhere, I silently multiply it by two. Adapting to island time has been harder than expected, and I now feel sorry for whoever my next boss is when I keep showing up to meetings no less than 20 minutes late.