Maewo

PENAMA Province, where I work, is made up of three islands: Pentecost (PEN), Ambae (AM), and Maewo (MA). Every day when I wake up, I'm greeted by a beautiful view of the other two, but as of the beginning of the year, I had spent a grand total of 4 hours on Maewo, and none on Pentecost. To begin the process of rectifying this, Kathleen and I took a weeklong trip to Maewo; to visit the other volunteers, swim in some rivers, and see how life is different on the aelan blo wota (water island).

I'll spare you the daily play-by-play, and just talk about a few of the highlights in this post.

Maewo! Pretty, ain't it?

A Big Waterfall
Inching carefully forward, I looked over the edge and sucked in my breath. It was high; higher than I expected when I'd been standing on the far side of the pool looking at the waterfall I was about to jump off of. I glanced to my right to where Kathleen and Lea were standing, grinning at me, and took a deep breath. I raised my right hand, counted down from three on my fingers, and jumped. It didn't take long to fall the 30 feet or so to the deep pool below, but it was long enough to feel a little terrified, and for my shorts to ride up to show a scandalous amount of thigh. After plunging into the cold water at the bottom, I swam upwards until my head broke out the surface of the water, and I let out a celebratory whoop, a big smile on my face.

Photos with kids
Clutching my camera with one hand, I carefully made my way higher in the tree. Looking down, I saw I was about 10 feet above the water now, and edging my way towards a higher spot, the one with the good view. After a couple more acrobatic maneuvers to get around the various branches, I made it. I took my picture, and making sure I had a good grip on my camera, jumped into the pool. One little girl had been watching me and swam up. concerned that I'd broken my camera by getting it wet. After explaining to her that it was waterproof, she said something that was the Vanuatu kid equivalent of "Prove it!"
I told her to hold her breath, and dive underwater. She did, and I snapped a few pictures. When she surfaced, I showed them to her, and laughing in delight, she sang out to her friends. Slowly they came, and soon I had 4 girls diving and surfacing, asking me to take more and more pictures, laughing the whole time. You can see a small selection of the many photos here:

People with food at Jo and Aaron's

I don't think I've ever sweat more in my life than I did on the hike up to Ngota. It was kind of steep, and it was kind of long, but mostly it was HOT. Just...so hot. It was probably about 150 degrees with 8000% humidity. No but for real, it was really hot.
We finally arrived, and promptly lay down on the floor, panting like the dogs that are our constant shadows here. Within minutes, we had the first knock on the door: a member of the Ngota community with a plate of food! 

The Store Lady
Near the end of our trip, it was time for our longest day of walking: Ngota to Nasawa. Getting down the hill from Ngota took about 2 hours, and we had about another 4 to go to get to Nasawa. It was hot, we were tired, we were both a little burnt out from being social and how much walking we'd been doing...when up ahead we saw a store. Maewo has stores, but they're generally small, don't have a great selection, and don't have power, so no cold drinks. This store, however, was different. It was big, and had solar panels on top, promising not only a selection of items to bring up our spirits, but also a cold drink to cool us down.
We walked up to the store, and were disappointed to see it was locked. We looked around us, and were surprised to see...no one. We wandered around until off up a hill, we saw a man sitting in a chair. We sang out to him to ask about the store, and he invited us up to talk to the storekeeper. This lady, as it turns out, was awesome! She was eating lunch, and invited us to sit down. Her husband gave us a custard apple, and we started chatting.
Eventually, lunch eaten, she opened the store. We bought peanuts, toilet paper, and she gave us free cold juice. It was wonderful! What should have been a 5 minute stopover on our long walk to Ngota ended up being about 45 minutes. I love that how easy it is to get into conversations with people here!

I always really enjoy seeing other volunteers sites; hearing about their challenges and triumphs; being able to put their stories in context; meeting their new families and friends...it puts it all in a little bit more perspective. We all have struggles and joys, good things and bad things (although way more good than bad), and even though our experiences are different, we've got this common thread of Peace Corps tying us together.

 And now, some bonus Maewo pics that I like: