The Pacific Hope

A couple of weeks ago, I had a very busy, very lovely, very different kind of week. I, along with most of the other volunteers on Ambae, got involved with helping a medical ship, The Pacific Hope, with their outreach in Lolowai (a town about a 30 min walk from mine). I spent the week travelling about 200 miles on a small boat to help them find certain villages, translating for doctors and nurses, swinging on the rope swing off of their ship, meeting lovely people, eating lovely food (it was so good...there was cheese!), feeling disoriented by being in AC on their ship, and making so, so many phone calls.
As those of you who read my blog may have noticed, I shy away from the day-to-day play-by-play (I like how many hyphens I just used), so I hope you enjoy some highlighted moments from the week.
For those that want the more visual version, I'll post here first the video Marine Reach (the organization that runs the boat) made about their week on Ambae.

Squinting through the glare of the sun off the waves, I tried to orient myself. Alright, there are the cliffs by Lolowai, the Pacific Hope, the microwave tower by my office...but where the heck is Vuingalato? The captain was looking at me expectantly so I pointed to a distant ridge, and said "There...I think".
We were coming back from a meeting at the health center on Maewo (the island across the way) and were on our way to pick up some people from Vuingalato to take to the ship. To save some time (and gas), we decided to try and head straight there. Turns out, it's difficult to orient yourself when looking at an island from a totally different angle than you're used to, and finding landmarks when you're 2 miles from shore is significantly more difficult than finding those same landmarks when you're 500 yards away.
Luckily, my semi-educated guess was pretty close, and I was relieved to see the steep mountains with the gash of a deep ravine between and the small splashes of color that meant there were people there. Turns out, we were a little off, but the people there gave us directions to the right spot, and after a few more minutes we made it.
There was nowhere to beach the boat we were in, and way too many people there to be able to take back with us, so the captain (an EMT) and I jumped into the surf and waded to shore, breaking a toenail in the process on the slick stones. We hiked up the hill to a shaded area under a mango, and proceeded to do short checkups of the patients, to see who we should bring back with us and who we could treat right there, on the mountainside.
After an hour and a half, 23 patients, and 4 passengers to take back with us, we headed back to Lolowai, wet, hungry, and pleased with the success of the adventure.

I spent American Independence Day this year in North Ambae, in a small village called Tamamwai, translating for a doctor as she provided some much needed health care to the people there. We looked at who knows how many clogged ears, gave a lot of advice on how to take care of diabetes and high blood pressure, and got sprayed by many a syringe full of water (thanks Marvin...).
The end of the day was welcomed with a thank you from the town, AKA custom dancing and kava, as per usual. Dancing bolo, rounding (running in a circle around the dancers) the dance, and strong kava followed by pamplemousse wasemaot (to get rid of the taste of kava) wasn't exactly how I expected to spend the 4th of July, but it'll definitely go down in history as one of my more unique and exciting celebrations.

I worked for an afternoon at the glasses table, helping people find reading glasses that were the right fit for them. There was one woman I worked with whose eyes were quite bad; she could read anything smaller than a 14 point font without glasses. We tried a couple of strengths that didn't work for her, until we finally found the right one. The surprised "oh" and giant smile she got when she could actually see what was on the page still makes me smile to think about.

It's hard to condense a week into a palatable blog post, especially a week as eventful as the one I spent with the crew of the Pacific Hope, so here's hoping this gave you a small taste. They're doing really good work, and providing many services to people who would otherwise have difficulty accessing them (for example, there are no dentists outside of the two main cities in Vanuatu, both on other islands), and I feel lucky to have gotten the opportunity to help them out for the week they were a part of our community here on Ambae.