The World Changes Every Day

One of the benefits to Port Vila - weekend scuba diving! The other day, someone I met asked me how being a Peace Corps volunteer in the capital compares to serving in a more rural community.  While I haven’t served on an outer island here in Vanuatu, I did serve in a rural community in Benin – and told him that “it’s completely different – it’s like having a regular job, only without the money!”  Working with World Vision is very much like having a regular job.  I have a desk and a computer, I’m in the office from 8 to 5 – and there’s lots of work to do.  While I wouldn’t trade the challenges and rewards of serving in a rural area during my first service, at this point in my life this is exactly what I need.  I often find it amazing to look back over my time in Vanuatu so far, and think about how despite all the challenges and uncertainty of my first four months I ended up in a situation that is such a good fit – really a much better fit than my e...

First day of work at World Vision! The title of this post was a motto of the Rotary Youth Exchange program, and I learned it when I was an exchange student with them in Finland the year after high school.  The phrase stuck with me in Benin, as I dealt with the infinite frustrations and challenges of my first Peace Corps service.  And now in Vanuatu, I’ve had yet another chance to experience the importance of flexibility.  The good news is, whenever I get the question about whether or not I can work in a rapidly changing/flexible work environment during future interviews, I’ll be all set! Some time ago I wrote a post about my job here in Vanuatu/ what I will be doing for work.  You may not have read that post; it was very long, and didn’t have any pretty pictures until the end.  If you did read it, disregard everything you learned from it – my situation has had some pretty major changes.  Shortly after my time on Ambrym working with fellow Peac...

All the post cards I bought during my long wait.   Yesterday, I was working in the Peace Corps Office resource room when a friend asked if I could help her run an errand.  Another Peace Corps volunteer who is serving on Ambae had a package at the post office, and it couldn't be delivered to her on her island until the customs fees were paid.  I didn't know much about how to do this, but I was free- and so I walked to the post office downtown, stopping into stores to browse as I did. When I got to the post office, I went to the desk labeled "customs" and explained the situation - but they were confused about why I had come and not the volunteer in question, and why I didn't have an invoice for the amount I was supposed to pay.  They suggested that I try another desk, labeled "items to collect" or something like that.  Before I headed over there, I got into a conversation with a couple of men sitting on bench.  In Vanuatu "storying", or c...

Most of my time here in Vanuatu has actually been spent in Vanuatu's capital, Port Vila - waiting for work to get started between trips out of town.  I haven't written about many of that time - a lot of it has been wasting days on the internet, nothing that would really be interesting to read about (although maybe it would give a more realistic view of what my service has really been like).  But several adventures have been sprinkled in.  Here are some of them! One weekend early on in my stay here, another volunteer and I decided we wanted to visit Lololima Waterfall.  He'd heard the waterfall was cool, but neither of us knew how to get there.  I asked the women who work at the hotel where I've been staying, and they thought we could probably flag down one of the "busses" in Port Vila and get it to take us there for around 400 vatu ($4).  Busses in Port Vila are actually minivans that act sort of like taxis, driving around and picking up and dropping off...

Ambrym is a beautiful island, and not all of my three weeks there was spent lying around on the floor - I also went swimming in the ocean almost every day.  Another good place to reflect on life.  I'm not dating anyone right now, and while I love the freedom to pack my bags and move to a tropical island in the South Pacific whenever I want sometimes I really feel like I'm ready to find my life partner.  The idea of sharing all these experiences sounds great.  One day on Ambrym I was alone at the beach, standing in the water and thinking about this.  I thought about how many of us have this desire to find a person that will make our lives feel complete, to be able to say "you complete me."  I've been in love in the past, and have dated some wonderful guys, and I do know that it isn't that easy - no matter how great a person is or how much you love them, they never are able to make everything perfect.  Maybe we're thinking about the phrase "you complet...

Peace Corps, especially in Vanuatu, is certainly full of adventure - but the experience also involves a whole lot of personal reflection and wrestling with complicated issues.  Figuring out personal relationships, dealing with uncertainty about what my service is supposed to be about, what in the world I'm doing with my life, etc.  When I spent three weeks on Ambrym last month (the island where I went through Cyclone Cook), a lot of this wrestling came to a head.  While there, I learned that the funding for the project I originally came to Vanuatu to do had still not come through, and there were some serious doubts about if/how the project would go forward.  Everything felt very uncertain - I didn't even know for sure if I'd be able to finish my service here in Vanuatau.  This was pretty stressful for both me and the other volunteer I was staying with, who was doing the same project in her community. One day we were both particularly down about the whole thin...

I recently got back to Port Vila after three weeks spent on Ambrym, another of Vanuatu's islands.  I was spending time with Kathleen, a volunteer there who is working on the same project as me.  I helped her lead part of the two-week training with youth that starts the project, and had plenty of time to enjoy her site - one of the most beautiful villages I've been to so far.  Ambrym is volcanic (it has two active volcanoes), so the beaches are all black volcanic sand and it has a beautiful, mountainous landscape. At the end of my second week there, Cyclone Cook passed through Vanuatu.  This is the first time I've experienced a cyclone or hurricane firsthand.  A couple days before the cyclone passed through our area, the weather started to get windy and the waves were stronger than before. Peace Corps does a great job at looking out for the safety of volunteers, and we began to get regular texts from our Safety and Security manager in the office about th...

It would be fair for readers of this blog to wonder if I have a job here at all, or if my Peace Corps "service" just consists of being flown around to ever more beautiful islands, spending time on the beach and going on adventures.  Usually work for a Peace Corps Response volunteer starts right away, and in fact all of the other Response volunteers here in Vanuatu were packed off to offices around Port Vila right after their two-week training to start 9-5 desk jobs.  My case is a little unusual, but I am here to do a job, and here's some more info on what it is. I was invited to Vanuatu to work on a program called Youth at Work, a program organized by the South Pacific Community   (SPC).  The program's core goal is to help out of work youth find employment, usually through starting small businesses.  It's been active and successful in Vanuatu's neighboring country, the Solomon Islands, for some time now, and SPC is now trying to introduce it to Vanuatu. ...

 In the Peace Corps Vanuatu welcome book I was sent before coming, I was told that "In Vanuatu, you will probably do more walking, riding in the back of pickup trucks, flying in small planes, and bouncing around in small boats than you have ever done before."  On my recent trip to Malekula, Vanuatu's second largest island, I got my first real taste of Vanuatu travel.  I am someone who loves all of those modes of transport - pickup trucks, small planes, boats - so this is a great country for me. I was spending a week in Malekula with a Peace Corps Volunteer Leader - a 3rd year volunteer who helps with developing sites for new volunteers, among other things.  I spent the week living with her and visiting different villages around Malekula as part of her site development work.  The idea of me being along was basically for me to get a sense of village life, and I also got the chance to chat with a couple volunteers who will be doing the same project as me. To g...

When living life at village pace, without electricity, it's pretty natural to go to bed early.  9:00 pm was a late night, I was often in bed by 8.  This leads to waking up early, a great thing when your morning trip to the latrine takes you past a beautiful white sand beach with an unobstructed view to the east over the ocean.  It became my routine on Pele to sit under a coconut tree next to the ocean for one or two hours each morning, watching the sunrise.  Gypsy, the family dog, would come and sit with me - more often than not, she'd try to climb up on my lap.  For some of the time I'd be alone, but at least one or two people would come and sit next to me and chat - going to sit next to the beach to look at the ocean in the morning was a very normal thing to.  Never before in my life has watching the sunrise been a regular part of my routine.  Each sunrise was different.  As the sky got light, activity would start on the beach - the village mot...

My first couple days on Pele were the weekend - no classes, nothing to do but adjust to village life and talk as much as I could in my broken Bislama.  I think it was my second or third day, I was alternating between chatting, napping, and reading my Bislama textbook, and the day was starting to drag.  "Hmmmm," I thought, "I remember this feeling.  Just like last Peace Corps."  But then - "Guess I'll go snorkeling!!!"  My village, Launamoa, was right on the ocean.  I swam at least once a day, and the snorkeling right in front of my house was pretty great.  I saw all kinds of neat fish, including a group of clownfish hanging out around a rock covered in sea anemones.  Some of my snorkeling adventures were farther afield, though.  One time after lunch I complained about the heat to Terry, our language traininer.  "Ok", he said, "Why don't we go swimming?"  He guided us to a place where the reef drops off and the ocean gets deep -...