The case of the 2,000 ducks and the house without walls: aka what is my job and where do I live?

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.  They've asked Peace Corps to help with this.  The Youth at Work program has an urban version, in which youth can either start businesses or intern with existing organizations, and a rural version, which I and three other volunteers will be starting on our islands for the first time this year.

The Youth at Work rural model is a 20-week program that has focuses on climate change adaptation, community service, and small business development.  I will run the program twice, in two villages on the western part of Ambae island - Walaha and Tavala.  In each village, I will work with a committee to select 20 young people between the ages of 16-29 who are not currently in school and would like to participate.  The program will begin with a 2-week training (basically like a day camp), in which the youth will be trained on topics like climate change adaptation (including things like agriculture and natural resource management), self confidence/goal setting, the importance of community service, and small business development.  After this, I and the youth will conduct community service activities in the village for 18 weeks, while continuing small business trainings.  Ideally much of our community service work will be related to making the village more resilient to climate change.  At the end of the program, participants will receive help with writing business plans for their own small businesses, and starting said businesses.  

So that's the well-worded, organized-sounding description of what I am up to here.  Like any time multiple organizations try to work together on a new program, however, everything is a bit up in the air.  Funding is one question - we're still working out where the money is coming from for the expenses associated with the training and starting the small businesses.  This is one reason I haven't started the program on my island yet.  And of course everyone involved in the project has different ideas for how it will go.  My first meeting with SPC, just a little more than a week after I got to Vanuatu, was quite a whirlwind.  It felt like jumping into the last third of a conversation that was well underway.  The whole thing was in rapid-fire Bislama.  Everyone was talking about how this and that minister should be involved, and we need to be sure to be represented at a big upcoming government meeting, which may or may not be on Epi island, and by the way there are 2,000 ducks in New Caledonia that need to be used, so can we work them into the project?  

Wait a second - ducks?  It turns out SPC had budgeted funding for ducks in their Cyclone Pam recovery funds (Cyclone Pam hit Vanuatu a couple years ago, and many organizations have been helping replenish lost livestock).  But no one is really sure what to do with the ducks, so in the meeting I was told to do my best to incorporate around 700 ducks into my Youth at Work project.  I clarified that the ducks are a budget line item, not physical ducks sitting in a crate somewhere - if they were 2,000 ducks stuck in a box, this would be very urgent!  Instead, the plan is to purchase them from New Caledonia when they are needed.  So perhaps some of the youth in my program will end up as duck farmers.  But then again, not much has been heard about the ducks in the month since the meeting so maybe they've been taken care of some other way?  

So starting up this program will be interesting, to say the least.  An added issue is that, for those of you who are good at math, you will notice that running this 20 week program in two different villages will require around 10 months - 5 months per site.  This is assuming a mythical perfect world in which all the youth are already in place and ready to go, it takes no time to discuss the project with the community, it also takes no time to move house from one village to another, there are no local holidays to slow work down, and no follow-up is needed with the youth at the end of the program to make sure their businesses are going well.  Anyone who has served in the Peace Corps knows that this mythical, smoothly oiled world is so far from real that it's almost impossible to imagine.  So let's add another month for miscellaneous tasks and delays (which is pretty conservative).  That brings me to 11 months.  Now my contract here in Vanuatu is for 12 months, and as my faithful readers are well aware I have spent two of those months doing things like watching sunrises on Pele island, snorkeling in an underwater plane, riding pickup trucks around Malekula - and most of the time, sitting in the Peace Corps office on my computer - but either way, not running the Youth at Work program on Ambae.  The current plan has me moving to Ambae mid to late April, after assisting with the launch of the Youth at Work program on another island.  So essentially, I'll have 9 months to do what should really take 11 or 12...it's looking like this Peace Corps service will be significantly more fast paced than the last one.  Fortunately my two villages are close to one another so it should all be possible, I should be able to start working with the second village before I've finished in the first one.  We'll see!

Although I haven't started the Youth at Work program yet, I did get to finally visit my site last week!  I and Fredlyn, the Peace Corps staff person who coordinates Peace Corps Response here in Vanuatu, visited Walaha for three days.  We met my future host family, who seem wonderful, and saw my house - which lacks walls, roof, and floor, but otherwise is great!  As some of my ever-positive Facebook friends who have served in Peace Corps before commented, the house has great ventilation, excellent natural light, is very energy efficient, and does not have bats living in the ceiling.  So the proverbial glass is solidly half full, if not overflowing.  I also got to meet with some members of the committee in village who will be helping me with the Youth at Work project, and I think we'll work very well together.

My house - so much potential.

Meeting the family!  

Here are a few scenery shots of Ambae.  Every island in Vanuatu is so different- Ambae is not at all beach-y like Pele, and instead has a rugged coast made of black volcanic stone.  In fact, the coast is so rocky that it wasn't possible for a road to be built that goes all the way around the island - if I want to visit Peace Corps volunteers on the eastern part of the island it will need to be by boat!  Ambae is also significantly hotter than Port Vila, being closer to the equator.  It's beautiful, though, and I felt at home.  

The view of the ocean from the guest house where we were staying

The Ambae coast - this is where I'll be swimming every day :)

Heading back to Port Vila.  The airstrip is grass - which means planes can't land when it's rained too much.

Ambae from the air

My village - the building with the large pointed roof is a church, and my house is pretty near there.