Island Dresses!

Oh the "Mother Hubbard." Island dresses are a staple outfit in Vanuatu. In Bislama they are called "aelan dres." Most of the Mamas wear them daily. In more urban areas skirts and shirts are more common for the younger generations. Island dresses are still worn to church and for special ceremonies. They are given as gifts at engagement, bridal, and marriage ceremonies.

Here is a link to a string band video where they are singing to the song "aelan dres" which was composed by a man from Paunangisu!


Mama made me a matching one for our first day at church together! I asked her why they are so big and she said it was so the wind can blow up them and cool you down! I think these dresses were introduced by the missionaries that came to Vanuatu. They hide the shape of a woman's body so they are more appropriate to wear then pants.











Here are some of my fellow Peace Corps volunteers at church on our first Sunday in Paunangisu. After church all of the Peace Corps members had to form a line outside and the whole village shook our hands! Hand sanitizer is very useful here!

Here are 2 island dresses my host Mama made and a shirt for my host Papa. She painted them herself and used stencils to write Vanuatu on them. This is the newest style of island dresses.

Often the Mamas make dresses and sell them for a small income or fundraiser for the church. Carolyn (a fellow volunteer) purchased this one for 1500 vatu which is about $15 American.

Side note: Check out the sunset in the background! I love the sunsets against the silhouette of coconut trees. It is stunning!





These next pictures are from our "last kakae" or feast in the village. They threw a big party to celebrate our last day in Paunangisu before we left to come to Port Vila.

This is Sandra! We went running together every morning. She is headed off to the island of Malakula. She is a fellow SHREP volunteer so we will have all of our teacher trainings together!






Our village had 15 trainees. We had 18 but 3 people have gone back to America. Here we are in our island attire for the last kakae!! Such a colorful bunch.








Now boys don't think you have it easy! You get to wear island shirts. My favorite is when the men pop their collars!










We often ask the locals...why don't island dresses have pockets!? They don't really have a reason that makes sense other than they just don't want them. Many island dresses have a little "flas" on them for fashion. We think they look like wings. At our last kakae we found out a purpose for them! They use them to swing their dresses while they dance.





This is my language training group. Linda is a local Ni-Van woman who was our teacher. We are at the University of the South Pacific for our swearing in ceremony!

Here we are! This is Group 22. We are the 38 new Peace Corps Volunteers of 2009.

Paunangisu Village

Here is a little glimpse into where I lived during training!!

During our training we spent 6 weeks living with host families in the village of Paunangisu on North Efate island. This is the house that I lived in with Mama Monica and Papa Fred. My host Papa is a retired police officer. They have 4 children in their mid twenties but they are all living in various other parts of the island.

This house was built in 2003 by my Papa and his sons. It isn't finished yet. Inside the walls that separate the rooms do not go all the way up to the ceiling.

Here are Mama and Papa with me at our official swearing in ceremony!

Every morning my host Papa wakes up and rakes the lawn. My host family works very hard to make their house and yard clean.

Paunangisu is like the suburbs. It is about an hour or so truck ride to the capitol city. They have stores with small refrigerators so they can buy cold beverages, meat, fish, etc.

Here is a picture of their outdoor kitchen. The building on the left is where Mama stores some food and prepares it to be cooked. The building on the right side is the kitchen where they cook over fire or with hot stones. The building in the far back is a shed for storage. When the boys of the family get married they will live on this plot of land with their wives. The storage shed will probably be torn down and a house will be built in that part of the yard.

Here was my bathroom and shower. The toilet is called a "small house" and the shower is called a "swim house." I had my own small house but shared the swim house with my host family.

The shower was water from a huge rain water tank for the village to share. During the middle of the day you could almost take a hot shower because the water pipes are black and run along the top of the ground.

This was my toilet. To "flush" you just pour water from a bucket into it so it essentially works the same as a normal American toilet. I was special with a toilet seat...they usually don't have those.

At night there were always spiders in my small house. Thank God they only came out at night! I was ok with it because I knew they were eating the mosquitoes. Oh how I have changed! :)




Here is the "living room" of the house. This is where they store food and their extra plates, bowls, etc. Under the cloth is a TV! My family has a generator but they don't use it very often. When the generator is on they have 2 or 3 lights and this TV as well as a DVD player. They like to watch religious musical shows! Each room of the house is separated by either a door or a piece of calico. They use calico to decorate the walls too. Mats that are woven from leaves of pandandas trees. These mats are often given as gifts for almost every ceremony. In many houses they do not have beds and just sleep on the mats.


This is the kitchen/dining room area. This is almost equal to a porch in America. There is a 4 burner propane stove on the table that Mama used a lot. This is where vegetables and fruit are stored and where they do dishes as well. The ground is sand and they cover it with the mats. When it rains we have to keep our legs up on buckets so that those poisonous centipedes don't bite us!






The table cloth was hilarious. They asked me so many questions about what things were on it. It was a great conversation starter. They think that everything on this tablecloth is American. They wanted to know why the fruit looks so perfect...I gave them a mini lesson pesticides.






Here is my bedroom. It was a a comfy twin size bed. The room also had a plastic circle table with 1 plastic lawn chair. I had a couple smaller coffee tables that I put my clothes and toiletries on. The concrete floor was covered with something similar to wallpaper.

The red blanket you see is from the Peace Corps. The red fuzz gets on absolutely everything and the color bleeds when you wash it. It has already started to unravel and I have only used it for 2 months! My host Mama and I joked about the Chinese blanket and how cheap it is!

Here is my favorite accessory! This mosquito keeps away mosquitoes, spiders, centipedes, rats (called rats but they are really just field mice), and who knows what else!! It keeps me safe and happy!! I always keep it tucked in so nothing has a chance to get through.


These are the great wall decorations that my host Mama put up! Soccer is big around here. They call it futbol of course from that British influence. Depending on the place women are sometimes allowed to play futbol. Usually the women just play volleyball. I have always been really bad at soccer but maybe I can actually learn how to play now!