Haos blong mi!

Here is my cozy house on West Ambae island. It has a cement floor. The front half of the house has wood and tin walls. The back half and inside walls are made from woven bamboo.

The roof is made from natangura that has been woven and sewn onto the wooden beams. Spiders and geckos just love to hang out up there! It is a hexagon shape and has 6 windows. On a hot sunny day it actually stays resonably cool (you know like 85 degrees)!

West Ambae makes a special style of mats made from pandana leaves that they paint or dye red. I have never seen one made but I have heard that they carve the design into a banana tree trunk then press it onto the mat before they paint it red.

This is where I wash my dishes! The blue bowl is for washing and the pink bowl is for rinsing. The green bowl in the middle is where I put fruit to keep the critters out of my house (well or at least attempt to!)

And THIS is my "swim haos." We actually call it the bathroom on West Ambae. I carry a bucket of water from the water tank and use a cup to bathe. It works for what it is meant for and just that alone. Sometimes it even is used as a way for my siblings to start climbing up the guava and orange trees nearby!

The line I use to hang my clothes to dry is right next to my house. If it rains I hang them underneath a tin covered veranda at my counterpart's house. Saturday mornings is laundry day! It is so much easier to wash a little each week instead of letting it build up. I just fill a big basin with water and use a wooden plank to prop the clothes up on while I wash. I actually enjoy it. While here in Vila this week I paid to have a load washed and dried at the laundromat. $12 later I was LOVING the smell of the cleanest clothes I've had since September of 2009!

The front half of my house is a living room/dining room/pantry/kitchen! Here on the left side, as you walk into the house, I have this table that I use for doing work and eating. The chair is my favorite reading spot. My Bubu man Fred made both of these!

This is my wall of letters and cards! After I read them and write back I hang them on the wall. My host family loves to look at the pictures and sometimes tries to read them.

Here's my cousin sister Charlotte. She is in Kindy and starting first grade next term. She is 6 and loves to talk talk talk. One of her favorite things to look at in my house is my wall of letters! Her favorite is the one with baby Jesus (thanks Mom!). She also likes the singing cards (thanks Andrea and Mom & Dad!!).

Sometimes the kids come over and like to look at books, do puzzles, or color in my house. I also taught them how to play concentration (or memory) and they love that!

This is the right side of the front room and you can see my food safe and cooking area. The barrel is where I keep my water that I carry from the water tank. I only boil water to drink tea or eat oatmeal. I am eating lunch and dinner with my host family so as of now I don't cook actual meals in here.

Here is my food safe where I keep everything except for fresh fruit. The rats can chew through it if they really want to but if I block the top with things they tend not to be able to jump from the wall onto the top. Little by little I am learning how to outwit the critters!

On the door connecting the two rooms I have lots of pictures that people have mailed me and my calendar. Every day I write what I did that day on the calendar to help me remember in years to come.

Ok this is the second half of my house. It is seperated from the front half by a woven bamboo wall and the door above. This is the right side where my bed is and my clothing wardrobe (which Bubu Fred also made!).

Inside the wardrobe I can hide (oops I mean hang) my island dresses. Now that the rainy season is ending I am realizing I may need to reorganize. The rainy season did bring a large amount of mold that grew inside the wardrobe so I need to find a new place to keep my clothes!

On the left side of my bedroom I have a table and bench along the wall. I have a clothesline strung in here too to hang sweaty workout clothes or clothes that I may not hung outside for everyone to see (if you know what I mean) ;)

Here is my current collection of books to read. Well actually I've read half of these now...

The bamboo walls are covered with calico to make it more homey feeling. My counterpart decorated it for me so unfortunately I wasn't able to choose my design but that's ok! I get to have Christmas every day :)

This is my toilet! It is also called a "smol haos" on some islands. It is about a 1 minute walk from my house. It has a concrete floor which is over a long hole. The walls are made with cement brushed over burlap bags.

This is "the box." You can sit on it or hover but I keep it as clean as possible. Keeping the lid on helps to keep the smell down along with some bleach every week or so.

So there you have it! I glimpse into my everyday life. I like my house and am so grateful to have some space just for me.

A day at the "soltwata"

When the weather gets hot we head to the ocean! West Ambae is full of black stone beaches. As the "soltwata" tide comes in and out the big black stones capture it and make small pools to swim in. They aren't deep so it makes it very safe. No sharks allowed!






This is one of the many places we go to swim. Here is my host Papa and some of my sisters and cousins enjoying the refreshing coolness. The kids usually just swim in their underwear or naked. Everyone else just wears shorts and t-shirts.

The names of the kids starting from the left are Noella (6), Charlotte(5), Selena (6), Christiano (4), and Joylynn (5).

Here are Michael (12) and Jerekslynn (12) (not sure how to spell that one!) climbing up the rocks to look at the ocean. They are the oldest kids in our family. They are both my cousins.



This was baby Jenny's first time in the salt water. That is my host Mama and youngest sister (8 months)!





And apparently she wasn't a fan!











I look forward to more days at the beach to come!

Launching of our Health Promoting Program

I will be working at Volovuhu Centre school in Tavala. Our school is K-8 and has plans of growing to continue up to year 9 and/or 10. Here is the school's logo. They had a drawn version and I made it into a computerized one for them.

Mid November we celebrated the launch of our plan to promote health education within the school. The first step was for the school to build an aid post. This building is a short walk from the school and is open Monday, Wednesday and Friday during school hours. It has two rooms inside but is quite small. The first room is Andrea's desk and basic supplies for first aid. The second room has a bed as well as shelves for the rest of her supplies.



The aid post worker was trained in first aid and the basics related to malaria, infections, and is able to give out medication. Her name is Andrea and she is quickly becoming one of my good friends! Here she is receiving a gift of banana lap-lap to thank her for working at the aid post. She is in the brown island dress.

She is going to Pentecost island for 3 months of training and when she gets back we are going to make plans to climb to the volcano's crater on our island!

The ceremony to officially open the post was lots of fun!

One of the teachers (Mr. Vira) and some of the students performed a skit to demonstrate how in the past the villagers were not always receptive to visitors coming to their islands. The boys dressed in leaves and pretended to block the invited guests as they arrived by holding up pretend bows and arrows.


Here they are also banging a beat on the tamtams. These are hollowed out tree trunks and are used to form the beat for dancing as well as to announce many other things such as births.










These are the salu salu's that were made from fresh flowers to give to the invited guests. This is the National Flower of Vanuatu and many of you may have seen it on stamps that come when I send letters. I call it "friendship honey" because that is how it sounds but the name is spelled something like "Fragipane." It smells BEAUTIFUL!! The come in white and pink.




With every ceremony that I have seen so far in West Ambae there are generally the same order of events. The invited guests arrive (probably about an hour or two late...this country takes fashionably late to a new level!). They are given salu salus and sometimes fresh coconut water to drink.



Here the chief of Tavala is giving a fresh coconut to the doctor that works at the only hospital on West Ambae.


The ceremony is opened with a prayer.






There is always an MC. Then there are multiple speeches followed by presentation of gifts. Here is my counterpart Chris who I will be working with at the school. He was the MC and loves the megaphone!










Now the plan is to encourage members of the community to use the aid post. There is a very small fee to get a sore cleaned and bandaged. I think it is either 50 or 100 vatu (aka 5o cents or a dollar American). Also, the school will be doing more health education and I hope to be a part of that as well. First goal...get them to wash their hands!!!