The Happiest Country On Earth
For the last couple weeks I have been living inside a National Geographic’s magazine; in a rain forest in the happiest country on earth. Every morning I wake up to the sound of roosters crowing. I go to breakfast which usually consists of a Gato (almost like a croissant, but a full circle, and a lot more greasy) and some sort of fruit, like bananas (which taste like unlike any banana I have ever had before…much more flavourful!) or papaya (or popo in Bislama) and after breakfast my day begins. My days are pretty uniform here, depending on whether it is a weekday or the weekend. Monday to Friday I walk up a short path passing hibiscus flowers and banana trees to the school that consists of five concrete buildings that surround two outdoor volleyball courts, an assembly hall and a field. I head to the library with Chelsea (who is my hutmate here) where we get settled. This always includes heading to the classroom next door to visit our friend Josiah that teaches at the school. We all pick out virtue cards for the day and read them over before heading off in different directions at the school. I then make my way next door to the main office at the school where I count up the kids’ lunch money and make sure that the head cook gets the appropriate numbers for meal time. Shortly after I finish that, it is morning tea. I usually will have some tea with Chelsea and we might buy a samosa or something else small to snack on. Then we both head over to the primary building where we read to classes. After we finish reading I head back over to the library to put the books away and do any of the numerous small jobs I am assigned that day. Lunch is at noon and I am on duty during Thursdays from noon to half past. Monday to Thursday, Chelsea and I eat at the school; a heaping plate of food for only 100 vatu a day. Everyday and we sit and watch the kids play or we sit in the library and talk about life. After lunch I either have art with year 1/2 or Baha’i class with year 8. Every time I can be seen by the kids in grade 1/2 I am welcomed with cheers and small voices excitedly announcing “Ms. Stacey is coming!” Year 8 is never as eager to see anyone from the staff. After school is over Josiah, Chelsea and I usually congregate to the library where we pick up where we left off the day before. We generally head into town to make purchases or we head to our huts where we do whatever we feel. There is only one true town on Santo. Luganville (the town) consists of only one road where lots of people travel through or hang about everyday. There is small stores packed full of random odds and ends and there is a market close towards the end of town where many locals sell their food. We walk about the market as the people behind the tables swat away flies. They wrap up any of our purchases in banana leaves as we pay them in with Vatu (the money in Vanuatu). My favourite thing to buy at the market is Laplap which can be made with different things like for example, cooked banana with coconut or cooked manok with meat. When I first came to the school we had a lady named Rosaline cooking for us. Rosaline is a total powerhouse. She is a very built and very strong (physically and minded) Ni-Van woman. As of this past week Chelsea and I have been cooking for ourselves. This means building a fire (which is actually harder then I imagined it would be) and cooking whatever foods we have purchased at the market. For dinner tonight I cooked rice and kumala and ate it with soy sauce. Dinner is pretty random and we eat whatever we feel like eating that night. On the weekends here everything is pretty quiet. Friday nights we have a youth gathering at the Baha’i centre where we eat food, sing songs, say prayers and talk about events that are coming up. So far this has been my first Saturday on my own. Last weekend was the cluster meeting and then before that we were at the Baha’i centre hanging out. Today Chelsea and Josiah went to the Baha’i Centre to have an intensive Ruhi study and I stayed back at the school. After walking to the mini-market with them (which is only like a ten minute walk away from the school) and picking up some gato for breakfast I came back to the school and had a nice cold (there is no hot water) shower. I did some laundry (which I do all by hand in a bucket full of water with a board stuck in it and a brush to scrub the clothes clean) and then I went back to my hut. Our hut is probably half the size of my room back at home. When you walk inside our beds are on the left and we have a shelf on the right. We have a piece of linoleum down right inside when you enter and we try to keep it pretty clean so that we can hang out on it. Our hut is anything but soundproof. Rosaline lives on the other side of our hut and she tends to have a static filled radio on full blast at the oddest hours. It is very hard to get any alone time or any quiet time here at the school because even when it’s the weekend there always seems to be some sort of noise happening. Thankfully today has been the quietest day I have spent at the school yet. After spending some time reading on my warped-too-short-for-my-mattress bed hidden under my mosquito net I fell asleep with book-in-hand for a couple hours. I woke up and headed over to the kitchen that Chelsea and I share with Aunty Lena (a teacher at the school), Uncle Matthew (the school’s handyman), their daughter Alice, their son David, Josiah, Markus (Josiah’s hut mate; also a teacher at the school), Joseph and his sister, Velindas. The kitchen is a pretty busy place and there always seems to be a fire going with either a pot of food cooking over it or a kettle with water boiling for tea. I finished making dinner and now I have decided to do some catch-up blogs as I have fallen immensely behind. The internet is very slow here and we actually don’t even have it on weekends, so although I am writing this on a Saturday it likely won’t be posted until Monday (which is still a Sunday back home). Well I am finished this wordy, information packed blog and I am going to go write some more blogs about stuff that has happened now that everyone is caught up on how I am living.
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