Settling In

Relaxing in the hammock after a long day of pouring latrine slabs has a familiar and satisfying feel about it, but at the same time it makes me miss having my old PC buddies nearby to complete the picture. And rum—that's missing too. Strangely, this tropical country grows a lot of sugar cane but doesn't produce rum. There's imported scotch and such in the capital, but I decided to hold off on bringing a bottle of spirits to site for this first stretch, a decision I'm vaguely regretting at the moment, though it's really the first time I've thought about it much. There's always the option of going out and drinking a shell or two of kava, which I do on a regular basis, but that's different from kicking back here in the hammock under the thatch sipping a glass of Havana Club. For one thing, kava tastes exactly like dirt. I will share more about kava some other time, but I should get to filling in the bigger picture before I get too far sidetracked on the topic of intoxicants.

So yeah, Peace Corps Vanuatu is where it's at! At least, it's where I'm at, and I'm quite happy to be here. I'm out on the very northern end of the tall, narrow island of Maewo.

We're not far from the island's only airstrip, in a village of about 45 households that are strung out along a few kilometers of the island's single gravel road which parallels the jagged, coral-lined coast.

Just across the road the land rises steeply as you climb up to a densely forested interior. Up about 150 meters things level out and there are vast coconut plantations and areas cleared for the gardens where families grow their staple crops of manioc, yam, banana and taro. The people here have been extraordinarily welcoming to me and after some shaky moments early on that had me wondering just what in the world I must have been thinking to have jumped into Peace Corps all over again, I'm now getting settled and have started finding my footing, both figuratively and literally. And nowadays there seems to be more to do most days than I can find time for, which is a surefire formula for a contented volunteer.

The reason things have gotten so demanding here is the disaster on the nearby island of Ambae. When I walk out of my house it's only a hundred paces down the hill past my latrine and through some dense bush to where the path opens up onto the aforementioned coastline. It's a remarkably beautiful spot.

Just a few kilometers across the sea to the east lies Ambae. On a clear day you can see the gentle slopes of its Manaro Volcano rising in the island's center and disappearing into the clouds. But most days the view of the island itself is lost in a light haze and the only indication that it's still there are the thick plumes of smoke and ash that form in the sky above the volcano.

Since I arrived here in late June we'd been hearing the frequent rumbling of the volcano, sounding like distant thunder, and sometimes ominously accompanied by mild earthquake tremors. Last month the volcano kicked into a higher gear and enveloped big swaths of Ambae in ankle-deep ash. When a subsequent rainstorm caused two ash-choked rivers to overflow, an entire village that was perched on Manaro's western flank was washed away in the middle of the night. Luckily, just as with Ngabes, there seem to be Ni-Vans who never sleep, and the alarm was sounded in time for people to escape to higher ground with nothing more than their pajamas where they watched everything they owned slide down the side of the volcano in a slurry of sulfurous ash and mud. That was enough for the Vanuatu government and what had been a strongly suggested evacuation was upgraded to a mandatory order with no exceptions. Freight ships were marshaled and the several thousand islanders who had been holding out on Ambae were carried off to other islands. A substantial share of them were brought here to Maewo and they began arriving in our village by the dump truck full.

That was a month ago now, and our little town of Marino has now nearly doubled its population with the arrival of some 200 evacuees. It's been an exciting and busy time to be here as you might imagine.

I've been pitching in whenever and wherever I can as we set about building temporary housing for the arriving families, getting water systems and latrine facilities in place and so forth. There has been plenty of outside aid coming in both from the Vanuatu government and international NGO's, but the hands-on work on the ground is all local.

  The orange “Community Disaster Committee” vests became a hot item, as men set to work with their bush knives hacking down small timber and bamboo to erect frames for the tarpaulin tents that make up the improvised neighborhoods and women and girls pinned panels of thatch for roofs and wove coconut leaf screens for doors.

We didn't have any decent latrines here to begin with—just a few crude “bush toilets” and those are quickly being overwhelmed.

So we've made a big push to get the pits dug and slabs poured for new "VIP" latrines. Unlike Panama, the water table here is not so high as to be an issue, but traditional bush toilets are generally very shallow because once you dig down through a foot or so of loose volcanic soil you hit solid layers of coral stone that can only be worried through by chipping away at it for hours with a heavy iron bar know in Bislama as a “groopah.” 

The other big challenge that's been occupying a lot of my attention is getting enough clean water to everyone. When I first arrived here the community was barely getting by with its aging gravity flow water system which was only working intermittently. But that's not going to cut it now. The government dropped off a big 6,000 liter poly tank that we set up in the middle of town where water flows pretty consistently and that has saved the day for now, allowing us to store up water from the trickle that runs overnight.

The big problem comes further down the road and further down the pipeline where I live. A small village from Ambae--the the same people I mentioned who escaped in their pajamas--have settled in a small encampment right across the road from my house. We're all running very low on water cause the pipeline has been dry more than it has flowed for more than a week now. I have some theories about what's going on with the pipeline, but troubleshooting it has not proven easy. I've been experimenting with washing my clothes in the ocean where I do all my bathing these days if that gives you any idea of how it's going. But as I said, the ocean is only a hundred steps away, so I 

won't expect much sympathy on that count.

I've been so impressed with how the people of Marino have welcomed the evacuees— upending their village and disrupting their lives and to make a place for them. Even more impressive is the equanimity of the new arrivals as they cope with abandoning the island that has been home for as many generations as they can imagine. At this point in seems unlikely they will ever return. 

The children seem to be adapting to the tumult with surprising ease, finding new friends to play with homemade toys and bonding over familiar routines like the traditional group head check.

It's heartening to see but it's still very early in what's bound to be a seminal chapter in everyone's life and with the rainy season just now arriving the tarpaulin huts are not the only things that are going to be put to the test. As for my own unique role here it feels like the game has changed and the stakes raised in a way I never anticipated. The more mundane challenges of volunteer life seem rather pale in this context. Salty laundry and lack of decent coffee (or rum) don't get much traction or cause much distraction as I just join in with everyone else as we do our best to get settled in to our new world.