Coming Up

Computer Lab when I arrived 1

Computer Lab when I arrived 2

As I come to the end of my service here in Vanuatu, I reflect back on my computer lab and how far it has come. It has been a struggle to get it to the level that it is now. I remember when I first got to my school, there were ten station units and ten flat screen monitors with the majority of the monitors not even opened yet. There were a ton of the old school monitors (CRT monitor) that were just laying around in the lab. The lab was dirty and disorganized. We routinely got hornets and different kinds of bugs in the lab because it was not sealed and we were next to a bushy area which was a good breeding place to insects like you would not believe. We had no mosquito screens on the windows, no curtains and barely any chairs.

Computer lab 1.0

I got to work on the lab with the help of the extremely supportive principal and of the school. When I checked all the computers, only three system units were functional. To maximize the amount of computers that my school had, we decided to explore thin client options. Thin client options will allow to run multiple workstations off of one system unit or computer base. The solution that we could access in Vanuatu is called N-Computing. this brand of thin clients can allow you to run three workstations off of one computer base, or six stations. We decided to go with the six workstation version and bought three. Each one went for the price of one new system base. At the end of the day we therefore had eighteen workstations just off of three computer bases. This made a huge difference in the amount of students that we could hold and teach in the computer lab. My goal when I got to Vanuatu was to end up with one computer for each student in the computer lab. This would increase the quality of teaching significantly as each student would be able to use a computer and kind of learn at his/her own speed. The largest class size we have at the beginning of the year is about 25 students. By the middle of the year however, this number always goes down to about thirty, so at the end of the day just four students would have to share two workstations among them which I think is a great improvement from when I first got to the school and students had to be broken up into two groups and they still had to share computers.

Computer Lab 2.0

This year, I changed the arrangement of the computers. Now the computers are arranged in rows. With the new budget from the school, we managed to purchase flat-screen monitors for every single one of our eighteen workstations and an extra monitor and a low power computer dedicated for the use of the computer class teacher. We used to have a blackboard in the class and this created a lot of dust when it was cleaned of the chalk markings. We got the blackboard out and installed a white board. We installed mosquito screens on the windows and sealed up any openings in the lab. We also installed a screen door so that we could leave the door of the lab open for ventilation purposes. Curtains have also been put up. Now we are also going to install a very low power server in the lab that will service the entire school. This will really help us out as we have had issues with data loss as people are not very vigilant with backing up their work. In fact, as I write this blog, I just received an email that the server we ordered as arrived and I will go pick it up and set it up with the assistance of my counterpart.

I am thinking of creating user accounts for every staff member and every student that takes computer class. We will see how that goes. We still have a lot of problems with the computer lab. I still haven't found a good way to control the printing that goes on. People just go to the lab and print whenever they want and waste paper and the ink which is very expensive. However, that problem will get fixed before I leave. I still haven't been able to sit down with my counterpart to create a comprehensive computer lab policy. Every time I try to meet with him, something always comes up. However, whenever I think about how the lab was when I got there and how it will be when I leave, I am happy with the two years that I spent here.

People using the lab

The plan that we have now for the lab that should have been implemented but has been delayed is to create "shelves" for the bases and put them under the table, so that when you walk into the lab, the only thing you really see are the monitors. We also want to attach a cupboard to the wall so that we can store our materials and spare equipment in them and have them be secure because we will lock the cupboard. We also want to find a way to hide the wires. Unfortunately we are on solar power, so my idea of having an air conditioning unit installed will not happen for a while yet.

Speedin'

Map of our Journey

Have you ever driven on a runway in the dead of the night? It is an amazing experience. Sit back and relax and let me tell you all about it.

A couple of months ago, we had a very intense rainy season. The effect of the incredible amount of rainfall was that roads all over the place were really bad. In that kind of weather, a peace corps staffer came to visit us to evaluate our sites and how we were doing. Since we volunteers are placed all over the island of Malekula, the staffer had to go all over the island to visit us. He could not visit a couple of sites including mine because the rivers leading to our site were flooded because of the heavy rainfall. However, he did manage to get to another volunteers site. This lived on the Northwest part of Malekula and although the roads were really bad, trucks could still manage to get there.

The staffer chartered a truck to go to this guys site and since the truck was already paid for, a couple of us volunteers that were in town decided to jump on the truck also and follow him to the site. It was a lovely way to pass the day. We left late afternoon and started driving. The truck we charted was a Toyota Hilux with four wheel drive, so it was pretty strong and had a decent amount of torque. However as we continue on, the road got progressively worse. Very soon, the truck was just plowing through sop mud (mud). Layers upon layers of mud. Even with four wheel drive, the truck kept dancing all over the mud, we would try to travel in the grooves left by the heavier trucks such as the land cruisers, however, the grooves were so deep that the truck would get stuck and we would have to get out and push. Pushing a truck while standing on about six inches of mud is not fun at all. It is impossible to get traction first of all and then your legs sink into the mud and by the time you are done pushing, you are covered from ankle down in thick black mud, that if you are really unlucky stinks. You do not have access to water to wash off and you have to get back inside the truck again, just awaiting the next time the truck gets stuck in the mud.

An example of how bad the road looked

It was basically almost impossible to get to the guys site and as we continued driving and had to push the truck for the third time, I became really incensed. I thought about how difficult it was for us five reasonably healthy guys in daylight to get to our destination. Then I imagined attempting to traverse the same road at night, trying to get a sick person to the main hospital on the island which was located at the place we had departed from. I came to the realization that if it was a medical emergency that required immediate care, the patient would die. This road that we were on was not traversable at night with a sick person on board. The truck never once drove on a straight line, it danced all over the road like a drunk man staggering his way home. How would a sick person handle that? Somebody in the grips of heavy malarial fever? Or somebody that had fallen down and broken their back or neck? I thought about all that and I got really incensed like I mentioned before. In fact I believe that I started talking in a heated tone to the people inside the truck with me. I said something to the likes of "This is the 21st century, there is absolutely no reason that a major road should be like this in any country of the world". The road we were on was THE road on the island. In the states it would be an interstate. Eventually I realized that I was preaching to the choir and stopped my ranting. However, that experience made me value even more highly, the importance of good roads. Imagine, you need to get somewhere and you have everything. You have the truck, you have the fuel, you have the driver, you have the money..everything, but you cannot go because the road is not good. Something like that should still not be possible.

Eventually, even with the bad road, we got to our destination. The village of Lavalsal in North East Malekula. This village is an SDA village which means that it is very strict. Sabbath is strictly observed from 6 PM Friday night to 6 PM saturday night. No caffeine of any kind is allowed in the village, alcohol and cigarettes are also not allowed. Kava, the traditional drink of Vanuatu is also not allowed. This was actually an ironic placement for the volunteer that got placed there because according to him, he is an alcoholic and also loves drinking Kava, so for the entirety of his time in Vanuatu, he has not really imbibed any of those substances, which I think is good.

At this village, we all relaxed and chatted with the inhabitants. Everybody seemed to be having a good time. Meanwhile I keep looking at the sky and watching the position of the sun. Remembering the status of the road, I knew that once it became dark, we would be stranded in this village because the truck driver would not want to travel back in the dark because he would have to make the trip back to town and back to the village as that was where he slept. As a matter of fact he had said as much to us on our way to the village and it if he refused to go back, we did not have any other options. I saw the sun start going down and started telling the others that we should go. I actually kind of felt bad doing so because this was not our trip. The staffer had to take as much time as he needed to fully access the site because that was what he came for and if he needed to stay the night, it was his decision, however I did not want to sleep in the village that night. For some reason, the thought of not going back to town where there was running water, electricity, comfortable beds and Kava distressed me, especially if we could make it if only we sped up what we were doing.

Eventually we were ready to go back. At this time, it was twilight and as I suspected, the truck driver did not want to go back. I did not blame him, however this was one of the few times that I refused to understand and kind of let my wants dictate what I would do. See, in cases like this in Vanuatu, people would just sleep in the village and leave the next morning, even though it would be inconvenient for them. That was kind of what the peace corps staffer suggested we do without directly saying so. However, I was very strident and said we should go. I just did not want to stay at the village for the night. My rationale was this. According to the truck driver, there was enough light for him to make it back to town, however he wanted to come back and sleep in his house and coming back might be difficult for him. He could sleep in town with family members or friends, but he did not want to do so. However, we had paid the guy to get us to the village and back, since we were paying, it did not make sense for us to be inconvenienced, rather, he should take the inconvenience upon himself as we had paid for his service.

All of us wanted to go back, but nobody wanted to be the guy to convince the truck driver to go back, so we just stood around..wasting daylight, saying how much we really wanted to get back to town tonight and then looking away and keeping quiet. The truck driver would say how he would not be able to come back tonight especially by himself and keep quiet. We would say how important it was for us to get back to town and keep quiet. Nobody really came out and said.."you have to take us back because we already paid you" or "I refuse to take you back and here is your money back". Eventually we won the standoff and the driver reluctantly said we should go. (In Vanuatu, here is how you get what you want. You never directly force people to do what you want, you just say how much you want it and keep quiet)

By this time we had wasted even more daylight but we started off. The driver as visibly angry and was deliberately driving badly, which caused us to get stuck numerous times in the mud and have to push. He then said that the road was too bad for us to travel and we had to get a land cruiser with a bigger torque or we would sleep and he would take us back in the morning. So now we go looking for a land cruiser but we cannot find one and the ones we found, the drivers were very hesitant to drive in the mud because they were sacred of damaging their gear boxes. In defeat we start to turn back to go to the village when lo and behold, a Mitsubishi truck comes driving past. this truck was coming from town where we were trying to go to. We stopped the truck and after some fast talking and exchange of money from driver to driver we got on the Mitsubishi, the passengers of the Mitsubishi got on our truck and we start to go back towards town.

The runway we drove on

Man, this truck was was monster. The grooves we got stuck on before, the truck just plowed through like they were nothing. Everytime we came to a mud hill, the truck would power through it. I remember myself and the other two volunteers with me standing on the back on the truck just yelling "Get it, Get it, Get it, Get it!!!!!!" Everytime the truck powered through another mud hill, and it did get it! Eventually the truck got to town with just a slightly damaged gearbox. All of a sudden the driver goes down a road we had never seen before. We were looking at each other wondering what was going on because there is really only one road on Malekula that could get us where we we going. We were wrong! In a minute, the truck burst out on the runway of the island airport and picked up speed just going down the runway. It was the most surreal experience going from battling mud hills and six inch mud groves to speeding on a bonafide asphalt road in the space of a couple of minutes. We had such an adrenaline rush that we just started whooping from the back of the truck, urging the driver to go faster. The wind was whistling past our ears and wonders upon wonders, there were no potholes. Me and another volunteer looked at each other and we had the biggest grins on our face because this could only happen in Vanuatu. Eventually we crossed to the other side and the driver eplained that he took the runway as a shortcut, and that it was illegal, but at ten at night no planes land , so it was quite safe.

We got to the house we were staying and immediately went to have some Kava at the closest Nakamal to celebrate getting back to town safely and on the same night and the surreal night we just had.

Slideshow

 I have put up some pictures and short blurbs beside very picture. Enjoy. This will be part of a new category that I am making.

Moldy Pot

This is what happens when you cook food and do not wash the pot for about a week. Randomly colored stuff starts growing inside the pot. I bet if I had left it for about a month, all the colors of the rainbow would have eventually been represented. I washed this pot and I soaked it in bleach, then I boiled water in it. Then I washed it again! You cannot be too careful you know. I did not mean to have the pot turn out like this though, but sometimes life happens and you just forget about unwashed pots that are lying around; especially if you survive on a diet of bread.

A tresspassing cow met its fate

Sometimes I love my school. When I first arrived at Rensarie, at times I would hear loud creepy noises at night that would scare me deeply. Not wanting to look like a coward, I told no one about the noises and my fear. I later found out that those noises were roaming cows that broke into the school compound on the hunt for some grass. Cows look mild-mannered, but when they start their mooing right outside your window at around 1 or 2 AM, they sound like what I imagine ghosts would sound like when they are coming for you. Imagine..MoooMooooMoooooooo, right outside your window!!! Anyways, Rensarie had a tradition of killing these cows whenever they were caught tresspassing. In Bislama, they would say "oli ronnem buluk", Some men would tie their bush knife (cutlass) to a stick and chase the cow while stabbing it. After the cow was killed, they would share out the meat to all the families that lived on campus. If it was the students that killed the cow, they would share it out among themselves. Any animal that tresspasses on Rensarie Secondary School territory is fair game, pigs, horses, cows..I bet even chicken.

ME before the locks

Man, the day before I left my site to go back to the states, I was so happy! I could not stop cheesing all day.

Me about to pull off the Adeyemi offensive

 Last year, I lived in the same apartment complex as another teacher, Abel Chalet. Our relationship got off to a somewhat rocky start, but towards the end of the year, we became really good friends. Chess brought us together more than anything. I got a chessboard from a volunteer in Vila and brought it back to site and the rest as they say is history. We would play every single day, sometimes four or five times a day. We talked a lot of smack while playing and just had a great time. I won a lot of the time if I managed to capture his queen at the beginning of the game. Everytime I captured it, he would scream "yakanel". I have no idea what that word means, But I would crack up whenever he said it. For a while I thought it was a french word because the guy is a french speaker, but I doubt it now. However, if I did not capture his queen, he would win. Man, this guy was surgical with his missus (thats what he called his queen). The day I left my site to go back to the States for my month long visit, we started a game, but could not finish it before my truck came. No kidding, for the entire month I was home, I was itching to go back and finish this game, thats how addicted we became to playing every day.

Transportation problems

This is real. This is how the roads on my island are during the rainy season. Trucks routinely get stuck and soemtimes you have to get out and push them. Let me tell you, stepping in mud is not fun, especially this kind of mud which is several inches deep.

Garden

"My mother was a florist, now my garden is enormous" - Drake.
That line just got into my head when I looked at this picture. This is the beginning of my Garden. Enough said. The people in the students are some of my students who helped me to finish it off.

Ponder this

A mother fowl and her chicks hiding from the rain.  I saw this mother fowl when it started raining. She started running towards the overhang and she spread out her wings and her chicks ran with her, but under the wings. I saw this and I thought to myself that it was an amazing sight. I mean chickens are agreed to be some of the dumbest creatures. At least they have extremely small brains. But here you have one protecting her young. Amazing!

Poor Cat

Some female peace corp volunteers emasculate their animals. For exhibit A, I will give the example of the poor cat in the picture. It is a male cat, but the volunteer that owns it refers to it with a female pronoun. She calls the cat "she". To add insult to injury, she did not give the cat a name and she just calls it cat. Can you believe that? she complained to me about the cat and I told her the poor cat probably had identity crisis. It probably thought it was a female dog with the name of cat. Of course it would not kill any rats. Some male volunteers emasculate their animals also, but that is a topic for another post. if I had a cat, I would call it Rambo or Commando or He That Devours Rats, I bet it would live up to its name and demolish every Rat it came across.

I Tried to Call..Really!

I am unlucky when it come to phones.
Ruminate on that for a minute.

When we got to Vanuatu that warm sunday two years ago, we were phoneless. We were not supposed to get phones until our two months training came to an end. However, after a couple of trainees left to go back home and we all complained, the office came to the conclusion that being able to speak to family back home on a regular basis might help in the adjustment process. With that in mind, they bought us all phones about a month into training. I remember, the phones were these brands called corals. My phone was black and red and it was the most wonderful present that I had received in my life. I immediately called my family and friends back home and started telling them all about Vanuatu and my snap conclusions about the culture and environment.

The honeymoon lasted for about four months. My phone started messing up. First of all, it got extremely scratched and worn looking. Probably because I dropped it. A lot. I would practice my catching with this phone whenever I was bored and I am not a very good catcher. However, phone makers should know that people like me exist and make their phones durable..right? Anyways, eventually, this phone became so bad that it would turn off randomly. I would be in the middle of writing a text message and it would just shut off. A lot of people missed extremely witty text messages from me because of my phone troubles. Then the sound went. I could only hear other people faintly and other people could hardly hear me at all. this would cause me to hold the phone close to my mouth and yell into it, then hold it to my ears straining to hear, then hold it again to my mouth and yell "WHAT DID YOU SAY?". I'm sure a lot of people found it funny and strange, especially since I had to make my phone calls in a public place. Oh well, we peace corp volunteers are in country to amuse people. Eventually, the screen would sometimes randomy turn white.

Lately, I had become obsessed with having a really flas phone, so while this was happening to my first phone, I had my mom send me a phone from the states. This phone was reliable. This was the phone we used when traveling internationaly..primarily to Nigeria. I had used it before and I knew it would work. But best of all, it was a flip phone! I wopuld be the only person on Malekula with a flip phone. I could just imagine hanging out with some people and hearing my phone ring. I would tell them "wait a second" whip out the phone, flip it, and hold it to my ear, all in one smooth motion. In addition, I thought it would have a better sensitivity to cell phone signals so that I could actually take calls inside my house instead of having to walk to the school canteen and have everybody and their mum listening to my phone calls. So, my mom sent the phone and it was wonderful..for all of three days, then it stopped working and before I could fix it, somebody stole it in the capital city. ...sigh.

I really did not want to spend a lot of money on another phone that I did not trust..there are too many fake products floating aorund in Vanuatu. So I decided to wait until November 2010 when I was going back to the States to purchase another phone that I knew would be genuine. So I continued using my first phone. Eventually, I got back to the States and when I was about to return, I went on a hunt for a phone. At this point, I was broke after traveling all over the country attempting to relive my college days with my college friends. I therefore could not afford a really flas "new" phone. People offered to buy me a phone, but being prideful, I attempted to prove that I was becoming really independent. I refused all offers of help. I decided to buy a reconditioned phone which was selling for less than thirty dollars. Another twenty dollars to unlock it for global usage and I had myself a nice, reconditioned flip phone, which meant I could still do the smooth one motion flip and answer maneuver.

I came back to Vanuatu and sure enough, my dreams were becoming a reality. People were shocked and awed by my new "flasness." Peace Corp volunteers and locals alike. The sensitivity to cell phone signals was better also. I still could not receive calls from my house, but I could receive text messages..sometimes. Two months after arriving..the phone started acting up. The battery charge was horrible. The phone could not last a day without needing to be recharged. If I actually used the phone to do more than text? well, it would not last an hour. It got to the point that I stopped using the phone, it was frustrating. To make matters worse, the phone could only hold twenty five text messages. 25!

I decided to buy a new phone and went to Lakatoro to get one. Lakatoro is the political and economic capital of Malampa province. Provinces in Vanuatu are like States in the United States. So, Lakatoro is a very important place. About as important as say, Atlanta is to Georgia. For almost two months, Lakatoro did not have phones for sale. A provincial capital did not have phones for sale. Thats like Boston running out of MOBILE PHONES for TWO MONTHS!! I would go to the place about twice a week looking to buy a phone. Transportation from my site to Lakatoro is 300 vatu one way, so I spent 1200 vatu every week trying to get a phone. Granted in US dollars, thats 12 dollars roughly, but thats a good amount of money here. I would have had a friend buy a phone from the capital city of port vila and send it to me, but the store kept telling me "next week" and I kept falling for it. Why did I keep falling for it you ask? well three reasons. I wanted to choose the phone I would buy myself, I did not really trust somebody else's judgement and two, I was being fiscally responsible..after all we are in a recession. Phones sold on my island are much cheaper than iin the big cities of Vila and Luganville because they always discount them on the Island. (I think because of the purchasing power of the people on the island). I really wanted to save 2000 vatu and I did not want to worry about paying the postage for the phone and the phone possibly going missing in transit. Lastly, the phones were already in stock at the store, however, the supplier of the phone - Digicel, had not given the authorization for the phones to be sold. I kept thinking that the authorization would come anytime, after all the phones were already in stock.

Eventually, during the second week of April, I got extremely angry after I checked again and was told that there were no phones for sale and that the phones in stock had been sent back that very day. I went back to my site, took out my sim card from my now non-working flip phone. I then called the peace corps office and told them to buy me a phone and give it to a teacher who just happened to be in Vila that week. The teacher brought it back the next week and there I was with a new samsung brand mobile phone, with a flash light too. Hopefully, this phone lasts me till the end of service, but I doubt it. This phone ended up costing me about 4000 vatu, the price I was trying to avoid iin the first place. To make matters worse, the week the teacher came back, they started selling phones again in Lakatoro and there were cheaper phones being sold. sigh.

That is my phone story. I am now on my fourth mobile phone, after 19 months in Vanuatu.

PS
This post as being over 1300 words, and it has been about mobile phones. Why could I not be this easily verbose during my college days?

flas = cool, flashy, nice..any other adjective you can think of to describe cool

The Kids

My first day teaching was amazing. Before this day arrived, I read a couple of books about teaching. There was one that had soem tips and teaching techniques. The book had advice such as "Greet your students with a great big smile", "Use your first day to set the tone for the rest of the year" "be well prepared". My favorite advice though, was "Stand at the door of the class and welcome your students, so they immediately feel comfortable". When I read this, I said to myself "yeah, I'm gonna do this!"

Some of my year 11 students

My first day rolled around and I'm not going to lie, I was a bit nervous. However, I had all those wonderful instructions to keep my courage bolstered. My first class was at 7:30 in the morning and the first hitch in my day happened. I could not find the class. I walked around, and still could not find it, so I asked my counterpart to show me to class. When we arrived at the class, my second and third hitch happened consecutively. The students were already in class. I was not late by any means, however, the students stay in one class the entire day and they just switch students. This meant that I could not stand at the door and greet each student as he/she came in with a great big smile. The only way that I could do this was if I sent out the students, then made them come back inside. I considered this for a split second, but i decided against it. I did greet all the students in the class with a big smile. I think I showed too much teeth, because they shrank back a little bit. My third hitch was that my counterpart was the one that introduced me to the class and he introduced me as Joshua. He did not put a Mr. in front of my name, which kind of messed me up. I really wanted to be called Mr. Joshua. After introducing me and spoiling my childhood dream, he left to go teach his class and there I was, in front of 35 year eleven students, just looking at me.

Now, I will admit that I am not the most detail oriented kind of person. I usually just make a general plan and then go with the flow. So far, it has worked pretty well for me. However, for this first class, I went out of my way to plan my lesson. I had a legit lesson plan. Firstly, I went over my expectations for the students. I had corny lines like "I expect all of you to have fun and learn", I then went over what the students could expect from me, I said phrases like "You can expect me to be prepared for every class". I did not come up with this idea of expectations, I read it in a teaching book also. I made the students write down my expectations for them in their notebook. (When I taught the french students, it was fun translating the expectations to french). I then made the students introduce themselves to me and tell me one thing they like to do. The most favorite answers were: the girls said play volleyball and the guys said play football.

I then started teaching the students about the basic computer system. The desktop, monitor, keyboard, mouse and printer and how they all work together. I was going to make the class more of a discussion than a lecture (I think, I was still in my college mode). However, I ran into my fourth hitch. The students were very quiet and shy. In fact, for almost the entire year, I could not hear them when they spoke, they spoke to quietly. I was also going to have the students write their own notes during the course of our discussion. However, again, this did not work out as planned. I quickly fell into the routine of talking at the students and occassionally asking them questions.

Me with another teacher

My period was about an hour long and by the end of the hour, inspite of the hitches, I was feeling pretty good. Although the students generally remained quiet, they seemed interested in the subject matter and I was interested in talking about it, so it was a good mix. We played hangman at the end of class and the students performed well. I asked them questions relating to what we had learnt that day and depending on how well they answered, the guy either got hanged or not. My mom called me that day or the next day and I gushed to her how much I loved teaching. It does feel good to teach somebody and have them know what you taught them. I thought I would feel like that for the entire year. Oh how wrong I was!!!!

Don't Go Chasing Waterfalls

So, we are in another year. It is amazing how fast last year went by,
and how little I updated my blog. I am extremely ashamed of myself.
However, my faithful readers, you will be pleased to know that one of
my resolutions this year is to constantly update my blog. In fact, I
plan to update it so much that you will be sick of reading it. I will
start by recounting my adventure on the island of Santo during the New
Years 2010. I originally promised to write it at the beginning of last
year, but life called and said 'let them wait". Well, the wait is over
and here is the long awaited sequel to "I'm on boat" titled "don't go
chasing waterfalls".

Six of us volunteers brought in the New Year together and it was fun
and filled with the typical things you expect young people to do when
they have any occasion to get together. After New Years day, our two
hostesses proposed a plan to us. They came and with beguiling voices
asked if we would be interested in going on a hike. I generally am not
a hiking sort of fellow. When I think of hiking, I think of
unnecessary exertion in an effort to see "nature", but I figure
"nature" is happy where it is and I am happy in my house with a cold
drink, sprawled in front of the TV. Therefore my answer to their
suggestion was no. Some of the others were interested and some were
not. Then our hostesses, I will call them W and Z, fluttered their
eyelashes and said "but it is an underwater cave." Now everybody else
was really excited and really wanted to go, except for me, who became
even more adamant because of a very important fact, my inability to
swim. I tried to use this as an excuse and said "well, if only I could
swim, I would go. Oh well!" However, I was foiled because W and Z
triumphantly said "well, the water only gets up to your knees and the
highest it ever gets is up to your shoulders, so there Josh!" I was
trapped, I had no choice to but acquiesce to their demands and agree
to go. I will admit that I was also mildly interested in seeing an
underwater cave. W and Z pumped their hands in triumph and went to

On the way to the Hike

arrange the trip.

The day of the trip, we jumped on the back of a truck and drove for
about an hour thirty minutes to the beginning of the hike. The hike is
apparently a tourist attraction and is called the Millennium Cave
Hike. With a name like that I should have been warned, after all, we
all know what was supposed to happen at the beginning of the
millennium. We got to the beginning of the hike and it was a village.
We went inside a small building and waited for our guides. After a
short wait, our guides came carrying a lot of life jackets and flash
lights. At the sight of the life jackets, I begin to get apprehensive;
however, I calmed myself down. The leader of the guides, a wiry man of
medium height began to explain what the hike would consist of. At some
point in his explanation he said that we would have to swim for 45 minutes. At that point, I stopped the guide and asked him to clarify. He repeated what he said previously and explained that although we would have to swim down a river for 45 minutes, there water was shallow in a lot of places, and there was an alternate route if I really did not want to swim. I decided to go ahead with the hike,

The Bamboo Bridg

mainly because of my desire not to stay in a strange village for three
hours by myself.

The hike began and was wonderful in the beginning. We walked on a
level trail and I began to be lured into a sense of well being. At one
point, we walked across a bamboo bridge that crossed a chasm. The
bamboo bridge was not fastened to anything on either side, the bamboo
were just laid across the chasm and whenever a bamboo started rotting,
another fresh one was just laid over it. There was a shiver of fear
crossing it, but the danger was only illusory, the bridge was
perfectly safe. I should have known that would change. Eventually, the
trail started going downhill. The ground was really muddy and
slippery. However, logs were laid across the road to make the going
easier. There were times when the ground went straight down and we had
to hold on to a rope while we climbed down ladders made from rotting
wood.

Eventually we got to the entrance of the cave which was in a valley. At this point, I had some apprehensions because I realized

The Entrance of the Cave

that to get back to the village, we would have to climb up.
The guide told us a custom story about the cave and painted our face
with a red claylike substance according to their custom, then he
handed us flash lights and we went inside the cave. The cave was pitch
black and there were rocks everywhere. The water, true enough only
came up to our knees. Footing was horrible and we kept slipping
because the ground was made up of small, oddly shaped stones and we could not see them. Sometimes we held on to the walls of the cave for
balance and got introduced to the sensation of bat droppings (they are very slimy and disgusting, although Bat meat itself is delicious!..story
for another time). All around us was the noise of bats as they flew overhead and sometimes we would hear the noise of bats we just disturbed as they flapped away, but we could not see them. The lights
of our flash lights, while strong were swallowed up by the darkness of

The Exit of the Cave

the cave. I admit that if I was by myself, my imagination would have
been working overtime and I would have been frightened. The cave was so dark that from quite a distance away we could see the light of the exit. Contrary to the other light, this light we wanted to walk
towards. After walking about a mile, we came to the exit of the cave.
At the end, we all breathed a sigh of relief and slapped each other on
the back and exclaimed, "what a nice hike that was". Little did we
know that the real hike was ahead of us.

While we rested and had lunch, the other guides left and the
remaining guide told us to follow him. We grabbed our life jackets and followed the pied piper. We walked for a while, and then eventually we

Canyon Hiking

had to start climbing giant rocks. I believe what we did in this
segment is called canyon hiking. We had to climb up giant, slippery
rocks, into little caves made by rocks stacked up on each other, jump
from one rock to another. There were footholds cut into these rocks,
but they are also wet and slippery. At this point I was nervous
because of the element of extreme danger. A little mistake while
crossing from one rock to the other had a high chance of resulting in
a broken bone and incapacitation. Eventually we saw the river we would have to swim across for 45 minutes. The guide then asked if I wanted to go the alternate route and the others would swim straight down the river and we would all meet up at the end of the river. I asked him how the alternate route was and he said we would basically continue the canyon hiking. I told him, no thank you, I would rather brave the water than take the chance of falling off one of those slippery rocks. I put on my life jacket and we all jumped into the river. To be honest, it was not bad, there were times when the water was deep and I had to float, then there were times when we could walk and I could feel comfortable. There was a time I floated into a mini waterfall and panicked because my eyes were closed and I was not floating out again like I expected. Eventually somebody pulled me out and when I opened my eyes, I was extremely embarrassed because this was a case of a six foot man thinking he was drowning in the four feet section of the
pool.

We finished swimming down the river and at this point I had some resentment towards my companions because they had so much fun in the water, while I was focused on not downing. We started walking again
and then we got to a cliff and down this cliff, water was running. I will call it a waterfall, although it was not like Victoria Falls. The guide told us that we would have to climb this waterfall to continue our journey. At this point I was past the point of no return, so I had to keep going forward. In my mind, I started praying, "God, I do not want to die, just let me make it and I will not do anything so foolhardy again."

We started climbing the waterfall. Handholds and footholds were cut into the cliff and there was a rope hanging down that we also had a constant hold of. However, again things were very slippery and a
mistake while moving up would result in a fall down a very high cliff. In my mind was thinking "ebi mi ni, ki ni bisnes mi pelu Oyimbo " Eventually, we got to the top of the waterfall and I took a breath of relief. However, the last and worst test was to come. We now had to walk across the top of the cliff we just climbed and the road was really narrow, so narrow that one foot had to be ahead of the other at
all times. The ground was muddy, not slippery per say, but there was
nothing to hold on to for balance. On my left side was a shear drop

The waterfall where I almost "drowned"

down the cliff we had just climbed and on my right was another wall of
rock and only small plants, which could not support anybody's weight.
At this point, I am not ashamed to say, a single tear rolled down my
left cheek, just one tear though. I cannot stand heights and whenever
I am high, I always feel like a stray gust would blow me over. It was
almost impossible for me to continue. However, I knew that I could not go back, so I forced myself to start going forward. The whole way
across, I had to fight a fear that I was going to fall any second. The
host dad of one of our hostesses was really helpful here and stayed
back to help me, encouraging me and giving me his hand when I felt I
could not go on. Eventually I got to the road proper and finally the
trial was over! I believe that the moment my feet touched dry, solid
ground and I saw a wide field all around me was the happiest I had
ever been in my life.

We walked back to the village and started debriefing. While
debriefing, one of my friends said "it was so wonderful, while I was
climbing the waterfall, I was in such awe." I honestly could have
punched him at that moment. The thought going through my mind was "are
you serious? That was the most dangerous thing I have ever done in my
life, and I have done some dangerous things. My every being was
concentrated on me not making a mistake and dying and this guy has the
time to be in "awe!"

Eventually the adrenaline came down and the fear passed and I started
to appreciate it. However, what did I learn from this experience? If

Me getting my face painted

any peace corps volunteer asks me to go on a hike, my answer will be a
resounding NO! I do not care how beautiful it will be and what I will
see. They could say, lets go on a hike and at the end of it you will
see a phoenix or a unicorn, or whatever and I will still say no. I
have realized that other Peace Corps volunteers apart from me are
crazy!!!! Just playing, but seriously…I have crossed putting my life
in danger on a hike off my bucket list and will never, ever, do it
again

Not Afraid

Vanuatu is a pretty lucky place. There are practically no dangerous animals here. So, in Vanuatu, you will not be scared of getting bitten by a snake, unless you are swimming in the Ocean and you encounter a water snake, which are very venomous. Generally though, Vanuatu is pretty safe as far as flora and fauna go.

However, with the good comes the bad. There are what are called giant centipedes here in Vanuatu and they are demonic. When most people hear the word centipede, they think of funny looking creatures with a ton of legs. They do not get a feeling of fear and impending doom. Well, those fuzzy, pathetic looking creatures drank some monster juice mixed with some amphetamine or something because the ones I have seen have been big, red and fast as blazes. They have little horn looking things on their head and just scare you to death when you first see them because they come out of nowhere and in the blink of an eye, they are gone.

Also, they bite, and their bite hurts! And they are mean, sometimes it seems like they have a vendetta against the human race. We probably destroyed their centipede god or something when we cut down rain forests.

For people who find it difficult to wake up, nothing wakes you up faster and better than a centipede biting you. You go from deep sleep to extremely wide awake in less than a second. I know this from experience. Last week, I was sleeping, looking forward to going to town the next day, having a nice dream. All of a sudden, my dream changed and i just felt a sense of impending doom. I felt like something was going to happen that I could not prevent. All this was while I was dreaming, so it was really weird. All of a sudden, I felt a sharp pain in my leg. I was still dreaming though, so I thought, what a strange dream. Then the pain got worse and I woke up..but I was still groggy and started thinking, what is this pain? Then my brain started working really fast and I thought..I'm in Vanuatu..there's only one thing that can cause a pain like that at this time of the night. CENTIPEDE!!! Immediately I thought that, I went from sleepy to wide awake in a quarter of a second. In a Hollywood movie worthy move, I leapt out of bed, while at the same time tossing my covers as far away from me as possible. Now, all this took place at three am in the morning. I looked at my bite, sat down for a couple minutes just dealing with the pain and preparing myself to look for the centipede because after that bite, I had to kill it. There was no way i was going to sleep again until that monster was dead. While sitting down the centipede came out from one side of my bed, sped under the table and back under my bed. I just looked at it thinking, "enjoy your last couple of minutes, cause its over for you". I took my time, went to the restroom, stretched a bit, maybe drank a cup of water. Then I went for my bush knife(cutlass) and went to war.

By the time I was done with that centipede, It was a pulpy mess. It sounds excessive, but you either have to turn a centipede into a bloody smear, or pour boiling water on it. Just cutting them up does not kill them. Its crazy.

I have only been bitten once by a giant centipede. I have a friend who has been bitten so many times that he has declared war on them. His house is infested with them and every night he lays in bed, under his mosquito net, quivering in fear.

I have not slept at my house since that night because I have been in town for a conference. I'm going back tomorrow, so we will see if there will be any more centipede encounters. Maybe that first bite was the vanguard of an invasion of centipedes. I'm not afraid though..I have my bush knife.