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.