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.

I'm on a Boat

A couple of months ago, a couple of friends and I took a trip to another Island in Vanuatu called Espiritu Santo to celebrate with some friends over there. To get there, we had two options. We could fly and it would take us fifteen minutes, or we could take a ship and it would take us anywhere from three hours to eight, depending on the ship. In the spirit of trying new things, we decided to take a ship. So we went to the wharf and asked for a ship and the only ship available was one that took copra (a coconut product that Vanuatu exports) to Santo. We decided to jump on this ship and off we went after a couple of hours.

We were about an hour into our trip and were passing a small island called Atchin, when we suddenly saw a speedboat coming after us and the men on the speedboat were signaling for us to stop. I think the crew of the ship recognized the men on the speedboat and did not want to stop, but eventually the speedboat caught up to us and they practically threw a man abroad. From the attitude of the crew of both the ship and the speedboat, nobody was happy about the man coming abroad, but it seemed like they had to let him on. The man came abroad the ship ad immediately went to a cabin and started talking to a woman who was sitting by herself inside. I had noticed that the woman earlier and she looked sad.Now she was pointedly ignoring the man who seemed to be begging her. Eventually a crew member told us the story.

It turns out that the woman is/was the girlfriend of the guy. Let us call him Mr. X and let us call the woman Miss. Y.  So, Miss Y comes from Santo and Mr. X comes from Malekula, from an area called Atchin. Miss. Y and Mr. X had been seeing each other for a while (in Vanuatu, this is called frending. If you ever come to Vanuatu and someone asks if he/she can frend you, it doesn't mean what you think it does). Miss. Y came to Atchin to visit Mr. X and found out that Mr. X had been seeing other women of the alphabetical persuasion. However, I guess that her love for Mr. X could climb any mountain and cross any sea, because she forgave Mr. X and stayed with him. Until one day, Mr. X becomes angry at Miss. Y and, I guess forgetting how strong her love was for him, decided to throw an axe at her. I am not sure if he missed or not, but seeing that Miss. Y was still around, either he missed, or the axe was blunt, however it is sharp enough to destroy the love that Miss. Y had for Mr. X because Miss Y. decided that enough was enough and she left him to go back to Santo and her family. Mr. Y realized his mistake too late and decided that he cannot live without Miss. Y and so finds out the ship that Miss. Y is taking to Santo and decides to come after Miss. Y and beg her to take him back.

Nobody was happy with the man, and I believe that even if she decides to take him back, he will have to deal with her family and make a sorry ceremony or something. However, this was a very interesting beginning to a memorable trip, the details of which will be continued in the next post titled..Don't Go Chasing Waterfalls

My Home

The title of this blog post is a song by the most popular reggae artist in Vanuatu called Naio. For the next year and a half, my home is Vanuatu and I want to tell you all a bit about Vanuatu.

Vanuatu is a very interesting country. It is made up of about 81 Islands. It is divided into seven provinces and there are about three major islands in each province. The province that I am located in is called Malampa province and the three major Islands in this province are Malekula, Ambrym and Paama Islands.

Most of Vanuatu is still very rural. Rural meaning that a lot of places do not have running water, centralized electricity is a distant dream and paved/sealed roads are the ravings of a mad man. Some places are more developed than others though. The capital of Vanuatu is called Port Vila and it is located on the Island of Efate. As such, Efate Island is a bit more urban than other places. However, as urban as Efate is, centralized electricity and water is still limited to the capital of Port Vila and its immediate suburbs. It is expected in the future that Efate will become even more developed because a road that goes around the entire Island will soon be entirely sealed/paved/tarred, so more businesses will be able to expand to outside of Port Vila.

Another place that is pretty developed is the town of Luganville, which is located on the Island of Santo in the north of Vanuatu. Santo is the biggest Island in Vanuatu and was a major operations center for the US military during World War II. The military built the town of Luganville for their bases and this has helped in the development of Luganville because after WWII the infrastructure for a town was already present.

Outside of these two places, the rest of Vanuatu is pretty much rural. Two other places deserving of mention in terms of development are the Island of Tanna and the Island of Malekula. Tanna is a major tourist destination because of the world famous volcano - Mount Yasur which is located there. I believe that this has helped a bit in the development of Tanna and the provincial center (the capital of a province) for the Tafea province is located on Tanna which helps also. 

Malekula is the same way, expect that it is not really a major tourist destination, however the provincial center for the Malampa province is located there.

The four Islands are the only places in Vanuatu that have centralized electricity and some sort of centralized water system and these only extend a small radius. The rest of Vanuatu is made up of small villages of about 300 people, with some much bigger villages and some much smaller villages.

Coming from the States and even from Nigeria, it is very difficult to imagine a place like Vanuatu. The amenities we take for granted  are not present here. The interesting thing is that the absence of these amenities are not the exception, but rather the rule here.

So this is my home for now.

Happy New Year

So today in Vanuatu is the 31st of December. Its crazy to me that 2009 is over and I am going to see 2010 in another country. This time last year, I was in a plane on the way to Nigeria after being stuck at the airport for about three days. I look back on this year and it was really so eventful in so many ways for me. I graduated College, went back to my country of origin after an 8 year absence, joined the peace corps, turned 21, ran away from a potential tsunami and so many other things. Just reflecting on my life so far, in many ways I have being blessed.

So Merry belated christmas and a happy new year 2010.

Bae mi Kros

In my everlasting quest to bring you my faithful readers, my unfiltered experience in Vanuatu, I am starting a couple of categories.
This one, Bae mi Kross is about things that have happened in Vanuatu that pissed me off.
Have you ever had experiences that just make you grind your teeth? Well, I've had a couple here in Vanuatu.

The question --yu blo Africa? is starting to really irritate me. Yu blo Africa means, are you from Africa?
Now, I very happy to answer people's questions and if people ask me, I tell them I am a Nigerian who immigrated to the United States at 12 years of age and we talk about Nigeria and I tell them all about it and we have a jolly good time. However, imagine having to answer this question literally hundreds of times, and I am not exaggerating. The first question when a lot of people talk to me is yu blo Africa? I have talked to over a hundred people in Vanuatu already and have had to answer this question that many times.

Imagine, you're sitting in a bus minding your own business, chilling. Then the man beside you looks at you, you smile at him and he looks away. Then he looks at you again. Again, you smile. Again he looks at you, then he says hello, you say hello, then he asks..yu blo Africa? I wanna yell. I mean, at least let us have a freaking conversation first before you ask me where I am from you know? Hello, how are you doing, nice weather we are having, this bus driver is a horrible driver isn't he? After good will has been established, then you can ask me, yu blo Africa? And I will smile and explain exactly where I am from.

Not everybody I meet does this, but a good number of people do it. It is starting to really irritate me.

Malekula

So, it has been a little bit more than a month since I last updated my blog. My sincere apologies...when you're living the island life, chilling on the beach, drinking coconut juice and plotting the extermination of mosquitoes, updating a blog is the last thing on your mind.

What has happened in the past month? Well, I am officially a peace corps volunteer. We had our swearing in on the 5th of November and the president of Vanuatu came to the ceremony ad gave a speech which was cool. I got to shake a president's hand, which funny enough has been on my list of things to do for a while now. Funny how things work out.

I am based at a secondary school on Malekula Island. There I will be teaching computer studies when school starts back up next January. I live in the singles quarters of the school and have two rooms to myself. One serve as a bedroom and the other will serve as a small living room. There a communal bathroom and a communal kitchen. So far I lucked out and I have a fridge, a pretty decent gas stove and a shower. Among the other peace corp volunteers I am living in the lap of luxury. In fact sometime in the future I am going to make an MTV cribs - Malekula version, then y'all will see how I'm really living.

The lab I am going to work in has solar panels so the computers can be used anytime which is actually really great.  Most places in Vanuatu do not have electricity, so most schools have to use generators for electricity. As anybody who has ever used generators know, it eats up a lot of gas or diesel and they are expensive in Vanuatu, about 3 dollars per liter. Because of this, schools only turn on the generator three hours in the morning and sometimes three hours in the afternoon. This makes a  computer lab not all that useful because people can only use the computers briefly and students do not get nearly enough time on the computer to become really comfortable and productive on them. However, my situation will be different because of the 24 hour power supplied to the computer lab. So here's hoping that I am a good teacher.

I think I have rambled on enough. Asta luego.