Hello All,
So it has been a long time since my last update. I went up to my new Village of Butmas on my 23 rd Birthday the Fourth of July. For the last month I have been working on finishing a house which was given to me to use and getting a feel for the area. I have planted a garden (100 heads of Kava, some taro, island cabbage, sugar cane, tomatoes, eggplant, corn, bell pepper, cucumber, sweet potato, onion, green beans, etc…) and am slowly becoming accustomed to the life in the bush. In the last month I have gone to two soccer tournaments with the guys from the village which entails 15 mile walks through the bush to a village with grass mowed by cows (very hilly and full of holes) with bamboo used as goal posts, and rules that are not fully understood (offsides especially) and each team sleeping in different thatched huts with beds comprised of banana leafs placed on the ground. So unlike any soccer tournament I have ever attended before to say the least. Also unlike any soccer tournament previously attended you can eat three meals a day and be full for roughly $5 for a 4 day tournament with fruit along the road (papayas, bananas, other native fruits and nuts) for travel days through the bush and green coconuts, all supplemented with a little peanut butter of course. Unfortunately here I am down to dial up and as of yet do not have an efficient way to attach photos. So far the village has been extremely supportive and good to me in the move in and set up process and some of the boys are helping me everyday whether it is with gathering materials for the house, working on the house or bringing me food. While most of the main house is finished I have had to build a toilet and am now building a bath house as well as a bush kitchen which is a place to cook on open fire. Lastly I need to put walls on the bedroom so until then I am sleeping in the main room of the house. Hopefully sometime soon I can get some pictures out of the house. Unfortunately my time when I get down to town is very rushed as I usually have about 8 hours here and need to go around town hunting for the things for my house, talk with the guys at forestry, try and check emails, try and make phone calls throughout Vanuatu and to Home but the phone system here is a joke, and then use the Internet on a dial up connection which makes what should be 30min using the Internet as a resource take 3 hours.
Supposedly it is the dry season here and coming from Hilo I never thought rain would ever be an issue again but I think I have moved to a place with even more rain. I am trying to get used to everything being damp, all my clothes are mildewed and anything left close to a wall or floor mildews in 24 hours. I am hoping once I get a place for a fire set up and the weather shifts a little I can dry myself out. They keep telling me it is sunny sometimes though I have not seen a full day or even a half day of sun yet. But rain 9 out of 10 days. Custom in the village is that when a man has his first shave there is a ceremony and small feast. The village and I are looking forward to a feast to celebrate the completion of the house and my first shave in the village. However for the time being they have had a blast shaping my beard and they also chopped off most of my hair.
Other than that life is good here. Diet has never been healthier and I probably walk between 5-7 miles a day on average, many times carrying food or timbers so I feel good and healthy as my body is adapting to the changes in diet and lifestyle.
-Until then much love
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- Eddie Ruhland
- 2 Emergency Medicine Residents in Providence Rhode Island. Sharing our story and journey through photos
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Butmas Village Background
Butmas Village is a small community in the island nation of Vanuatu, home to the families of six local clan lineages. The community is comprised of around 100 villagers, 50 of which are children attending the local primary school. The village is located on the island of Espiritu Santo, Vanuatu’s largest island, and geographically the village is quite central in the interior of the island at a relatively high altitude in relation to the surrounding plain areas. Because it is located above 500 meters in elevation the village attracts much rain and the area is home to a local rainforest that remains free from logging and plays a large role in survival of the people. Living at high altitude also inhibits the growth of many traditional local food crops that the people rely on for sustenance. Thus the population is quite nomadic, moving between gardens at lower elevations and the village above which accounts for the rough population figure given previously. There are 93 individuals that refer to the village at Butmas as their home and another 22 individuals who refer to their garden houses as their permanent homes, though they have houses in the Butmas village and their children attend the school there.
Since the village is comprised of families from a number of clans there is in theory more than one chief in the village. However the chief of Butmas clan, chief Lolos, is acknowledged as the traditional village leader as he is the chief of the ground on which the clans have come together to live.
The villagers rely mostly on agriculture and gardening for both sustenance and income generation. The major crops are kava, taro, yams, cabbage, banana, corn, pumpkin, sweet potato, and cucumber. Apart from gardening, hunting plays a very important part in their diet. Their main sources of protein are pig, chicken, cows, river prawns and eel fish, with these supplemented by fruit bat and a number of local birds.