September 16, 2007

Water Park

Over the past few weeks I have been battling some illnesses (Mono, Cigutera, the flu) and have started to come around this past week. While sick I made some preparations for when I would feel better (bought a canoe, tied all my fishing set-ups) and have been reading books, books, books aside from working on my vegetable garden. Here is a little pictorial summary of some of the things I have seen and been doing in the village.





This is my little sister Vina trying out my new personal means of transport. The weather has been sunny and hot as we leave the cool season and as a result the kids are in the ocean swimming every chance they get. Since I bought the canoe I have taken it out for the kids to play with and continue to do this as they bombard my house for me to join them in the water, with my canoe daily.


Yesterday I jumped off the canoe and found a few underwater wonders:


Cuttlefish

Giant Clams


The seafood also continues to amaze me. Yesterday being Sunday, the mamas prepare their biggest and best meal of the week. Yesterday between eating dinner and lunch I had fish, clam, crab, octopus, Lobster, Some sort of small opihi like shell, trocha and


Coconut Crab-The largest terrestrial arthropod in the world.



My Peace Corps experience continues to be one of much learning, like when my brother Bratley popped a bubble of chewing gum on his face and spent three days scrubbing his face to try and get the residue off. Something I had never seen before.

September 2, 2007

Kalotiti Wedding

A few weeks ago, magaliliu village was busy with a wedding that was the culmination of many months preparation. There were two couples being married because a wedding in the village is such a large ordeal it is easier to marry in groups rather than have the village constantly preparing for weddings year round. This wedding included the chiefs first born son marrying a girl from the outer island of Malekula and the chiefs nephew marrying a girl from the neighboring village. The wedding entailed both custom (bride price of pigs, mats, sugarcane) and western aspects (wedding cake, presents, money, church service) and was a a huge week long celebration. Here are some of the photos:



The Married Couples

In The Church

Flower Girls

Grooms Witnesses

Table Display of Custom Foods
Banannas. Part of the Bride Price


Bride Price

Custom, Pandanus Mats (Bride Price)

Sugar Cane

July 31, 2007

Welcome to Mangaliiu

I have now been in the village of Magalilu for three weeks and yesterday moved into the house I will be living in for the next year. Upon arrival, I had been living with my newly designated host family in a small house adjacent to the family house. My new family consists of the father William, mother Leimara, and 5 kids: Jonas 13, Viktor, 12, Jimmy 8, Bratly 6, Olivina 4.
There is definitely lots of Energy at the dinner table and around the house! I was postponed moving into my new house (taking it over from my predecessor) because there was need to smoke the thatch roof by lighting fires for a few days inside the house. Getting a layer of smoke on the thatch protects it from insect infestation, helping the house to last longer. In the meantime, I have been doing the first bit of landscaping (mostly removing invasive species that are taking over the waterfront) and planting of some papaya, bananas and local cabbage. I also have erected a fence for my soon to be vegetable garden.

It is nice to be in a village with fresh daily bread, running water and I even have a flushing toilet (I use the toilet belonging to the tourism project, as it is located next to my house). The commute to Port Vila is $5 round trip and I am able to get into town and take care of ongoing applications and communicate with family on a regular basis.
In the past three weeks, we have celebrated both Children's day and Vanuatu's Independence Day (July 30th). The community united for Childrens day and had a day of events for the children that included a treasure hunt, church service, sports games and a night of watching childrens movies on a generator, TV, DVD Player combination. At the afternoon meal everyone who was considered a youth (anyone who is not married, even 60 year old men that never were married) was treated to a meal and each table had two mamas presiding over it making sure everyone had enough food and juice.
Surprisingly (to me) the Independence celebrations were not planned out like those for Children's Day and a last minute plan came into action the morning of to get fish and food ready and put on an afternoon meal. The country is 27 this year and it is still very visibly in its early years, though working toward a better future.
I have been working with the local tourism committee and attended a tour last week to further my understanding of the project. There is much happening presently with the areas property buffer zones, environmental impact plans and establishing a licensed tourism business. As things move along "slow, slow" here as it goes with the project. Other projects are in the works and currently being passed around the community for input.
I am excited for my Dad to come and visit in just a few days and am hoping we will get a lot more pictures to post up on the blog while he is here. For now, I hope you all enjoy the pictures and are staying healthy and happy wherever you may be.
Love and Peace from the South Pacific.














July 12, 2007

New Address

My new address is actually my first address:

Eddie Ruhland PCV
PMB 9097
Port Vila
Vanuatu, South Pacific

It is also listed on my personal information on the right side of the page under personal info:

July 4, 2007

24




My 23rd birthday was spent loading my belongings into a truck, travelling to Butmas and drinking a large bucket of Kava, marking my arrival and new habitation in the village. One year later I am transitioning out of the village and spending the fourth of July in a much more tradionally American manner. Melanie's Mother had sent two packages of patriotic decorations and so Melanie went about planning a birthday BBQ over the past week. It was a good time with a bunch of volunteers who happened to be in Santo at a workshop and especially wonderful to spend it with Melanie before she leaves for Japan.


July 2, 2007

Move to Magalilu

After a year in Butmas, the time has come for a migration to the ocean and a new community to spend the next 10 months of my Peace Corps assignment with. Magalilu (pronounced Mag-a-lee-loo) village on the island of Efate is currently involved in a community tourism project in collaboration with an ongoing process to declare a local area world heritage site. A volunteer who I will be replacing has assisted the project for the previous two years at the community level. While the previous volunteer had originally planned to stay for a third year, he decided against it in May during our All-Volunteer conference. It was at this time the Peace Corps country director approached me with the idea to spend my last year with Magalilu village and take over the project started by the volunteer who is leaving. With the forestry office in Santo burned down that same week, it solidified our decision to go ahead with the move. I will be moving to the village of Magalilu in the middle of July.

Magalilu village is situated about a 30-minute drive from the country’s capitol of Port Vila on the western edge of Havannah Harbor. It is the sister village to the island of Lelepa (where I did my training) and just about a mile away from Lelepa across the water. The village is rather new as it was settled in 1983 after some of the families on Lelepa moved off the island to the “mainland or big island” and settled at what is now Magalilu. The village sits right on the oceans shore where there is a plethora of reefs and marine life.

The current village project is a cultural tour that will fit hand in hand with the declaration of a world heritage site in the area. World heritage sites are declared and governed by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. The following excerpt may be helpful in gaining a small understanding of what World Heritage sites are, how areas become designated as such and who makes these decisions:
“To date, UNESCO's 1972 Convention on the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage protects 830 properties of "outstanding universal value," including 644 cultural, 162 natural and 24 mixed properties in 139 States Parties. 

The Convention encourages international cooperation to safeguard the common heritage of humanity. With 184 States Parties, it is one of the most widely ratified international legal instruments. When they sign the Convention, States Parties commit to preserve sites on the World Heritage List, as well as sites of national and regional importance, notably by providing an appropriate legal and regulatory framework. 

The World Heritage Committee is comprised of representatives of 21 countries, elected by the States Parties for up to six years. Each year, the Committee adds new sites to the List.
The sites are proposed by the States Parties. Applications are then reviewed by two advisory bodies: cultural sites by the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), and natural sites by the World Conservation Union (UICN). The International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Conservation of Cultural Heritage (ICCROM) provides expert advice on conservation and training in restoration techniques. 

The World Heritage Committee is responsible for the implementation of the 1972 Convention. It examines reports on the state of conservation of the inscribed sites and asks States Parties to take measures when necessary. The Committee supervises the disbursement of over $4 million per annum from the World Heritage Fund, aimed at emergency action, training of experts and encouraging technical cooperation. UNESCO's World Heritage Centre is the Secretariat of the World Heritage Committee.”

The area that is up for determination this February in Vanuatu and that I will be working with encompasses the story of legendary local chief Roi Mata who is said to have lived about 400 years ago. During a time of tribal warfare throughout much of the south of Vanuatu he orchestrated a “Peace Feast” at which de declared a system of family Klan lines and united the islands in peace. While his home village was just a half-mile north of Magalilu he died on the island on Lelepa and was buried on the small Island of Eretoka or Hat island just off the front of Magalilu. At his death many of his smaller chiefs and devout followers were buried with chief Roi Mata as a sign of just how much power and rank he had. In the 1970’s a French anthropologist explored the grave and over 45 bodies were found along with much many valued items of the day (shells, pig tusks, etc).

The proposed site would incorporate three areas that form a triangle and include the ocean that is between these three places. The first area is the old village ground of chief Roi Mata (Mangas village), which have been uninhabited since his death. This area consists of boundary wall remnants, a large banyan tree that is said to have been where Chief Roi Mata observed custom dances from and some 500-year-old Tamanu trees along the shoreline. The second area is Fels cave on Lelepa Island that is said to have been where the chief’s body was brought and where he drew his last breath. The cave is a limestone cave that was formed when the island was underwater millions of years ago and contains many illustrations and carvings. These pieces of history have been carbon dated and range from 3000 years at the oldest to 500 years for the most recent. The last area in the project is Eretoka or “Hat Island”. The island to this day remains a Taboo place for the locals and hence is home to some of the most amazing reefs and marine life I have ever seen. This is the island that the chief and his loyal subjects were buried on and the burial ground remains with some taboo stones and relics of the day in the area.

The process to get the area declared a world heritage site is being headed by an Australian couple and they responsible for the necessary publications and doing the associated research and developing the areas management plans. There is also an Australian business volunteer associated with the project handling the business side of things. My role will be to help facilitate at the village level with the community’s responsibilities. The community holds sole rights to give tours of the area and developing a cultural tour for tourists that would bring benefits to the community is intrinsic to the projects success and sustainability. There are many smaller details that have been ignored until now and two of these that I will be most involved with are the gardening that provides the food for the tours and the development of tour infrastructure. The village is in need of gardens that will provide food for the tourists on this tour. One of my responsibilities will be to help introduce intensive vegetable and root crop gardening to the village with the creation through a garden set up to provide food for the tours. Also after a walk through of the area in September by an eco-contractor the authenticity of the site will be evaluated and the community will be given guidelines for what they can and cannot not alter, rebuild and what kind of trail, bridges, walkways, steps, etc can be incorporated into the area. Once this is known I can help facilitate the construction of such infrastructure.
I am excited to be moving villages. The village of Magalilu is currently playing in a local soccer league on Saturdays in the capitol and practicing daily for their weekly matches. As I said the village is located on some of the most incredible reefs and the seafood, snorkeling and fishing that goes along with that is very appealing. Also joining an ongoing project has the benefits that I am at least guaranteed some project to help the village with. Being closer to the capitol will mean luxuries like a water system already intact in the village with running water at my house, a telephone in the village and the avaliability of bread daily.

My last weeks were spent back in Butmas wrapping up some loose ends, spending time with those I have spent the last year with and moving my stuff out of my house. After the work I had put into the house the actual owner is quite excited to be moving into it for the first time. I spent a few last days at the nursery doing some potting and am passing the duties now onto the community.

Melanie and I also spent a few nights with the Pike family who are an Australian family living in a village about 15 miles past me in the bush. I was helping Adam (the father) install some facia and gutters for his rain collection and we spent an afternoon flying their son Hayden's remote control airplane (see photos).

I had a last meal with the village on Sunday (June 30) and hope to visit them next month when my Dad comes to visit. Since moving out Melanie and I (who arrived a week or so ago after finishing her trip through Asia) are in Luganville town and awaiting a boat that departs Friday to take us and cargo (all of my stuff) to Port Vila. Tomorrow I turn 24 and we are going to have a peace corps BBQ and celebration of our independence here at the beach. Once I get to Vila I’ll have another week in town before I can get out to the village, as my predecessor will be wrapping up his time there.

That’s what it is here in Vanuatu
Much Peace and Love to everyone

June 3, 2007

SAPA

Sapa was one of the two side trips Melanie and I embarked on out from Hanoi. Sapa is about 500 miles from Hanoi and to get there it entailed an overnight train from Hanoi to a city only 2 km from the Chinese border and then a bus ride another hour up the mountain side. Sapa is central to many of the local minority populations that are present in the area as the city is situated overlooking an emmense river valley that has been cultivated by local people for generations. Living closest to the city of Sapa are the Black H’mong people and they were the most prevelant minority group in the city though also flower H’mong and Red H’mong.people and villages were in the area.

Sapa was probably my favorite part of my entire trip and we spent our two short days there walking to local villages and taking in the amazing scenery. The amount of work that has been put into this valley over it’s inhabited history is enormous and has created the thousands of terraces that cover valley wall to valley floor. Each terrace is irrigated as supplied by an intricate weaving of waterways. For the most part little technology is used in their farming. Buffalo are used to to plow and break up the ground, hoe’s are used to pull weeds, and lots the family’s hands are used to make the terraces and plant the crops. We even saw a wooden rice mill that used one of the waterways to power its up and down movement and husk the harvested rice.
However in contrast to the little technology used in the fields, communication technology is taking off. Our 16 year old H’mong guide was frequently recieveing calls while on our walks from family in even more remote areas than we were. One of my favorite examples we witnessed as a poster at a small store along the road, in the middle of a small village. The poster was Ronaldo juggling a soccer ball and advertising mobile phones that have both video and music playing capabilities.
As Melanie and I were discussing how vast the spread of technology is and if this poster was applicable we looked into the window of a bedroom adjacent to the store and saw a PC with internet connection, ADSL connection at that. This was just another example of how fast things are changing, and a mix of old and new, a few levels above the mix I am witnessing in Vanuatu.

June 2, 2007

HANOI

Getting off the plane in Hanoi, Vietnam I didn’t know what to expect. I had no Lonely Planet or guidebook of anykind; I had done no research into the history, current affairs or attractions that pertained to the city, or even the country. I was for the most part ignorant about the country in which I was traveling to. However I was excited. Melanie said we should go to Vietnam, I said okay, and off we went.
Any apprehensions I had increased as Melanie and I got in the taxi to Hanoi and conversation commenced with the driver. He was asking where we were from and when I told the taxi driver I was from America he replied “you look like America, like army”. While at this first worried me, I came to find there was nothing to worry about and the next week and a half proved to be amazing.
Traffic, traffic, traffic, were my first observations of Hanoi. Cars ,the horns constantly blaring to get the motorbikes out of the way, the motorbikes engaged in their own race of passing one another and that too for some reason requires non-stop horn usage. Crossing the street took getting used to. Melanie and I stood on the curb and I would try to wait for a lull in traffic, only to find there was no such thing. Luckily she showed me the proven method to cross the street that she learned last time in Vietnam; walk slowly side by side, her ushering me across the street. There are probably a few hundred motorbikes (mopeds) for every car in Hanoi. Hence the traffic is dense; moving at different speeds, and has no rules. However while the were everywhere anc caused traffic to be out of control, what blew me away was the utilization of these motorbikes. They carried everything and accomplished this while managing the traffic. Just a few examples of everyday mopped cargo that we saw during our trip were: entire families (5 people) on a moped, animal transport (one was carrying 12 piglets), food transport (enormous bundles of fruit, huge bails of rice), and tools (ladders, rebar, display cases).
The layout of Hanoi city seemed unique to me in that each street had a common retail theme. On one street, every shop would sell sunglasses, the next street, every shop shoes, the next, every shop clothes, the next toys, so on and so forth. The fmost comical and strange streets were the street that sold only stuffed animals and toys and the other being the street where every shop sold Mannequins.

Walking around the street in the evenings as Melanie and I did frequently there were all kinds of social activites taking place. badminton and a checkers like game were the most common and mixed between these games would be women set up with a plastic table and chairs selling fresh juices, whisky and cigarettes. Badminton courts are painted everywhere there is enough surface area and commonly use the edge of the sidewalk as a boundary line. The checkers games would be played all around the cities parks and usually each game would attract quite a crowd with people huddled into little groups throughout the park sidewalks.
On our last day in the city we went and visited Uncle Ho at the Ho Chi Minh Museum and Mausoleum. The line had thousands of people waiting to view his body as apparently visitng the mausoleum is a pilgrimage for the Vietnamese.

Vietnam was beautiful, and I have much on my to do list that I wasn’t able to see or do this time. I think it was an amazing time to see Vietnam as the country is changing rapidly and probably will only continue to do so in the future. Everywhere we went development, development, development. Industrially, there are factories and manufacturing plants being built, hotels are being erected for the growing tourism industry, and infrastructure is being laid out to support it all. The amount of change occurring right now in the country was absolutely crazy.
I have returned to Vanuatu, a country whose entire population would take the place of only a couple of Hanoi’s inhabited streets. Here in Vanuatu we are moving into the cool season and I have a lot to look forward to in my last year here. Also many visitors and more travel. First Melanie is coming for one last visit, then I will be moving villages and islands, which will be followed by a visit from my Dad. Through all this I am applying to Med School and hopefully will be traveling back stateside for interviews during the Northern Hemisphere’s winter.

Pho




May 23, 2007

On The Road

It has been a wonderful week in Thailand. Melanie and I arrived in Bangkok on Tuesday and spent two nights there in a wonderful old little 6 bedroom inn in the heart of the old part of the city. Melanie drank her first 7-Up out of a questionably sanitary plastic bag, Eddie learned how to look right so not to get hit by oncoming traffic (Thailand drives on the left), and we both got lost trying to get oriented in the city with little help a map. After too much traffic by Tuk tuk and being overwhelmed by such a large city, we finished seeing the more popular sites and booked a sleeper car on the North bound train. 15 hours later we arrived in the city of Chiang Mai.


Chiang Mai has been an enjoyable city. It is smaller and more walkable than Bangkok, a little cooler(being situated father north and surrounded by hills) and full of good food and crazy markets. I have especially enjoyed the mangoes and lychee which are currently in season along with the many varieties of what Melanie calls "meat on a Stick".


One of the highlights was a cooking class Melanie and I attended yesterday by one of Thailand's most well-known chefs Sampon. After a walk around one of the markets in the morning, we spent most of the day in front of a wok and with the help of Sampon we both agreed it was the best Thai food we had yet eaten. (The two of Us with Sampon)



The Thai people continue to amaze me. They are some of the most genuinely friendly and smiley people I have ever met. Upon arrival in Bangkok people would come up and start asking Melanie and I where we were going, what we were trying to see and trying to offer us help in finding our way. While at first I was skeptical of ulterior motives during such encounters, it seems for the most part people here are just really friendly and happy to practice a little of their English with a white person. They ask where I am from, where I am trying to go, and recommend which Wat (temple) I should see. The same friendliness and hospitality has continued but not just with people one meets on the street but with the majority of all Thai people I have met so far.


However, to me, the most comical interactions so far have been with Thai's who begin by addressing Melanie rather than myself and addressing her in Thai rather than in English. Many a times she has been mistaken for my Thai girlfriend and she gets quite a few looks from both Thai men and women because of it. Maybe it's just because she is so pretty. She does recieve many compliments from the locals after they switch to speaking english recognizing thather blank stares means she has no idea what they are saying. Thankfully she has been a good sport about it and the idea has become a frequent topic of our joking and playful rambling as we wander the streets.

Tomorrow we are heading to Hanoi Vietnam and then on to Halong Bay. You can check out what looks like an amazing UNESCO World Heritage Site on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ha_Long_Bay

Peace and Love,
Eddie

May 18, 2007

SYDNEY

I escaped Vanuatu and am traveling through Thailand and hopefully Vietnam in the next
couple of weeks.

However not before I had 4 days of relaxation, ferry's, Starbucks and cool (70 degree) weather in Sydney.













Here are a few photos....They should be self explanatory.


Peace and Love,
Eddie

May 6, 2007

Pictures from the trip




Here are just a few last pictures from the Australia, Thailand, Vietnam trip

May 5, 2007

Bula Fiji

Last week my counterpart and myself received a last minute invitation phone call to attend a workshop with the GTZ (German Technical Corporation) in Fiji. GTZ (http://www.gtz.de/en/), is the overseas group currently working with Butmas and the grantor's of both the portable sawmill and the materials needed for the agroforestry and tree nursery projects. So with some quick peace corps approval I was off to Suva the capitol of Fiji 24 hours later. When we arrived at the workshop on Monday I realized that it was in no way applicable to my work here in Vanuatu (the workshop involved learning very basic software to analyze business viability and train business advisers) and so spoke with the regional GTZ boss about making the week more worthwhile for not only myself but the corporation that paid my way. Luckily he was quite flexible and I ended up having a week of daily trips to sawmills, nurseries, forestry research stations, eco-businesses and an entrepreneur working in bamboo technology. With this change in plans I also was able to spend my last day on a small island surf resort and got a full day of surfing at Frigates Pass, a world class south pacific reef. This wave was unlike any I had previously surfed in that it was 12 miles out to sea. We took a boat from the island and from the water could not see the mainland while surfing though we were surrounded by quite a bit of wildlife including jumping Marlin, Turtles, Schools of Tuna and the accompanying sea birds (Frigates) following the fish.

Fiji was quite a bit different from Vanuatu and I was impressed by the development in both the urban and rural areas. I believe that the lengthy colonization by the British helped greatly by providing much infrastructure for the country and also the presence of the Indo-Fijian population creates an atmosphere of competition within the country in both schools and business that requires the native Fijians to compete and thus develop/ grow so not to get left behind. Needless to say Fiji is many levels above what I witness here in Vanuatu. (Random Fijian Window Sticker)
Upon returning from Fiji I went and spent three nights with my original training host family on Lelepa island and had a few days of boats, spear fishing and sunshine. It was good to see my host family and again observe the other end of the Vanuatu village spectrum. I also shared my times in Butmas with the villagers of Lelepa through a slide show.
This week is our All-Volunteer conference and hence I have been in Vila for the last three days since coming back from Lelepa Island. Today all 84 or so volunteers head off to a resort where we will be for the next four days sharing stories, knowledge, and attending workshops/seminars and having a little break from island life. Then on Friday I leave Vanuatu for Australia where I will be meeting up with Melanie and heading to South East Asia, which I am looking forward to very much. So Until then.....Peace and Love from the South pacific

April 11, 2007

Passing-Over Prawns on Easter

With my village planning a picnic for the upcoming Easter Holiday, it was brought to my attention that one of the villagers, Daniel, had plans to dump “Medicine” into the rivers to gather up prawns for the Easter holiday village picnic. Apparently the week before, Daniel had witnessed a neighboring village dumping a “medicine” into their river then, for a few hundred meters downstream, all the prawns float up to the top and children ran around picking up the prawns. Of course this sounded fishy to me and I began questioning the process and the so called “medicine”. When Daniel realized I was overly interested in this topic of conversation because I was concerned with the idea and practice of it, he countered by saying “Well it was a man US, someone from your country, who showed us how to do this in the first place so it must be something good”. This furthered my probing and questioning and by the end of our conversation I deciphered that American Mormon Missionaries had shown this neighboring village, in Daniels presence, how to use mosquito net treatment poison (heavily subsidized by aid organizations to be free to all in the fight against Malaria) in their rivers to kill all life, including prawns, for an easy harvest. This being shown to these villagers with total disregard for any of the other life in the river, the delicate ecosystems in the river, the unsustainable aspects of this harvesting method not to mention the river in question is the water source for all of the urban area here in Luganville. Thus my week leading up to Easter included many talks on the inter-connectedness of living things, why poisoning a river is a bad idea and making some compromises to stop Daniel from bringing this practice to Butmas, which after the weeks talks he agreed to. By the Monday after Easter (Easter Monday, A holiday celebrated by those in Australia, NZ and here in Vanuatu) the rivers had been spared from poison and in return I followed a group that collected prawns with masks and spears so Daniel could have his prawns at the picnic(see photo above) and I agreed to construct some traps for the village and do some research into the practice of farming prawns to try to introduce some sustainability to their prawn harvesting and river resource.
However saving the rivers was not all that happened last week. I also broke ground on a community tree nursery that when completed should have a capacity of over 2000 seedlings. This nursery is for the trees that will be planted in the 10 hectares of the agro forestry project we are working on. The nursery uses only Bamboo in its construction including the 20 foot long raised beds to try and keep the seedlings isolated from the constantly wet ground in Butmas, thus regulating the moisture of the soil. Currently we have potted 600 Sandalwood Seedlings and are planning on raising over 1500 along with some other trees with future timber value and a number of fruit and nut trees that can be used for food throughout the villagers lives and then timber when the trees are fully mature.
I hope in the next few days to be able to post the previous emails I have sent throughout my first year here and to archive them for anyone interested. Thank you for those who have written back and as always I would love to hear from everyone all the time.
Peace and Love