Holiday Greetings

Happy Holidays Olgeta (Everyone),
As the Holiday season approaches and I find myself apart from familyand friends it brings back many memories of previous holidays(Chanukah, Christmas, New Years) spent with many of you and the goodtimes we had. I have been receiving many updates from family andfriends since Thanksgiving, Hanukah and now Christmas about theongoing celebrations and let me tell you I am jealous. Largely I missthe food, Taro can get a little old after a while As for my current times here in Vanuatu, things are finally becomingnormal for me to the point where I am eagerly trying to get projectsstarted to keep me busy. Currently in the village we have receivedfunding to start work on a 10 hectare (250m x 400m) area of land thatwas disturbed by logging activity in the past. Our goal is to usegrazing cattle to clean the area so that the community can then comeand make gardens on the grounds and plant native timber species, witha large percentage of the trees going to a community fund. Inaddition, I have just learned about a water source that lies above thecommunity approximately two miles away. Thus I am looking into thisspring as a possible source for a gravity fed water system for thecommunity, as water in my major goal at present. However working onthese two projects is in no way a full time job as I am finding andone can only work in the garden, read and try to occupy one's time inso many ways before becoming bored, especially when one enjoys beingreally busy as I do. So to occupy my time in a productive manner Ihave started two more endeavours. First there are some communitiespast me in the bush ranging from 3 to 15 miles away that have askedfor some simple help with different projects. In order to be able toservice these outer communities I am in need of transportation.Therefore I am currently looking for ways to acquire a descent qualitybicycle for myself, which would put many of these communities inreach. Secondly a saw millers association in town has been trying torun a timber yard with no capitol to benefit the "small guys" orlocally owned saw millers that can't fill huge orders. This lumberyardis in desperate need of a manager and some capitol, so I may try tospend one week or so a month in town working on this project as well.
For some of you the above mentioned information might be enoughlogistics. As Melanie tells me most of the time my emails are mostlylogistics as I try to recount my activities and what I am doing here.Therefore I thought I would take a few moments to share a few thoughtsand reflect upon what has now been almost 9 months (1/3 of my service)in Vanuatu and 9 months of substantial growth to my global perspectiveof today's world. As you may imagine and I said previously, there is alot of down time here and thus I am sure my head has had too much timeto ponder things big and small, important and extremely insignificant.Also without the daily American lifestyle to keep one busy andconstantly mult-tasking it is amazing to observe where my thoughtstravel to, what memories of the past come back at random times and howmuch my head can get stuck on the most trivial of ideas and ideals.Having this time, I have been fortunate enough to be able to read amultitude of books and have been fortunate to come across quite a fewthat have been powerful, motivating, and guiding. Yet, being able toindulge in reading of books along with the weekly delivery of Newsweekby the peace corps at times has led my brain further into a slurry oftangent thinking. Though Newsweek is usually filled with the sametopics week after week; Iraq, Iraq, Korea, Iraq, Election, Iraq,latest movies which I am not able to watch, Iraq and Iraq. Anyway,with my head constantly running in a hundred directions I decided toattempt to harness a few of the most dominating themes of myexperience here so far and reflect upon them
One of the biggest changes in coming to Vanuatu has been the changeof culture. I have found and believe that it is not until living here,working, and trying to accomplish things rather than visiting that onefully experiences and begins to understand a different perspective onlife and the world held by the local people. Coming from the West Ihave become aware that ingrained in me is a way of thinking that getsme from point A to point B in what I would consider the most "commonsense" fashion (something for the most part I have had to throw outhere). Also, coming from the West I had the perception that if apeople could easily increase their standard of living; it would be anobvious choice to do so and people would jump on any opportunity to doso.
Never did I ever consider that a village would not want such things,or rather, not want to put in the minimum effort required to achievesuch things. I ask myself, why doesn't this community want to changeand why should they change. In response to the question "why shouldthey change", unfortunately or fortunately, the country of Vanuatu(and I imagine everywhere in the world now) is changing and changingfast, due to outside influence and whether they like it or not theirlives will be changing in the not too distant future. The idea ofliving a custom, traditional, uninfluenced organic/ holistic life inthe bush is great in its ideals but unrealistic. So if they don'tchange with the times they are going to get left behind or exploitedor maybe those are the same. I believe that to this point what is keeping them from changing is the lack of pressing need to change andan uneducated population. The community at present has not oneindividual that ever sleeps on an empty stomach, their gardens areplentiful and large with every dietary need available and the amountof ground belonging to each family clan is immense (each family clanthat resides in the Butmas area consists of about 15-30 people andthey own thousands of hectares of mostly undisturbed bush). Topping itoff is an abundance of an intoxicating substance, Kava, which is alsobeyond plentiful in their gardens. So if currently there are nopressing hardships their motivation for change is quite small.On the side, education, one could infer that someone who is educatedor has more of a global perspective and could understand and realizethe possibilities for change and get motivated about it. At the leastthey will have left and spent time outside the village, sampled adifferent style of life and bring some of the modernizations back tothe village, if they think the influences are advantageous to thechanging times. However, a common problem is that anyone with furthereducation beyond that of year 6 (US year 2 or 3) leaves the villageand settles somewhere else (usually urban). So there has been somewhatof a brain drain to the rural communities. The remaining youth arethose who finished school to year six, who left to try furthereducation in town, who didn't agree with the change in lifestyle andcame back to pick up their bush knives, make gardens and start rearingchildren. So the population that is left also are those that are notas keen to change or as prepared. This is evident by the villagersglobal perspective or lack there of. I am continually amazed and havenot yet been accustomed to some of the questions and ideas presentedby my villagers. Their exposure to geography and basic ideas of howpeople live in the rest of the world are either very little orinfluenced largely by a few small things they have seen here or there.Thus sometimes I get questions that I can't even begin to explain theanswers to, within their realm of understanding.
Another major influence that has negatively affected this community'sand others desire to change or motivation to change is that there hasbeen a long history of receiving freebies starting with the jointcolonization by the French and British and continuing through presenttimes. The History of Vanuatu is full of receiving handouts and thishas spread into the peoples attitudes on community development andlargely into politics. There has been so much aid money squanderedhere because of donors overlooking sustainability for a projectsfuture. One strategy in creating sustainable projects is to involvethe community and require some sort of investment from the communitythat makes the village have a sense of ownership over the project.Because this was not done with either the arrival of the forestryproject or with me coming as a peace corps volunteer I have a had ahard time getting the community to get motivated and have had to useultimatums to see if change was something they really want. However Ifeel as though as of recently the community has rallied strongly andis very excited and committed to some of the community developmentprojects.
Another cultural difference / cultural behaviour which has beenchallenging to deal with is the people of Vanuatu's ignorance of anyreligion besides Christianity and their interpretations of followingthe Christian faith. When gallivanting around the rural areas and evencommonly in the urban areas when I meet or am introduced to someoneone of the fi5rst questions they ask in conversation is "yu blongwanem jej?" or of what church are you a member. There is no idea that1) possibly someone is not a member of a church thus not Christian or2) anything other than Christianity persists in the world. If onetries to explain, while the villagers pour over my Newsweek magazineswith pictures of Muslims praying in Mecca or Monks in a monastery,they can't even begin to comprehend, not even an iota of connection ismade that there could be anything besides the Bible, Jesus andChristianity. To add to this Vanautu has got to have one of thesmallest ratios of population to church denominations as everyone fromthe Mormons, seventh day Adventist, Jehovah 's Witness, Catholicism,Presbyterian, Church of Christ, etc are here along with many Christianbased cults with local prophets. My favourite is Neil Thomasministries, an Australian who named his branch of the church afterhimself as was instructed to do so by G-d in a dream. To top it offevery church is in competition with one another, there is nointerdenominational cooperation and in a great majority of villagesthere are dividing arguments and alliances based on the churchdenominations present. When asked why one resides with onedenomination rather than another they often can not give an answer. Ifeel it is more of a competition thing where different people rallybehind opposite churches to fuel existing fires between families orindividuals and there is not really a logical explanation for theirchoice of denomination. That is of course unless one church is moreforgiving if you don't tithe than the other, in which obviously you'llgo to the one that doesn't take as much of ones money.
I assume and am supported by much of the local history that beforethe missionaries the people of Vanuatu lived a very custom life withtheir beliefs of a higher, guiding presence or ideas of creation etcexplained by custom myths and legends that gave the ni-Vanuatu a senseof understanding about their place of existence. As the missionariescame and spread Christianity their previous beliefs were discouraged,many customs such as dances and festivals banned, and Christianitypreached. Along with this is the usual piggy backers of disease,coastal migration and internal warfare. Where I am trying to go withthis is that now, I find the people of Vanuatu to be caught in themiddle between Christianity and their custom beliefs taking just wantthey want from each. Sickness, the weather, natural disasters, areexplained by custom, while they go to church so that their sins can beforgotten from the past week and next week they'll go commit some moresins and then go to church again next week. For every ni-Vanuatu thatI have asked the question "why do you like Christianity" the responsehas been "because I can sin and then be forgiven". So from what I havefound this has left most of the population caught in the middle,taking what they want and as a result not being a spiritually basedpeople or having a resolved understanding of any bigger picture fortheir lives. Granted they have never encountered enough to ask thesequestions for themselves so I am making these deductions about thepeople from my own experiences in living and working with them.The last major challenge I am going to share about living in anotherculture for a prolonged period of time is being able to talk tosomeone about anything from your own culture. As I said I have beenreading a lot on a number of different topics. How nice it would be toread about love, passion, art, religion, economics, systems ofgovernment, war, or history and have someone to talk with aboutdifferent ideas. This has got to be one of the hardest things aboutlife here. And even when I get to town that still doesn't guarantee Iwill be able to share these thoughts with anyone, actually usually Istill am not able to find someone with whom to share these thoughts.One can only convey so much by email to family and friends. Nothaving anyone to talk to week after week about such things has provento be a challenge.
I hope the last few paragraphs didn't seemed depressing or convey theidea that I am not enjoying my time here. I think that after havingsuch a dream of the first three months in training and then a busyfirst few months at site trying to finish my house and everything wasstill so new to me, it was very exciting. Now I am getting down towork and the reasons this country is labelled "developing" arebecoming much more apparent. I imagine similar challenges are faced bythose trying to help throughout the world and if there is one finalthought I have, it is that grass roots development is probably themost practical sustainable development strategy, however slow andtedious and sacrificial it may be.
I love hearing from you all and hope this email has sparked somethoughts you wish to tell me because I would love to hear them. I misseveryone and remember strange small activities here and there or timesI have shared with many of you.
Wishing everyone a happy Chanukah/Merry Christmas and a happy, healthy new year.
Peace and Love to All