VANUATU - Say What?

VANUATU: Say what? 

"What do they speak over there?" - said everyone to me before we shipped out for Vanuatu. I knew that the answer was Bislama (many pronounce it "biz-llama" and others "bish-llama"), but didn't know too much other than the name. I had also read on Wikipedia that Vanuatu is the worlds most language diverse country in the world, with over 110 local vernaculars spoken amongst only approximately 250,000 people. We came here totally unprepared, but thankfully Peace Corps makes you sit through roughly 10 weeks of grueling language lessons, so once we headed out to site we felt a bit more comfortable with Bislama. 

Bislama is the national language listed in the constitution of Vanuatu, but English and French are also recognized as primary languages. England and France held a condominium government here together up until independence in 1980, so each government founded and funded their own schools teaching their language. During pre-independence time, Bislama was not well known in the rural regions of the country (which there are plenty of!). Back then, and even today, travel among islands is difficult, so many places and people remained isolated and primarily communicated in local language. 

Our Peace Corps language textbook references D.T. Tryon's book on Bislama for a short history of the language. To summarize, Bislama as a language is the outcome of the people from this country being recruited (or enslaved as indentured laborers, depending on the circumstance) to work in the whaling, sandalwood, trepang, sugar cane, copra, and cotton industries, among other short lived economic booms in this side of the world. People from all over Melanesia were brought together to live and work on plantations, and communicated using previously developed jargon and broken English from earlier whalers, traders and workers. Fast forward to the early 1900's, and Bislama's vocabulary and grammar had been established, along with similar languages spoken in Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands (Tok Pisin and Pidjin, respectively). In 1981, after independence, Bislama was accepted by the many churches of Vanuatu, which were still administered by foreign religious missionaries. This was a major step for the language, and from that point forward it began to be used (alongside English and French) as the language of administration and in government. 

Bislama is probably 85% broken English, with 5% French influence, 5% slang...and the other 5% extremely broken English! You will find very few to zero synonyms. Instead of great, awesome, super or tremendous, in Bislama it is just "gud". And instead of bad, terrible, horrible or awful, it is just "no gud". I was reading George Orwell's 1984 during our second week of Bislama classes, and came across a fitting paragraph that I shared with everyone. It's about the destruction of English ("Oldspeak") into a simpler version ("Newspeak"). 

"...It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words. Of course the great wastage is in the verbs and adjectives, but there are hundreds of nouns that can be got rid of as well. It isn't only the synonyms; there are also the antonyms. After all, what justification is there for a word which is simply the opposite of some other words? A word contains it's opposite in itself. Take 'good', for instance. If you have a word like 'good', what need is there for a word like 'bad'? 'Ungood' will do just as well--better, because it's an exact opposite, which the other is not. Or again, if you want a stronger version of 'good' what sense is there in having a whole string of vague useless words like 'excellent' and 'splendid' and all the rest of them? 'Plusgood' covers the meaning, or 'doubleplusgood', if you want something stronger still..." 

Maybe that won't resonate with you, but to me it makes a lot of sense. To many people here, there aren't numerous types of birds, there are just pidgins. When I ask what kind of fish we are eating, it's just fish. It's a simpler way to think for sure, and many people just aren't taught a whole dictionary worth of different words to express their thoughts. 

I don't know all that much about local languages, but as I mentioned there are between 110-120 still in Vanuatu. Some are spoken by roughly 10,000 people, while quite a few are only known by some 100-500 people. In our bush village of Narango in south Santo, they speak Farsaf. Up the hill, 45 minutes walk away, they speak a totally different language, and down the hill towards the ocean, there are many more languages spoken by a couple hundred people. This causes many problems in regards to an acceptable national education curriculum, and is the topic of debate and reform in the Ministry of Education right now. How can you develop a one-size-fits-all education plan with materials and workbooks for young students when they speak over 100 different languages? It's a fine line between preserving unique, and dying, languages and developing a modern education program. Just for fun here are a few words in Farsaf, for those of you interested: Good morning is 'Lolotalnam', good afternoon is 'Ruffruffnam', good night is 'Talcharoof' and thank you is 'nokorpay' (I have no clue how to properly spell them - another issue with Bislama and local vernacular: there is no nationally accepted spellings of many words!).

To summarize my rambling topic of language written from my hammock on another rainy day, I'll just say that Bislama is an expressive language that allows people of this country - spread across 80 islands, each with a totally different culture - to communicate. I'm grateful to have learned it, and practice speaking it every day. While it will prove of nearly zero use anywhere else in the world, it will be a fun secret language that Caroline and I can use to talk about you all right in front of your faces! I plan to take French classes in Luganville in 2016, so hopefully I'll come home speaking two new languages. 

Some simple Bislama below. Come visit and you can practice it: 

My name is Cole. - Nem blong mi Cole. (think 'belong' - the name belonging to me...)

What is your name? - Wanem nem blong yu? 

Where are you from? - Yu blong wea? 

How many children do you have? - Yu gat hamas pikinini? 

I believe I have diarrhea. - Mi think se mi gat sitsitwota.

A cat bit my nipple! - Wan puskat kakae ae blong titi blo mi!

Tankyu tumas lo ridim blog post blong mi, 

Kol 

VANUATU: Music

Vanuatu: Land of String Band and Top-40 Remixes

The people of Vanuatu love their music. Plenty of people load it onto their phones and walk around at all hours of the day blasting their tunes. We have two of three neighbors that are kind enough to blare their favorite songs from deafening speakers at all hours of the day. It has become kind of a pleasant background noise in our otherwise quiet village, and helps drown out the dogs barking, mosquitoes buzzing, and people of all ages spitting and hawking loogies. Most of the time we welcome it, unless we are reading or trying to sleep.

As this blog title mentions, in my experience I’ve noticed two main types of music poplar with the Ni-Vanuatu people: String band and American Top-40 Remixes. When you mix in the occasional country hit or the “Water Music” of The Banks Islands in Northern Vanuatu, I think you’ve painted a full picture of the music scene here! Reggae also has a huge following. Bob Marley is an icon here, with each local owning at least one Bob Marley themed shirt, pair of shorts or lava-lava. The Vanuatu colors match the Jamaican colors, so maybe it’s convenient that Marley apparel also shows national pride. It doesn’t seem to bother parents that their children wear clothes and carry backpacks showing large Marijuana leaves and the word “Rasta”, but that’s another blog posting all together!

String Band music: This appears to be uniquely Vanuatu - although I haven’t yet traveled the rest of the South Pacific islands, so what do I know? I’ve put a link to a YouTube video that shows a string band song, so check it out. In a quick search I couldn't find too many online, so look for yourself. The minute you get off the plane in Port Vila, you are welcomed by a 5 or 6 man string band group that seems to play their music all day long. In my opinion, the best way to describe it is a Mexican mariachi band influenced strongly by T-Pain. It is an acquired taste for sure, and I’m not quite sure I’m there just yet. I got some music from our little host-brother Junior, so I'm listening to it more and more. We haven’t seen a string band group live yet outside of the International Airport, but I have been promised there is plenty to entertain us at the Independence Day festival in July. Stay tuned....

Stringband music

American Top-40 Remixes: Take a popular radio hit from a year prior, such as a Taylor Swift or Adele song, and then lay the aforementioned String Band music sounds on top, and BOOM, you have the second popular musical trend of Vanuatu. Plenty of them are very entertaining. In addition to TSwift and Adele, I have heard Genesis, Darius Rucker, Maroon 5, Eminem, and lots of Rihanna and Beyonce remixes. Also in a taxi in town one time the driver was blasting a string band remix of the “Chillin’ on a Dirt Road” country song by Brantley Gilbert…the version WITH Ludacris, which made it that much better/worse. I like a lot of these, and it's a fun way to spruce up a played-out song from a few years ago. 

Water Music: I find this interesting music. We have a volunteer in the Banks that has seen this live, and if we visit I'd like to catch it also. See below video if you'd like an example. From a UNESCO report:
For as long as anyone can remember the women of the Banks Islands have made sounds from the river and the ocean. Women from other islands in the TORBA, and as far away as the Solomon Islands have also been known to engage in this practice of making sounds in the water by splashing, scooping, and slapping the water.....Another reason why Zemp, and the Melanesian communities themselves, have considered the water music as a “game” or pastime may be because, almost exclusively, it is women who practise it. Occasionally boys join in if they are young enough to be bathing with their mothers or sisters, but water music is simply perceived to be “a woman’s thing”. The water music is also not associated with any formal ritual or ceremony, and is therefore not considered a sacred or taboo practise. It is possible that if water music was considered “a man’s thing” then it could have developed a stronger association with men’s customary rituals. Perhaps the women deliberately prevented the water music from entering any ritual, or any musical canon, preferring that it was perceived to be a “game” so as to protect it from being ritualised by men (from inside or outside the community). The fact that it is not associated with any ritual or taboo

Water Music- skip ahead to 45sec 

PC Vanuatu Diversity Song

VANUATU - Housing and How We Live

Free Housing! Build Local!

If you have ever wanted to build your own house, and not spend a dollar doing so, then this could be the place for you! People outside of the main towns of Luganville and Port Vila (and even some people in town) simply walk into the bush, cut down small trees, many pieces of bamboo and then take the leaves of the Natanguro tree and make a roof. Done. Sounds easy enough, huh? Luckily with families so tight and large here, someone can recruit everyone they know and have a house built in one or two days [not actually sure about that, but I'd imagine if they worked hard and didn't "spel smal" (frequently take rests - everything is on Island Time...another future blog topic) this would be attainable].

Step 1: Have friends, and don’t piss off your family.

Step 2: Ask said friends and family to help you build your dream house.

Step 3: Take the collected small trees pieces, and simply shave the bark off the straightest pieces of the Namau (local name for the tree/wood type – I have also heard “Navue”), and build the frame of the house. You can connect different pieces by cutting out a small notch of one piece, and then lay the other piece on top.

Step 4: Tie the pieces together using locally made rope from the vines of the Voja tree (I’m not entirely sure if that’s the word of the tree or the vine…plenty of things are lost in translation here). Some people use nails to make the construction go quicker, but most believe the Voja is stronger, and more importantly: it’s free.

Step 5: Take some of the bamboo pieces and shred them into long straight strips. This will form the wall sections and your main line of defense from critters, bugs, and kava-drunken neighbors. You take the strips and weave them together in some particular pattern. The color will turn from green and fresh looking to a brown and dead look as it dries, but rest assured it will stay strong for many years. Although, in reality these thin walls are full of holes and really don’t keep bugs or rats out, they help keep the wind at bay. More creative people paint their walls to make their house look nicer. Our walls are covered with calico that the previous volunteer installed.

Step 6: Roof time.  You take the straight pieces of bamboo that are left over, and make them into similar lengths, then connect to the frame of your house to make a roof structure. Tie these into place with the Voja. Extra time spent securing the roof to the frame is important for that next Category 5 Cyclone that rolls through the South Pacific. Most of the time while the men are cutting down the taemba (“timber” – name for pieces of wood: store bough/recycled 2x4s or locally sourced tree pieces), the women are preparing and weaving the natangura roof pieces. These sections are then fastened onto the roof structure. It’s commonly called a thatched roof here, and people insist they are very strong and can withstand storms and cyclones, lasting up or 10 to 15 years.

Obviously, these “kastom” (Custom) houses are not sealed completely, and anything small enough that wants to enter can. Our kastom house, shown below, has a cement foundation with 4’-5’ cement walls. We also have five window openings with screen on top, which is nice to have for privacy, but doesn’t keep the constant mosquito swarms away since there’s a 6” gap between the walls and roofs. This gap does allow for nice air movement, so our house ideally stays cooler than sealed houses.

Regarding the cement: locals cut packaged cement (I noticed yesterday a sign that said ~$10 for 18lbs of mix – don’t know how this relates to home) with crushed coral and sand from the beaches. I assume they do this in an effort to stretch the purchased cement. It works fine, it just doesn’t necessarily have the same strength as a solid concrete wall might.

A “permanent” house here, as far as I can tell, is considered a fully concrete structure, both full slab and concrete walls with a “kopa” (copper – most actually they use tin or other cheap metals) roof on top of a wooden frame. These can be completely sealed, or have a gap at the top as I mentioned above. Commonly these houses have louvered window panes, and some with protective bug screens or metal grids for security.

Most of the houses in the villages have no running water or plumbing. Rarely, a permanent house may have solar power wired into the walls neatly, and maybe a sink with piped water from a rain tank or a gravity fed pipe. The super nice houses in the village are lucky enough to have a sealed flush toilet. Aside from these luxuries, most people either have a water sealed (where you pour in water to the toilet after use and gravity forces down waste) or a long drop toilet like we use at site (see photo). These are dug into the ground anywhere from 6’-10’ deep maybe, and used until they are full, and then buried (sorry for the mental picture!). Water is retrieved from rain tanks, and brought home in buckets where it’s used for bucket baths and for washing clothes and dishes. 

Our village recently brought in a few water pipes from a natural spring higher up the mountain. It’s a pipe that currently runs 24/7 flooding some bush…prime mosquito territory. We have been assured they are working on bringing it to a reliable tap. This is cleaner water in theory, but regularly pumps out dirt and debris, and you never know if anything has contaminated the water upstream. The rain tanks are safe if they are sealed completely from bugs and critters, and from kids!

Any other specific questions on housing or living here are welcome, and I’ll try to find a valid answer. This is just my experience, and some things may be assumed, or even made up if I didn’t find a valid source! Housing here is simple, but it’s enough, and most of the time free. Just for the record, there are plenty of houses in the towns that would be comparable the nicest in the United States. 

Our host family's house/health center on Lelepa Island

Our little thatched roof house in Narango village in South Santo

Our long drop "bush" toilet

Our "swim house" - where we take bucket baths

Coral on the ground of the swim house (has since been concreted with a drain)

Our thatched roof made with natanguro leaves and bamboo (and our gymnast cat)

a neighbors custom house

The local Presbyterian church - made of solid block with a metal roof. Building is used as a safe structure during big storms

An empty concrete slab where a Disability Center is set to be built in the future (...maybe?)

Halo!

Hello. Thanks for taking the time to read this blog. In addition to Caroline's blog about our everyday lives volunteering in Vanuatu, I wanted to author something about cultural differences and general observations between the US and this small interesting country located in the South Pacific Ocean. I have a handful of topics that are of interest to me, and I hope you'll find the uniqueness of this place as fascinating/weird/awesome as I do. As different as the United States is from Vanuatu, there are many things we have in common, so I hope to highlight those things too. As an organization, the Peace Corps has 3 main goals. Aside from "promoting world peace and friendship", staff and volunteers are expected to (1) Provide technical training to locals, (2) Share American culture with the locals of the host country, and finally (3) Share local culture to those back home in America. This, is my attempt at the Third Goal. Any questions or things you'd like me to research, lemme know!