Sunday, July 13, 2014

Hiking in N. Ambrym

Some point, I need to write a long blog post. I just went to North Ambrym, where I climbed Marum volcano, saw a bunch of kastom, saw the Rom dance, did a phonics workshop, and drank a lot of kava. 

On our last day, Michelle K and I were told that the ship was going to come pick us up late at night. The day before, we'd wandered over to Melvat village to see a circumcision kastom. Unfortunately, we missed the circumcision, but Michelle met some family -- there's a girl she sings out sister to who got married to a guy from Melvat. The guy, Joel, offered to take us up hiking to the top of this mountain nearby.



It was actually really hard -- much harder than climbing the volcano, I think, because it was just straight up. Maybe 3 hours up and 2 hours down? But most of it had to be done barefoot, and it was slippery, and raining, et cetera.

What I thought was really cool, though -- so Michelle and I are thinking that maybe we'll just be walking around with Joel. But this is Vanuatu, and as we're walking along, a bunch of yangfala guys start joining us. Michelle told me that the joke is 'waet pej', like, 'white page for today, no plans.' It was really cool, though, that we all ended up on this little expedition.



The funniest part is that an old volunteer, Betsy, told me over facebook that she sings out brother to a bunch of these guys.

(Oh, and that white shirt? I wore it hiking the volcano, too ... You'd think I'd learn not to buy white things in this country. It's definitely deteriorated to garden status, now.)

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