This is going to sound crazy, but I think that, superficially, Vanuatu's culture doesn't look that different from the US. Anyone who's seen any photos is going to put up their finger and say, hey, wait a minute, so let me explain.
Vanuatu is filled with some of the friendliest, kindest, and most generous people on Earth. Ni-Vanuatu are also, coincidentally, really, really good at hospitality and being open to strangers. This is not a culture in which volunteers feel like they are constantly hitting themselves against a brick wall to try and make friends and connections. Add the fact that Bislama is very similar to English, and it's very easy (I think) for volunteers to make the transition here. You can start making jokes in Bislama and being funny, friendly, and interesting to talk to, in maybe a week or so, to start. Don't get me wrong, it takes much longer to learn how to speak it correctly, but I think the level needed for an entrance-level social life is pretty low. And everyone is so nice!
Because of all of this, I felt like I integrated into Vanuatu very quickly. To a degree, while I think I understood on an intellectual level that Vanuatu's culture was very different, it was easy to downplay things as being differences in clothes, kastom, and food. Don't get me wrong, Vanuatu is physically quite different from America, and, of course, they don't do things on the same time or organize themselves like the States or really do much of anything exactly like America. But what I'm trying to say is that it's very, very comfortable for me to be here. It doesn't really feel like I have to exert myself too much. Like, I can just hang out and be me barefoot in some grubby clothes with my hair like a mess sitting on the ground and that's okay. I've been able to get a lot of work done, but I also feel very comfortable here. Especially now -- it's a no brainer. It's so easy to live here.
Honestly, though, the longer I'm here, the more I am able to pick out the things that I don't like, and that I'm not comfortable with, here in Vanuatu. The biggest one is, obviously, the status of women here. It's not like it's a secret that Vanuatu is a very male-dominated culture, but it's appalling how much violence against women there is, and just how blasé many people's attitudes are. I always feel a tension in this blog between the fact that I want to tell the truth and the fact that I realize I'm a foreigner in this country and I don't want someone reading my blog and saying, "Oh luk wan pis kop i stap talem ol rabis toktok abaot on man ples, olgeta oli stronghed tumas, oli no shud tok tok olsem ..." It's frustrating because on the one hand, I feel like people should know that the X on Y island did Z, especially when Z is the sort of thing that even here makes people go, Oh my God.
It's unsettling to realize that a specific group you feel so close to puts up with some of its members behaving exceptionally, criminally, badly. They do it for a number of reasons, everything from perhaps that they don't think domestic violence is that bad to it's easier to resolve community conflict over a rape by saying that the girl (not woman, girl) is responsible too, to just I don't even know, the fact that the chiefs are all men and I've heard of exactly one female provincial councilor. I'm not really sure why it is this way, but it is. And the more I'm here, and the more I hear, I just get this intense, visceral reaction that the situation is just awful, nogud, rabis fasin blo evriwan we i gat kaen tinging olsem.
Vanuatu ... Man, what do I say about this place? I think that living here, you really do come to love people. Ni-Vanuatu people really embrace us, and definitely I feel that love in return. At COS, we were talking about how to describe Peace Corps when we got home, and the obvious answer is that I've been getting my mind blown, my horizons widened, and my butt kicked into shape. I wanted something that was going to change my life, because I didn't like what my life was turning into back home. I felt very constrained and like I didn't have the skills or the drive or the confidence to go from where I was to where I wanted to be. And Vanuatu ... Vanuatu delivered. My friend Michelle Wong and I were discussing this recently, how we both felt like we came to Vanuatu as college kids and turned into adults. I owe a lot to this place and to the people here. It's been hard and good and weird and beautiful and boring and tough and easy, peasy, lemon-squeezy. I love it and I'm not going anywhere for now.
But it's not all smooth-sailing. I still learn new things about this place all the time, things I like, and things I don't like, too. I guess what I'm trying to say is this: Peace Corps is going to deliver something wildly out of left-field at every turn. It's not easy all the time to be an American and work in Vanuatu, because Vanuatu isn't America. Culture is an iceberg whose top quadrant is the only part visible above the water. Et cetera.
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