Tru tok about working in Vanuatu: time and disagreement

Here is some tru tok about working in Vanuatu: it's not America, it's not Australia, and when volunteers get pushy, their communities push back.

So we're volunteers, and our work is community development. But the people we work with have other things to do ... and, honestly, Ni-Vanuatu aren't as direct as Americans are. When we don't want to do things, we say so, or we make excuses about how we're busy. I've seen a lot that Ni-Vans make excuses to avoid things that they don't want, but they'll also enthusiastically agree to do stuff that they have no real intention of doing. It's not being dishonest, more like -- why, yes, it would be great if we could do this extremely complicated, time-consuming thing! I absolutely intend to do that .... at the bottom of my list of things that I want to do.

I think you see it a lot with work scheduling or meeting scheduling here. In America, we're very focused on the clock, tick-tock, tick-tock, and to show up late for a meeting is rude. It is a way that we tell other people that we don't value their time. But here, people have other things to do and we are not their first priority. So a lot of times when volunteers want to hold a meeting or a workshop, people will come late or not at all, because whatever else came up is more important to them. It's not just with us--they do it to each other, too, and they all understand more instinctively what each scheduled time really means. This takes us a while. It definitely took me a while to understand that church starts at "church o'clock" and that that is largely dictated by the amount of time it takes a family to get ready in the morning. During Independence 2013, there were all of these events scheduled to start at 9 a.m. ... that began at 11:45 or 12:30. Things just don't happen in real life the way that they do on paper.

A lot of volunteers get really angry and it's very counterproductive. You just have to understand that things are always going to take longer and start later than planned, and that sometimes, if you choose times and dates that are most convenient to you, they won't happen at all. The trick is, don't take it personally if you try to set a three day workshop in the middle of yam planting season and no one comes (personally guilty of that one). Do your best, but you have to give up on expecting things to work on American time. It's not America, it's Vanuatu, and whatever you want to get done is going to have to get done on the local schedule. 

Also, remember: people will agree to your face to do things because they don't want to disappoint you. It's part of saving face, I think. They assume that we'll understand the difference between a serious, firm, let's meet at 9 a.m. commitment and a tentative, let's try to meet sometime tomorrow before dinner but I might have to do my wash first. Even in Vanuatu, I think we're still on schedules because we feel like we need to produce to feel like we're accomplishing stuff. But 2nd goal, y'all. 2nd goal.