Cross-Culture: Deaths and Funerals

I thought it'd be fun to do a mini informative series of posts about cross-cultural differences between America. My hope is that by highlighting an American practice and contrasting it to a Ni-Vanuatu practice, people who read this blog will get to know more about my country of service. As I'm home on home leave, I keep getting struck by little things -- talk of funeral arrangements, baby showers, how kids should/should not behave -- that differ here than in Vanuatu. Sometimes the differences are pretty subtle, but I think it's interesting to consider how we as Americans have our own culture and our own practices that differ from others.

I want to start with something pretty heavy, which is death and funerals.

I'm choosing death and funerals for several reasons. One is that I listened to this absolutely bonkers/great Fresh Air podcast this weekend called A Mortician Talks Openly About Death and Wants You To Too. The mortician in question wants Americans to be more comfortable with death, to have wakes, to accompany their dead family members to the crematory, to eschew embalming, to use degradable shrouds to bury their dead, et cetera. She believes that practices that let living family members come into closer contact with their dead are more natural, healthy, and conducive to a successful grieving process. While I was listening to the podcast, I did think, Wow, actually, when I die at the age of 103, I would like it if my family dressed me in my nicest outfit at home and then bury me quickly in the backyard where they'd see my headstone every day. That would actually be nice. My second thought was -- Wow, absent her discussion of embalming and cremation, she is basically describing Ni-Vanuatu death practices to a T. It's because of this extreme disparity between American and Ni-Vanuatu culture surrounding death and funerals that this just has to be the first post.

In America, people might die at home or in the hospital. A doctor or a coroner has to pronounce the person dead, and if he or she dies at home, the police have to be called. If the dead person wanted to be an organ donor, some tissue might be retrieved. You call family and friends, and have the body taken to a funeral home. Typically the staff of the funeral home embalms the body, puts on makeup to look more natural, and puts the body in clothes selected by the family. Sometimes people hold wakes. Observant Jews will have a funeral very soon after death, but most other people will wait a certain amount of time so that all family can make the arrangements to come. The funeral might have several components. For example, for my grandfather Peter Gritis, there was a Catholic mass and an Elks ceremony in March, followed by a military burial at Arlington in July. We can and do have large gaps between when a person dies and when their body is buried, usually for family convenience but sometimes because of scheduling at a cemetery. And when burials happen, they happen in a coffin, sometimes with trinkets or mementos inside. There are prayers at the graveside, people might throw flowers, or the family might throw handfuls of dirt. Afterwards, usually there's a headstone, although sometimes people use crypts. In the case of cremation, the ashes will either be collected in a box, collected in a box and buried, or scattered somewhere scenic or meaningful. That's how we deal with death.

In Vanuatu, it's different. I'm going to describe death and funerals on Tongariki, but this is the general pattern in small villages in remote areas throughout the country. Most people die at home. This is because when people are very sick, doctors will encourage them to go home to die. It's not being heartless. When people from an outer island die in a remote hospital, their families usually will suffer an extreme financial burden to charter a boat or a plane to take their bodies back to their home village. This can be several thousand dollars, in a country where most people make their money through small scale agriculture. You don't call a doctor, because it's pretty obvious when someone is dead. The women of the family will wash the body immediately and wrap the body in cloth, and place the cloth on pandanas mats. The news goes around. That day, within a set of hours, everyone who has a relationship with the deceased or their family will come over to cry and wail. This will go on for hours as a sign of respect. You'll see some people are really bawling while some others aren't crying anymore, but they'll still wail. There are hymns and prayers. Afterwards, everyone will shake hands with the deceased's family. The village all eats together, and school is cancelled the next day out of respect.

The burial happens either the same day or the next morning. In one case, I heard of a burial that was delayed for three days because a child thought that their father was poisoned by magic, and this was considered extremely disrespectful on the child's part. Unlike the mourning part (which is called a ded), the burial is basically private. Often the burial will happen very close to the house. A friend of mine had her brother buried by their outdoor eating table, and they would decorate the tomb every year. The general style is to have a raised coffin-shaped cement block plus a headstone, or simply a cement headstone with the name written in.  

There are some things that I think are better about funerals in Vanuatu. I think it's wonderful that grieving is communal. You never have a situation where there's a death in the family and people don't seem to know, or care. I think that there is something that is more humane about how deaths happen at home, and how people bury their dead nearby. I don't think that this is possible for us, since except for Native Americans, none of us have kastom land, the way Ni-Vanuatu do. But I think it's beautiful, and I think it underlies the tie to the land and the space.

On the other hand, I think that it's better that in America we have our time to have funerals and say our respects. I find it very sad how many deds I've been to where the deceased died somewhere else, and the family found out a few days later but wasn't able to attend because the burial had to be held that day. A good friend of mine had her father die on another island, and, of course, she wasn't able to attend. Maybe we'd be better psychologically if we all got together and grieved/mourned/wailed it out for four hours communally, rather than spreading our grief out, bit by bit, but at least daughters in America can typically attend their father's funerals.

Women's rights = human rights

It's become increasingly clear to me, by living in Vanuatu, just how successful the American women's movement has been. When you read about society and gender roles in the States, you can tell that we have a ways to go before we live in a nation that's 100% fair and equitable. But we've gotten so far, seriously, and that's something we should celebrate. We're arguing over who should pay for contraception rather than whether a woman should be able to access contraception. We're talking about whether men do enough child care rather than assuming that that's a woman's role. We assume that our daughters should be educated for the workforce, rather than thinking that they're just going to get pregnant and stay home, so what's the point? We don't value our sons over our daughters.

I love Vanuatu. I really do. But one thing about Vanuatu that I think is bad--that I think is very, very, very bad--is the status of women, particularly when it comes up against rape or sexual assault. It really sneaks up on you, because the people of Vanuatu are genuinely friendly and kind, especially to strangers. Vanuatu is not a country where you walk around scared that you're going to get jumped; it really is a place where you feel you can trust the kindness of the people you meet on the road. But it is a place that, when push comes to shove in a difficult way, seems to always value men over women.

I heard a really horrible story yesterday involving a 9 year old girl. It was probably the worst story I've heard here, but it had a lot in common with a lot of other stories I've heard. Especially in cases of rape or sexual assault when the victim is especially vulnerable -- a child, a disabled woman, a teenager who had previously been selling sex to her chief, a young mother off of her island--everyone just wants to brush it off under the rug. Even when they know exactly what happened--and in a small community, everyone does know exactly what happened--no one seems willing to get their head out from under the sand and actually do anything about the fact that a crime took place. I do understand, partially, that the men are family, too, and that it probably is much easier to downplay everything and to blame the victim. But it's so wrong.

I think it comes out of way too much respect in this culture and too much emphasis on communal harmony. It's like everyone wants to get along so much that even when men (and usually it is men) do really insane things, everyone just wants to brush it off and return back to normal. Like on my island, a man who was removed from the truck committee got mad, went down and spoiled the road so that the truck couldn't run down to the passage that week. He got a little side eye and some complaining, but everyone just carried their parcels up the hill and fixed the road. No consequences. Or three times I can think of on Tongariki, I've had men do these totally insane things--refuse to take no for an answer romantically and just make a total ass of himself, request to come to a workshop in Vila and just get drunk the whole time instead of attending, and grossly misrepresent the scale of a project then blame me for not getting 5x the number of tanks as we'd agreed. Every time it was "Oh, that's just how he is, fasin blong hem nao." It all slides away in the face of the fact that in a small community, you have to keep living together, and to do that, you have to ignore or purposely try to forget the things people have done. Most of the time, I don't think this is the worst strategy in the world.

When it comes to rape and sexual assault, though, it's really bad. If it's just a case of someone being a jerk or being unreliable, that's one thing. But there's so much victim blaming that goes on here and the police, both village and government, do not do what they ought to. I know of a case where a report was made and police straight-up refused to make an investigation. It doesn't help that, somehow, the police never have the money to make the rounds, so many times if a complaint is made, the complainants have to pay the price of the police visit. Depending on where you are in Vanuatu, that might be as much as 100 or 200 dollars, which is impossible for a subsistence farmer. Can't afford the boat charter, and the cops just won't come. 

And with victim blaming--so I led a workshop on Gender Based Violence. It went over really well, and I was very impressed with what everyone had to say. One session that did, I think, fail, was a session on how to prevent rape inside of a community. The way it worked was that it was one of the later sessions in the workshop, and I was listing their suggestions on a sheet of butcher's paper. There were lots of ideas of how a woman could prevent rape--stay close to your house, don't go walking anywhere alone, don't flirt with boys and give them the wrong idea, don't drink alcohol, don't wear clothes that will spoil a man's thinking, always stay with family--and, I think, two suggestions for how men could prevent rape. The first was "don't smoke marijuana", a drug which in Vanuatu has a reputation for making people violent and crazy, as opposed to lazy and prone to skipping Intro to Anthro. The second was "don't watch blue (pornographic) movies". As an American, I think we would say different things, like "ask the girl/woman if she wants to have sex with you" or "no means no." It's just a totally different attitude in which women have to behave within a certain very narrow set of parameters or else, well, that's what you get. And especially considering the extremely high rate of sexual abuse that happens within families and at schools (largely between students but also teacher-student), I can't say I can identify any one particular place that is universally safe.

It just makes me really angry. I know that at a certain level I am outraged because I am a woman and so I take these stories perhaps more personally than some other people. Women's rights = human rights, though. And here, in some cases, it's just so straight forwardly against what we in America view as proper and appropriate that it boggles me.

Fatfat

Most Ni-Vanuatu are fairly slim. You do sometimes see some big mamas or some papas with a gut, but most people are on the smaller side. Especially on the island, there aren't a lot of heavy people. I know some women with two or three children who have the figures of cheerleaders. My school of 70 kids has one teenage girl who's on the chubby side, but I'd say she's within a pretty normal range for puberty.

So in comparison, most of us volunteers are enormous.

The word in Bislama for fat is 'fatfat', and it doesn't really carry the same negative connotation as in the States. If someone calls you fatfat in Vanuatu, it's the same as saying that you're short ... or have a big nose ... or pretty eyes. It's not meant to be an insult but rather a statement of fact. It's like a way to cheek someone a little bit. Sometimes it's even a compliment -- as in the phrase 'oh, yu fatfat gud we.' (You're very nicely fat.) 

Obviously, though, for us it's weird. In America, we don't use fat as a neutral description. It's like it's assumed that if you call someone fat, you're trying to insult them or cast aspersions on their looks. We say that someone is big, or heavy, or overweight, but you don't usually say that someone you like is fat. 

It really used to hurt my feelings when people would call me fatfat, because I'd be just like, come on, that's so mean. Talking like that violates normal American codes of behavior. Now, it doesn't so much, especially as I've come to realize that only the very thinnest volunteers have escaped being dubbed fatfat. There are some volunteers with great figures who've been told by people on their islands 'you are so fat.' So that makes me feel better about being, you know, colossally gigantic. 

I do still feel like it's rude, but I wonder if Ni-Vans don't have the right idea. In America, it seems like a lot of women are really concerned with their bodies, and a lot of attention is devoted in the media and in education to developing healthy body images. The only time I've heard anyone in Vanuatu sound concerned about how they looked was a friend who was worried her new boyfriend might not like how her stomach looked (because she'd had a baby the year before and her stomach wasn't flat anymore). Maybe in America we all need to just chill out about being fatfat. No worries, yumi evriwan i fatfat lelebet, laef i olsem nomo.

Culture clash

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. 

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.

Laplap with my auntie/Food culture

(I'm making lap lap banana with shellfish with my auntie Leikar here. Carolannie is the one photobombing behind my head.)

When I first got to Vanuatu, I thought laplap was disgusting. That's because when I first got to Vanuatu, I was stupid. One thing about life in the States: we have too much of everything. Too much TV. Too much sugar. Too much fat. Too many delicious items to eat all the time. I think the last time I was really thin, I was a toddler--because American food is so tasty, so available. You have to have a will power of iron to be able to stay away from ice cream when you're upset and it's literally available at ten places within ten minutes' walk from your house. American food culture is based on the idea that you can eat something delicious all the time, whether it's in season or not, as much as you want. 

Ni-Van food culture isn't like that. Out on the island where I live, the people have a very seasonal diet. They feast during times of feasting, but when the party ends, it's over. We eat meat at Christmas time, at New Yam, Chief's Day, Shefa Day, Independence, funerals, weddings, new baby parties, and in celebration of important visitors. The rest of the year? No fresh meat. It's the same with fruits and vegetables. We eat certain things at certain times of the year, and when it's done, it's done. Mango season lasts from October to late December and then it's over. Nakatambol season lasts from May to July (three terrible, terrible months.) It even applies to staple crops. Certain months of the year we eat breadfruit. Other months we eat yams. There's a while when nothing's ready and we all eat a lot of rice. There's always enough food, but it's not always delicious or balanced. I would say that the mentality can be very much food-as-fuel at sometimes.

Back to laplap. When I first got here, I thought it was this gelatinous slime gunk. Laplap is basically a baked pudding of grated root crop mixed with coconut milk. It can have island cabbage, wild cane, fish, shell fish, or meat mixed into it, or it can be just eaten plain. It's not bad at all, especially if it's hot -- but if you're thinking about eating something with a lot of flavor, it's a let down. But it's what's for dinner. 

I've been thinking a lot lately about food preferences, allergies, certain kinds of restricted diets. As a volunteer in Vanuatu, I do think you could maintain a vegetarian diet or even a kosher diet without causing too much offense, but that's about it. (The kosher diet would only be acceptable because there are so many Seventh Day Adventists in Vanuatu. A lot of Ni-Vans already know people who won't eat crab or pork, and no one really eats dairy anyway). Having strong preferences in any other way, though, is really just being insulting and not trying hard enough. The way I see it is your mama or someone else's mama slaved over a fire to make you a plate of food. Whatever she cooks, that's what she knows how to cook. She might not even really enjoy the meal herself; I've heard a lot of mamas tell me that they don't really like breadfruit, for example. But if the breadfruit's ready to eat, the breadfruit's ready to eat. You have to chow down. 

Bonus points as a volunteer: nobody is going to like taro enough to get fat on it. It's impossible. 

Football!!!! And a discussion about names.

This picture is from the end of February. I was playing football with all the village kids (by football, read: I was playing goalie). So in photos here, kids always throw peace signs ... I'm not just being a dork; I'm being culturally normal. From the left, on top: Morris and me. Second row: Morris, Eddie, Mark, and Wicki. Bottom row: Jayline, Michel, Carolannie, Aaron, Moses, and John-Mark. 

One thing you'll probably notice about these names: they're basically either biblical or very straight forward and English sounding. Not everyone has a name like Marie, Jack, Charlie, or Esther, but those sorts of names are really common. A lot of my students have names that sound like they're a hundred years old: Dick, Elsie, Reynald, et cetera. But there are still a lot of kids with kastom names too, names like Leisongi, Kalo, Lepakoa, Leimande, Kaloran, and so on.

Another feature about Ni-Vanuatu naming is that children take their father's first name as their last name. So my little brother Morris (the one in the blue with the rad hair) is called Morris Jerry or Morris Paul, because my host papa is Paul Jerry. It's very, very common in Vanuatu for young women to have children before they're married, because marriage is so expensive and permanent here. In the case that the parents are unmarried but the dad recognizes the kid as his own, the baby takes the dad's first name as his/her last name. But if the baby's dad doesn't think it's his, the mom doesn't want to say who the dad is, or if it's a pikinini blong rod (child of the road--saying that the mom doesn't know the dad), then the kid will usually take the grandfather's name. There are a few families on Tongariki that have decided to use one name as an English-style last name and keep that as their official name, but that's not very common yet.

Island Dresses

Island dresses were introduced by the missionaries when they came to Vanuatu. They are baggy, usually have scallop edged hems, may have little E-shaped bits of fabric called wings at the hips, and always, always, always come in a bright color. The mamas on my island wear them just about every day. As time goes on, an island dress that was good for church becomes only good for the house, and eventually, everything is only good for working in the garden. If you think of a Hawaiian muumuu, you won’t be far off, although the biggest style influences for island dresses currently come from Papua New Guinea, Fiji, and New Caledonia.

I don’t have a PNG style island dress, but their style is a loose hip length shirt with puffed sleeves over a skirt. Fiji style is similar but much more body conscious—the skirts really follow the line of the hips and the shirts are usually more tailored. Fijians do wear dresses, too, but they're more like new style Vanuatu dresses--puffed sleeves, no wing flaps. (In every Pacific fashion, by the way, skirts are long—usually around calf-length to floor length.) I don't know what the ladies up in the Solomons wear--I haven't actually met that many woman solomons!

What I do have are old style Vanuatu, new style Vanuatu, and a few New Caledonian island dresses. I’ve currently got about thirteen of them, all as gifts. I don’t wear them too much—only to church on Sundays or to important holiday events—but it was so sweet of everyone who gave them to me. I think right now I have three from Buninga, one from Makira, one from Emau, and the rest were given to me by people on Tongariki.

Here's an old style dress:

This is a pretty standard kind of dress. It's got a round neck (usually they're V necks, but not this time) and all the color on it is just fabric paint. It's baggy with big wings at the side. The photo is from swearing in; on the right is my friend Jen who lives on Tanna.

Here are a few newer style Vanuatu dresses:

This is a newer style island dress and a lot fancier than the one on top. Instead of having wings shaped like an E, it's got square wings. The square neck is also more stylish. It still makes me look like a house. This is me with my tawi Nerry at my counterpart's birthday party in March.

Here is New Caledonia style:

New Caledonia style has long bell-shaped sleeves. Usually it has a square neck, too; this one is not totally standard. If you look at the sides, right around my hands, you see square wings—that’s a new thing. Honestly, a lot of New Caledonian dresses don’t even have wings. Sometimes they don’t even have all that lace everywhere (although my one is admittedly decked out.) What they usually are, though, is flas (fancy, good looking, nice.) I’ve seen a fair number of NC dresses around town, and my counterpart has confirmed that they’re the newest popular style. My mom took this photo at Christmas.

There you go! Island fashion. 

Gift Giving and Respect

OK, so here I am with Monica on Buninga. I feel like I should try to make this blog a little more informative--maybe fewer pretty pictures?--and so this would be a good opportunity to explain what's going on.

This photo was taken at a birthday party/opening of Monica's water project. We're in new island dresses, with salu salu (like leis, but more scratchy), calico over our shoulders, extra dresses around the neck, and a shell of kava in our hands.

Basically, in Ni-Vanuatu culture, gift giving is very important. When a man pays bride price, he has to give lots of presents along with the money--pigs, calico, kava, bananas, et cetera. When anyone wrongs anyone, in performing a sorry (the ceremony to apologize and gain forgiveness for wrongs, sort of like what it sounds like), you have to give presents. No fair just going over and saying sorry--you need to give them a mat, at the very least. On Mothers', Fathers', and Children's Day, gift giving is just as important. On Tongariki, the community gathers together so that everyone can watch you give presents to your kids. It's the same when a government official comes--the community gives him mats and kava, and he'll present the mamas who cooked his meals with a fresh 5000 vt bill (~50$), no matter what the price is.

Gift giving is very socially important. It's a sign of respect, and it goes with the understanding that it should be reciprocated. For example--if one of the teachers gives you a dress, you should at some point give her a basket. If your neighbor gives you a plate of food, you should send the plate back with lollies. As far as I can tell, gift giving and just generally doing favors for your neighbors is so important because it's such a face-to-face society. In the States, I could be an unsociable hermit and order my pizza on the internet if I wanted to. On Tongariki, if I want to drink kava, it's a bit of a production--since I have to find someone else who's drinking it, convince them that they really want to chew up another bowl for me, and sit around and story until it's ready. It's not such a hardship, but it's much more personal.

Another aspect in this photo to be explained: so I did nothing with this water project. I had no role other than showing up for the party. And yet I got all of that swag. Buninga's done it before--I got a dress when I went there for Easter. The same thing has happened elsewhere--on Makira, I got a dress and two beautiful baskets from Steph's host family when I went to her last kakae, and on Emau, I got a dress from Lynn Marie's host mother when we went over to visit her. So what's this about?

Another huge thing in this culture is their hospitality. Melanesian hospitality is incredible. Even though I had nothing to do with the project (except showing up to eat cake), some of Monica's mamas made this really kind gesture of friendship towards me. And it's not just this--everywhere I've gone in the Shepherds, the mamas are so sweet and always send plates of island kakae over. I think the day after this photo was taken, Monica and I got eight plates at lunch. You can't beat that kind of hospitality.

Yam planting season...

Yams are the staple crop on Tongariki. We eat kumala, manioc, breadfruit, taro, banana, and rice, but our main food is breadfruit. It's lucky for me -- yams are delicious. Boiled yams with coconut milk is one of my favorite meals.

Yam planting takes up a good portion of the yearly work calendar.

Roughly around May, you start to burn the gardens. Everyone takes their knives and cuts down grasses, trees, and any plants left over and spreads them all around the garden. The sun dries them up a bit, and then you're ready to burn. The most efficient way I've seen of doing it is cutting down big trees and using them as fire logs. You build the fire up at the top of the garden and then use rakes to pull it down slowly.

Once you've cleared and burned all the gardens, it's time to plant. This photo was taken in July, during a yam planting work party I went to with my counterpart and other family members from Lakilia and Tavia villages. First, some women cut the yams open and scrape out the insides to eat later. Then, you dig a deep hole (roughly to your bicep), plant the yam with the top facing up, and build a large mound of dirt around it. (The mound is to discourage mice, pigs, and other animals from digging up the yams.) You put a piece of wild cane in by the yam to encourage its leaves to grow up the right way.

Later, around September through November, you start staking the yams. You take lots of wild cane and build little houses for the yam stalks to grow around. My village cuts holes in the yams and builds these beautiful tinker-toy like contraptions; two of the villages on the other side just bend the wild cane. Either way, you have to regularly go back and turn the stems around the wild cane. If you don't do this, the sun burns the leaves and they can get moldy, too (I think.)

Then, over Christmas, you spel. No yams. Over Christmas, you eat all of the fancy foods you want to eat during the rest of the year--bread, pork, beef, cake, lollies--but no yams. That has to wait until February, when the New Yam kastom happens, and you can start eating them again.

Delicious!

Cooking in the nakamal

Just a normal day in the nakamal. Erata, Atong.

Tongariki boys doing kastom dance from Pentecost

Here are some boys from Class 3 doing a kastom dance from Pentecost, which is the long, skinny island up north where they do land diving. I am terrible (I know, I know) and I don't have everyone's name perfect yet. On the left is Kalron, my neighbor, who comes from the generally most attractive family on the island; in the middle is my kid brother Morris, looking like a rock star, as per usual, and on the far right is a kid whose name I have temporarily forgotten as I'm away from the island. (I'm writing this on 5/20 in town--I've been away for a bit.)

This dance was great. So the boys used brooms made of coconut leaves to sword play, essentially. They're wearing modern variations on kastom wear--skirts made out of pandanas, yep, but shorts on underneath. Hey, kastom continues, but life moves on ...

Nakamal, Lewaema village

Here is the nakamal in Lewaema village. (And there, to the right, is Elsie from Class 4!) Nakamal is a very complicated term, and it's not made any easier by the fact that nakamals can be very different wherever you go in Vanuatu. At its base, nakamal means meeting place. In traditional kastom areas, the nakamal is the place of the chief, and it's the place for men to drink kava. On Tanna, and in kastom villages across Vanuatu, women are not allowed to enter the nakamal. In less kastom places, like mine (Tongariki is not particularly kastom), it's more of a gathering place. Men drink kava at the nakamal, but women cook there, too. On Tongariki, the mamas cook lap lap or other community kakaes at the nakamal regularly, and during feasts, everyone hangs out there. We watch DVDs together (sometimes--I've seen string band videos and First Blood) or just story. In town, for the last example, nakamal is the word for kava bar. You go, you pay kava, you buy food ... And so on.

Tongariki has five nakamals (one for each village) and one kava bar (in Lakilia village). Men, women, and children can go to all of them, but the genders are usually segregated, for the most part. At the nakamal in Erata village, for example, women and children (and maybe a few of the papas) sit inside underneath the roof, while all the rest of the men sit on benches lining the nakamal. And at the ready made (kava bar) in Lakilia, men sit over by where the kava is sold, and women sit over by where the food is sold. Women drink kava and men buy food, but after they pay, everyone goes back to their appropriate site.

The nakamal in this picture is the southern style of nakamal--built under a tree. Most of the nakamals on Tongariki are this style, but the nakamal in Erata is northern style -- a large house complex. Tongariki is a central island, so this makes sense--influences from the south and the north meeting together.

A Few Words in Language

The national language of Vanuatu is called Bislama, and it's something like a pijin version of English. On my island, however, and throughout the Shepherds, they speak a different language--allegedly called Nawakura, although I only read that in a book. Nawakura bears no relationship to English, and so I thought it might be fun to share a little bit about the words I know in that language! (Mostly--note--I basically know nouns. Hah.)

To start off with, all nouns in language start with the prefix na-.

namalok--kava
nambatav--breadfruit
nakukam--cucumber
nambuang--taro
nambetet--sweet potato
navi--banana
nau--yam
nato--fowl
nabolok--cow
nakiri--dog
nabus--cat

korokololo--go swim (bathe)
kaen korokololo--YOU go swim
korokokinikan--go kakae (eat)
koroara--go sit down
korokoelo--go to the salt water (beach)
korokomalal--go to the garden
korokomatir--go sleep

mangorise--early morning
leat--mid morning to early afternoon
diravi--afternoon
mbong--night

meno--thank you
meno mbigiak--thank you very much

ia--yes
ee--no

mim--aunt
lolo--uncle
nana--sister
didi--brother
bob--father
nunu--mother

I know other words, but now that I've been in town for a while, I forget ... Like, I've forgotten the word for pig. (How is that possible? Pigs are a big, big deal. Also, the days when someone kills a pig for a feast are, without question, the best days of my life. There's nothing like roasted pig on top of manioc lap lap. It's amazing. Love it.)

Good Friday with Jennifer

I just like this photo. Jennifer's like my ... cousin? Man I don't even know. She has the same father as my little half sister who was carried out from Vila. (Asina isn't really adopted -- or maybe she is, I kind of don't know. I thought she was staying forever, but maybe she might go back? But then she's like six or seven and I think she might have said that just because she misses her dad.)

But Jennifer's really cool. I need to remember to develop a bunch of pictures for everyone, and I think I'm going to give her a copy of this one. I just really like it.

In the back is the cross the Presbyterians burned for Good Friday. It's supposed to symbolize how Christ burns away your sins. We threw in pieces of wood and coconut husks to show how the cross burned them all away ... It was really sweet. Obviously in the States this has a different context, but this is Vanuatu, you know?

After Bonani with one of my students

Bonani (bon annee, I don't know how to insert accents on a windows machine) is a tradition in Vanuatu. On my island, the way it works is that everyone from village A comes to sing to village B. Everyone from village A stands in a circle facing in, and people from village B give presents of calico and put baby powder, perfume, lotion, tooth paste (!), sometimes margarine ... Haha.

So this picture was actually taken at the nakamal in Erata, and Jaylene (on the left) is from Erata, so I don't know why she's got that stuff on her face, hah.

My little bro @ Jesus, Palm Sunday 2013

Morris as Jesus for Palm Sunday. He's riding in on a donkey (Jaylene) to Jerusalem, whereupon the other children will sing Hosanna. It was pretty adorable, can't lie to you. He's a great kid.

Langwij, langwij, oooooo langwij

Frustrating reality: Trying to look as though I'm quietly amusing myself while everyone else is talking in language all the time. In church, I have a good excuse now--I read the Bible, and I'm considering downloading some Bible Study so I can slow this process down a few months--but at meals? I know that some mamas who don't know me too well in the village think that I speak fluent language (lolz wut) but those who know me know I can talk about food, where I came from, and what children should run off and do. SIGH.