A day in the life for myself and for a ni-Van who lives in my village is as follows:
You start your day usually with the sun. The lack of grid provided electricity means no high powered entertainments after dark which in turn means early nights and early days. You also start your day with the crows singing in the morning. And those guys sound like someone is being assaulted. So it took me a while to realize, as I was being awoken at the crack of dawn from roosters crowing, that the sound waking me up was in fact roosters crowing and not someone getting their ass kicked.
Mornings are leisurely. The stores are open and you can get a little something for breakfast as needed. Breakfast itself can be something simple like tea and crackers or left overs. Since all cooking is over a fire keeping it simple in the morning is ideal. My breakfast is oatmeal, coffee, and my malaria pill.
At 7:30 am most people at dressed, fed, and starting their day. Plenty of children are already at the school playing. The trucks have started their day taking passengers to and fro. And pretty soon people will start heading to work.
Your day will then consist of a few options since being in a small village connected to other small villages have limited things to do. Children go to school. And adults go to work. Work is mainly the gardens whether that is tending cash crops or food crops. Because of the family ties, obligations, and overall network; you may be working in your own garden or someone else's. When you cross work in each other's gardens and help each other out, it is also expected that you 'remember' the people who helped you in your garden when it's time for harvest and vice versa. Since Vanuatu is tropical, harvest is throughout the year depending on individual crops. The idea of winter bringing an end to gardening from fall to spring is an odd idea here and has led to some interesting conversations.
In addition there is occasionally the option to earn some cash working in someone's else's cash crops garden whom you have no family ties / obligations with. A person will 'sing out' that they will pay x-amount for those willing to 'klin lo kava' or trim grass and do a general cleanup a kava garden for the owner.
Work can also be community service days. The ship comes in and needs to be unloaded, a community building is going up, etc. At which point the men work on the main activity and the women provides the food, whatever weaving needs to be done, and other support work. Weaving with coconut fronds is pretty common for making containers, mats, partitions, and decorations.
The cash crops of our village is kava, which is sold either fresh or dried. Dried kava is for export and the price for selling it to a factory in Port Vila for processing is set by the government. So when the radio announces a particularly good price for kava, the work for that day is for everyone to gather up the kava that they have been drying at their homes and consolidate it for shipment. This way the cost of truck and ship is shared among everyone.
Occasionally someone will use a plane to send fresh kava to Port Vila since fresh kava has to be used as close to the day it was pulled from the ground as possible. To charter a plane is to pay for every seat in that plane. Or the kava gets loaded as cargo on a regular passenger plane, if there is room. If a plane is being chartered, then the cost gets shared and the work that day is getting together enough fresh kava root ready for transport. If you want to know more about kava, Drinking Kava in Vanuatu, Kava Part 1 of 2 and Kava Part 2 of 2 are good posts about the drink.
Another cash crop is kopra, which is dried coconut meat. But the gov price for this per kilo is much lower than kava and it is much more laborious to produce. So kopra hasn't been produced here for some time though the kopra houses are still around.
In addition there are community days when the work will benefit everyone. We have a spot for anchorage and there is one ship that will deliver goods there. It can take nearly a full day and every hand to unload the supplies, one small dingy at a time, and then load up the outgoing cargo. Another example is rebuilding community buildings. One of the churches here was damaged in an earthquake, so one Wednesday at a time over the course of a couple of months, it was rebuilt.
When it's time for everyone to get together for a chief's meeting, for a church service, for the community work project, or a fundraiser, the call is sent out by ringing the bell. Which is an empty metal container such as an old oxygen or propane tank. Whomever rings the bell has to have the right to do so. There is protocol and hierarchy in place. That way when you hear a bell go off you can be assured it means something and isn't someone's whim or a child pulling a prank.
My work day is mornings at the Dispensary with my counterpart. I do what I can to try and get work done on different projects. Right now is the holiday season and work that I want to do such as awareness's, workshops, or a community project is not done at this time. Now is the time for the circumcision ceremony, for marriages, and in general getting ready for Christmas and New Years. I am also spending more time at the gardens and making kakai with the Mama’s.
Once the work day is done everyone heads home. That is when I station myself under the mango tree on the road into the village. I get internet and can do some work. I chat with people as they walk by coming back from the gardens. And if I need veggies I will ask if anyone has anything to sell me. There's no fresh food market here, which is a major bummer.
The stores open up again as the owners come home so you can buy rice and tin tuna for dinner. The Mama's begin cooking dinner, which can take an hour or two. Some food is from scratch and over a fire consisting of what you harvested that day. Rice is the staple that is easy to make a lot of, even if it's not that filling, which leads to people eating 2-5 cups of rice in a meal to get full. It's easier to make a big pot of rice than to plant, harvest, prepare, and cook the equivalent in a non-processed starch such as yams. Also along the same lines, it's easier and more likely to have tinned tuna than to raise, catch, prepare, and cook a fresh protein.
For a while there everyone was also playing a game of volleyball or football, depending on your gender. But that was basically until the October. Independence Day and Province Day are holidays where there are sport tournaments with cash prizes, so in the months leading up, those who wanted to play in the tournaments got together to practice. After those celebrations were over, the volleyball and football season was over and no more evening sports.
While dinner is being prepared, everyone takes a shower and gets ready for dinner. The men congregate with each other gossiping, chatting, and drinking kava. In our village women are not allowed to participate in drinking kava. This rule was recently reiterated at a week long church conference consisting of church people from around the island. A key messages they left behind was women cannot drink kava because the Bible says they are supposed to cook, clean, and raise the children.
Dinner is around 6pm and is held in the kitchen, which is a kustum house or shelter where everyone will sit on mats. Sometimes there is a raised platform, sometimes everyone sits on the ground. The Mama's set up all of the pots of food next to them with the plates and utensils. They make a plate for everyone, including the men who may eat with the family or who may just grab a plate when they are ready. The Mama's then eat last once everyone is served. Typically, the women and children eat together. The men are off somewhere else. Occasionally I will see a father or brother eating with the family. Here is a cool video about making and eating laplap which is a common dish throughout the islands.
Dinner could also be a fundraising event. The school, dispensary, church, or family could be in need of extra funds. To build, to pay for a custom ceremony, etc. So the fund raiser would be about 2-3 cups of rice with a main dish; perhaps fish, perhaps a veggie dish with tin tuna, fish or meat. There is usually kava also for sale. And you bring a plate and fork, pay for the food, and hangout enjoying your dinner with the community. Again men and women are separate from each other with the men gathered around the kava and women serving everyone. When the kava is ready the call goes out just by yelling into the night "kava for sale!"
The largest church in our village is also very active in the evenings with sermons, singing, and so on. Which is right next to my house, so that's fun.
Then it's bedtime, for the most part. Occasionally, especially if they're had been a celebration that day, people will party into the night. Young fellas will binge on kava and alcohol, crank the tunes, and scream. Ya, scream. Holler. Shout. And this will go on for as long as they have endurance and liquor so sometime well into the morning. I have spent more than one sleepless night both in village and in the city awake because of the tunes and shouting.
I'm addition, I'm across the road from the pastor's house, who in the evenings will have the music going such as Christian rock music with people shouting and laughing, and in general having fun. That will generally go on until 9 pm.
But that's occasionally. Usually it's very quiet, very dark, and very easy to get a good night's rest.
I've been making short little videos about daily life happenings and have been posting them to my YouTube channel. Check it out.
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