6 August 2006 - Vanuatu

Had a really nice breakfast of pawpaw, bananas, maniok pudding (a locally grown root which looks like a big white carrot, but tastes a bit like potato, also called "kasava"), fried cooking bananas (tastes like potato chips), a piece of a HUGE mandarine (about 8 inches in diameter), coconut cream, and bread. It was some decent meal!

Have done some washing clothes in buckets today, and hung them up inside one of the huts. I met John Fox. He's a local and lives about 15 minutes south of where we are staying, across little water and big water. Less than 100m from where we are staying, there is a stream of water called "Little Water" which is about 2 metres wide, averaging about a foot deep and flows contstantly all year round. Probably delivering about 1 cubic metre per second. It's amazing to have unlimited fresh, drinkable water in that quantity. Less than 500m down stream is the ocean. There is lots of coral which goes about 1 km out to the sea. You can see the large waves crashing on the coral furthest out. When the tide is low, we can't use the boat because the water is not high enough about the coral. So, tides are quite critical around here.

Gaua is a volcano island about 20km in diameter. The volcano has smoke, but not very much and I haven't seen any of it yet. It's been dormant for quite some time. At the top of the volcano, there's a lake, full of fresh water. It flows down the mountain on this (Eastern) side of the island near where we are staying. Less than 1 km from where we are staying, the stream divides into "Little Water" and "Big Water". "Little Water" flows near us, and "Big Water" flows slightly southward and is less than 1 km south from here. "Big Water" has a capacity of about 5 times that of "Little Water". So much fresh water!

On Wednesday, we left Saraka SDA Mission (where we stayed the night), in Luganville, the second most important centre of Vanuatu, located on the largest island in the country, Santo. I loved the experience of seeing the town briefly. It was not of video, but I was actually seeing it for myself. We used an Internet Cafe there (have some photos to prove it!). We caught a "Twin Otter" airplane from Santo airport (which is very new and clean, was just opened a few weeks ago) to Gaua. We finally made it to Gaua, our destination. Near the airport is a village which had a "shop" (called "Beres Shop" with basic supplies, like rice, tinned fish, tools, soap etc. This shop is one of the major shops (more like a small shed with supplies), and one of about half a dozen shops around the island. The shop had a telephone, and Dr Mark dialed up to the Internet to do some business stuff. The Internet connection was at about 28.8 kbps (half normal dialup speed). Amazing to have Internet in a remote village!

We were there for a while. Then walked up to another village where the SDA church is, on the north-east corner of the island. We had some local food (some apple'y type thing, some biscuits, and coconut drink). They are building a new church, and the walls were getting built from concrete besser block brinks while we were there. I think we'll be going up later this week to help.

Then we took the boat (the Torba SDA Mission boat) back to where we are staying now. We had to wait until close to dark before going back, because of low tide. It was rainy, windy, and getting dark, which made it quite cold. We were all shiverying. We had all of Jared's and my luggage on board, laptops, and other kinds of things. Thankfully, it all arrived safely. It was quite a day getting from Sarakat to Kiriliu (which means "Small Water) Station or Kiriliu Bungalo. A Bungalo is a hut-type house. We rested very well that night, after a good shower and nice dinner.

Thursday I spent some time hooking up a fluro light to the electic wires setup here. Then wired some more wires to another bungalo. Also took some time to get all organised and give a number of things (folders, lights, tracts etc) to Mark. In the afternoon, we went to a nearby village and saw a very natural snapshot of village life. Kids were playing (although some do go to school across big water), pets, dogs, pigs, cattle where walking around. In one of the huts, a man was making some lap-lap (a local dish made from a root) and coconut milk. They wrapped it up in large leaves and put it in the rock fire, which takes a few hours to cook. It was a great experience to see normal life in the village. I'd like to do some more of that while I'm here.

Friday we spent quite some time working out some details about a hydro-electric system. Since we have so much water, we could have some decent electic system going. We work out we have about 10 meters of water head from the water intake to a place just below the main bungalo here. The water intake is just near where big and small water divide, and comes via a 1 inch poly pipe. We also walked up little water to the divide. Talk about nice! Water just flowing down rocks with green and green on the sides, palm trees stretching up to the sky, larger water pools, just beautiful. Just where the water divides, there's a strong current about 2-3 feet deep and 10 meters wide. I did some "diagonal" swimming across the current. It'll sweep you away if you're not careful! It was such a nice place.

Yesterday we walked to church along the main highway (4wd only track) on the island. It's about 6 km to church, so it took over an hour through mud, grass and wet. Of course, got changed into better clothes at the church. They start about 9:15 and have a big "gonger" the bang. If it bangs 10 times, it's about 10 minutes to start. We sang some songs, which were all from the SDA hymn book in English, even though just about everything else they do in church is in Bislama, the main language in Vanuatu. We did some praying, heard some mission stories, and studied the lesson (they do the same lesson as the churches in Australia, only 2 weeks behind). Very similar format to SDA church in Australia, except all in another language. You can pretty much work out most of what they are trying to say in Bislama. Also, being a white person, they ask you to do a lot! They welcomed us with flowers around our necks, which was really nice. We talked a bit about ourselves. I was asked to pray, do mission story, do some music (on my harmonica), and teach a simple 15-minute music class all with usually a few minutes notice. (So be prepared if you come over!) Mark took the sermon on Nehemiah, and the rebuilding of the wall of Jerusalem. The message was, "We shouldn't let others discourage or distract us from the work God has for us to do).

We then had lunch and relaxed for a bit. An AY (Adventist Youth) program was in the afternoon, with a quiz, songs, nature talk, prayer, general knowledge, and Bible story. We walked back with some of the local children who walked to church with us in the morning. They picked some flowers for us and we put them in our hair! It's ok to do that over here :-) It rained a bit on the way back, and we got out our torches out part way back since it got too dark. We showered up and had some nice dinner and went to bed.

We can make phone calls here from a satellite phone (which is not on all the time) and costs about US$1 per minute. We can also dial up to the internet at 9.6 kbps (about one sixth of the speed of normal dialup). we just do emails, and that's why we like plaintext emails with not attachments or pictures. We dialup through the satellite phone. The power we get here is solely from solar power, and because the last few days have been cloudy, we were extremely low on power on Friday. We're quite dependant on sun for power to communicate via email etc. That's why we're looking into hydro power.

Have been really enjoying the challenges and differences here. It's a great experience (not for those who want an easy holiday) and well worth it so far. Have plans of going right to the southern part of the east coast of Gaua to a village called "Durrig". Will probably do that the week after next. Many other plans to help out in mission work and helping out. Will write them down as we organise them.

Brad in Vanuatu