My Vanuatu Talk
Hi everyone,
sorry it took so long but here it is, finally, the talk I gave in church after I got back from Vanuatu. I got a lot of positive feedback from it so hopefully you will too. :0)
The Other Vanuatu
My Paradise
Hi everyone,
for those of you who don't know my name's Jess and I'm up here for one special reason. Because for the last 6 months of my life I was living on a tiny speck of beach in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. This piece of land was the island of Paama in Vanuatu.
Most people when they hear 'Vanuatu', if they even know where or what Vanuatu is, will immediately picture tall palm trees, crystal blue water, white sandy beaches and the best diving in the world. And while this is all true, today I am going to introduce you to the other side of Vanuatu. My paradise. It was up and down, it was beautiful and sometimes downright ugly.
I went to Vanuatu with an organization called GAP, Government Activity Projects, which sends young Aussies on their GAP year all around the world. There are heaps of positions in many countries, but my calling was to the schools in rural Vanuatu.
There were two GAP volunteers on Paama, Bec and myself. While there I taught year 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and helped the year 10s with their exam revision. A couple of days after we got there we were handed a timetable and teachers started pointing out the subjects of theirs we should take. We had no training, we had very little experience and we had very little help. Bec was meant to be observing only during her first lesson, but the teacher slept in and half an hour into the lesson Bec ended up adlibing the entire hour's work.
Towards the end of my placement I also worked with World Vision developing a Bislama numeracy and literacy program for over 15s. My entire experience was just one gain in knowledge after the next.
What was I expecting? I certainly don't know, but whatever it was I can tell you it was absolutely wrong! Even with all my photos, all my stories I don't think I could ever do the country of Vanuatu justice. I could stand up here all day telling you about everything that happened to me, or giggling over funny stories but I decided that instead I would tell you the most important things I learnt.
I lived in a grass hut, I ate practically nothing but rice, bread and cabbage, I wasn't paid a cent, my toilet was a hole, and my shower was a bucket. While I was there the island's next door neighbour, a volcano, was spitting ash clouds, there were earthquakes and cyclones. The volunteer I was working with, Bec, and I had many battles with rats swimming in our garbage, sometimes we had no water and had to swim in the sea for a week, and once I was chased inside at night by a flock of bats, but I never regretted leaving Australia and not once did I feel like I was lacking anything. And nor did the people who I called my neighbours, students and friends. It was the funnest time of my life, and an adventure I sometimes wish could go on forever.
Vanuatu has been listed the number one happiest country in the entire world. What is the secret of their happiness Well, one guess would be the care free attitude they have towards life. Time has no power in Vanuatu. Unlike the scheduled days, rosters and clocks in every room here in Australia. If they felt like having a holiday, they had a holiday. If you didn't feel like going to school, you stayed home (although thankfully that wasn't very often). There wasn't any high expectations. Because in the end, there's only one person's opinion that really matters.
One day I woke up and pottered about getting breakfast, finding the week's advanced lesson plans and reading through them like a good Western teacher would. Suddenly I realised I hadn't heard the sounds of girls outside my house like I did every morning. Poking my head out the door I saw a deserted school. No kids, no teachers, not even a stray dog. After further expliration I discovered, just because they felt like it, the students and other teachers had left for their holidays a week early. They all also decided to come back a week late.
You might call it laziness but everything that needed doing got done. The gardens were tended for food, the houses kept in repair, branches trimmed in case of cyclone. Everyone always had their yams to eat, the houses, school and church were kept in good condition but there was still so much time to just sit down with your neighbour, or with the chief and watch the time go by. I spent ages playing volleyball with my friends, chatting away with villagers or eating picnic dinners watching the sun go down. I still had work to do, preparing lessons, teaching, homework helpt, tutoring, just like I do in Australia but I certainly was never quite so busy as I am right here at home.
The second reason I discovered was that no matter how little they had, they were grateful for it. I saw families living in no better than our garden sheds. When I climbed the mountain to get to the other side of Paama I found a little village more rural than the one I'd been living in. I had an attack of asthma and one family took me into their houses to sleep. They were family of ten with a house a little bigger than my bedroom where they all slept, and an outside cookhouse and toilet. But it doesn't matter to them, and it was hardly any time before it didn't bother me. They don't live in their houses. They sleep in them, cook in them, and wash in them but rooms are a patch of grass under a mango tree, and their kids' playroom a creek or the ocean. And when they do go home they don't squint at what they have, they barely notice it, they thank God for it.
We are a world of more, more, more. No matter what we have, it's not good enough. We have a mobile phone that sends text messages and makes calls, but when that better phone comes out with the camera,, or the internet, or the funny ring tones, we have to have it. I'm guilty too, no false pretences about being perfect. There were exceptions in Vanuatu (for sure) just as there are anywhere else in the world, but we have a lot to learn from a country we call underdeveloped.
So that's the secret of happiness according to the Ni-Vans, and it's so simple. Take it easy, and always be thankful.
It was a short talk but not even the whole day would be enough time for me to tell you everything about my time away, and I doubt I'll ever be able to describe properly the real Vanuatu.
There you go! :0) After the talk I played a DVD with a slide show of what was most important about my trip away. The kdis. And while they can be absolute scoundrels just like any other kid, they're also just as special. There was a song playing in the background called 'Lifesong' and some of the opening words of that song are "empty hands held high, such small sacrifice". And even though my hands were empty when I offered them up for this trip, they were filled with too much happiness, too many fantastic memories for me to feel like it was a sacrifice at all.
posted by My name's Jess Petrusma! @ 2:43 AM
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