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Tuesday 1st December
So, I've survived a week, and what a week it's been! It's been interesting, challenging, fun, terrifying, frustrating and hell - all at the same time! I've been eaten alive by mozzies despite dousing myself in repellent and being really careful. Our project manager had some spare mozzie nets so I found a great one that goes over the posts on my bed and makes me feel like a princess rather than the cocooned caterpillar I was the first few nights. 2 nights running there have been ginormous spiders (and I mean huge, not just in my eyes!) in my room and another one in the passageway so my room mate (Ozzie so no worries mate) does spider patrol every night before we go to bed to check the coast is clear. The rats are still around though as one has had a good old chomp on my flip flop next to my bed during the night and we've had all kinds of roaches in and outside of our rooms (including an albino one). Last night there were 3 huge roaches in the toilet so I couldn't go and had to hold it in all night! No way was I sharing the loo with those things and it's such a confined space that there's nowhere to escape to.
Daily Routine
We tend to get woken up at various stages of the night by cockerels crowing (someone shoot the things) but then finally start emerging at around 6.30/7am. Breakfast is always there (with extra flies if we're lucky). We then sit around complaining about the heat and not doing a lot. Before you know it, it's lunchtime at around 12 (well, island time means anytime between 11 and 1) after which we do pretty much the same as the morning although we might fit in a snorkel, a nap and a shower and then have dinner at around 4.30pm before setting off on our trek to turtle beach. I feel like I'm on the ultimate diet/health regime - 3 square meals a day, sweating out all the toxins during the day, no alcohol, no food after 5pm and a daily 12km hike up and over a hill and across a very soft sandy beach which is torture! Still don't seem to have lost any weight at all though which is highly annoying!
The villagers seem to have a fairly similar routine to us. Except for the teachers (who finish at 11.30am anyway), nobody really works. Most of them live from hand to mouth so they spend any time they have tending their veggie patches either for food for themselves or for the women to sell at the market in Port Vila. The rest of the time they just hang around the village or sleep! The exception is the women who cook our meals and do our washing. There are so many who want to help out that each lady cooks for one day and then she doesn't cook for another 2 months or so as the roster is so large. The other ladies do the laundry 3 times a week. It always looks sparkly clean but smells like mud!!
I'm over the novelty of being Robinson Crusoe now and just want to feel clean. We cannot get completely clean as the water we wash in has salt in it and my hair is like a frizz bomb. I haven't looked in a mirror for 6 days as I don't want to see how bad I look! We all certainly smell though. Nice!
The Wedding
Friday was the big day as there was a wedding. All very interesting and rather pitiful really. The 'adoring' couple looked miserable as sin, considering it's suppose to be the happiest day of their lives and the bride looked like the back of a bus! Everyone who gets married must share the same outfit as the suit was far too big for the groom (and looked like something out of the 70s) and her shoes were like boats! Anyway, the church area was all decorated with tinsel and streamers, then the wedding cake arrived - a mushy mess (bought specially from town) with a plastic white bridal couple on top! The ceremony was a pretty intense yelling session of "praise the master' hallelujah; jeremiah" and so on and then we had a feast of pig (freshly clubbed the night before and laid out on display - at least it looked as though it was smiling!).We did a kind of line up with the bridal party and shook their hands but there were no smiles and they didn't even look at you when they shook your hand - all very sombre! After eating, the bride is then packed up and handed over to the husband - she was crying her eyes out the poor mite. God knows what was in store for her. At least they no longer practise the tradition of knocking the bride's front teeth out to show she is 'taken'.
Church
Hmm, we were told we were welcome to go to church (there are 4 churches in a village of 400 people - Presbyterian, Anglican, Catholic and Seventh-Day Adventist) which none of us were bothered about but then quickly realised we didn't actually have much choice in the matter! 2 ladies arrived and presented us with island dresses or 'Mother Hubbard' dresses as they're locally known - lovely. We all looked 8 month's pregnant and about 50 years old but this is what the ladies in the village wear all the time. Very airy though and handy for wiping your face and hands on! So, we had to wear them and go to church where it was more arms in the air and praise the master. One lady gave us a Bible and another religious book to keep for the week (it's currently gathering dust on the table) then one guy went into a bit of a trance-like fit and started staggering around shaking his hands and crying his eyes out. Someone had to go and help him stand up. Freaky! We sat there for around an hour and then decide to sneak away. Needless to say we are trying to think of excuses of why we can't go next Sunday! Oh, and for the last week there has been a big national church meeting in our tiny village so there have been loads of people staying from other villages and they have sat from dawn til dusk (one night the bells were ringing at 4am) preaching and singing (well, what can loosely be described as singing) non-stop. The theme of the meeting was Jeremiah and even we could hear the same things been said over and over. The book of Jeremiah isn't even that long! God only knows but they all seemed to be well into it!
Turtles
We've now done our mammoth trek 4 times (we took a unanimous decision to have a night off the other night as were knackered!). The first turtle we saw was amazing. She came up the beach to try and nest but after a lot of shuffling she turned around and headed back to the sea. The guys grabbed her on the way to tag her and it was incredible how strong she was. Her shell measured 90cm long and 80cm wide and they reckoned she was about 40kg. They can weigh up to 75kg. The tagging was a bit traumatic as it does hurt them but it was still fantastic to see. We went back last night and found a turtle building her nest. She was 92cm long so pretty big. We had to wait for around 30 minutes and then she started laying so we could go really close u as once she starts, she can't stop. It was pretty cool to see her popping out all of these eggs. They reckon they lay around 200 eggs at any one time (and only a couple of hatchlings out of that batch will eventually make it into the sea). I took a bit of a video which I'll post onto picasa when I get a minute. She then covered her nest up with sand using her back flippers. They can take another 30 minutes or so before they go back into the sea so we marked the nest (she was already tagged so we didn't have to put her through that aswell!) and then headed further along the beach. We found another one laying eggs and then as we headed further we almost trod on a hatchling as it was scampering down towards the ocean. Wow, how cute was that?! Probably about 5/6cm long and looking very confused, it was tripping over rocks but made it into the waves. Couldn't get any photos as the flash would have blinded it but will hopefully get a better chance when it's a full moon and there's some light. Very excited that we should see a lot of hatchlings over the next few weeks. Last night was a tough night though as we didn't get home til 1am (we're normally in bed by 10!).
Activities
On Saturday we did a trip around the island which was great fun. We'd bought some food for a BBQ in Port Vila. We stopped at a beach to go snorkelling and by the time we came out, the 2 local guys had built a fire and prepared all of the food. Not bad considering the men normally do diddly squat as it's women's work!
We learnt some weaving yesterday with palm leaves and made bracelets. Mine was crap and would only be good enough for the bargain bin! Next time we're supposed to make fans but I think I might sit that one out to save embarrassment of my crap creative skills!
Tomorrow it's the school Xmas concert so we're going to that and then were going to spend some time with the kids playing some games. So far we've got musical statues, 3-legged race and egg and spoon race (except we're using big round seed things instead of eggs). Should be interesting. Reckon it'll either be a complete flop or a raging success!
Thursday 3 December
Sitting here chilling out being pestered by kids fascinated by my laptop and camera and having to keep my eyes on everything to make sure it doesn't walk. Because the villagers share all of their possessions, they don't think anything of taking something that doesn't belong to them without asking so we have to be careful of everything, even clothes!
We had another late night on Tuesday night at turtle beach but it was worth it. We saw 2 turtles and the other local guys with us saw another 3. Last night we saw another 2 so it looks like it must be the right time for them to nest. The older nests haven't started hatching yet but we're hopeful for the next few days. All of the turtles we've seen so far have been Hawksbill but last night we saw a Green Turtle which was even bigger - 98cm long!
No more spiders been spotted yet but we had another giant roach in the toilet last night and the night before there was a little one under my mattress. I woke up in the middle of the night hearing rustling and scurrying and then a big thud. When I woke this morning, my roommate's soap was near my bed. A (or several) rat had obviously knocked it off the shelf and then carried it under her bed and had a good old gnaw on it. Ugh.
It was the end of term school concert yesterday so the kids had to perform skits, songs, poems and read aloud. We then played some games with them which was fun. We did musical statues, coconut and spoon race and a team race where you pass balloons. The whole community was laughing and having fun. Probably one of the best non-turtle related things we've done so far.
We also had an earthquake yesterday morning at 6.30am. We all thought someone was shaking us awake and then all clicked at the same time that it was a tremor. Not much compared to the ones I've experienced in Japan but when you're in a wooden hut, it's a bit nerve-wracking!
We've got 4 nights off our trek now as tonight we are trying kava for the first time and then watching Love Patrol (the TV series we saw being filmed) with a load of villagers. We all have to crowd around a portable TV in someone's house and hope the generator keeps going! Kava is the local firewater and is made from the kava root. It's meat to be hallucinogenic and makes your lips go numb and then you feel really sleepy. Apparently it looks and tastes like dirty dish water so we'll see. Tomorrow morning, 5 of us are flying off to Tanna for 2 nights to see the live volcano. Hopefully we'll have a freshwater shower - luxury!
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