Vanuatu Monday - Rain and Horses

Last night a thunderstorm swept through the strait between Nguna and the mainland. At times the storm lit the volcanic mountains across the water as if it was midday. The rain followed hard on the heels of the thunder, lashing and slashing the coconut palms and working hard to find the weak points in the roof of the thatched bungalow I'm sharing with Mark. Our one room accomodation sits below a giant fig tree. The trunk and some of the overhanging limbs have the girth of three to five men's linked arms.

Humans and animals are common yardsticks here. Wealth is measured by the number of pigs you own. They are the basis of the customary economy. One can even become a chief on some islands by slaughtering the requisite number of porkers - demonstrating your power and material wealth. Distance is often described as a half day or two hour walk.

On the boat ride over the strait a chief sat beside me reading the words on the outboard motor. He turned to me and asked Why do they call it horsepower? Vanuatu has few horses and their colonial history was not a horse and buggy experience - there were few roads and travel was by foot.  Strangely, at the time the British and French annexed the New Hebrides as a jointly governed condominion, the rest of the world had finished with carriages and was moving to cars.

I explained the concept of horse drawn vehicles using 2, 4, 6 or 8 horses. There was great amusement among the chiefs about the possibility of fifty horses pulling the boat across the strait. Horses don't swim that well, I mused, and surely fifty horses on land would exert more power than this 50 HP engine could harness on the water.

All this was racing through my head as I reviewed the day from beneath my mosquito net and waited for an unpredictable flow of water through the roof above me. I lay awake enjoying the roar of the wind and the thump of rain until the fury eased. The woven pandanus leaf roof held true and I awoke dry and refreshed. Mark had not been so fortunate. He had moved his bed twice to avoid leaks and, sleeping on a hard bed, had not enjoyed the night.

It's still raining the next morning. I haven't seen rain like this in quite a while. It's so heavy that the first few presentations of our five day workshop are almost washed away. No one can hear the speakers so loud is the pounding rain, and the visuals on butcher's paper are almost invisible so dark is the unlit room. 

Vanuatu Sunday - Nguna Welcome

Four boats, thirty people, luggage, workshop materials and a windy afternoon. The Emua wharf is a length of concrete pushing beyond remnant coral reef. Last time I was here I was staying in a thatched bungalow with Missus A. We had a great four days, each morning waking to see the sun sparkling on the strait of water between us and the island of Nguna. At times Nguna disappeared behind a gossamer of mist and rain. At others it jumped up from the surrounding waters shining like a piece of polished jade. That day it had taken ninety uncomfortable minutes riding in the back of a Toyota Hilux fitted out with wooden bench seats and a canopy. We were on the milk-run. This time we were in a Toyota Hi Ace ten seater and we covered the distance in thirty five minutes.

There are four boats lined up for us to share. Ours is a fourteen foot aluminium fishing dingy with a forward canopy. We sit shoulder to shoulder around the perimeter. Do you have life jackets? I ask the operator. It's okay. It's safe, he assures me and we set off.

We leave from a tongue of concrete and arrive on a sandy beach, met by fifty members of the local village including the paramount chief. He offers our coordinator a cluster of crocus leaves, the plant always used on these occasions. Our leader accepts this offer and after shaking hands offers it back. The agreement is complete. We have been welcomed and we have assured the chief that we come in peace.

Our bags, which have been littering the beach like a pod of beached seals, disappear and the throng dissipates and moves towards the centre of the village. We visitors process along a back path lined with vivid green hedges. As we near the village the sound of a conch shell blasting a long sweet foghorn note sounds out accompanied by shouting. We are being challenged before we enter the village. Again we pass the test and move through a palm fringed arch emerging onto a ridge overlooking a large traditional meeting house twenty five metres long and fifteen wide. It's constructed from huge timbers and ribbed with timber held together with hand woven pandanus ropes. The roof is thatched with thousands of individual clusters of pandanus leaves woven together into metre long flaps which overlay each other. It is open at the front and tapers towards the back. I later learn that this tribe has the whale as their totem and the Nakamal references that shape.

In the space between us and the Nakamal stands a warrior, a man who has applied charcoal to his body to become even blacker. He has become a moonless night. Now the real Kastom welcome begins.

Fifteen men accompanied by the same number of children and a handful of women rush from behind us and, dressed in full skirts of rustling banana leaves and anklets of dried seed pods, begin a circling dance stomping and thrumming to the sound of clacking sticks, chanting and the haunting call of the conch shell. The little ones run around the dancing adults circling them. On a signal they all stop and join the vocal chanted chorus. The little ones who are having a great time miss the cue and there's a pile up as each one bumps into the body in front. The crowd is in stitches. The welcome is complete. The village has welcomed the new arrivees who will spend the next five days as guests in their village.

There is no mains power here. No permanent water supply, no flush toilets, no roads, no motor vehicles. Life is lived by the rising and setting of the sun. The only nods to the modern world are the aluminium and fibreglas boats and their outboard motors lined up along the beach. That and the ubiquitous mobile phone. To my surprise most of the delegates and village leaders carry one and coverage is remarkably good.

Once during the following week I am surprised by the sound of what I guess is a small chainsaw. I hear it for five minutes and then its gone. Occasionally I spot a Yamaha generator quietly humming. It powers our printer and digital projector and a single fluorescent light. The only other evidence of modernity is the power cable bisecting the open space beneath an enormous mango tree as it runs towards the block-built church hall where our workshop will take place.

We three Aussies in Paradise

There are three Australian facilitators on this trip to Vanuatu.

Gabrielle has spent most of her adult life in PNG and Indonesia and Timor as an educator and Community Development worker. Most recently, in East Timor, she lived on the remote island of Atauro, two hours by boat off the coast of the mainland. She lived loved and worked there until she recently returned to Australia to be nearer her three grandchildren and her daughter and son-in-law. She's had all the real world experiences that give her a great understanding about how communities in countries like Vanuatu work. Her language experience in PNG means she can understand the local Bislama speakers.

Mark has been here many times and Melanesian history and culture is his PhD thesis topic. He left school at 15 and set off to gain some life experience. He travelled around Australia, sailed across the northern seas to Papua Nui Guinea, fell in love with the culture and now at 42 is nearing the end of his great anthropoligical adventure. His next life begins after this. As a father of three children below the age of ten and a partner to a very supportive woman he will soon be looking for a real job. For academic anthropologists that's not an easy task. Mark is so well read and researched that it makes my head ache. In a strange way he almost knows too much. That's not to say his knowledge is only book based. He has lived in remote villages for extended periods doing his research and experiencing the culture first hand. Naturally he is a fluent Bislama speaker.

And then there's the Team Leader. Me. This is my fifth trip as a facilitator to Vanuatu. I was one of the University of Queensland team who initiated the Community Development training package here so I am "the expert". Luckily I don't believe in experts except when it comes to building large structures like bridges and sky scrapers. This is fortunate because, given my background, no one else would quite believe it either. I don't speak Bislama beyond what you would call tourist level - I can ask for things, tell people where I am from and use a reasonable range of greetings but in conversation I am lost. I understand more than I can speak, which is pretty typical of people immersed in new languages, and it makes it easier that Bislama is based on English, my native tongue. So with limited language, no formal studies in anthropology and 50 days in the country I am the least experienced.

But I have lived. and I think I have some natural communication and facilitation skills and I reckon I know a bit about people and relationships. Now I hadn't intended this post to be "all about me" but I am interested in the sets of skills we all have and how we use them. We three aussies are, in a sense, mentoring each other. Mark helps me uncover some of the less obvious aspects of Vanuatu culture, Gabrielle brings a calm and grounded common sense to the process and I see a role for myself helping us to learn from each other and, without being patronising, helping guide Mark to be a better facilitator and helping Mark and Gabrielle work quietly and effectively with a team of locals whom I have come to know and trust.

It's not without its challenges but we are, each of us, committed to becoming better leaders and learners. We've completed the three days training which we were responsible for. We now travel with the large ni-Vanuatu team to Nguna (Pronounced with a silent g) where they will lead a five day training program for a group of 40 leaders from across the region with us as the observers and back-up team. Nguna is reputed to be a beautiful island. We've been told we'll be staying in two thatched bungalows on the edge of a pristine white sandy beach. Wish you were here.

More about the workshop next post.

Vanuatu Trip No 5

I'm off to Vanuatu for 12 days for work. I'll try and post a few thoughts on my experiences when I have access to the internet.

Temperature in Efete and Port Vila - Min 25 Max 27. Haven't packed anything warm. Have a bag full of reports to read, my Bislama dictionary and enough pills to open a local pharmacy. And a pair of flippers and a snorkel and goggles.

We'll be on the small island of Nguna for a week.
www.positiveearth.org/bungalows/shefa/nguna.htm

Rat a tat

I was out-partied this week by a bunch of rodents. Not huge river rats from the Thames but mice sized black coated country rats who like to play.

We were up on the highlands, two hours inland from Brisbane for three Autumn nights post Easter. To get there we travelled south-west through the Fassifern Valley and climbed through Cunningham's Gap. Up and over the saddle straddling the Great Dividing Range. It's short and steep here and on the other side it flattens again into fertile grasslands which canter on mile after brown mile until you get to Stanthorpe.

Stanthorpe is granite country. Huge gray outcrops dot the landscape and boulders emerge unannounced from every surface across the undulating plains. It’s always significantly cooler than the coast and this week, while Brisbane sweltered, we sat around a fire each night and sighed and drank our way towards bed. Drank because, though we are in the subtropics, the altitude is friendly to stone fruit orchards and to grape vines.

Once the province of rough reds made by the a handful of early Italian settlers, the area now boasts dozens of wineries producing ever improving vintages of chardonnay and semillon, shiraz and cabernet. Old names such as Puglisi and Barbagallo live alongside the newcomers, the Tobins and Masons and the 'tree changers' who have arrived in large numbers. Why wouldn't you? Plenty of good wine, five degrees cooler than the coast, a thriving arts community, free of traffic jams and full of city small croppers all willing to give advice and learn from each other.

And its cheap. Half the price of its lowland neighbours.

Our accommodation was shocking. As we rounded the bend along the single vehicle track close shepherded by scrub on either side we all gasped. It was bloody incredible. Our simple accommodation stood before us all ripple iron and raw timber with decks leading off each bedroom and another off the living space. We couldn't believe our luck. Over the years we've tried to find affordable cabins within a few hours drive of Brisbane but our quest has always been in vain. Seems like there are too many people with too much money willing to pay stupid rates for bugger all. But here we were. And as it turned out the fridge was stuffed with home made jams, thick home smoked bacon and pork sausages from the owners free range pigs, milk, cereal and, wait for it - fresh baked bread and muffins delivered each morning with the newspaper. And the rats, or as our host might have preferred, the marsupial mice.

We didn't notice them at first. They're nocturnal. Our host warned us to be ready for the scamper of tiny feet each evening and she assured us they were vegetarian - not at all interested in human flesh. The ladies breathed. I smiled. Why would you be scared of some cute little field mice. Native mice at that. They probably even spoke English.

All was well until the third night. Something woke me at about two in the morning. It was the sound of a party. There was squeaking and dancing; there was flirting and hide and seek and occasionally there was a jealous outburst when, I suspect, one of the boys had cut in on someone elses' dance partner. This was not some party in the distance, in some neighbour's house, but in my room. By my bed. Mistress A. snored on. Oblivious. At first the action came from one corner of the room and then without warning, as if teleported across the room, the party goers suddenly decided to jive in the opposite corner. I was convinced I was surrounded. I swear there were at least twenty of the little buggers.

At first I was amused, but slowly I had this sense that if native rats were comfortable spinning across the carpet in this room and sliding across the polished floor in the living room why would they not be quite relaxed about climbing into bed with a warm human body. What was the distinction between the floor, the benchtop, the ceiling cavity and a bedspread? None of these environments was native. Obviously the human owner had the rats in mind when she commissioned this retreat in the bush. What better way to protect vulnerable marsupials from predatory owls and mopokes, from carpet snakes and foxes.

Nights can be long. and though I am a sound sleeper by nature, in this case I was double bluffed by my fellow tenants. I listened while they caroused, half inclined to join in but sadly this was not my party. I finally fell asleep from exhaustion and boredom. There is only so much partying one can listen to; and only so much waiting for the scamper of feet across one's bedclothes one's mind can cope with.

I expected to wake to a scene of chaos - clothes chewed, toiletries scattered across the room and my mobile phone scarred with tiny teeth marks. In the early morning silence, a silence which had me thinking that perhaps I had imagined all this, I crawled out of bed to inspect the shambolic room.

To my consternation there was no evidence of the night of debauchery. Not even a dropping. I believe I have discovered the rare existence of the tidy mouse. The intelligent mouse which cleans up behind him/her to minimise retribution, to reduce the liklihood of a bloody revenge.

But even native rats and their native rat cunning have their point of vulnerability. On the bench in the kitchen lay the devestating evidence of the evening's party. Two half consumed muffins, our treat saved for our final day, lay side by side, still partially wrapped in their linen cloth, a hole gnawed where once a knot resided.

My Coat

Loani had asked me to MC her book-launch. Oh god! Public speaking. A joy. And a reason to have a nervous breakdown. I had two weeks notice. I began with a self hypnotic mantra which was intended to convince myself that if I just allowed time the ideas would come. The toilet was a pretty productive place as was my regular 20 laps of the local pool.

In my mind I was very clever, not to say hilarious, as I churned through the laps; laps turned out to be better than the toilet seat. Thirty minutes meditation on the loo I realised, was not only going to cause some disruption to family habits but to bowl habits as well; I remembered my mother's words: ' get off the toilet Stephen, you'll get piles.'

On lap 68 my plan began to develop. I would tell the story of the Adelaide woman who had knitted thirty of Loani's tea cosy designs and offered them to the local coffee shop where people came just to admire the wacky creations. And order a pot of tea on the side.

I would take the piss out of the self proclaimed 'Queen of the Tea Cosies' by quoting from the comments on her blog left by her acolytes. I would pose the possibility that Loani had, in fact, created a cult, with her as the goddess. There was plenty of material. My 'piece de resistance' would be to demonstrate that not only was most men's first response to a tea cosy one of putting it on their head but I would go one better, I would wear a teapot (and tea cosy) on my head as the final joke.

There was too much chlorine in the pool that week I suspect, because I couldn't figure out how to attach a tea pot to my head so my punchline was dead in the water, as it were.

By now it was the morning of the book launch. The table was littered with things. A couple of tea pots, some double sided tape, a roll of gaffa tape, an akubra hat and a length of cotton cloth. It was a disaster scene. I needed saving from my creative chaos. In stepped my regular saviour in these matters - Mistress A, mother, wife and costume designer, 'wear that dress up coat of yours. Add the tea cosy and it'll look great.' Where's that coat I wondered? Oh yeah. In the spare cupboard with all the other leftovers I am saving for an unknown occasion.

One set of things I've never chucked out is my costume collection from my performance days. I have the black twirly coat, a yellow and black check jacket, my original clown's hat; I even have my original striped circus bloomers from 1983. I can't bear to dump them. They have such memories, such stories to tell.

That evening at Avid Reader Bookshop, my swimming meditation paid off; my script flowed, my jokes hit the mark. Loani was brilliant.

One of my oldest friends asked: 'What show was that coat from?'. 'The Bob Club' says I. 'Remember. When every character was called Bob and the subtitle was "A Few Bob's Short of a Quid". It was a show full of acrobatics, cabaret, music and political satire, I played "Bobby Pin", a punky slapstick character obsessed with supermarket trolleys. 'Yeah. That was one of my favourites' says she. Did she remember the show? My performance? Or just the coat? No matter, it had helped a moment survive the moth eaten remnants of the past.

And so my curly coat goes back into the wardrobe for another possible occasion. It's been 27 years. In another 27 I'll be wearing it to funerals. There's a thought. I'll dictate in my will that I am to be buried in style. In my favourite coat.


For a great account of the meaning of things:
Sarah Toa over at A WineDark Sea has been moving house. She has written a great piece about the dilemna she confronted when faced with the choice of throwing or towing some of her 'icons' she discovered in the process of packing up.

How Tea Cosies Changed the World

Old mate and Tea Cosy obsessive Loani Prior launched her third book of Tea Cosy creations last Thursday night. She and I have become a bit of a double act. I helped her launch her last book at Avid Reader bookshop in 2010 and she invited me to do the honours again with this years offering.

Loani has a gift for creating art from tea cosies. She has also learnt over the past 5 years that tea cosies have much more to offer than their capacity to keep tea warm. I'll admit I was confused when she first told me the title of this publication. I presumed that "How Tea Cosies Changed the World" was going to be Loani's quirky history of tea and tea cosies and their place in changing social mores.

My reference point was a book I discovered many years ago titled: "How the Irish Saved Civilisation". I was convinced that that title was ironic and that it would be a spoof, Irish style. It turned out to be the opposite, a very serious analysis of the dark ages and Ireland's role in saving many of the classic tomes which were being destroyed by barbarians.

In Loani's case I was again confounded. Her Tea Cosy book is really about how tea cosies connect us to our history and to each other. Life Changing? Is that too big a claim? Well not according to a couple of people I met at the book launch. A young woman told me that she had bought Loani's first book and set out to teach herself to crochet and knit. She was struggling and so set out to find some like minded people. Twelve months later she has 100 knitting/crocheting colleagues who meet weekly at various places across the nothern suburbs of Brisbane to 'stitch and bitch' 'knit and natter' and she is now connected to a whole new world.

Not only does Loani's book contain some great knitting creations, it also has some great and touching stories about people she's met, stories they've shared with her and she's dedicated a cosy to each of these people.

It's a strange world where knitting tea cosies can verge on becoming a cult; where a Tea cosy book written by a Brisbanite can become an international phenomenon and be translated into French, Dutch and even Estonian.

At Loani's book launch I said " I've come to understand that this phenomenon is not about tea (some of the knitters don't drink tea); it's not even about knitting; it's actually about people having their creativity liberated and how the things we love can knit us all together."

Sweet.



PS I misread the invitation. I thought it said 'Come as your favourite tea cosy'!