Anything can happen Thursday

Most Fridays, I email Georgia, describing the happenings of the past week. There is a lot going on from day to day.

I’ve recently started writing a manuscript about my trips to Vanuatu. This is eating up great chunks of time but it is something that I’m really enjoying. I’m hoping to be able to share all those funny events with other people via Amazon self-publishing.

I hear that there are a couple of people who actually do read these wix entries; unfortunately, Georgia is not one of them; that’s why I send her the emails. A big hello to anyone who is reading this entry, Amelia in Lightning Ridge, Wally in China, Deb in Canberra, Neil, Mum & Dad in Ocean Shores and Janet in Puanangisu.

I want to keep blogging once a month but I’m struggling to find the time so I thought I’d continue to use Georgia’s emails as the wix content as I did with the last entry, that way, you’ll get all the goss regularly Enjoy!

Friday August 7

Didn’t remember it was Friday…

…until after lunch LOL.

Been another big week here in loony land, I mean Vanuatu. Hard to know where to start describing it and how.

Apu Tim went to Vila yesterday to get food for us and more meds for ‘man impetigo’, not sure re spelling and too tired to look it up which I blame on the cats.

Last night, Jake was let out at 6pm for a little stroll and didn't return til nearly midnight so of course none of the humans could go to sleep until she returned, mind you, mum and brother were sound asleep & snoring by 8pm, totally unconcerned.

The night before, Elsa did the same trick. Like mother, like daughter.

A week of curfew has been now enforced for the furry ones as we need our sleep.

By the way, thank you for asking Rob about the sores on Chief John’s bum. The chemist in Vila agreed when she saw the pictures on Tim’s phone. She recommended an increase in the antibiotics to four a day. It is healing so that's good but we wonder where he got it from. Possibly some other persons have it too. Makes me want to wash in pure metho.

While he was at the chemist, Tim bought more formula & nappies for little Tim which he dropped off after returning from Vila, driving to the side-road to give Jif John the extra meds. The baby was feeding so Tim gave the stuff to one of Janet's sisters to pass on.

Later that night we saw torchlight coming up the drive. It was Edwin, the baby's father, coming to say thank you and bringing us a giant cucumber as a gift. It must have weighed two kilos, it was so big. I’m sorry I didn’t take a photo of it. It was crispy and sweet to eat though.

Edwin had a little chat to Tim before he walked home, back to the side-road.

Ten minutes later, Tim's phone rang. It was Elizabeth asking who had come to visit us and what did he want? By the way, she already knew it was Edwin.

I could hear Tim's voice getting increasingly annoyed as he said to her, "I don't have a problem with Edwin."

What Tim was more upset about was the third degree about who had visited us and why. The guy just came to say thanks as he was extremely grateful for the milk and nappies. These people have just about nothing so a little thing like that to us, was a big deal to them.

This morning Silas came up to talk to us. Long story short: when Elizabeth's brother Kalo died here at Bethel about seven years ago, Silas said Kalo was magic-ed to death by Edwin and several other men. Apparently someone found a letter under Kalo's mattress, from Kalo, accusing Edwin & co of killing him. So they took the letter to the pastor. The tale petered out at this point.

When we asked why they didn’t take the letter to the Police, Silas said they did but the Police weren't mentioned in the first telling and Silas couldn’t describe anything in the way of Police investigations or charges and there was no autopsy.

Who knows what really happened?

Anyway, Elizabeth is convinced that this happened and so when she heard that Edwin was walking up the road to see us she thought she needed to find out all the ins and outs. She wanted Silas to tell us that they would tell Edwin that he couldn't visit us at night. Well you can imagine what Tim thought about that.

"It's not your business to say who can visit us and when," was his clear message to Silas.

We had our say to Silas about many things including how gossip is harmful and often inaccurate, how important it is for us to make and keep good relationships with people in the community and about how people light fires and chop things down around us which seems to happen the minute we both leave the house, for instance the big fire that came very close to the house, lit by Joel during the time we came to Australia for two nights in January. Joel was not only lucky that he didn't burn down our house but also his tourist bungalows which were on the other side of the blaze.

We've just renewed our annual insurance so if the worst happens, at least we should recoup some of the cost. I'm sure the insurance people would get to the bottom of who lit the fire and then pass the bill along to them. I’m not sure what people would do with the bill. I suppose it could be useful to start a fire.

Speaking of fires, we had a big one upwind today; it looked and sounded like it was out of control in gale winds, thick smoke blanketing us so badly that I needed to shut all the windows and doors for several hours. It's died down now thank goodness.

Other news: Tim just saw a message on FB put out by MOET this afternoon saying that due to Covid, Cyclone Harold and Independence Day interruptions to school, the first week of the holidays are cancelled. Holidays were meant to start after next week. I think I'm just going to pretend that I didn't hear anything as I'm sure everyone else will do the same. What message? Fancy announcing that a week before the start of holidays! Good luck getting the kids to come to school in a week that is meant to be a school holiday. Ditto teachers. Jospeh came up at lunch which is when I remembered it was Friday and when I asked him, "Skul i finis?" he said, "Tija i no kam tudei, i go long Vila." Dear me. Again?

We have lamb shanks, sweet corn AND broccoli for dinner tonight. OMG! Broccoli! Lamb! Corn on the cob! And it won't be tonight, it will be late afternoon as we will be having that early night after two nights of waiting for the cat-people to find their way home, little stop-outs.

OK, that's it from me for now. Have a lovely night and maybe we can Skype over the weekend, in daylight so you can see the amazing vegie garden!

Georgia’s reply August 11

I sent your story to a couple of people in the lab that I’d told about the Tim-Jo baby…

I thought mum that you’d like to see what Scott said about your email

See below… (and I told him that yes, you are a blast).

Scott.G.Page Tues 11th in response to email I sent Georgia

Your mum has such a great voice in her writing! I’ve never met her but she sounds like a blast! I fought hard to muffle my laughter at the microscope ha!

Wed August 12 in reply to previous email from Georgia

Ha! That was a terrible bit of scribble, I was so tired, but glad they enjoyed it anyway. By all means share the emails; if they give people a bit of a laugh, it’s a good thing in these times.

Nice to hear that I’m a blast. Feeling like an old blast at the mo tho. Must be the thought of the next freaking milestone, just around the corner.

Been missing you. I wish you could just get on a plane and come over. Or vice versa. Wonder how long it will be?

Been watching a bit of the news lately which makes me feel sad, all those Covid stories. I feel so sorry for the health workers. Losing their old clients would be devastating. I saw one young man who held the hand of an aged person as he died with his family watching on Skype as they weren’t allowed to visit. How bloody awful.

Tim showed me the Channel 9 news segment with you talking about solving diseases like cystic fibrosis. Well done! You come across very well on TV.

I taught a little boy with that terrible thing a long time ago when I was pregnant with you. He was such a gorgeous boy. He had to have one tablet with each morsel of food. His life expectancy was about twenty years at the time. I wonder what happened to him and if he managed to beat the odds? I hope so.

Making Bethel gyoza tonight. Yum.

Hope we get some rain soon; everyone around us is out of rain water so we get a lot of visitors with empty bottles in hand wanting a refill. It’s been so hot too; it must have been thirty degrees today. Been like that for a couple of weeks. The pawpaws on the trees have suddenly decided to ripen. I have six in the fruit bowl and two in the fridge. Wish I could teleport them to you.

The vegie garden is officially astounding. Cucumbers have reached the top of the trellis and have little green penises sprouting everywhere. It’s a credit to Tim.

From left to right, carrots hiding the spring onions & parsely, broccoli & lettuce (rear centre), carrots & lettuce (front centre), snowpeas, cucumbers & tomatoes in the trellised garden

School has been astounding too, but not in a good way. The kids end up being sent home sometime after 10am as the teachers are so disorganised that most haven’t finished setting their big end of term exams, let alone write the reports which should have been finished this week. None of the teachers seem to take work home. The writing of exams, marking and report writing appears to be done during class time.

I’ve told the teachers that I won’t do reading groups next week. It’s meant to be the first week of the holidays but MOET has extended the term and shortened the holidays.

I will go to school next week though. I have just found boxes and boxes of cockroach ridden library books hidden in the old storeroom that used to be the library. Wouldn’t have found them at all if some little darlings hadn’t broken into the room and dragged the boxes out, spreading the books all over the floor. It’s not hard to break in there, the back ‘window’ doesn’t lock and even more unhelpfully, the teachers don’t remember to lock the door when they leave school. Hope the $2000 worth of new PA system doesn’t get stolen from that room. It was put there before the Independence Day holiday rather than being stored in the lockable room, which is where it came from. I’ve told people about it now three times, but still the PA hasn’t been put away safely.

OK, better go gyoza.

Love to Stef. Tell him I miss him too.

Saturday August 22

Anything-can-happen-Thursday

It’s been another of those weeks where it seemed quite busy but nothing really much got done which is surprisingly tiring.

Monday was meant to be the start of the school holidays but was changed to be the last week of Term 2 due to the massive lost amount of time over the school year to date. This week was renamed ‘Week 14’. Well I had to go down to school bright & early Monday morning, not to do anything in particular as I’d cancelled reading lessons for the week, but to have a look at the circus. How many performers would show up and what acts would they perform? Would the audience arrive? What time would the show start? End?

I arrived at school just before 8am which is the official start time. Monday morning at 8am never fails to both amuse and perplex. The headcount revealed that two teachers and the builder had gone to Santo for a wedding. No surprise there, we’d seen the pics on Facebook. It takes two days to sail from Vila to Luganville on Big Sister, one of the main ferries then two days back so those people weren’t planning to return to school this week I guessed.

Another teacher, possibly two, had gone to Vila for the day, as you do. No surprise there.

We were down to about half the staff. Yep, I really wasn’t surprised.

About three quarters of the kids had shown up. The Principal arrived at a quarter past eight and asked me if I could take him back to Epau to collect his phone. On the way, I stopped to pick up a large group of Epau kids who had already seen the writing on the wall at school and decided to call it a day already. Smart kids. Drove Mr D back to the main part of the village to discover that he’d actually left his phone sitting on a public bench on the side of the road and luckily for him, no one had taken it.

On the way back to Ekipe, Mr D requested a ride up to Onesua as he needed to go to a workshop. I asked him what time the workshop was starting. 8:30, he said. I looked at the car clock and told him that it was already 8:30 so he’d be a bit late but that would be okay because we were all on black-man time. He agreed.

We stopped at the school first. Mr D held a quick assembly. Then we loaded up the truck with a group of Epule kids to drop them back home on the way up to Onesau. I went back to school for the second truckload of Epule kids. And then I called it quits.

Tuesday was the clinic run so I set off at 8:30 loading the truck with seventeen mamas, four newborns laying in the arms of pregnant mummies who are instructed to sit inside the cab and assorted others. Three ladies with big bel are due any time now and one of them is Sila. I can’t believe how big her tummy is. I’m thinking of changing my bet from a girl to twin girls. I need to take the very preggy ones back to the clinic next Thursday as they are so close.

Sila, not far from having her own baby, practices holding a new baby on the way to the clinic

All aboard! Next stop, the clinic, or hospital as everyone calls it

This is where the babies get weighed, placed in the hammock suspended from the wooden frame on the right. Everyone stands around waiting their turn. The babies are very cute!

Wednesday was a lay day, so I lay around and did nothing much, occasionally checking out the garden, admiring the hibiscus and cucumbers.

Anything-can-happen-Thursday started with my plan to go down to school and do more book organisation.

Joseph wandered up at eight o’clock, books in hand so we had a half hour reading lesson. He’s doing very well and always gives me a hug. The hug is a bit of a surprise. I know it’s coming but never when. Without warning, Joseph will suddenly launch himself at me, throwing his arms around me and hanging on tightly. He’s getting so big that sometimes I’m in danger of being knocked to the ground. It is lovely though.

When Joseph left, I frocked up and drove down to find a grand total of four teachers in attendance and that included the librarian. The kids were just running around everywhere. I started on my job of cutting cardboard dividers (from cartons) to insert between levels in the tubs of readers. About an hour later, Sophie started closing the library windows.

“Are you going home now?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said. “It’s lunch time.”

“Oh. What time is it?”

Sophie looked at her phone. “It’s nearly half past ten,” she said.

“OK, I suppose it is nearly lunch time. Come on, I’ll take you home.”

Two trips to Epule and one to Epau and then I went home.

An hour later, at lunchtime, Edwin, dadi blong smol Tim, came up to say hello and let us know that today was bebe (baby) Tim’s first month celebration. He invited us up for a meal that night.

In the next hours, Tim defrosted and cooked 2kg of chicken wings while I made brownies to take with us.

Michel turned up at about 5pm with a large ‘plastic’ (plastic bottle) of kava to share with Tim.

At 6:30, we told Michel that we needed to go to Tim Solo’s first month celebration.

“Me, I’ll come too,” said Michel.

We sat in the lounge room cum kitchen – a roofed structure with no walls, dirt floor, bamboo benches, big sink, fireplace and a massive table that was used as a table, a storage cupboard and also as a lounge when some people sat on it to eat. I estimate that about twenty, maybe twenty five people live in this house. There is one other room adjoining the lounge area, quite a large room with walls and a concrete floor. It has nothing inside it but a big pile of bedding in one corner. This would be where everyone sleeps.

Plastic chairs were produced for Tim and I to sit in. One old lady followed Tim around with the chair as he moved from place to place, determined that she would get him to sit on it. Three plastics of kava formed the contents of the bar. I was handed a fresh coconut to drink.

Three types of laplap had been unwrapped; banana, yam and taro. They were very nice, each had a different flavour and one was quite savoury. The best thing about the laplap was that I was served a small portion of each, as requested, and not great whopping surfboard sized slabs. I spotted what looked like local chicken on my plate. Oh no, I thought. I tried it and found, to my disbelief, that it was succulent. The flesh was like very well cooked shank meat. It was the best local chicken that I’ve ever eaten! I was told that it had been cooked with the laplap but I’ve had it done that way before and it was still as rubbery as a teething ring. This must have been a young chook.

One of the young ladies, Annie, seemed to have gone into labour as we left. She had strong lower back pains but wasn’t able to time how far apart they were. We assured her that we would take her to the clinic when the time came and everyone who had a phone made sure they put our numbers into their phones. I put my phone beside the bed that night and had a bag of drinks, snacks and a survival sheet on standby in case the birth happened on the way to the clinic.

We had a nice few hours visiting with the side-road family. Tim drank his fair share of kava but did so gracefully, in fact he was able to return home after the event and share one last shell of kava with Michel before nibbling on the doggy bag of chicken and laplap that we’d been presented with on our departure.

By the way, the brownies were highly enjoyed and lasted all of five minutes.

Yesterday I was tired. Wonder why? Didn’t get to bed until 11pm on Thursday, that’s why. Didn’t wake up til 7am Friday morning and completely missed sunrise. Hate it when that happens.

We had pizza last night. Pizza and a performance. Love the pizza, not so much the performance. I have no idea why, but when he cooks pizza, there has to be a bit of a paddy chucked, a bit of a stampy stampy. Probably because he’s doing the work and I sit, doing nothing, according to him. Which is the reverse of what happens when I cook. Hmmm. You can’t offer to help, he does it better. So the tanty occurred last night when Edmond rang at 8pm in the middle of pizza prep to ask if Tim would come and meet him at the wharf in Port Vila when he got off the boat from Epi at 10pm. Well, no obviously. I was in trouble for trying to give Tim the phone while he was making pizza. I had no idea I was being that provocative.

Oh yes, I apparently also made the heinous mistake of not sending you the Friday email.

He has hands doesn’t he?

It’s times like these when you miss Dominoes delivery.

Friday August 28

The first Jo-Ann!

Hard to believe its Friday again, it rolled around quickly.

It’s been blustery and shithouse weather for the past three days here. We’ve had about half an inch of rain (12mL) every day so it hasn’t been heavy but it has been consistent, wet and horizontal, thanks to the wind. Occasionally a heavy shower sweeps over and then back to sideways rain, blowing a gale.

We decided not to go to Vila today due to the weather. We were planning to go and look at the big plant market that sets up in Independence Park on the last Friday of every month but it’s no fun being outside today. We’ll go next month and we want to look at the Department of Agriculture nursery which we can do from Mondays to Fridays. There’s a market at Erakor that sells hibiscus plants so I’d like to visit that place too.

I’ve got six hibiscus planted already and another four in pots that are almost ready as well as a vase of cuttings from a small, orange hibiscus. They are growing root buds now so they’ll go in a pot soon.

Elwood under a hibiscus

Two of my three frangipani cuttings have grown some new leaves. I expect that the third one probably would have some buds by now but I haven’t checked. I’ll look later.

So this week was our official one week of holiday. It will be interesting to see what happens next week, wonder how many kids and teachers will show up and when.

Yesterday I was meant to take the three heavily pregnant mums back up to the clinic for a check but the weather was so shitty that Tim did it for me. He only had Sila and a new father in the truck on the way up as the other two ladies didn’t show up. The man’s wife had given birth up at the clinic yesterday so he was bringing manioc and all the food and other stuff needed to camp out in the hospital. When they arrived, the lady and new baby had just been discharged so Tim brought them all back to Ekipe plus a couple of older ladies who’d been staying with the mum. One of the ladies was Leikarie, I’m not sure how she was related, maybe the mother-in-law? Anyway, the baby has been named Jo-Ann in my honour. Not sure how they’ll spell it. Think I’ll call her Jo-wan. The next one can be Jo-tu, then Jo-tri and so on.

I’m not sure whatever happened to Annie, the girl from the side-road who seemed to go into labour a week ago. When Tim was speaking to Elizabeth at the nabanga (kava bar cum food hall on the side of the road under a giant banyan tree) the other night, Elizabeth’s comment was that Annie’s baby will take a long time to ‘come out’ because Annie won’t tell anyone who the father of the baby is. Well, that’s interesting because when we were at the side-road for baby Tim’s first month celebration, when Annie was having back pains, everyone told us that Annie’s husband was on his way from Port Vila. I would think that he would think that he was the father. Hmm. This story is so complicated that it sounds positively ni-Van.

Not much else has happened this week, just the usual. There’s been a few devices brought up to be charged from the kids and Lewi plus the odd request for a bottle of cold water from someone working in the garden earlier in the week when it was hot. Our house is a lot closer to someone in the garden than going all the way back to their house on the other side of the restaurant.

The other day, I came in after hanging clothes out on the line. Joseph had paid a quick visit to Tim.

“What did Joseph want?” I asked.

“A bottle of cold water for Michel,” replied Tim. “And juice.”

“Juice?” I said, perplexed. “That’s strange.” Michel had asked for water before but not juice. I went on with whatever I was doing and forgot about it.

Yesterday, Joseph arrived on the verandah with little Annieline and Karis in tow. This time he didn’t muck around by asking for water.

“Michel, he wantem jus,” Joseph boldly stated.

The penny, or vatu, dropped.

“Mi no gat jus, jus i finis,” I said. “Mi gat wota.” I filled up an empty rum bottle from the tap and gave it to Joseph.

When Annieline looked from the bottle of water to Joseph and said, “Blu-lu-lulu juice?” my suspicions were confirmed. Their scam had failed.

Speaking of Joseph, on Tuesday afternoon he’d come up to see us.

“Mevis he wantem tablets,” Joseph informed us.

Mevis has been here at Bethel over the holidays. When she wants something done, she delegates the younger ones to do those things for her and they are happy to comply. Espel has only just this minute brought Mevis’ phone thing up to be charged. I wasn’t about to start handing over medication to a young boy on Mevis’s demand. I didn’t know what was wrong with her – headache? toothache? If she wanted tablets, she’d have to come and see us in person. I told Joseph that as clearly as I could manage in my 18 month old Bislama. He left to relay the message.

About five minutes after he left, I turned to Tim and said, “I don’t suppose he was looking for Mevis’s phone thing?”

Five minutes after that, Espel came up on behalf of her highness to request the ‘tablet’.

Too funny! By the way, Joseph has recently been learning about plurals and adding ‘s’ to the ends of words in English as Bislama doesn’t have plurals. Guess he understands part of that idea hence asking for tablets rather than the tablet. He’s just got the idea a little arse about.

OK, well that’s about it for now. It’s Elizabeth turn to ‘raise funds’ (make money) tomorrow night at the nabanga so I may well bake a batch of biccies to contribute. Tim often wanders down for a shell or two. I might go down this time, for the social interaction, not the kava, eeeyyuuuu! Speaking of kava, I’ve been working on the Kava Kwin and reading about those kava episodes brings it all back. Eeeyyyuuuu!

OK, best go and do some more of it.

Hope your day is special.

Love Mum x x x x x x x