No-nos & chook-bum-mouths

We got one dead in the village.

This is how Mr Alick, the Class 5 teacher announced that one of the village chiefs had passed away. It was Siviu, who had died. He’d been battling cancer for a long time and had passed his titles on to his son at a chief-making ceremony six weeks ago.

The school is currently operating under social distancing conventions due to the Coronavirus. Not that we’ve got the Coronavirus in this country but Vanuatu seems to have gone out in sympathy with the rest of the world. The school has been closed for months but in the last fortnight it has re-opened. Classes have been divided into four groups of less than ten students. Each group comes to school one day a week to return and collect weekly home-school packs. Friday is a planning and marking day for teachers. That’s the plan. In reality, it hasn’t gone according to plan. Lessons have occurred on five out of the eight possible days over the past fortnight, just over 50% batting average.

It was eight o’clock on Wednesday morning when Mr Alick announced the sad news to those of us at school.

Wednesday was the designated day of attendance for students from Epule (Eh-poo-lay), the village five kilometres to the north of Ekipe (Eh-kee-pay). I’d made an agreement with the staff and students who live in Epule to transport them to the school on Wednesdays so I’d driven up to collect them at 7:15 a.m. They’d already started walking and were spread along a distance of several kilometres depending on the lengths of their legs. Another truck had stopped to offer a lift. About forty five kids, Mr A and Sophie the librarian split themselves between that truck and mine and we set off, arriving at school at 7:30.

I decided to see if I could arrange a definite time for pick-up on Wednesday mornings so that I could meet everyone at the village and not have to collect them in groups as they spread out along the main road. It’s not easy to pull off the road as the jungle reaches the edge of the bitumen. I thought that Sophie would be the best person to negotiate with as she speaks excellent English and would understand what I was trying to arrange and then she could communicate the agreed time to the others.

I explained my goal of meeting in one place at one time.

“What is the best time for us to meet at the main road?” I asked Sophie.

She replied, “We start walking at 6:15 so… 6:15?”

“6:15!”

“Is 6:15 too early for you?” she asked.

“Yes it is early for me but it takes fifteen minutes to drive from Epule to Ekipe so if we leave at 6:15, we will arrive at school at 6:30 which is an hour and a half before school starts. Do you want to be at school at 6:30?”

“No,” Sophie replied.

I tried a backwards slant.

“So what time do you want to be at school? 7:30?”

“Yes 7:30 would be good,” said Sophie.

“So what time will we meet?” I prompted.

“Well we start walking at 6:15, so 6:30?”

We spent another ten minutes going round and round in discussion which I found equally perplexing and amusing. Eventually we agreed that I would meet them at 7:15 a.m. I’m not sure that Sophie was entirely convinced by my reasoning. I am pretty sure that they’ll start walking at 6:15 and I’ll be collecting them in bits and bobs along the road as before.

I’d been in the library for half an hour with Sophie when Mr Alick broke the news. Siviu’s funeral would be held that morning due to several reasons, one of which was that the weather was warm and humid despite it being winter. Funeral processions must travel directly through the school grounds to reach the cemetery so school is closed on these days.

I packed up my work and loaded up the truck with the first load of kids to take them back to Epule. The cab was bulging with bodies and I thought the tray was as full as it could get but Mr A managed to squeeze another three pikinini in before I set off slowly up the rough track fringed with coconuts to the main road.

“Remember 7:15!” were my last words to Sophie as I dropped her off with the second load of passengers.

I went home and continued designing and producing laminated phonics resources which I hope to use with classes whenever regular school routines begin.

The Principal is thinking of going back to regular daily lessons for all students but there must be meetings with teachers and then the community before anything can be implemented. That will take a week or more.

Meanwhile, repatriation of the five thousand Vanuatu citizens who have been stuck in other countries or on cruise ships in the Philippines has just begun. The first sixty flew in from New Zealand this week and were whisked away to spend two weeks in quarantine at a local resort. They were transported crammed into minivans, windows open, one person apparently spat out of the window; not a malicious act, just habitual. It makes you wonder. Not about IF the virus will arrive but WHEN. Perhaps we should have started the restrictions now rather than four months ago. Should we ease the restrictions now? Probably not.

There is a push for Vanuatu to be part of the proposed tourism ‘bubble’ which would allow travel between Pacific countries, Australia, New Zealand and other places with infection numbers deemed acceptably low. Tourism has suffered badly in Vanuatu with many resorts and restaurants closed and a lot of locals suddenly unemployed.

Some smart operators have made changes that cater for the local trade at local (reduced) prices and are still in operation. People are taking round the island trips, stopping off to buy local produce such as coconuts, bananas and nakatambo at road markets. We drove past Eton Beach a few Sundays ago and it was choc-a-block with people swimming and barbecuing.

Tim and I call nakatambo the no-no fruit. They are small, round and yellowish, about the size of a macadamia and a lot like a mummified cumquat in appearance - and taste, I imagine, having never actually eaten a mummified cumquat. I find no-nos revolting, hence the name. I’ve tried them several times but each occasion only increased my aversion. Firstly you must gnaw the tough rind off the fruit. Inside is a miniscule amount of flesh, a scraping, and it’s not sweet, I find it bland. There’s a large ball of seed in the centre. It’s a lot of mouth action for no joy. Nakatambo are certainly not mangoes. I can’t describe how disappointed I was after the first time I tried one. I was expecting to discover something like a lychee or longan but no. No-no.

There is a marked decrease in the availability of vegies in Vila. Tim couldn’t find tomatoes, carrots, cucumber, spring onions or capsicum in Vila when he went shopping this week let alone beans or anything exotic like that. He managed to buy some lettuce grown locally and some potatoes. On his way out of town he snapped up the last three cucumbers at a road market.

Vegies probably aren’t being imported at the moment. We’ve had no overseas mail deliveries for months which is a shame because Mum posted the winter clothes that I left at her place and they are somewhere in transit between Australia and Vanuatu, probably still in Australia although they could be here in Vanuatu and just MIA; a common problem.

I am surprised that there seems to be a lack of food grown locally. This time last year I remember buying tomatoes regularly as they were cheap, plentiful and delicious. This year there’s none to be had. Tim did manage to find a beautiful pineapple which smells warm and sweet. I can’t wait to eat it.

We have an abundance of citrus at the moment. Pamplemus, the sweet grapefruit are my favourite.

There are plenty of oranges and mandarins but they are picked green and range in taste from okay to tart to chook-bum-mouth. I wouldn’t use the word sweet. Tim has suggested to The Family that they leave the fruit to ripen a little longer on the trees because it would increase the sugar content. Elizabeth says that if they leave the fruit, the pigeons will eat them all so that is why they harvest green fruit. This morning on Facebook, Tim saw a picture of mandarines grown in Fiji, resplendent in deep orange skins, positively radiating sweet juiciness. He’ll be sharing that picture with the locals no doubt.

Yesterday Sila made me this adorable basket and filled it with ‘oranges’ to thank me for tutoring the Bethel kids.

This is the banana cake I made in the bread making machine last week. It is delicious! My friend, Janet gave me the recipe for a cinnamon and coconut topping which you sprinkle on top of the batter before you bake it. This cake has been cooked by sunlight thanks to our solar system. I’ll make one to give to the builders at school on Monday to thank them for finally taking the cyclone shutters off the library on Tuesday.

TC Harold passed through during the first week April, two months ago. Sophie asked the builders to remove the shutters a fortnight ago. She was told that they were very busy building the new canteen.

On Monday after spending four hours in the library sorting books in the darkness and sweating profusely because the windows couldn’t be opened to let the breeze in, I tracked down John the builder. Literally. He can run but he can’t hide. After the usual greetings I told him that I knew how busy he and his team were but if he could find the time to take the shutters off the library I would be so happy that I would probably bake a cake for him. He said that he’d send some of the boys to take care of it. By the time I got back to the car after taking a small detour to collect some large and fragrant frangipani flowers from my favourite tree in the village, the glass louvres of the library were winking at me in the sunlight. The shutters were off!

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