The Rock Factor

We flew out of Vanuatu on the day that our visa expired, New Year’s Eve 2019.

Ekipe Centre School had signed a three year agreement to cover 2019 through to 2021 but the Ministry of Education had only allowed us a one year Special Category Visa to start with. I guess they wanted to see how everything worked. We are in a fairly unusual situation, living in a village on kastom land (no title) and not representing an organisation such as American Peace Corps or JICA. We are here in Ekipe because we want to be here.

Things worked out. The community was pleased with our presence and wanted us to stay. We began the process of reapplying for another visa in September, 9 months after we arrived. By the first week in November, we’d completed our paperwork and given it to Teaching Services to lodge on our behalf along with a letter of approval from the Minister.

We discovered that we needed to leave the country and re-enter after 24 hours absence so we booked flights out on the 31st December, returning at midnight on January 2nd. We didn’t want to be away from Vanuatu, it felt like we’d only just arrived.

And then there were the cats to worry about. Rolling Red Thunder I call them. We adopted a young mother cat and her two, month-old kittens back in July. They were living under a house in Vila that was due for demolition. They badly needed a loving home. It was Tim’s birthday. One and one and one equaled three. Three ginger wildcats. Three red-headed maniacs locked inside the house with nine bowls of water and two huge platters of cat biscuits to see them through our two and a half day absence. We tried not to think about the damage we might find on our return. Not damage… interior decorating, I could hear them thinking.

At 6pm on New Year’s Eve we found ourselves flying in a holding pattern over Sydney. Temperatures had been in the mid-forties a few hours earlier and then the famous Sydney Southerly Buster swept through, forcing the temperature to plummet into the low twenties as winds of 90 km/h ripped through the city. After half an hour of circling the captain announced that our little Air Vanuatu plane was going to be the first in the queue to attempt a landing. It was a rough ride down through the clouds and bushfire smoke. Most passengers applauded when we landed. I peeled my fingers off the arm rests. I’m usually fairly unfazed by turbulence but this descent had been a bit of a doozy.

We spent the next two days staying with our daughter and her husband, relaxing and eating foods that are either unavailable, expensive or past their use-by date in Vanuatu such as nectarines, cherries, apricots, mushrooms and lamb.

We flew back to Port Vila as planned, the flight was even on time!

Then, ‘The Rock Factor’ kicked in. A friend of ours calls Vanuatu, The Rock. Any of the frequent problems that can happen in Vanuatu, he blames on The Rock Factor. There was no Special Category Visa on the system for us. Luckily we had a Plan B. Always have a Plan B. And C, and D.

We ended up entering on a thirty day Tourist Visa as did the people before and after us in the residents line who were all expecting Special Cat visas but ended up as tourists. The lady behind us said that this was the fifth time it had happened to her. I was surprised that she was so surprised. This is Vanuatu!

We arrived home at 1:30am, tired but happy to be back at home.

The cats pretty much ignored our arrival but they enjoyed a can of food and then raced from one end of the house to the other for the next few hours, backwards and forwards, paws thumping on the wooden floor and up and over my body when I lay down in bed; the bed is an integral part of the racetrack circuit. I was too tired to care.

There was no obvious damage around the house but they’d redecorated the bathroom.

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