My two January blogs are extracts from
the Christmas 2007 letter sent to family and friends by my sister, Gayle Bowler,
from Ambae, Vanuatu, where she and her husband Gary were doing VSA – Gary as
advisor/mentor to a new school principal, and Gayle as a health educator.
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| Gayle and Gary Bowler Photo: Bowler family collection |
"Such a crazy place but we love it.
The people make it special –
their beautiful smiles, the way they care for each other and
us, the constant supply of bananas, green coconuts and pawpaw brought to our
door by the students. When they sing in Chapel it brings tears to our eyes;
they seem to open themselves up and sing with their whole being, and the
four-part harmonies when Chaplain joins in are spine-tingling.
When we first arrived on the grass
runway in the jungle we were amazed at the isolation, the primitive villages
and the dreadful state of the roads. A real effort had been made to paint our
house; we were given a new bed, and hours after our arrival a new
fridge-freezer was delivered; but we had very little power in those first few
days, the house was infested with cockroaches, rats and other creepy crawlies,
and our unaccompanied luggage, which was supposed to be here before us, was
delayed, so we had only our small backpacks, no mosquito nets, food or our
carefully-planned necessities, nothing – and we were just dropped here and
left. Our baggage arrived five days later. A test of our resilience! We cleaned
the house, sprayed for cockroaches and put out rat bait, ate a few nuts that we
had in our pack, and lay on the bed wondering what on earth we were doing here.
We seemed to lurch from one
disaster to another. Early in the year the whole school evacuated when there
was a tsunami warning. Fortunately, the tsunami, caused by the big Solomon
Islands earthquake, never amounted to much, but because we often have no phone
connection, the school did not hear about this until later. Since then, Gary
has prepared an Emergency Disaster Plan for the school.
When the water pump broke we had
to wait for a spare part to be flown in from Australia. A couple of days later,
most houses had only a little rain water in their outside tanks and we were all
asked to bathe in the sea, then it rained all day and we showered outside; it
was especially relaxing when we discovered the lovely massage to be received
from the heavy flow of water from the overflow pipe from the water tank. Since
it was too wet for anyone to stand and watch us, and hearing laughter and
shouts of joy, I imagine most of the students were doing the same as us outside
the dorms. It beats a wash in the sea or a bucket of water.
Rats ate through the cables and
for four weeks the school had no internet or fax connection and only one weak
and sporadic phone line. We felt very isolated.
Often we run out of diesel, or the
generator breaks down, and we are without power.
It is the people who make this
such a beautiful experience, but they can be frustrating. Nothing starts on time and we always arrive way too early – the locals call us 'the white men' and they talk about 'white man time'. Often we miss out on events because we’re not told; the locals have a bush telephone, which we're not tuned into – they
signal each other and communicate with whistling and other sounds from vast distances.
Students often come to our door
wanting help with their school work, trusting us to discuss issues of concern
to themselves, or bringing us fruit. In the weekends they often use our bush
kitchen and later reappear with a plate of food for us. They look after us well
and seem concerned for us. When the All Blacks lost we were surrounded by a sympathetic
silence and lots of sad eyes staring at us.
Gary has had several accidents,
once cutting his leg badly when he was climbing from a lighter boat to a bigger
cargo boat in rough seas, and another time he slipped and tumbled down the
rocks and received a black eye and many cuts and bangs. On both occasions the
students were very caring. He always heals well. I think the pawpaw we eat so
much has good healing properties.
In his usual way, Gary has worked
hard from Day 1 and has established a senior management team that has
introduced many changes. The school looks and feels a better place. The staff
and students are more positive and quite a bit happier. Gary organised for the dorms
to be painted inside and organised a long term maintenance plan for the school
including dorms and staff houses. Nothing happens quickly, but we have made a
lot of progress and it is encouraging to get positive feedback.
There has been no forward planning
here or preventive maintenance until now. I have introduced reproductive health
education, which I teach, and we have both been involved in some counselling
and plan to expand on this next year.
These people are resourceful. Once
when I was walking round the boys’ dorms, they complained to me about the state
of their rooms, the hygiene in the dining room, and the monotony of the food
they get every day. When I shared their complaints with Gary I can remember
saying that I wouldn’t be surprised if they went on strike. Instead they
rebuilt their bush kitchens – boys from each island have their own kitchens in
the jungle – and they have created outdoor furniture. These are beautiful
places where the boys spend much of their spare time and often prepare feasts,
roasting whole pigs on the ground – or foal, fish, anything that moves they try
to catch; and they grow corn and island cabbages and are very creative. We
often hear them returning, and they sing and sound so happy. This is a
wonderful environment for students. Whenever they are hungry they go into the
jungle and they have the sea for swimming and spearing fish.
We have felt honoured to be
invited to many end-of-year feasts; each dorm has a feast and often boys from
each island also feast. The students prepare all the food.
Trekking through the cloud
rainforest on steep and slippery tracks carved through misty jungle to the
stunning crater lake on Mt Manaro – Ambae’s volcano which last erupted in 2005 – with my brother, Paul, and his partner, was an amazing experience. Four and a half
hours up, and five and a half hours down in torrential rain. (Paul walked up in sandals, but walked back down in bare feet due to the mud, and discovered he'd got leeches on his feet.) We were amazed how
few locals have ever completed the journey.
The overnight sea voyage on a cargo boat with a badly-injured Gary and 500 others; sitting on deck with no shelter, except for our umbrellas, in a storm with huge waves and sea spray and heavy rain; the sound of people vomiting and moaning, or just curled up in a ball trying to shut it all out, unable to risk moving because another body would edge into your space. As the boat lurched in heavy swells, I realised we would not survive if we capsized – we had no jackets or life rafts. Then the realisation that this often happens to these students when they travel home for their holidays, and I felt humble rather than afraid, and I felt an unreal sense of adventure. Since then we have much more sympathy for students who arrive weeks late for the start of term. Their arrival and departure depends on the boats, as do our supplies; consequently, we often go weeks without eggs. Knowing how we rely on eggs for our popular banana bread which we share with any students, several boys have gone hunting for eggs. There are so many chooks around – apart from the generator, the loudest noise is the roosters outside our window. Three lots of students have come proudly to us with their pockets full of nine or ten eggs – sadly, they were all either rotten or fertilised. Once I was delighted to find eight fresh eggs in our pineapple patch." To be continued ...
Blog Ann Barrie
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