Wanting to travel to make a difference, Erica Louise went to Vanuatu to volunteer as a Vanua-Tai. This is part two of her story.
We woke early again with first light and very active roosters.
After breakfast (fresh bread with peanut butter and tea) it was time for the community meetings, held once a month, head by the village chief. Community meetings are quite formal, but with basic settings. After an introduction in Bislama, I was asked to give a speech to the community. I didn’t really what to say so I spoke in broken English about myself and my work as a volunteer with GVI. I seemed to get a few nods of comprehension, and smiles from my audience. Michelle and George also gave a small speech in Bislama and English about Wan Smolbag’s turtle survey work.
Subsequently, the villagers were given a one hour ‘interview time’ with Michelle and I. We sat on one bench, and in turn, individuals or two people together would sit opposite, introduce themselves and shake our hands. We received the usual timid approach from our ‘interviewers’, but gradually the community started asking questions (in the local language of Bislama) about the turtle monitoring work, or how volunteers would be helping with the community. The women were particularly interested in hearing about the turtles gender development; dependant on the temperature of sand in which the eggs are positioned.
After a quick guided tour around the village by Kalo, we stopped at the village school. School teacher Paul had prepared a welcome ceremony with his students which began with five girls holding freshly picked flowers. One by one we would receive a handshake and a flower behind our ear, accompanied by a few giggles. We were seated in the classroom for a few welcome songs with Teacher Paul strumming on his guitar. Ni-Vanuatu children love singing, and smiling!
After a group photo outside the school, it was time for a snorkel before lunch. The sea was quite rough that day, but we still had pretty good visibility. I did get a bit anxious at one point being surrounded by jelly fish. These jellies had no tentacles, but this didn’t stop me jumping out of the water shouting ‘jelly fish everywhere’ to a rather puzzled Canadian marine biologist - Michelle! It is a good thing however, that jelly fish are one of the turtles’ favourite foods, all the more reason to conserve these beautiful marine creatures I’d say.
After lunch we were given the opportunity to have ‘smal spel’ (time for a nap). I didn’t feel tired so decided to go and mingle with the children. I sat down with a few kids, smiling and speaking a few words ‘my name is..’ ‘I have one brother…’, ‘I have a cat..’ It wasn’t long before I became surrounded by an array of excited children, with grubby knees, no shoes, but big cheeky grins. I gave out a packet of clip-on Koalas and Australian flag stickers which the children clipped to their hair, noses and anything else possible. I had four postcards from Australia that I passed around. The kids knew the ‘Koala’ and ‘Kangaroo’ images, however, the picture of Melbourne’s skyline amazed them, particularly when I said that’s where I lived. One child even rushed excitedly over to his mother to show her the postcard, and she in turn looked equally fascinated.
One way to gage interest with the children is to sing songs. First I would hear a few songs by the kids, and I would be asked to sing one in return. I gave my rendition of ‘Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree’ and ‘I like traffic lights’. It’s all I could think of at the time but the children loved it.
By late afternoon it was time for us to make our way across to the turtle nesting beach on the other side of Moso Island. Kalo, Michelle, two other members of the community and I walked for about an hour through the forest. It wasn’t too steep or difficult, and not too hot being close to sunset. When we reached the nesting beach, we marked sections every 50 meters, in which we would count turtles if seen. We had to wait until high tide, so had a few hours to rest. Kalo asked if I wanted fish for dinner; why not I thought. Kalo and associates disappeared off into the sunset, and arrived back within half an hour, with three fresh fish caught from the sea. Kalo started a fire, and put each fish on a stick to roast. So that was my dinner, toasted fish on a stick! We didn’t have any plates, cutlery, or condiments, so I didn’t quite know what to do with it. I saw that Kalo used his fingers to get into his, and had some roasted banana to go with it. I put my fish on a rock, used a head torch as candle light, and tried very hard not to make eye contact with my dinner!!
At high tide, we started our walk along the beach for the turtle nesting survey. We would look out for new markings to see if any turtles had made their way up the beach to lay their eggs. The walk lasted a few hours, across sand and rock. Sadly we didn’t see any turtles on this occasion, but we did see a number of flipper marks from possibly the night or two nights before. If we had seen a turtle, we would have waited for her to lay and bury her eggs which would take approximately 40 minutes. We would then take her measurements, and tag her flipper if not already marked so she could be tracked in future.
After an hour walk back through the forest to the village, it would have been around 11pm. Exhausted, tired, but content, I slept very well that night!
Although born and raised in
Aussie Escape is proud to have Global Vision International as one of our partners. They specialise in volunteer experiences all over the world and will ensure your travelling experience makes a difference.
