Big Bay Celebrations

Big Bay (Bay of Illusions) is the large bay in the north of the island and is a 2 hour trip away. Olgeta arranged a cultural celebration and there was a country fair feeling about it with hastily erected benches for the visitors to sit on, a sign to a WC (long drop with handy leafy branch) in the overgrown forest and of course the admission booth with a solar powered fridge containing Tusker beer and Coke.

        There were demonstrations of making stone fires and laplap ( favourite local food), a mash of yams/taro/banana wrapped in cabbage leaf and baked in the stone fire.The women were busy grating taro and yams on the base of a Natangora palm whilst the men grated the coconuts using a sharp end of a cut bamboo. Later we had firemaking  and sand drawing. It was very informal and the visitors wandered here and there with a fair amount of waiting around.

 

We then had a good lunch of beef cooked in the stone oven, together with lots of island cabbage and salad. It was served on banana leaves and plastic forks were provided. By the time we queued up they had run out of banana leaves so we got china plates but no forks, so back to the fingers!
After lunch we had a presentation of custom dancing by a small but enthusiastic group. Later everyone was invited to join in which caused some hilarity. I don't think the old lady could believe she has just danced like that in front of all those strangers.

 

 


We then wandered down the black sands of Big Bay to see the monument to the Spanish explorer Quiros who was the first recorded European visitor in 1606.
On the way back we said farewell to a couple of the performers.
   

Saramauri

Departure was going to be Wednesday, then Tuesday 5 am then 7 am, then at midday Monday Jeffrey said '4pm today'. Well we did manage to get Marie Michelle, nurse from Port Olry, Worikar from Vanuatu family health, Christjohn from 'Men and boys' and us on board by 5pm. Night fell an hour later and we watched the Southern Cross and alpha (Rigil Centaurus)and beta Centaurus (Hadar) from the back of the Toyota truk. The road was a reasonable dirt road with two rivers to be forded. We arrived about 7.30pm but about 200 yards from the clinic we grounded in deep mud and walked up leaving the lads to dig it out.

Saramauri Clinic

  The clinic is three quarters of the way to Big Bay (the bay in the north of the island) and serves a huge area of north Santo in the foothills. It is well run by Manuel and his wife Suzanne  together with a nurse aid Jenita.

Breakfast 

 Next day we set to work with education for the secondary school pupils about Sexually transmitted disease and HIV. Lots of curiosity as there always is whenever sex is talked about. The boys had their talk by Christjohn and the girls by Warikar.

  Meanwhile Marie Michelle was giving the results of blood tests that were taken 3 months ago!
As people had been told we were coming, they flocked in to the clinic. Many of them wanted advice/treatment, but most came to hear what we had to say and were willing to be tested for HIV/Hep B /Syphilis. We set up 3 rooms for counselling and testing and in the end tested over 140 people. We found a high rate of Hep B for this region.
The Mum pictured below had delivered her baby at 3.00am, (which explains his pale complexion) then at dawn walked for 4 hours to bring the child for Hep B vaccination before walking home again. We tried to persuade her to stay in the clinic for the night, but she said she had her "Man" with her so she would be fine to go home....Naomi (in the red shirt), the Village Health Worker promised to look after her!
We hope to return to this clinic area to do a campaign on Women's Health and Family Planning. (See below). Cervical cancer is a big problem here, so it would be good to be able to do some Pap smears. As ever, funding is the problem. STIs and HIV always get the lions share of donated funding and a lot of that has been done.

The bush people are generally short and stocky. That morning a tall, confidant young man strolled into the clinic with his three hunting dogs. Manuel had only first seen him a month ago and did not know where he came from. Big John caused quite a few comments and amusement as we took his photo and made comparisons. It could be it was an American serviceman's genes from two generations ago or from the tall people of the west coast.

  

Next day was more health education and blood taking. Jeffrey had to leave that day and was taking a very sick child with him. We had either to pay £100 for a truck next day or to cut short our time. So we cut short our time and left. It was a pity as we had had no chance to really talk with Manuel and Suzanne. I wandered down to talk to some school girls, two were sisters and the rest from different families. one of the families have 9 children and the other three had 10 children! So 8 parents produced 39 children in one generation ie more than 4 times the original couples. As we say 'Sex without Contraception makes babies' and there is a lot of work for Manuel and Suzanne here.

 

We had been made welcome here, and in spite of having to share our room with a large family of rats and eating a very high carbohydrate diet for 3 days, we enjoyed the experience and look forward to returning (we hope.) We especially enjoyed the 'bush tea':  a mug of hot slightly sweet water with a couple of orange leaves in it -- delicious!
We said our goodbyes, piled in the truck and about 200 yards later got stuck in the mud.. We had many willing helpers and were soon on our way having used coconut fronds as a base for the tyres to grip on.
We forded the Oro River and were back within 2 hours.

 

A strong, active man in his mid-life years. This is how all men everywhere ought to look. (Well, probably with more clothes on in most places!)

Annie's work at the Youth Centre

Way back in May I posted a blog about my work with VFHA clinic. That is less than half of my work. I also work for the Northern Care Youth Centre (NCYC) in their drop in clinic which deals with all STIs, HIV counselling and testing, family planing and awareness raising on all related issues to young people.

Good graffitti is encouraged.

Volley ball, national game

It is a large, well run organisation, part of an excellent theatre based awareness raising NGO called Wan Smolbag (http://www.wansmolbag.org)  Here they offer all things for "Yut": music sessions, Hip Hop, guitar/keyboard/drum lessons, sewing classes, Volley ball, IT skills, etc., and of course confidential counselling.

Marie Michelle, senior clinic nurse..

Leimako Simon, Senior Nurse, WSB  

My desk; 10mtrs away through those breezy windows I can hear music-all day, every day-top volume. Mmm, nice!

Leimako is overall senior nurse and is experienced, well respected and excellent; I have worked a lot with her and we have a very good relationship. Marie Michelle is younger, but also has a lot of experience and is also good; they have both helped me a lot in my work.

At the moment, I am mainly planning, organising and running workshops in sexual and reproductive health, STIs/HIV awareness. As in most developing countries, the population in Vanuatu has doubled in the last 25 years and a recent survey on youth showed that 67% of people are <30yrs old. One of our target groups is young girls and women and in an effort to reduce unwanted pregnancy rates (the same here as in UK, i.e. high), we offer them a workshop, once a month from different urban areas around town. Most of the workshop/activities etc are delivered by the wonderful band of Peer Educators and I hope they will soon take it over completely. But there is still huge input from me at the moment, Vanuatu being the workshop capital of the world!

Kaltom, Peer Ed lead facilitating on decision making skills

Fiorina, Peer Educator, facilitating on  STIs

 Last week we had a bigger than usual hiccup: double booking on the room. Eventually a smaller room was found for the 2 Peer Eds, myself and a dozen girls. Great, we thought, so we began..... So did the music!! It came from next door, from the so-called soundproof room (a bit of leaf matting on the prefab walls and a poor effort at padding on the ceiling--no contest with the huge amplifiers!) I admit, I did struggle a bit to give my talk on female anatomy, conception and sexuality whilst orgasmic moans were emanating from the next room at top volume!! However, it seemed appropriate when it came to the condom game...........I was the only one who found it funny, everyone else took it in their stride and paid polite attention! 

Maybe it was my Bislama..........

Open day saw some home made posters.

Seline, our little miss Fixit/cleaner/photocopier/please pop out for more  sugar/ ink cartridge/phone credit person

Another large and important part of my work is fulfilling a VSO obligation in updating and training the clinic nurses in STIs/HIV/counselling and testing/family planning .... but more of that another time.

Water music

Ascension day was a Public Holiday and  a group collected on our beach to practice their water music. 

They are from the Banks Islands in the north of Vanuatu, mostly from Gaua and Mere Lava. The women have developed a technique of making music by splashing water in rhythm often accompanied by song.

They have become quite proficient and have just been to Brisbane to perform. They have now been invited to represent Vanautu in a cultural show in Sarawak and so had to do some serious rehearsing.

It looks great fun but you sure get wet.

This one was a bit bored

No one to play with