It won't happen overnight

It is now Thursday evening and I'm sitting back in my unit in Sydney after my first day back at work.

I find that I'm still processing my thoughts about the week up until now and I'd thought - "I'll come to a conclusion and then write the blog" - but I think sharing my thought process is better - I'm not sure I'll come to a conclusion about this for a while

While I was in Vanuatu I was thinking "it's hot, I'll do it tonight" or "I'm getting bitten by mosquitoes, I'll do it in the morning".  When I first got home I had a cold so I needed to rest.  But today I'm feeling better and I am still struggling with it. And I've put my finger on when this feeling started.

I thought it would be better.

When Tom and I went to the Cell Groups five years ago this is what I wrote:
Last night we visited the cell groups that we ate with on Sunday. As expected it was a highlight. We went to Luli. They live very simply. The houses are put together using materials found around. So this ranges from Bessa Blocks to panels of corrugated iron. There was a lovely fire smell and we sang some songs – some lovely simple ones, and there was a devotion (in Bislama). Thomas and I were asked to say a bit of a word from Australia – so I was saying some things about how warmly welcomed we felt and how we were glad the weather had been good. It was a really nice night.

When I went to the same cell group last Thursday there was a familiar feeling, familiar smells.  The corrugated iron was moved around a bit but it was all still there. The people were all still lovely but there were less in attendance, particularly there were hardly any men.  I'm not sure whether I noticed it before but it was very obvious that a lot of the families there only have a sarong instead of a door.  I'm trying to be positive but I struggled to see people who I'd seen 5 years ago still living like this.  One way to think about it is that you might be happy to go camping for a week, maybe even a month, but you'd like that to be a temporary situation.  After a week and a half I was delighted to get back to my own pillow and a consistently hot shower - I have no idea how I'd cope with that for 5 years!

This feeling was compounded the next morning when I went to a hardware store and got into a conversation with a woman who was employed there while we were waiting for some materials to be cut to order for us.  We told her about what we were doing for the school and she said she'd lived in that area but now lived elsewhere.  She said that she finds it hard to go back to her old neighbourhood - and I understood what she meant.

I know I have learnt a lot from going over to Vanuatu and interacting with these people.  In fact this time when I was asked to give a bit of a word from Australia I gave greetings from Wesley and spoke about how helpful the concept of "Vanuatu time" has been for me.  The way I look at it is that it's about putting people first - so if someone is late in Vanuatu it's often because they're prioritising looking after a loved one.  This is something I've tried to bring into my work, to prioritise the relationship over the task itself.  In some cases in Australia that really doesn't work - but in my experience it often works a lot better.  So I wanted to thank them for that.

I know everyone's situation is different.  For some this situation may be temporary and for some it might be better than what they've come from. There is access to health care and education.  The strategy we've chosen at Wesley is to work with the church and the school to see what we can partner with them on.  And I completely understand that education for the kids is the best way to break that poverty cycle - but as I sat there that night, I had lost some of the positivity that I had five years ago - because it was still there.

Now I've purged some of that from my system I'll give you a rundown on what we did on our remaining days.

Thursday and Friday we spent a fair bit of time at the church and school.

• Reading with the kids (not me)
• Fixing up some of the painting where things were scuffed
• Giving the floors of the church a good clean and putting things back where we'd found them (as far as we could remember)
• Working on fixing up the rest of the windows and louvers within the school
• Working on the stage in the middle of the school - David, Sanjay, Harvey and John worked with the local maintenance guy (I think his name was Tom but David called him Freddy Tom because he was initially introduced to him as Freddy) to build the frame which will now take the roof of a stage in the middle of the school.  And then there will just be some more concrete required to build the stage.
• Nerida, Kaye & Elle had brought a lot of resources for the kindy as well as the playgroup.  They spent some time showing the teachers how to use equipment such as the very versatile parachute. And also BUBBLES!  (Wow kids love those)
• On Friday night Elder Johnny hosted us for dinner which was lovely and we met a few extra members of his family.

Saturday we had a day out.  Priscilla organised a trip to Havannah Harbour which is on the west side of Efate.  We took a boat over to the beach where Survivor Vanuatu had been filmed (Nerida was very much geeking out) and we went snorkelling.  We went back to Wahoo Bar and had lunch there.  Excellent day - I got horribly sunburnt though.  Still ouch.

Sunday morning Kaye and I went early to church to check out Sunday School.  The kids sang quite a few songs at the beginning of the time (I think they even started on time at 8am - Kaye and I arrived about 8:10 and were late!)  Then the group split into younger kids and older kids (and I think even a middle group once another teacher arrived).  Kaye headed out with Ross and the younger ones, I stayed with Suzie and the older ones.  We discussed the 4th and 5th commandments.  Excellent teaching - I read some English on paper and listened enough in Bislama that I learnt a few things about the Sabbath.  But in a conversation with Kaye afterwards we did discuss that it must be difficult to be so hardline on doing no work on Sundays in a society where tourism is such an important industry and cruise ships might come on Sundays.

After church the locals put on an excellent lunch for us.  Nerida and I had fun learning how to shoo flies away Vanuatu style.  A couple from Nowra had come to the church just for the morning and were invited too.

During the morning I took some video footage of people giving their name, their comments about their church and/or us, and their hopes for the future.  And if you'll forgive the shameless plug - come to the trivia night at Wesley by which time I'll have cut the footage together!

Monday morning we packed our bags, used up our remaining Vatu and got a bus to the airport. Daniel and Johnny met us there and saw us of which was so kind of them.  Despite some of my negative feelings about the trip which I've talked about above I really do feel like just being there and caring about them is making a difference - it won't happen overnight, and to be honest I don't think it's as simple as saying "it will happen" - but I do have hope.  I hope.

Here we go around the coconut tree

Hi All - I was going to catch you up on the last few days but I've just spent a frantic half hour searching for my passport (found it).   Elle has written an update for you about playgroup on Thursday morning.

Thursday Morning was an exciting occasion! Kaye, Nerida and myself, alongside, Elder Johnny and Daniel have started a play group at Seaside Paama Community School for children aged between 0-3 years old. A play group is a vital part of any community as it provides the children an opportunity to play and interact with not only children their own age and younger but also their mums, dads and grandparents. At play group, the children are given the chance to develop important skills that are required for their transition into preschool. Skills including: fine motor manipulation, attention span and concentration, sitting at group and positively interacting with others etc. Kaye and Nerida did a wonderful job resourcing the playgroup back in Sydney so come Thursday we were raring and ready to go!

Daniel allowed us to use the new year 10 classroom at Seaside Paama for the playgroup on Thursday. We arrived at the room early to set up the resources in an aesthetically pleasing way that invited the children into the room to play. The resources that were displayed were divided into sections. One sections contained puppets and books, another had puzzles, a different section contained blocks, trucks, dinosaurs and little people and the last section had musical instruments. It was to begin at half past 8 and the clock ticked over to 9am and we were yet to see a child. "Vanuatu time" we all said! Sure enough, we waited a couple more minutes and we had close to 30 children attend the play group. Johnny had ventured out into the community to remind the families that playgroup had started.

We gave the children the chance to explore the new environment containing the resources with a little bit of free play. As we received some hesitancy from the children, unsure of this new environment and different faces, it allows the children to take their time in gradually coming into the play space and building their comfortability while simultaneously allowing us the opportunity to model appropriate play behaviour. We got down to their level and engaged them in many play experiences with the children alongside their accompanying adult. This gave the children the opportunity to hear the instructions in both English and Bislama. After 10 minutes, the children were walking around and exploring the different resources. They were sharing toys, taking turns and engaging wholeheartedly in each and every play experience. The favourite by far were the big toy trucks! After allowing the children time to play, we gathered them around in a circle for a group time. The children sat attentively as Kaye sung a few songs with hand actions that they were encouraged to imitate. Next, we said good morning to each other and the children. After the introductions, we had a story time. From this group time, we had some music and movement time with a large circle. Kaye instructed the children to stand and make a circle where we sung the song (Modified by Kaye) "Here we go around the coconut tree". Kaye added in a hygienic practice into the song including brushing teeth, washing face, tying shoes etc.

After music and movement time, Kaye and I brought out a craft activity and playdough. The children were given a mat and a container of play dough. We encouraged the children to label the colour of the play dough before giving them cutting materials to make shapes out of them. This activity was amazing! The children loved making balls out of the play dough and rolling them into various shapes. The playdough experience not only engaged the children but also the adults. They were making shapes, faces and animals alongside their child.

At the end of the session, we encouraged the children to pack away their toys and join us on the mat for a farewell song.

Initially, we found the children hesitant and unsure of both the new environment and the resources provided. By the end of the session, we saw lots of smiley children and their laughter rung through the air. The energy was one of openness, play and filled with happiness and harmony. The children left so excited and the adults left with the promise of returning next week.

Special thanks to the efforts of both Nerida and Kaye. They did an outstanding job purchasing a variety of resources to source the playgroup and Kaye did an amazing job engaging the children and creating a positive, meaningful play group session for them!

 Thanks Elle!

The Cat in the Hat

Some highlights from the last couple of days...

Reading
Tuesday morning I headed back to the classroom where I'd done the reading the day before.  The kids were singing 10,000 reasons as they'd done the day before and I tried to wait by the door but everyone was looking at me, so I went in.  The regular teacher who I'd been trying to catch up with wasn't in there, the teacher who teaches French was in there instead.  And then once the kids had finished singing and prayer, the French teacher thought, well this lady can handle it from here - and left the room.  Hmmm...

I answered a question or two that the kids asked me, and then I said I'd go and find their teacher and basically ran outside.  Fortunately the principal was just outside on the phone, so I waited for him to finish up and went over and basically reminded him that I'm not a teacher.  He said, but you could read a story to the kids - I said yeah I could do that - and I went in to choose a book.  Having no idea what would be good I found one book with a dreamtime story in it, and one Dr Suess.  I went to the classroom - the principal mentioned that the kids were about to have their French exam but would listen to me read first - I tried to back out at this point but nup - no backing out now - headed in.  I give the kids a choice - Dr Suess wins.  Rhyme.  I can do this!

And I begin to read The Cat in the Hat Rides Again (?) - the stupid cat has a whole alphabet of extra little helpers in his hats. FAR OUT.  LONGEST BOOK EVER!

A few of the kids stopped paying attention after a while but they didn't get too loud.  I heard a few laughs.  After the story ends, I thank the kids and basically bolt for the door.

Went ok - but not planning on walking into that room any time soon.

Painting
While my reading debacle was happening, the team was prepping the church for painting.  We had a slightly yellower colour of paint- I think the earlier colour might have been a bit more of a creamy colour?  It went extremely well actually.  We had about 6 or 7 local young men/boys helping us and between the lot of us we got it done between about 8am and 2pm.  You can see a video I posted on Facebook which shows a timelapse of some of this - there is still some touching up to do tomorrow - but we went to the church tonight and it looks pretty darn good actually!

Driving
Graham had the idea to hire a car and I immediately thought - that's something I'd like to have a go at!  People drive on the right hand side of the road here.  The plan was to hire the car on Tuesday and keep it for a few days.  Graham went to get the car but they didn't have any Automatic cars, so he got a manual for the first day.  Now I've driven in the US, but that was all auto.  Fortunately the first time I drive it's raining a bit, so the fact I keep confusing the indicator and the windscreen washers doesn't cause too many stares.  For dinner we went to a place a bit further away so I volunteered to drive rather than have us take the bus - was very glad I had driven around during the day!

Today, Graham, John & I drove around the island of Efate - which took about 3 hours of driving.  We changed to an automatic car, so driving became pretty easy again.  Still had to pay quite a bit of attention - there was a dog that stopped for a poo in the middle of the road and just stayed there - we had to drive around it.  In general it went really well.  Graham and I shared the driving.  We went to Blue Lagoon first - which was lovely to have a swim at.  We then went north and then west around the island. We had an awesome lunch at Francesca's - excellent home made pasta and a lovely view.

We then went to Mele Cascades and joined the rest of the group having a swim underneath the waterfall.  After some recent rain the  waterfall seemed to be so strong!  It was pretty beautiful though - worth a bit of a climb :)

Alira Update
Big couple of days for the cutie.  Last night she got her first tooth which was very exciting.  Today she's got a cold, and last night wasn't a great sleep - we're all praying she has a good sleep tonight <3

Another Day, Another Louver

Another day has finished and I'm sitting on the balcony of my hotel room looking out over the lagoon.  Can't hear any roosters at this hour - they start up around 4am.  Can hear a couple of dogs in the distance.

Today we arrived at the Paama Seaside School at around 8am.  Harvey, David and John headed off to the hardware store and Kaye, El, Graham and I took a look around the grounds and met some of the teachers.  My services (as a non-educator but pretty decent English speaker) were offered as a "she'll listen to the kids speak English".  Kaye, Graham & El - all educators, were able to ask lots of good questions - but I was soon ushered into a room and given instructions to listen to the kids one by one.

I think the last time I had done this it had been - just listen to them read and mark the paper, this time I was told it was an examination - so I felt a bit more pressure.  The story was about Meg and her Dad and a boy with a toy helicopter.  What a cliffhanger!  Will Meg's dad be able to fix the helicopter at the end of the story?  I think I will never know.

The first few kids read through the story with more or less ease - it soon became obvious to me that I had all the better readers up front, and then some not so good ones.  At one point the teacher entered the room and said "sorry, I've got to go to a meeting offsite, I'll leave these sheets for you so you can mark the ones who are at a lower level of reading.  The teacher never actually pointed out how I was supposed to tell which kids were at a lower reading level - and I'm sure it wasn't her plan to drop me or the kids in that ditch - but there were a couple of kids who ... well I gave them the wrong level - and had to read through the whole of the piece basically with them.  I walked out of the room feeling a bit shell-shocked.  Will need to speak to the teacher tomorrow about whether I can do some reading with the kids who need a bit more help.  I might also need to test them again - I got a good idea of their fluency, but otherwise not exactly sure my marks are useful!

Anyway - I then headed over to church where Sanjay, Nerida and Harvey had headed off to the health meeting.  Alira was with Kaye enjoying some orange mush.  David and El were working on painting the window frames, and Graham and John were removing the louvers from the last of the window frames.  After sitting for a few minutes I headed off down the road to the health meeting - I was planning to be "Vanuatu time" on time.  #WesleyOnVanuatuTime.  I arrived and said I was looking for Nerida, Harvey, Sanjay and Elder Johnny - there were blank looks until I said Elder Johnny and I was ushered into the back room.

One of the people at the meeting was Pastor Allen Nafuki who I had met on the first trip I'd had to Vanuatu - when we were just a team of four - he played a big part in that first week and took all four of us around the island.  His name, like Elder Johnny's, seemed to be a key that opened doors in Vanuatu - I am sure I name dropped it at some point to get a better seat on the flight home.  The other people in the room were Jonathan and Richard, who both work at the PCV offices and specialise in health.

We heard that the team at PCV has a memorandum of understanding with the government to provide health services which has been made after the success of the education services that the PCV has provided.  They are looking for some help with training materials.  Now given none of us have expertise in health we were careful to say we'd be happy to help facilitate with contact finding - but we're unlikely to be able to jump in the thick of this one.  All in all a good meeting - and we headed back to the church while Sanj went to find some lunch for us all.

Back at the church it was all systems go.  The paint was drying and some of the louvers were starting to go back on.  Some of the louvers were a bit broken so Harvey and Graham went off to find some more.  We saw lots of the kids bringing chairs out of their classrooms and gather round - there were four 20 somethings doing a play for the kids - I walked over and from what I saw it seemed to be about paying attention while driving and not talking on your mobile while at the wheel.  This was soon confirmed when they asked the kids to chat something like "look left, look right, look left" (might have been the other way around - don't quote me).  The kids seemed to be really enjoying the show - and the young people who were presenting certainly seemed pretty enthusiastic.

2pm school finished and we went to re-louvering in earnest.  There were two drills or maybe one drill and one screwdriver - so there was a bit of a resource drought - we all made ourselves busy taking off masking tape, cleaning glass louvers, drilling, finding screws - after a couple of hours they were getting down to the last of it so some of us headed back to the hotel for a rest.

Tonight we've had a meal at The Brewery - I think everyone feels that we worked hard today and another big day of painting tomorrow should see us breaking the back of the painting work.  We were talking about the school and how different it is to home - and it is _very_ different.  I'm glad we've seen it for 8 years now, and 5 years back, and 2 years back, so we've got a basis for comparison.

I hear some roosters.  What's going on there???

Part of the Family

It's the end of Sunday night and the team are gathered around in one of our hotel rooms after having dinner at the restaurant.

Yesterday most of the team arrived at Wesley for a 5:30 trip to the airport together on one of those airport buses. Nerida and David are travelling with their infant daughter Alira so they went in separately.  We arrived at the airport on time despite not taking the M2 or Lane Cove Tunnel - which to be honest has made me think about how much I use the toll roads in Sydney.

The flight Sydney to Port Vila direct arrives late on Saturday night, so we had chosen to catch a flight to Brisbane and then Port Vila - which would have us arrive in the afternoon.  The people at the Virgin Australia desk were lovely - and it wasn't long until we got on the flight to Brisbane.  Given the news stories this week about massive lines at airports I was a little apprehensive about the transfer in Brisbane, but we got a good transfer between Domestic and International, and customs was pretty quick actually.  David, Harvey and I were called to go up to the desk but despite hoping that we had been moved up to first class, they just needed to shuffle our seats a bit. :(  Our flight to Port Vila was uneventful - I think we were all impressed and just a little bit proud that Alira did very well on the flight - she was a bit cranky by the time we got to the hotel, but that was probably the same for all of us.

We were greeted at the airport by Elder Johnny, the minister of Paama Seaside church, and Daniel, the principal of Paama Seaside school.  I had just remembered that I hadn't brought any jewellery so I was delighted to receive a shell necklace from Daniel's daughter.  Some of us had booked official transfers (not sure that we knew we had) and some hadn't, so Daniel and Johnny organised to take our luggage in a ute, and ourselves in a bus.

We had arrived.

The smell when we got moving in the bus was a lovely combination of smoke and dirt.  And I'm not being facetious.  Having come from the cold of Sydney that morning, all of us noticed the difference.  We arrived at the hotel and were assigned our rooms.  The team said - "ok we're meeting at the reception at 5pm" - to which I said - "yep that sounds great" - thinking "that's almost 90 minutes away!"  I tried not to let my disappointment show when it was revealed that we'd lost an hour and I only had 25 minutes.

We walked across to the town to have dinner - found some nice Chinese.  I'm only recently vegetarian so every meal seems to be an argument with myself whether I should stay vegetarian while I'm travelling. Seems Vanuatu is pretty vegetarian friendly though - some really nice food over here!

We noticed that on the main street there seems to be a lot of new gutter work, and it seems to be quite a bit cleaner since the last time I was here - but it's still pretty dusty.  We went to the supermarket and stocked up on water and snacks, and caught a bus back to Poppy's (our hotel).  Buses cost 150 vatu for each person - a little less than $2 AUD.

We went back to our hotel rooms and I don't think it took us a long time to get to sleep.  8:30 the next morning we were having our included breakfast at Poppys.  I was wearing my Mother Hubbard dress which I had received from my bible study the last time I was in Vanuatu.  It's orange, green and purple and it has bows on it and puffy sleeves and little bits of extra material hanging from the side.  It might not be the most flattering dress, but I did feel a part of the family as I walked down the road towards church.  Lots of people said good morning to us as we walked along the road.  Several had met us before - some of which we knew their names, but most of which not...

We arrived at the church at about 9:30 which was time to set up before church.  There was a team singing in the church - I'm not sure if they just enjoy singing or whether they were practicing.  It sounded lovely though - and I could roughly understand some of the words - I can definitely understand when they sing "Jesus" - sounds a bit like "Geee-zass".  Nice that that's a word that pops out.

When the church service began, Johnny invited us all up to introduce us, and the women's fellowship had made us all leis which the little kids put around our necks.  They smelt great! Alira's went directly into her mouth of course.  We all sang "We are one big happy family" - which I remembered from the first and second times I've come - it has got actions!  I vaguely remembered some of the bislama for it too "Yumi one falla, big falla family".  We sat down after that and listened to the rest of the service - there was some singing done by the Men's fellowship which included a guitar, and then there was singing with the whole congregation which was a capella.  It's a beautiful sound - no microphones, lovely harmonies. I'm not actually sure how they do it but it's already worth the trip.

Alira was getting a bit fussy at this point and David popped up and took her outside.  I was standing at the back of the church taking some photos and after a while I took a look outside to see that with David there were several young girls who were asking to hold Alira.  With Alira's big eyes looking all around it seemed they were as interested in her as she was with them.  Very cute!

After the service we shook hands with everyone.  Again there were lots of people we recognised, most of the names I had forgotten - hopefully I will learn more during the week and I'm hoping to make some Facebook friends too - that seems to be a good way of remembering everyone from trip to trip.

We went back to the hotel to change and then wandered over to Port Vila centre.  I missed wearing my Mother Hubbard dress - when I smiled and greeted the locals I no longer felt like part of the family - I looked like a tourist.  After lunch I bought a hat which ... well it's purple - so that's good - but it makes me look even more like a tourist!

A snooze this afternoon and then down to the waterside for a chat and some dinner.  We did "Butterflies and Cockroaches" around the dinner table - which is basically where you say one good thing and one bad thing from the day.  I really appreciated David showing that he's an involved father and taking Alira outside during the church service.  I'm not sure whether that would be the done thing here but the roles of men and women in the church will be something I'm interested to learn more about during the week.

We're currently preparing for tomorrow.  We know we're going to be painting the inside of the church.  We know we're going to be helping out at the school. We've got a meeting to discuss health with a team at the PCV.

There seems to be some controversy brewing over the best to paint the church.
Will keep you posted.

#WesleyOnVanuatuTime

Exciting News!  We're going again!

This time there are 10 people from Wesley going - Harvey & Kaye,  David, Nerida & Alira, John, Graham, Elysia, Sanjay & Katherine (that's me).

We fly out on Saturday morning to Brisbane, and then to Port Vila - so we get there mid afternoon - and hopefully have a pretty relaxing evening before heading to church the next morning.

So that will make it four times that people from Wesley have been to Vanuatu in recent years

1. July 2009 - a small group headed over to see if we could find a church which we could start up a relationship with.  We were introduced to the team at Paama Seaside.
2. July 2012 - a team visited the church and school at Paama Seaside - helped paint the outside of the church, worked on a computer room for the kids at the school.
3. June/July 2015 - another team visited just after a big cyclone had came through - there was lots of helping at the school and understanding the local situation

In the meantime there have also been lots of visits from the Paama team to Castle Hill in Australia.  We're certainly looking forward to going again.

Stay tuned for more updates.  And look out for the hashtag #WesleyOnVanuatuTime on social media!