{"id":364,"date":"2020-02-28T11:43:17","date_gmt":"2020-02-28T11:43:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jenstutoring.com\/wordpress\/?p=364"},"modified":"2020-02-28T11:43:17","modified_gmt":"2020-02-28T11:43:17","slug":"highs-lows-and-more-highs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.jenstutoring.com\/wordpress\/uncategorized\/highs-lows-and-more-highs\/","title":{"rendered":"Highs, lows and more highs"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

February 28th, 2020 – Lakatoro<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So the last few days have been a bit bipolar. Either everything is going terrifically well, or everything is going disastrously. Tonight, all is terrific, and I’ll explain why in a moment. Firstly, let me go back to Tuesday; a French company had been in touch with the province, as they are hoping to commence a petroleum storage operation on the South side of the island. With tales and dreams of untold wealth, the province had decided to assist these investors in every way possible, and had managed to negotiate with three tribal landowners to sign a contract effectively granting the investors’ company eternal use of their land (according to the Vanuatu constitution, all land of Vanuatu belongs to the people of Vanuatu, so an outright sale isn’t possible). They were to fly in on a charter plane on Tuesday, sign a memorandum of understanding with the province officials and then fly out again, flying down to the South side of the island the following day to sign the contract with the tribal landowners and then fly out again. Their arrival and signing on Tuesday went swimmingly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The French investors and the tribal landowners all wearing leis, and province officials and me not wearing leis. Despite the stifling heat, I was told by Kevin to wear jeans to look smart.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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French investor shaking the hand of a custom landowner (with beard). The French are paying the three landowners jointly approx 1 million USD for the use of their land, around 500 hectares. It’s impossible for me to evaluate whether that’s a good price or not with the limited information I’ve seen, and I wasn’t privy to negotiations. But for now, everyone is happy with the deal.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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The charter plane as they were leaving.

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After the investors departed, the landowners and the province officials wanted to celebrate with a kava session, so we all went to a nakamal (kava bar), and started consuming the stuff in a big way. For those who aren’t aware, kava is an intoxicating drink made from stewing a locally-grown root of some sort. It is the colour of grey clay, and tastes a bit like liquorice boiled in mud and then watered down. Its effect is somewhere between marijuana and alcohol. It is an anti-stress analgesic, and makes your mouth go a bit numb after drinking. All in all, I don’t enjoy the feeling so much, but it does get you very intoxicated for not much money (as opposed to beer, which is relatively expensive). The norm is to have around 3 shells (traditionally half coconut shells, now Chinese melamine noodle bowls for reasons unknown) in an evening, but that night everyone was celebrating the first appearance of the French investors, so we had more than 5 and I started to lose count, as well as the ability to use my tongue. You will have seen my blog post from that night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The following day, we were supposed to depart very early indeed to drive down to the South for the contract signing with the landowners. Apparently it’s a 3-4 hour drive, depending on the roads, so I was told to be ready at 4am, and a truck would come and pick me up. 3:45, I awoke, still slightly under a kava haze, and got dressed and ready to depart at 4. By 4:30, I was still waiting, and trying to figure out a way to top up the credit on my phone so that I could call Kevin. By 5:30, I figured they weren’t going to come, and gave up using the top-up system (it involves scratching codes off scraps of paper), and tried ringing Kevin using my Skype account instead. Got through, but was instantly cut off. By 6:30, I went back to bed, pretty hacked off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Spent most of the day recovering from lack of sleep, and still pretty upset that they hadn’t picked me up. To make matters worse, it was Hunter’s Birthday, and I experienced a full-on bout of homesickness. Rather than celebrating my boy’s fifth birthday, I was sweltering in a cockroach infested dive where the people I’m supposed to be helping couldn’t even be bothered to pick me up in a truck. I was not happy at all. The following day, still no contact with Kevin, he was nowhere to be found, although I did find another councilman who explained that they realised about 2 hours into the drive that they had forgotten to pick me up. Not cool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was told once again that my Hep B jab would be put on a plane in the afternoon, so I hitched a ride to the airstrip, and was excited to see 2 planes arrive at the same time! Both flying the same route apparently, within 5 minutes of each other, which seems pretty nonsensical. After a few hours faff, it was determined that my vaccination was not on either plane.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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One plane wing on the left of shot, the other plane on the right. Like buses, no planes all day and then two come at once!

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So, forgotten about, uncontacted, and once again defeated by the logistics of getting my vaccination, Thursday was also a pretty poor day for me. Started wondering whether I should just throw the towel and fly to be with Jen and Hunter. A call with the VSA programme manager, Trevor, put me in a slightly better frame of mind, but I was still pretty miserable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then this morning, I’d be damned if I was going to traipse up the hill just to find Kevin not in his office again, so I started to plan a hike as something for me to do during the day. Just as I was about to depart, I got a call from the council President (Kevin was previously the only one who knew my number, so he must have been too embarrassed to call me directly, and asked the president to do it) asking my whereabouts. When I told him I was at home, he said not to move, he was coming with Kevin to see me. Kevin showed up at my front door deeply apologetic, and even gave me half an orange to say sorry (sharing food is a ni-Van expression of friendship). He said we should sit down that afternoon and make a schedule so mishaps like forgetting me don’t reoccur. Apology accepted, I went to the office in the afternoon, and we actually achieved a decent bit of work together on the investment policy. I’m not certain the momentum will last, but while he was apologetic today, he was at his most willing to please, which helped cooperation greatly. It was a good day, and as I headed back to my house in the afternoon, I figured I needed to make some more friends here, so ventured to a local nakamal. They were nice people, but it was pretty hard work trying to strike up a friendship with my shaky Bislama. Just as I was attempting to ask one of the locals how many children they had (a decent cross-culture conversation point), the council President drove past and asked me if I’d like to join him for a shell at his preferred nakamal. I went along, and had a good conversation with the nakamal owner who is standing for election next month. He was frankly pretty lame on policy, repeating over and over how honest he was and not much else, but honesty being the big issue in Vanuatu politics right now (the exiting prime minister and 5 cronies have just received a jail sentence for criminal behaviour while in office, although they are intending to appeal and stand for election again anyway), maybe this guy was on to something.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In conversation with the council President earlier in the week, I had mentioned I hadn’t yet had a chance to eat a coconut crab (local delicacy, similar to lobster). Apparently today, he had tracked down a huge one and given he wasn’t returning to his home on the other side of the island till tomorrow, he was looking for someone with whom to share it. He wanted to know if he could come round to my place, and we could cook it on my hob. I was very willing, and it was a pretty amazing experience to sit down with the provincial council President, and get stuck into kitchen duty together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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President displaying the crab he’d bought. I reckon the crab weighed about 2.5 kg.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Action shot of him incapacitating the crab on my balcony. Given the crabs are land crabs, they don’t die when caught, and are sold tied, but very much alive. You have to be careful when untying that a) they don’t scuttle away and b) they don’t pinch you with their enormous claws, capable of crushing coconuts.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Cooked in coconut milk, seasoned with local turmeric, ginger, spring onion and chilli.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

All in all, it was a great evening, and it was a unique experience. Can’t even do the washing up tonight, as the water is off until the morning. Filled with delicious crab and quite content. Goodnight all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

February 28th, 2020 – Lakatoro So the last few days have been a bit bipolar. Either everything is going terrifically well, or everything is going disastrously. Tonight, all is terrific, and I’ll explain why in a moment. Firstly, let me go back to Tuesday; a French company had been in touch with the province, as they are hoping to commence a petroleum storage operation on the South side of the island. With tales and dreams of untold wealth, the province…<\/p>\n

Read More Read More<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jenstutoring.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jenstutoring.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jenstutoring.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenstutoring.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenstutoring.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=364"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenstutoring.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":372,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenstutoring.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364\/revisions\/372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jenstutoring.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenstutoring.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenstutoring.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}