Vanuatu Life and Life on Sunrise

As the sun dipped to the horizon Saturday afternoon, there were no clouds nearby. Out came the camera. As the last of the orange sun disappeared below the horizon, there was a brief "flash" of yellow-green light. We captured an image of the famous "Green Flash" again and it looks as good in the pictures as it does to the eye. Having spent most of his career dealing with optical physics, Barry is always on the lookout for interesting atmospheric optical phenomena like the green flash, double rainbows, sun dogs, halos and such.

Bright and early Sunday we left Sunrise in Rubber Ducky to head down the coast a bit to the village church. We arrived at 730 am because we were told that church started at 7 am (that's not a typo, just being realistic). About 8:15 they blew the conch and at 830 they rang the bell and that is when church really started. Walking up the path to church we heard some snorting over to the side of the path - a pig. Then peeping - chicks. Upon approaching the village we found every inhabitant standing and looking at us. We are sure that many of the children have never seen a "white man". We used the time from 0730 to 0830 to bird watch. Coconut/Rainbow Lorikeets, Cardinal Myzomelas, Glossy Swiftlets and Uniform Swiftlets. An elder niVan, Silas, befriended us and we were grateful, because he spoke pretty good English. The Anglican Church service was very familiar and we could join in much of it. We found out women do exist in this village of Merino because we saw them all there in their side of the church. There were 2 church buildings, a new concrete one and a smaller wood post and woven mat one. Guess which one they used. They were packed into the smaller one with rows of people standing outside. After church we took a group picture and many individual photos as requested. We were given a meal of taro, chicken and island cabbage - yummy. All the food cooked in the earth oven has a wonderful smoky flavor. The afternoon we spent on Sunrise receiving visitors bringing gifts of food and coming aboard to see Sunrise, asking to see our photos and posing millions of questions. Word spreads at the nakamal, as we told you. "We heard you have a photo album." We are impressed with the desire of these very bright people to know how everything works and their interest in our life and country. There is not a whiff of envy; they know what a good life they have. Vince's album is perfect because it has fishing and hunting and they can relate. We asked about killing and eating fruit bat. They shoot them with a rock from a sling shot and then kill them with a stick - different than the shotgun version which was different from the prior kill them with a stick version. In Bislama, they killem ded (hit it and knock it out), then killem ded finis (hit and kill it). Speaking of killem, it means to hit. So you killem the gong. A piano is wan bigfala - i gat tith. Sam (some) i waet (white) sam i blak. Taem you killem i singaot. By the way, fruitbat is very tasty per our visitors. Still no one has heard of Disneyland.

We told them we might leave tomorrow so they brought extra food for the journey and thoughtfully picked some of it green so it would ripen later. Now we have 22 drinking coconuts, more than 20 pamplemousse (some as big as volley balls), 10 bunches of bananas, a giant yam, cooked taro, beau coup island cabbage, 10 papayas, 4 heads of lettuce and a bag of capsicums (bell peppers). And a shooshoot which is what they call the green cocoa pods that we eat as a vegetable. Other islands use the word choco or cocoa. This illustrates the myriad languages spoken in Vanuatu - at least one language per island and there are 83 islands.

Oh, and I found out you get extra credit for having a father who was in the New Hebrides (Vanuatu) in World War II. Add that to having a granddog named Ziggy and I'm doing OK here.

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