9 November, 2002

Letter 5

Hello! It's been a while since we last wrote an update on our doings. October was the push toward the end of the school year, and we wanted to work hard at helping kids get ready for exams. I spent some extra time teaching a group of year 12 students, as well as finishing up the year for my regular four classes. We'll find out over the next couple of months how everyone did.

We are slowly drifting toward summer here. The temperature is still remarkably stable, but it is edging up. For the last week, the high has been 82 F, and the low 76. The trade winds are becoming less reliable, but we still have breezes most days, so things are livable. Sometimes we have long drizzly days and sometimes we have sudden heavy rainstorms. Emily put out a glass to collect and measure the rainfall during one heavy rain, and there was over an inch in half an hour.

The kids are working well at school. Lora supervises almost all of that effort, and I help out once in a while, particularly in science. Kinsey does the dinner dishes most days, and Emily works in the garden. We have discovered that our computer will happily allow the kids to play Harry Potter, so the girls take turns playing computer games while Lora makes dinner in the early evenings.

Torey, the cat who adopted us, had kittens in the girls' room, and all are well. The girls are enjoying the three new pets, and the kittens don't have any idea of how much too much they are being girlhandled, so they don't complain. Torey is probably the best fed cat in Vanuatu.

The garden is growing well, but the grass is amazing and threatening to engulf everything. Lora works in the garden most days for a little bit, ‘til things heat up and get too sweaty. The rest of us help irregularly, but we're always ready to eat. We have a steady supply of bananas and papaya. The tomatoes are just coming into flower. One of the curious things to us here is that at least some of the plants are seasonal. It all looks like endless summer to us, but some of the plants know better. For instance, many of the flower seeds that Lora has planted have not come up. One large tree turned red in October. All its leaves fell, and now it has leafed out again in fresh green leaves. For that tree, "winter" lasted about a week! Some trees have flowered in brilliant orange blossoms, while others have finished flowering and are now producing seeds. It's interesting to us how each plant has its own schedule here; it's a lot different than Montana, where everything tries to beat the early frost. Even in Montana, there are different strategies: some plants are hesitant to jump into spring, and some are impetuous. Here there seem to be a lot of different approaches to getting through the year. One tree on Coconut Row, the avenue that leads to our house, drops perfectly round pingpong ball size fruit, which I kick out of the way every day so I don't step on them and trip in the dark.

I preached for the first time back in early October for World Communion Day, which was also the first communion for our communicant's class here at the school. I was worried about it, but the message was well received. It was seen as being very short, which is one thing that the adults fret about and the kids appreciate. I would rather have the congregation remember what I said for a long time than simply sit and suffer for a long time. That sermon is copied at the end of this letter, in case you'd like to wander through it.

We have been swimming a couple of times at Sara Top, which is a high valley behind the campus where the Sara River (a small and beautiful stream) has a pretty waterfall into a deep pool. It feels good to climb up the pathway through the heavy trees, come out on top to cross the grasslands where the neighbor's cattle graze, look out over the valley, where you can get above the forest enough to see what it looks like more than one tree at a time, and then drop down among the volcanic boulders to the little hidden pool. This last week we went in the rain. That feels strange to a Montanan, who believes in his heart that getting wet outside will kill you. We had a lot of fun, and did not die of hypothermia. The girls walk out on the rocks and dive down the last cascade into the pool, and we make much bigger splashes than the raindrops on the pool. Sometimes kids from the school tie up a vine to an overhanging branch, and swing out over the water. After swimming we sit on the rocks and watch the little fish and the floating tree leaves, and then walk back.

We've also been to a new snorkeling site, just about a half mile away down the road. It's a sandier, more gentle beach than the little ones in front of the school, and it's very beautiful to float there and spy on the fish, starfish, and strange sea slugs that carry on their lives just below you. The owners of the beach, at Sara village, have invited us to go anytime, so it will probably become a regular place to visit.

Our health has been fine, with one worry nearly solved. After trying for about two months to treat a strange spot on Emily's leg, we finally got some salve that appears to be working. In the meantime, we went through two courses of penicillin treatment, and two different diagnoses, and I got it too, before we finally found out that it's just ringworm, and not a big cause for concern. We, of course, are very conscious of weird infections, and aware of how easily little problems can grow into big ones here, and we are grateful for modern medicine, and lab reports that let you know what you really have, and doctors who have seen it before and don't panic.

Coming back around the island in the afternoon last week from our doctor's appointments in Vila, our van had a flat tire. No spare. Fortunately, we were close to a village, so we just sat, the driver, who was embarrassed and apologetic, and about eight passengers headed to several different villages. Various pedestrians wandered along on the way home from their gardens and commiserated with us. No, this village does not have any cars or trucks. No, this village does not have a pump or repair kit. Sorry, the closest person who can repair a flat is Michael at Onesua, but he's in Vila for a funeral today. No, Elder Leslie's van has not passed here yet. Maybe he can take you. No problem! All we had to do was wait for a while, and sure enough, Elder Leslie's bus came by, packed to the gills. Ok, still no problem. He will let us borrow his spare. The driver and a local man work for a while to get Elder Leslie's spare unstuck from where it has rusted under the car, and then they jack up our van. The wheel won't fit. No problem. Elder Leslie will stop at Ekipe, which has a truck that may be there, and have them come get us. So he drives off, and we share some cookies we have bought in Vila with the passengers and some local kids, and Emily uses the local pit toilet, no paper provided, and I talk to a local man about the new Presbyterian Church that was just dedicated. The church is new and clean, and built to double as a cyclone shelter for the villager. It starts getting dark, and we watch little bats hunting over our heads and big fruit bats flapping at tree level toward some destination in the dusk. After a while the big flatbed truck comes, just as promised, and we ride around the island, dropping off people at their villages. We usually don't travel at night. It's surprisingly cold in the wind around the cab, and dark. Kinsey and I wonder aloud which stars are which, and Kinsey chats in Bislama with a seven year old girl sitting next to her. When we come in sight of Onesua, it looks like a city, spread out with all the lights in the classrooms glowing and the tinted chapel windows shining blue above the rest. We usually think of Onesua as out in the bush, but when you're coming from the bush, it looks like civilization. As Americans, we tend to think it's pretty incompetent to drive in the country with no spare. ("Why do these people live like this, anyway? Where's their sense of how things should be?") But from this perspective, what looks incompetent is the willingness to tolerate a society where fear is the norm. Stranded motorists in the US, away from home in the dark, would not typically be offering cookies to passersby or chatting about church architecture. Why do we live like this, anyway? Where's our sense of how things should be?

Last weekend the school had its end of the year house parties. There are four houses. red, blue, grey, and green. Each house lives in its own dormitories, elects its own head boy and girl, and generally tries to look out for its members. So a goodbye party is a big event in the year. Food was handed out at an assembly Friday afternoon. The students, some 450 of them, all sat down on the grass in front of four huge piles of food, and the farm manager gave a talk. He explained that each of the houses had worked well in the school gardens and on the school farm as part of their duties, and that this had been a very successful year for the farm. The school, of course, has to feed the students, and they buy bread for breakfast and rice for lunch and dinner. The goal is to have as much of the rest as possible produced on the farm, while the students learn agriculture at the same time. This last year came very close to reaching that goal. We had to buy some beef from the next door rancher to supplement the school herd, but not much, and there was also some manioc and taro left to sell at market in Vila to offset that cost. So there was a lot of food piled up on the lawn for each house: manioc, taro, sugar cane, a big bag of rice, and half a cow, slaughtered just that afternoon. There were also a lot of huge leaves to wrap the food in while it cooked. The farm manager thumped a staff into the ground by each pile, while announcing which house it was given to, everybody clapped, and the students descended like locusts to carry it all off. All Saturday there was the smoke of cooking fires and the sound of laughter around the campus, and each house decorated their area with woven fronds. They used long poles to knock down flowers off the trees and made flower necklaces, called salu-salus here, for all the departing students. Saturday evening was full of music from tape recorders.

Sunday morning was the final worship service for the entire student body. The choir sang wonderfully (I can say that as a father, because both Kinsey and Emily were in it!) and there were a lot of "signs of peace" and prayers for the coming exams. After the benediction all the year ten and year twelve students, who were graduating from their respective classes, lined up outside to shake hands. The students left in the assembly hall sang while everyone filed past, and most of the graduates, both boys and girls, were crying.

National exams started Tuesday, and on Friday afternoon the year ten students left campus. After living here for four years, most of them had three bundles: a thin mattress rolled within a woven mat, a suitcase of clothes, and a cardboard box of notebooks, spare clothes, and personal belongings. Again, lots of crying and hugging.

The leavetaking helped us see Onesua through the eyes of the students rather than our own. We tend to see Onesua as a clearing along the rainy coast with the jungle trying to encroach. The buildings, low, long, made of grey cinderblocks and corrugated metal, look like a prison camp. The food for the students is tea and bread (with a smear of butter and jam) every morning, and rice with a few pieces of meat and vegetable soup poured over it for lunch and dinner. We look at the menu, unvarying for four years, and think it barely adequate and certainly incredibly boring. We see the dorms, with long lines of bunk beds draped with mosquito nets, and personal gear stuffed under the bottom bunks, as ugly and totally lacking in privacy. We see the student life here as a lot of hard work. They study incessantly, and do their laundry by hand, and take their turns in helping run the school, including stints on the farm. But how do the students see it? For many of them, especially the ones from poorer villages on outlying islands, this is luxurious. A cold shower is wonderful if you're used to bathing from a bucket. Running water is marvelous if you are used to carrying the bucket from the well or the river. And electricity several hours every evening! What an adventure, to be able to read after sundown! Each day something to eat that is not cooked in leaves and smelling of smoke, and what is this stuff called bread? Wow! Many of the students, especially the younger ones, label agriculture as their favorite course. It's fun to work in the sun with your house members, and to learn how to manage a garden at the same time.

Students leaving here after year ten, except for the few from urban life in the capital city, look back on this as the most amazing time of their lives, and pray that they do well enough on their exams to come back for years 11 and 12.

After the next week, which will be a flurry of exam marking and inventorying, our life will calm down immensely. This is the hot time, and the quiet time, and the time of not being used to the fullest. All of the students, and most of the staff, will go to their home villages for the holidays. We will be alone a lot. (We're begging, here!) If you are inclined to write, it's a great time to do it. We appreciate immensely every email we get. We carry the laptop home from the office where the phone line downloads for us, and read the letters aloud as a family, usually late in the evening. Emails work best with no attachments or forwards, which tend to take a long time to download, and then are not possible to open anyway. Surface mail seems to come from us to you in about ten days or so, but it usually takes about three weeks to get here. If you send packages, remember that it can easily take six weeks for something to reach us, and that using a large envelope is cheaper than a box.

We wish you the joy of water running from a tap, and the taste of fresh bread, and the feel of a clean shirt, well-rinsed. More than that, here in November, we wish you a season of Thanksgiving. Please don't forget the little things that add up to wealth, the minutes that add up to life. We feel surrounded by gifts, and your support is an important and welcome bonus.

Love and Peace,

Bruce, Lora, Kinsey, and Emily