December 14, 2002

Letter 6

How these letters should be numbered is a good question, but I've decided to number each series, or format, differently. This is #6 of the unpolished, rambling attempts to journal our lives here, in more detail than any one person could possibly want. (Skim through, and find something interesting.) These may be sent once a month or so. There are also more formal letters put out through the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) which will be sent as newsletters. One will be sent shortly, and they will be sent three or four times per year. There is also the Whearty Family Tribune, published by the kids. It has appeared twice so far. These three forms of communication all have separate but over-lapping subscriber lists. Please let us know if you would like to be added to any mailing list. All of them are also available on our Web page on the PC(USA) site.

One of the reasons for gaps in mailing lists is that Kinsey was experimenting with programs on our computer, and decided to create an account for herself. In so doing, she wiped out our entire email connection, including all mail that you sent to us, all our records of what and when we wrote to you, and our address book. With help from Ray, most of the original address book was resurrected, but we know it is not complete. Please mention this letter to friends, and if they say, "Huh?" then tell them to email us. If we owe you letters, we don't know it. If you have asked questions, they must be re-asked if you want an answer. Sorry about all the confusion. We're going to work harder at back-up, but we will not be able to save everything we would like to. To get the connection back, Kinsey and I carried the laptop into Vila, and Jean-Yves, the computer guru at Telecom, the local phone company, helped us input the startup data while he was talking on the phone with other customers, paying a delivery man, and swearing fluently in three languages. When we nervously asked him how much we owed him, he laughed and said, "Nothing! You did the typing. All I did was sit in my chair!"

At the end of October we went palolo worm hunting. On the fifth night after the full moon in late October or early November, a very strange thing takes place in the South Pacific. There are worms that spend their entire lives hidden in crevices in the reef, and this one night, triggered by the moon, they rise to the surface and mate. Not every culture in Vanuatu harvests them (maybe yours doesn't either!) but Michael, the school farm manager, and Niku, his wife and the school secretary, do. Michael parked the school truck on the beach, rigged up a florescent light running off its battery, and propped the light on a tree branch wedged into the rocks along the shore. Then we waited for worms. There were none for a long time, and then once in a while we would see one or two, swimming around. I don't really know much about this. Maybe there are many different species that all have the same breeding habits, or maybe there is tremendous variation in one basic worm. Some are over a foot long, and some are only two inches long. Some are thick, sort of like leeches or planaria, some are as thin as pencil lead. The majority are dull orange, but some are green or blue, and some even have red and white stripes running length-wise. About five of us waded into the shallow bays between the rock outcrops, where the water swirled around our knees, and scooped them up with strainers. When I got some in the strainer, to the point where I worried that they might swim out again on the next dip, I emptied it into a bucket. This went on for a long time, without very many worms. Lora and the girls stayed out of the water, and pointed flashlights and called encouragement, and passed the bucket. Michael waded out across the fringing reef, away from the bright light, clear out to the breaker line. We could see his flashlight waving, then disappearing as he turned to dip more. After maybe an hour of work, we had very little to show for our troubles except sore backs from all the bending. Then, as the horizon began to glow in the last half hour before moonrise, things got busy. There were worms everywhere. Each wave brought in a dozen or more, and we scooped like crazy. When the moon rose, the worms dispersed away from our light, and we packed up and walked home. I slept that night thinking of worms. We had scooped up hundreds or thousands from twenty feet of beach. Now, picture all the reefs surrounding all the islands of the South Pacific. That's a lot of worms! The next day Niku cooked them by wrapping them in leaves and baking them. She sent over our share, and Kinsey and I ate them. They were salty, and vaguely fishy, and looked like a mass of gray top ramen noodles. In the old days, before batteries and strainers, they were attracted by bonfires on the beach and collected with brooms made of palm frond ribs, swept through the water to catch the worms. We later tried to learn more by looking in a marine biology book, but it told us that only the rear end of the worm breaks off and floats to the surface before releasing eggs or sperm. That may be true of the short orange pieces, but it definitely is not true of the long worms, which are complete, free-swimming, and able to move toward moonlight or away from a strainer. There are clearly things about this that are not understood well scientifically. But they taste good!

The school year closed with strange scheduling. Year 10 students sit exams at one time, and year 12 a week later, because the Ministry of Education schedules year 10 and a Pacific education authority schedules the year 12, which are shared among 12 little island countries. Then school continues for two more weeks, mostly finals, while the year 10 tests are graded. I can see how the system is expected to work. There are troubles, though. First, our school council made the decision to send the year 10 and 12 students home as soon as their exams were finished. It would be too hard to supervise and guarantee good behavior for kids hanging around with no work to do. Second, more than half of our teachers were (asked? invited? ordered?) to Vila to help grade the year 10 exams. This was necessary so that the exams could be marked promptly without having to pay transport costs for teachers from other islands, but it wiped out our staff. So, we quit school early and sent the kids home. It's one of those deals where you can follow every reason behind every decision, and it ends up wrong in the end anyway. The year kind of petered out, with lessons cut short and reviews for tests truncated. We'll see if we can anticipate a bit next year and have things finish up more smoothly.

School closing ceremonies, then, did not take place at Onesua because all the kids would have had to be bused back around the island. We met in the courtyard of a Presbyterian church in Vila. Chairs and benches were borrowed from churches, tarps were pitched against the threat of rain, people assembled, and awards were given. Top student awards are presented in each subject for each year, such as "top student in agriculture for year 7," so it took a while. Speeches were made, and going-away gifts made to teachers who were transferring, while several chickens pecked around on the ground in front of the stage, and smoke from the cooking fires drifted past. When it started to drizzle, an umbrella was held over the award table and the presenter, and the action went on. Afterwards, parents, students, and staff all ate together, and the school year was over.

We went snorkeling at Hideaway Island resort several times, which is on the leeward side of the island near Vila. Onesua's coast, on the windward side, is rough with surf and the coral is broken and half dead, the fish are small and fast. Hideaway has wonderful coral gardens, with dozens of different kinds of fish, some of them showy and easily identified, like butterfly fish, and others shadowy blue or nearly transparent and hard to see. Snorkeling about them seems like something out of science fiction; you're invited to peer into an alien world, the work of an extravagant imagination. The girls are fun, because you can hear them exclaiming to each other about things they see, even through their snorkels. They are getting good at diving and clearing their masks and snorkels, but I still watch them as much as I do the fish. We stay close to shore and close together, and are very careful what we touch.

Lora and I have been helping the librarian shelve, catalog, and repair books, and Lora has been asked to be the assistant librarian next year. She also hopes to start a preschool. She was worried that her Bislama is not yet to the point where she would be confident with small ones, but the mothers of the community want her to teach as much as possible in English to help their kids get a head start on schooling.

Tonight is an important evening in the lives of families across the country, including Michael and Niku and their son, Pua, who just finished grade 6. At 7:00, the names of the year 6 students who passed their final exams will be read out over the radio. About twenty percent of the year 6 students will be assigned places in junior high. For the other eighty percent, their formal education is over, unless they can be accepted into a vocational school or a rural training center. It's hard for us to imagine what tonight means to families and villages, as well as to the students themselves. One friend told us of her son, years ago, who stole the family radio and hid in the cooking shed behind the house. The parents only found him when he started yelling, "I passed! I passed!" After the year 6 announcements, the year 10 results will also be read out. This is where our Onesua students find out if they have earned the chance to go on to year 11 and 12. There are only places for about one-third of the graduates. In the U.S., where we even hand back tests turned over so that the child's peers cannot see the grade, this seems terribly public and humiliating for the vast majority of kids for whom there is no space in school. But it's the only way to get the word out to a nation of scattered islands. Parents of successful kids will hold feasts and start worrying about raising money for school fees. There will be a lot of prayers in church tomorrow morning, some full of thankfulness and some seeking comfort.

The Presbyterian Church of Vanuatu is now recognized as an educational authority, just like a provincial government, and under a reorganization of the country's education department funds will now be channeled to the church's schools. This is a localization of education, and gives the church more freedom to define policies and priorities, more chance to succeed or to fail. The range of possibilities just got a lot wider. I have been asked to help the church puzzle through how this transition should work and help to run a church educational forum on the topic in March. So I have been studying education reports and statistics and talking to a wide range of people to see what they think. The basic issue is that the government is broke, the church is stretched really thin, the economy is not really growing, and the population will double in the next twenty years. Hmm. Sounds like we won't be short of things to keep us busy.

I have been meeting with Pastor Tom most afternoons to practice Bislama. We sit in the shade behind the chapel and chat about all sorts of things, mostly questions I have about things I have not understood recently. I still can be left behind in a conversation pretty easily, but now that I'm not teaching English every day, I'm making more progress, enough that I was invited to preach last Sunday. There is an excerpt from that sermon at the end of this letter. Lora read scriptures in English and Bislama, and the four of us sang a song. I was proud of the girls' willingness to sing in public.

Our health has been pretty good. Emily's stubborn ringworm, which she has had since August, has nearly disappeared. Mine is still hanging on, but the doctor has just prescribed a new course of heavy weaponry. Kinsey came howling back from the jungle one morning. She was stung on her lower lip by a wasp. Wow! That hurt a lot, but baking soda and ice helped it quickly.

Yesterday we visited Mele Maat, a village where one of our teachers lives. Aki's mother-in-law died last Saturday, and so the rest of the teachers piled on the school truck or in a small bus and visited the family home. We took several bags of manioc from the school farm, as well as some small bags of rice and sugar, and gave them to the family to help them host the steady stream of visitors that come to call. Then we went inside the corrugated metal hut, and gathered around Aki, who sat on a mat on the floor and softly cried. Our principal gave a short talk and our chaplain said a prayer. A family member gave a short thank you speech, we shook hands with the whole extended family, even with little boys and girls, and filed out. The setting was different than in the States, but the essence was the same: in the face of the mystery of death, we share food and tears and what words we can find, and it doesn't really matter if you're in a carpeted weather-tight house or in a hut with pandanus mats over a dirt floor. We continued on to Vila, where we attended the wedding of Nae, one of the young math teachers here at Onesua. She married a man named Kalki, and since they are both from families that live in Vila, this was a very Western ceremony. Nae is the adopted daughter of the Prime Minister, so it was a big bash, with bridesmaids, and a hired string band in matching shirts with tropical prints, and even a hired photographer. Again, some of the trappings were different. The band played guitars, a one-string bass, and a marimba made of lengths of bamboo. It was tuned by filling the sections with different amounts of water, and then the tops of the tubes were slapped with floppy rubber sandal soles. After the ceremony, different groups from the couple's home island of Futuna presented songs and dances. The young men and women dancing wore traditional "grass" skirts, which are really made of strips of the inner layer of tree bark. In this case, some of the skirts were also made of the pink plastic ribbon that is sold here for string, and the girls wore T-shirts and blue jeans underneath. In all the strangeness, we recognized the feelings of joy and trust in the continuity of hope even through all the changes that can take place "until death do you part." There was nothing alien here, even though the bridesmaids wore chartreuse and teal, and the food at the reception included two whole pigs, complete with heads and crispy skin.

We have an Advent service each night after the lights go out. The girls' faces shine in the candlelight, and large moths beat against the screens. Week by week, we light more candles and Emily's alto on the carols gets stronger. This is a time of gathering strength and joy. We hope that you take the time to stay close together, be careful what you touch, and celebrate the strange. Remember that beneath our differences we hold in common the common mysteries that surround our days, each full of mourning and joy in bewildering abundance. Merry Christmas!

Sermon at Onesua

December 8, 2002

Bruce Whearty

Based on storytelling from the village of Fareafau, Nguna

On the island of Nguna, in the old times before the missionaries came, each village was the enemy of every other village. People who went into the forest, or even just to the gardens, were in danger. They could be attacked at any time by neighboring villagers, who would kill them and carry them home to eat. Everyone was under very strict discipline, and had to follow the leadership of the chief. Sometimes a boy was born who was strong-headed, and did not want to follow the chief. Maybe he would wander off by himself, or maybe he would refuse to do as he was told. Everyone in the village would try to help him behave as he grew, but sometimes he was just too independent. When he became a man, he would still follow his own thinking, a bad example to young men, and a danger to himself and others. Eventually, the chief would get tired of the man's disobedience. The chief would call several strong warriors, have them attack the strong-headed man, tie him up, and throw him onto the ground inside the chief's hut. Then the chief would choose a brave man as a messenger, give him a sacred palm leaf to carry, and send him to the neighboring village. When he left his home territory he would be surrounded by enemies, but the leaf would keep him safe and he would be escorted to the chief of that village, who would ask him to deliver his message. The messenger would say, "We have a strong-headed man in our chief's hut. Our chief has decided to offer him to you. If you would like to come get him, you are welcome to use him for a slave, or you can carry him back here and eat him. He is no longer a member of our village, and we don't care about him anymore."

Let's think about the strong-headed man, lying on the ground in the chief's hut. When he regains consciousness, he realizes where he is and what has happened. He is lying on his belly, with his face in the dirt. His hands are tied behind his back, and his feet are tied, too. There is dirt on his face, and maybe a little blood from where he was hit. The hut is dark, and he cannot see anything. He cannot hear anything either, not the laughter of his companions, not the singing of women, not the playing of the children. He knows that he has lost everything, his family, his village, even his life. He is alone, and he waits in the darkness, afraid, wondering who will come to get him.

Suddenly he hears the footsteps of someone coming into the hut. The steps come up beside him. He turns his head and he can vaguely see two feet beside his face. They are scarred. The man beside him stoops down and cuts the ropes that bind his hands and feet. Strong hands, also scarred, lift him to his feet and wipe the dirt and blood off his face. The visitor smiles at the prisoner he has freed, and says, "It is not my choice that you should be a slave. It is not my choice that you should be eaten. Come with me, outside, into the light."

Dear God,

We thank you that your choice for us is life. Thank you for coming into the darkness to lift us up. Help us be quiet so that we can hear your footsteps. Help us turn our heads so that we can see your feet.

Amen