11 July 2004

Letter 24

Dear Friends,

June was the month of millipedes. We don’t know why, since they haven’t really been around a lot before, but whatever the conditions that govern the millipede population they produced a truly spectacular display. If they had been shooting stars, we would have called it a shower. If they had been frangipani, we would have called it a bloom. As it was, we called it yucky. They were everywhere, exploring the benches and table on the porch, climbing up the side of the house, crawling under the doors. Lora would sweep the kitchen clean, and they would all come marching back again. We have already learned from our cockroach and beetle teachers not to walk barefoot to the bathroom in the dark, but we have discovered that millipedes make particularly nasty crunching noises no matter what you are wearing when you step on them. We tried to interest the cats in eating them, but the cats just looked at us in that superior cat way they have, and led us to understand that it really was not their problem. So we swept and sprayed and said, “Yuck!” a lot, none of which seemed to impress the millipedes any more than it did the cats. Now suddenly we are millipede free. We don’t know why. They’ve just disappeared. We live in the middle of mysteries, and even the geckoes on the wall, who seem to understand a lot and sometimes chuckle in the night, don’t have anything to say about this one.

The big news for Americans in Vanuatu these days is about the “Survivor” show. The series that will air in September is currently being shot here, and everyone is excited about it. Since we are Americans, people ask us a lot of questions, as if we were experts on all things American. We have practically no answers at all for the local people, since we have never even seen the show, but we can at least share a little bit with you of how things are going.

When we first heard that the show would be on location here, we tried to guess exactly where it would be filmed. There are some very rugged, very remote areas in Vanuatu, and we each had our favorite candidate for the locale: the ash plain on Ambrym, the crater lakes of Gaua, the rocky cliffs of Futuna. It turns out that the shoot is on our island, just down the road from Onesua School! We have friends at the villages that own the chosen sites, and we drive past them every time we go to the capital city for shopping.

We think that perhaps the show tends to exaggerate the wildness of the sites chosen. (The alternate explanation is that Onesua is a lot more remote than we thought!) During the two months of shooting, the cast and crew will spend five days on Tanna, where the volcano scenes will be shot. The rest of the film will apparently be from Efate Island, where we live, and two little offshore islands, where we have visited.

The places where the actual shooting is being done are not untouched jungle; they are village gardens in the fallow phase of slash and burn agriculture. Of course, they look like jungle to Americans, since the bush just grows up wild. When you see the show it will probably give you a good idea of what our area looks like, but you should remember that you are seeing the Pacific equivalent of stubble in a wheat field.

Meanwhile, security is very tight. The area is patrolled by men wearing camouflage and carrying radios, and they are enforcing a no-go zone, which was quite illegal at first, since they didn’t go through the proper channels of giving advance notice for shipping. Some New Zealander friends of ours, just as obnoxious and confrontational as Americans are, made a point of sailing a flotilla of yachts into the bay in the middle of filming, just to protest the point. “Survivor” responded by getting everything properly announced and publicized, and the yachts went on their way.

Another issue has been the fact that this is an oral culture, where you sit and talk about everything before you even start to get down to business. A local newspaper columnist writes, “People in ‘Survivors’ are acting as though they own the place. They should be told this is Vanuatu and not the USA. They have advised the Tourism office that if local media want to get any news or interviews we will have to pay for it. Talk about arrogant.”

The front page of the newspaper of July 3 carried a political cartoon where a crewcut, sunglasses-wearing director says, “In order to win that one million dollars, you ‘Survivor’ contestants must survive 39 days without electricity, running water, hot showers and telephones—completely cut off from the modern world!” In the background, a Ni-Vanuatu woman says, “What’s so special about that? We island women live every day of our lives that way!”

This could give a person a whole new perspective on “reality” TV. What’s “real?” The carefully edited contests or daily lives? In my opinion, there will be nothing in the contestants’ games as challenging as this whole thing is for the villagers. They try to understand a world where frivolous wastes of wealth exist side-by-side with people who could use those wasted resources, and they try to reflect on a world where cultures clash.

There is some monetary benefit for Vanuatu from the American money being spent here during these two months, and there may be some long-range benefit in increased tourism from the publicity. I’m not sure that it will offset the ill will caused by the filming. Vanuatu is a great place to be an American, since we saved the islands from slavery by stopping the Japanese offensive in World War II. The New Hebrides, as Vanuatu was called then, was a major staging area for the critical battles of the Coral Sea and Guadalcanal, and thousands of U.S. soldiers were stationed here. The old people remember American friendliness, American generosity, and American sacrifice. That is a nice list of values to export! The current generation of Ni-Vanuatu, thanks to ‘Survivor,’ is getting a very different picture. I’m afraid that they see us more like millipedes.

Go ahead and watch the show if you like. Maybe it’s fun entertainment. But maybe it would be better to think about the real issues involved, side-by-side with the villagers. The TV producers could have done a lot better job; why not have contests in making cement blocks and building a new clinic? Why not see which contestant can learn the largest local vocabulary or the most intricate traditional dance? Why not compete in teams of illustrators/authors/translators to produce the best textbook for the local primary school? That would be reality TV. I could cheer those heroes.

On July 8 we had the largest earthquake that we have felt here. It was 5.7 on the Richter scale, and the epicenter was about 12 miles east of us, right under the Survivor location. We often feel small earthquakes, like a faint queasiness, as if we’re not quite sure it’s real or just imagined. Occasionally we have felt larger ones, which sound like a fat man dancing on the roof because of the shifting of the corrugated metal. This earthquake was the first one that we have actually heard. It came with a loud “Boom!” and things were scary for a bit. I was in the middle of class, and students jumped out of their desks and ran for the classroom door. I blocked the door and told them to sit down; we were safer under the roof trusses than running around outside under the coconut trees. Lora was working in the library, where books fell off the shelves. The girls were studying at home, where things rearranged themselves, including our kerosene lantern falling off our food safe and hitting the concrete floor. It’s easy to see how quakes can start fires; if this had occurred at night when the lantern was lit, then things might have been pretty scary. Aftershocks continued for several minutes, as if the earth was settling itself into a more comfortable position before going back to sleep. It is a strange sensation to lean against the wall at the back of the classroom while the students try to find the surface area of a cylinder, and feel the cinderblocks quiver. The kids giggled and had a hard time concentrating.

We held our monthly birthday party for the staff children in our residence. Beverline turned 1, and had a lot of fun wearing torn wrapping paper on her head. Charles turned 12. We gave him a small note that read, “This is not your gift. You must look on the stump in the flower garden.” The kids, including Kinsey and Emily, went chasing off into the moonlit night to find a series of notes, each of which said, “This is not your gift. You must look …” It was fun to listen to them searching in the dark for clues, chattering in Bislama and waving flashlights. Charles finally found his soccer ball, hanging in a sack from our clothesline, and the game started then. No need to wait ‘til sunrise!

Today we have a farewell lunch for Maki Okada, the Japanese volunteer who has been here for the past three years. She has been a wonderful help to PE programs in Vanuatu, including initiating the HIV/AIDS March back in May. Even better, she has been extraordinary at living with the local people, including learning four of the local languages. We are amazed and humbled by her example.

We will also be saying farewell to this year’s crop of student teachers. I have enjoyed working with Jacqueline a great deal, and it is hard to see her leave. There is a teacher shortage here in Vanuatu but the government has no money to pay new teachers. They will graduate, ready and eager to teach, but they may have no jobs next year.

We ask for your prayer support for Maki, Jacqueline, and all who face uncertain futures. Remembering how it feels to lean against a wall while it shivers, maybe that includes all of us. On the other hand, maybe we already have the guarantee we need: “Seek and you shall find.” While you search in the dark for whatever gifts await, take friends with you and trust that the outcome will be joy.

Love and peace,

Bruce

The 2004 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 101