John and Elaine - it's so hot in Vanuatu!

John and Elaine, UCA Volunteers in Mission from Victoria are serving as teachers in Vanuatu. On Friday 4th March 2005, they wrote:

At last I am able to email. I started on Feb 23 and the power went off. I then decided to prepare the email offline and email when I could. Since then we have either had no phones or intermittent power so I have not been able to email at all. Today I am in Vila (on the main island of Efate). I came mainly to email and phone . As well as having problems with emails and phones we have had mail delivery every 9 or 10 days (supposed to be daily and we are a post office sub agency) They forget to collect the mail at Vila and of course if they don't collect they don't take our letters to the post either. Oh well, it can only improve.

Teaching is great. The kids are really eager to learn - though I wish we could get them to talk and even then a bit louder than a whisper! The kids we had in Year 7 and now in Year 8 are good. They are confident and will speak up. Maybe we will get the others going.

Things are much better organised so far - bells go on time and the teachers are in class most days. There are much better desks and chairs for the kids - not fancy by any means but they are not broken and there is a chair for every kid - bonus!

Yesterday I went to a classroom without a teacher. The teacher had left them a message to study for the final exam - agriculture. The final exam is in November!!! Of course if you tell kids to stay in the room and study they do just that! I guess I have told you there is no such thing as a relief teacher so the kids are often on their own.

Our house is a mansion compared with the houses we have lived in previously - very breezy and easy to keep clean - just concrete floors and no coverings - like our garage floor at home. Still no fly wires to keep mossies out but the mossie net is pretty good. Kitchen bench space is about 30 cms total - getting good at juggling.

We really appreciate the second hand pencils and textas from primary school around Sale - they are great for assignment work and the kids really value them. We got the books from Maffra Secondary the other day. They are outstanding books - and because we chose them they are all relevant to the course here. We also got our teaching materials. Some stuff is missing but we are lucky to get what we have.

We now have our own vegie garden. Our old Year 10's came and planted some Island cabbage and some manioc. I wanted the island Cabbage as it is high in iron(like spinach) but I will not be cooking lap lap - we will just rely on gifts from our neighbours. The teachers have been very generous to us this year - lots of bananas which really helps us a lot as we cannot get fruit unless we go to Vila otherwise. Last night we had tuluk and somboro - both lovely local foods - but too much (92 families cooked). We gave the extras away to hungry kids - didn't want to ruin our chances of a repeat plate sometime
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On Sunday I had to tell a children's story at church. It had to be based on the school motto - "The truth shall set you free". I did my version of one of Loloma's stories - made puppets. John finished my story with a skit enacting stealing money from a case in the dorms. I told him what I wanted him to do but he did far better - he was hilarious. Beats me how he can be so silly and clever when he isn't a confident talker . I must say he is great to team teach with - it's a bit like being in a comic show. The kids love his Grade 3 humour - and can understand it - not sophisticated.

Just finished the hottest Feb on record in Vanuatu. No wonder we were hot. However the last few days have been cooler - a bit.