What does love look like?

It looks like a family adopting a white girl from another country into their own family, giving her an island name, and calling her one of their own.

It looks like a community putting aside their day-to-day activities and coming together to build a classroom for the local school.

It looks like children bringing vegetables to school for you (the teacher) to have enough food for the week.

It looks like villages and islands coming together to support each other through weddings, funerals, and now, through the devastation caused by Cyclone Pam.

It really breaks my heart to see the people of Vanuatu going through such a terrible time. After calling Vanuatu home for 6 months, the news of this natural disaster tears at my heart strings, and my prayers go out to all my family and friends, and just the population of Vanuatu in general.

Not only are the people of Vanuatu the happiest, friendliest, most unconditionally loving people ever, but they are also some of the poorest people you’ll meet too. Most housing is constructed from corrugated iron, and some traditional materials such as mud and straw. So it’s no surprise that when Cyclone Pam came and said hi, she left damaged houses, villages and communities in her wake.

However this is more than a ‘pity’ story, I’m sure, in fact I’m positive, that the people of Vanuatu don't want the rest of the world to feel sorry for them. To Ni-Van people, they come at whatever life throws at them with a sense of unity, positivity and faith. I remember when I was living in Vanuatu we didn’t have rain for just over a month. The tanks were running scarily low, and in any other culture emergency water supplies would’ve been ordered and being demanded to be delivered the next day. However, my Mama said to me “Big fulla upstairs will provide everything we need. He will make it rain, I prayed.” And sure enough, the next week, it rained. Our tanks were over flowing. We had more than enough water.

There is something we can learn about the small population (250,000) of Vanuatu. Attitude is key. If we faced our ‘first world problems’ with an attitude of unity, positivity and faith, we could be more like the Ni-Van people, facing hardships with a selfless attitude that looks out for other people and isn’t all about what I need and what I want.

There’s no doubt that times are tough in Vanuatu at the moment. With 44 unconfirmed deaths, lack of communication with outer islands, and crops nation-wide destroyed, Vanuatu is in a state of emergency. They need our support. They need our prayers. So please, don’t let the media control our naivety towards such natural disasters as this. Yes, the initial cyclone destruction was all over the news, but I imagine in two weeks time everyone in the rest of the world is going to forget about lil’ Vanuatu and some other news story will be pushed in our faces.

These are real people, going through real and raw emotional times. They deserve our support and they deserve our thoughts. 

What does love look like?
Well I can tell you one thing; the Ni-Van people get what love is. Without even realising it, they practically love in no other way I have experienced before. Be encouraged by these people, and pray for them. Mi luff yufala tumas. x

Click this link to see some before and after pictures of the devastation in Vanuatu.

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This is something I wrote in my journal while I was living in Vanuatu. Obviously, I didn't do this everyday, but it gives a small glimpse into what life was like for me while living overseas.

A Day in the Life of Saskia Whitelock on the 21st September 2011

6.15am
·      Wake up 45minutes before the alarm
·      Try to go back to sleep and ignore the full bladder

6.30am
·      Give up sleeping
·      Go toilet and sanitise hands afterwards

6.38am
·      Get changed, take anti-malaria tablet, make bed, and tie up mosquito net

6.45am
·      Make pikelets for breakfast- with bananas because we actually have ripe ones this time

7am
·      Eat breakfast with or without spreads (spreads: peanut butter, nutella, jam or marmite)
·      Have breakfast with a cup of lemon leaf tea with a teaspoon of sugar

7.15am
·      Brush teeth and wash face
·      Read Word For Today
·      Lie on bed and waste time

7.30am
·      Read book and go over what my plan is for my subjects I’m teaching today (I’ve already planned these weeks lessons in the weekend)

8am
·      School starts
·      Raising of the Vanuatu flag, notices, daily devotions (sing Rejoice in The Lord and Trust in The Lord and read bible verse)
·      English lesson

10am
·      Break time
·      No more classes for me now as I don’t have to teach Maths today
·      Read books, write letters to family and friends back home, talk to Georgia, mark school work, hand-wash clothes

12pm
·      Start thinking about what to make for lunch. Today it is manioc, cabbage, and susut soup/stew
·      Take iron tablet
·      Peel and cut manioc, cut cabbage and susut

12.30pm
·      Boil manioc and susut, add cabbage after a while of boiling and add beef stock cube

12.45pm
·      Taste test
·      Add more salt
·      Add mixed herbs and a wee bit of curry powder to add a bit of taste

1pm
·      Eat lunch with a drink of water
·      Read books and write in journal
·      Organise and rearrange school library into alphabetical order and non-fiction/fiction sections

2.30pm
·      Teach my class how to play rugby and play the ship game

3pm
·      School finishes
·      Turn phone on and walk to get reception and check for text messages

4pm
·      Socialise with Anna and Rinah (fellow teachers) and with some of the local kids
·      Make a list of things that you can do with bananas.

4.30pm
·      Start boiling water on the fire for swims (buckets of water to tip over your head- a.k.a showers)

5pm
·      Prepare food for dinner
·      Tonight it is manioc, kumala, and taro soup with cabbage
·      Additions are: vegetable stock cube, garlic and her salt, and cumin
·      Should be a gudfala kai-kai

5.15pm
·      Finish boiling water and put the food on the fire to be cooked

5.30pm
·      Have swim (shower) and watch out for Sally the Spider who lives in our shower hut

5.45pm
·      Get changed and put more wood on the fire

6pm
·      Light candles and get out head torch because it is almost pitch black
·      Finish cooking meal and add final touches to the taste of the final product

6.15pm
·      Kai-kai time! Have dinner with a cup of water
·      Eat bananas for dessert

7pm
·      Have a chat with Georgia over a cup of lemon leaf tea

7.30pm
·      Wash face with water and flannel and do teeth

7.40pm
·      Go toilet in the long drop which is a 100m walk from the house

7.45pm
·      Talk with Georgia about: Katy Perry, Justin Bieber, Kangaroos, Emus and other animals in Australia, songs that we have stuck in our heads, and teachers from old schools
·      Throw rocks at Larry the Lizard’s albino cousin, Alby, or Albert as he is formally known

8.30pm
·      Go to my adopted family’s house and have some kava and storian (tell stories)

9pm
·      Write in my journal for the day
·      Blow out candle
·      Go to bed!

Continuing on with my list of weird and wonderful things in Vanuatu, I give you numbers 6-10! 

6. Sex-crazy roosters
I called them the rapist roosters, which pretty much sum them up. Not that roosters in New Zealand are any different, but I had a fair bit of down time in Vanuatu, and unfortunately became a witness to these roosters doing their ‘thing’ while I was happily minding my own business under a tree. Those poor chooks, no wonder none of the families in my village got any eggs, the hens were always busy having chicks instead!

7. Our housemates
My roommate and I encountered various species in our house during our time, which we proceeded to name. First there was Larry the lizard, he was an approximately 20cm long reptile that chose to live in our food cupboard with the bananas. You’d open the cupboard and get a massive fright when Larry would jump off the inside of the door onto a wall and run away to hide, he certainly kept us on our toes! Then there was Alby, Larry’s albino cousin, he was just as big as Larry, except white. Lil Alb, was the next lizard that began to inhibit our house, he looked exactly like Alby, except was smaller. We wondered if Lil Alb was the offspring of Larry and Alby, but we couldn’t quite figure it out. Next was Sally the Spider, she was really something. She had the leg span of my hand, and loved to just sit on our wall and watch us, with her 8 eyes. I made sure not look away from Sally for too long just incase she decided to go on an adventure around our room and I had to make a run for it!

8. Wood-chopping procedures
Lighting the fire was an essential part of my day, without it there would be no food, and without food, there would be no Saskia. Point made.  We had plenty of wood that we’d collected and had given to us, but most of it was way too big for our fire, so we had to chop it… with a rock. There was no saw or anything normal we could use, so I used what anybody else would use during desperate times, rocks, and big ones too! I would get the large branches and sticks we needed to chop and balance them on top of two rocks. Then I proceeded to choose a really big rock, bring it above my head and throw it down onto the innocent branch with heaps of force. Sometimes I was successful, and sometimes I missed the branch itself. Every time I the rock hit the branch I had to be ready to jump out the way, because there was no telling where that rock would ricochet to after snapping that branch. I had many scratches and bruises after some of my more ruthless attempts at the rock-throwing branch-breaking adventures.

9. Sticker-love
All the pikinini really love stickers. That’s probably the only reason some of my students even did their work in the first place! You would see their face light up when you told them that they got to choose the sticker for the work. However, I always got told off when I stuck the sticker in their book, because the sticker would loose it’s stick! Instead the pikinini preferred to have the sticker either on their hand, forehead, nose or cheek, they usually went for the forehead though. It was hard not to laugh when I looked up from marking work to see a classroom filled with forehead-stickered students.

The kids also loved the word ‘excellent’. If I wrote ‘good work’ next to their spelling test they would get angry at me and say “Eh miss! Put excellent!”

10. Dead animals
This isn’t something that particularly disturbed or surprised me, but I thought I’d add it in anyway. I remember one time Georgia and I went to a wedding in another village. We were climbing up a hill to go to the bride’s house, all of a sudden we ran into a bunch of dead pigs hanging from a tree. It was one of those moments where you just had to take a step back and laugh. Imagine if you went round to someone’s house and they had a bunch of gutted pigs hanging from a tree, and not just the body’s hanging but pig heads too. It was just one of those moments.

Another time I looked outside my house only to find a really big fish hanging from a tree, they were massive! It was rather exciting because I hadn't eaten any form of meat in a month, so I was looking forward to eating them for tea! 

Check back next week for "A day in the life of Saskia Whitelock", during my time in Vanuatu!

In 2011, I lived in Vanuatu as part of my gap year and worked as a volunteer teacher in a primary school for 6 months. During that time I kept a diary and wrote about all the adventures I had. Recently, I picked up that diary again to take a walk down memory lane almost 3 years later (wow, it’s been that long!!). 

Here is the first segment of a list (I really do love lists!) I wrote while in Vanuatu, which I have elaborated on since coming back. 

Weird & Wonderful Things About Vanuatu

1. Mr Thompson’s fashion sense
Mr Thompson was the school principal where I taught. During those 6 months Mr T turned up to school in an assortment of bright Hawaiian shirts. The patterns included: bananas, palm trees, sharks and more. Mr T loved all bright coloured shirts, he also wore ghetto hoodies, weird looking pants, and snorts (sneakers and shorts).

2. Obsessions with mobile phones and photos
All my students LOVED it when I brought a camera to school, it got to the point where I decided not to bring it because otherwise the kids would get no work done at all! Anytime a camera was brought out, the kids would go into their default pose, gangsta. All of a sudden those sweet little kids were pulling the fingers at the camera, east side, west side, they did them all. It was as if the presence of a camera suddenly gave them a new persona!

Almost every adult on my island had a mobile phone. You could be in the middle of nowhere with no power and no internet, but I can guarantee you that there will be mobile phones. 

3. ‘Coconut Wireless’
Of course because the village I was a part of was so small (perhaps about 200 people), news got round, and fast. Village gossip about Mr T not coming to school because he had a kava hangover got to everyone else in the village before 9am. We called it the Coconut Wireless system, everyone knew everything! 

4. Pimp my ride
There were only 2 trucks on my island, but in Port Villa (Vanuatu’s capital) there were plenty of cars, trucks, and motorbikes. They all had subwoofers, neon lights, and anything that made their vehicles look remotely cooler. They all looked like mutton dressed as lamb, but these old, dusty, rusty pimped out vehicles were all the rage!

One night on Nguna (my island) one of my students, Andrew, came up to my house on his bike. Every possible surface of that bike was covered in neon lights. The spokes, the handle bars, the rim, the seat, everything! And they were all hooked up to a battery pack that sat in the front basket, he thought he was the man! Also, there were no streetlights or anything, so you could see Andrew biking to your house right from the other side of the village! 

5. Hilarious laughs
One of the funniest things about the Ni-Van women were their laughs. None of this half-cast laughing, when they laughed, they really laughed. You’d find yourself laughing just as loud with them at something as simple as George Bush (my adopted family’s dog) walking into a door (he was old). Their laugh was contagious, and full of life. The Ni-Vans I came across were probably the happiest people I have ever met in my life, so how could you not find yourself be happy when were with them! 

Be sure to check back soon for more weird and wonderful things about Vanuatu!