Aug 18-24
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(18) Monday -
It is 3:17 am and the roosters are going nuts as usual and then the waves of annoying dogs join in the choir. So many stupid roosters, and dogs, 20 of them at least... barking their brains out until you wish that they would all just die... So I figured I would blog a minute and set up the post for the week.
I changed the style again because all these blogspot themes sort of suck and now my older posts have a weird text highlight that looks funny. Maybe I will fix it more like I will just ignore it. I want to try and frame my bed today. I needed the school circular saw to make the frame nice and square. I tried using my handheld one but it was a bit crooked.
I changed the style again because all these blogspot themes sort of suck and now my older posts have a weird text highlight that looks funny. Maybe I will fix it more like I will just ignore it. I want to try and frame my bed today. I needed the school circular saw to make the frame nice and square. I tried using my handheld one but it was a bit crooked.
I am sort of dreading this week since I will have to deal with the cult people all week but oh well.
OK now its 4:20 am and the extremists are going at it hard core chanting... maybe someone died or something, there was alarms going off and the whole compound is in an uproar. I walked around no signs of what went down.
No one died. They wake up at 4:00am to chase demons. But they are harmless just really loud and non-stop guess its only a week. I can mostly ignore it.
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Hours later after trying to sleep like 5 more times. I woke up and got the two stainless steel brackets to mount the murphy bed... and build the frame. I have yet to mount it to the wall I need a concrete drill that is floating around somewhere at my school. Check out these photos:
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(19) Tuesday - Randomly went to a cave / river near Jessica's site south Santo. I forget the name of her village. Oh wait I see her on facebook I will ask. Narango. The village is called Narango.... very beautiful place.
The trip out there took about an hour by truck, and it was way further away from town than I have been before, when we drove past AndbloCulter (or however you spell it) that was the furthest away I was from town... That is a nokemal... a kava bar.
The driver brought us all the way up this giant hill and the view was amazing. Rich took some photos, I left my camera at home because they said there was a river and there was, that we'd walk through and I did not want to destroy my equipment. I wish I had a gopro or some waterproof camera. Kicking myself.
The reason we visited was to see this HUGE sinkhole. It was an inadequate description or my lack of sinkhole experience makes that imagined place not look at all like what it was. The area of the hole was like the mall of america and it dropped into the ground maybe a hundred or two hundred feet. There was a narrow semi dangerous path that leads down into the ravine and eventually you hit a stream. We followed that to a waterfall and cave. Where we swam and took photos and I ate. The cave was pretty big. I could not see much of it since we did not bring torches. Maybe another time. Luckily the did not even charge us for the visit or it would have been like 15 bucks or so. But we are all broke so 15 is lot of money here.
We left about 3 and starting walking down the huge hill towards the main road. Molly, Rich and I... Rich was his animated self saying stuff life put our faith in him because the lord will guide him and therefor us. He is hilarious. I think Molly heard this bit of his a few hundred times so she got way ahead of us to ignore it.
So we made our way past a place called Tata... a small school/village guess there was a G24'er that served at that site and we found a guy willing to drive us into town. The driver I think his name was Peter... a Nivan. He attended my college in 1989... pretty cool guy. We had a debate about politics and other such things... it was fun talking with him. He wanted to know what I think would be a great way to improve Vanautu. I said a lot of ideas some involving how the government should consider a program to sponsor Nivan's opening their own small shops versus all the SHIT chinese stores that are dominating the markets if the town has a market. That and finding ways to export their food goods because they have amazing farms if only they could get some trade partners and well it was a long conversation.
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The trip out there took about an hour by truck, and it was way further away from town than I have been before, when we drove past AndbloCulter (or however you spell it) that was the furthest away I was from town... That is a nokemal... a kava bar.
The driver brought us all the way up this giant hill and the view was amazing. Rich took some photos, I left my camera at home because they said there was a river and there was, that we'd walk through and I did not want to destroy my equipment. I wish I had a gopro or some waterproof camera. Kicking myself.
The reason we visited was to see this HUGE sinkhole. It was an inadequate description or my lack of sinkhole experience makes that imagined place not look at all like what it was. The area of the hole was like the mall of america and it dropped into the ground maybe a hundred or two hundred feet. There was a narrow semi dangerous path that leads down into the ravine and eventually you hit a stream. We followed that to a waterfall and cave. Where we swam and took photos and I ate. The cave was pretty big. I could not see much of it since we did not bring torches. Maybe another time. Luckily the did not even charge us for the visit or it would have been like 15 bucks or so. But we are all broke so 15 is lot of money here.
We left about 3 and starting walking down the huge hill towards the main road. Molly, Rich and I... Rich was his animated self saying stuff life put our faith in him because the lord will guide him and therefor us. He is hilarious. I think Molly heard this bit of his a few hundred times so she got way ahead of us to ignore it.
So we made our way past a place called Tata... a small school/village guess there was a G24'er that served at that site and we found a guy willing to drive us into town. The driver I think his name was Peter... a Nivan. He attended my college in 1989... pretty cool guy. We had a debate about politics and other such things... it was fun talking with him. He wanted to know what I think would be a great way to improve Vanautu. I said a lot of ideas some involving how the government should consider a program to sponsor Nivan's opening their own small shops versus all the SHIT chinese stores that are dominating the markets if the town has a market. That and finding ways to export their food goods because they have amazing farms if only they could get some trade partners and well it was a long conversation.
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(20) Wednesday - Today I helped work on installing new mosquito net in the dorms at my college. Very time consuming work. I did that for about 5 hours. and I was lucky enough to get concrete paint so I can finally paint my computer lab with legit material and reduce the amount of filth that gets sucked into the computers.
Most people are playing ultimate frisbee today at 4 but I am not. I just don't feel like running around in the mud after a long day of working.
I forget so many details in these entries but what I want to try and capture is the odd things not the common stuff. Example there was a mini earthquake this morning probably like a 3 or 4 tiny just jolted my house... but right when it happened I woke up from a dream, a muscle-bound-moron from my high school, John Guilder, just shoved me out of my bunk bed at Timber Bay (a work camp for juvenile delinquents or volunteers like me) it took me a moment to snap out of it.
OR anther example... During the construction of the screen windows at the dormitory, we took the normal hour and a half lunch and sleep. Before they all feel asleep, Nivan workmen and I, all sat around the compound and started joked around.
Well more accurately they joked around with me. I am as most know from hearing me try, pretty bad at speaking Bislama, which is likely why they enjoy asking me questions at random like: is it a number one or number two... or zero zero? I never know why that is so funny but what they are asking is if I have one ball or two or none at all. They are always trying to make repeats absurd crap I know is most likely something about sex, or mutilation or anything they deem as gross or whatever. I don't really care, none of it makes me upset, it just is tiresome to participate in.
They love jokes about castration, or if I am big nabus or small (if I would wear a large penis shaft or small one) and homosexuality is always waiting to be dropped into one of Dickenson's persistent rants of questioning, and other things of this sort. I attempt to ignore it as much as possible but more often than not I just sit there and hope we can get back to work as quickly as possible.
Most people are playing ultimate frisbee today at 4 but I am not. I just don't feel like running around in the mud after a long day of working.
I forget so many details in these entries but what I want to try and capture is the odd things not the common stuff. Example there was a mini earthquake this morning probably like a 3 or 4 tiny just jolted my house... but right when it happened I woke up from a dream, a muscle-bound-moron from my high school, John Guilder, just shoved me out of my bunk bed at Timber Bay (a work camp for juvenile delinquents or volunteers like me) it took me a moment to snap out of it.
OR anther example... During the construction of the screen windows at the dormitory, we took the normal hour and a half lunch and sleep. Before they all feel asleep, Nivan workmen and I, all sat around the compound and started joked around.
Well more accurately they joked around with me. I am as most know from hearing me try, pretty bad at speaking Bislama, which is likely why they enjoy asking me questions at random like: is it a number one or number two... or zero zero? I never know why that is so funny but what they are asking is if I have one ball or two or none at all. They are always trying to make repeats absurd crap I know is most likely something about sex, or mutilation or anything they deem as gross or whatever. I don't really care, none of it makes me upset, it just is tiresome to participate in.
They love jokes about castration, or if I am big nabus or small (if I would wear a large penis shaft or small one) and homosexuality is always waiting to be dropped into one of Dickenson's persistent rants of questioning, and other things of this sort. I attempt to ignore it as much as possible but more often than not I just sit there and hope we can get back to work as quickly as possible.
(21) Thursday -
I managed to drowned out the noise last night playing my music (thankful that I have mainline power) and slept decent and I did not even notice the kids running around speaking in tongues and chasing demons around the campus in the middle of the night. It was the first night in a week I slept.
with a little luck I can return to finishing the bed and soon sleep on a full bed instead of these tiny kid beds I have been sleeping on for 8 months. So excited.
OK... I managed to frame the bed. Just not going to mount it to the wall until next week or wait until i get the drill "chuck" for the concrete bit. Mr. Dennis Came to Santo, and there was a New Zealand "Kiwi" Singer at the Youth Center performing, And the babby Docs had a going away party for Dhara... Dhara is great. I am going to miss her. I joined the Peace Corps crew that is in town for a quick minute at the Kava Bar, they like Kava. I am not a big fan so i just mostly hung out with them ditching the concert scene for a half hour, then we went back the baby docs disappeared, I watched Hunter and Dennis go on stage and adHoc perform with the band. then I too took off to go to the Baby Doc Mansion first time I saw that. Pretty nice place. It is located behind the hospital. They have a book with all the previous baby docs notes in it. We took some photos, and Simon sent on to Amanda from the previous baby doc group... heh. Hope she likes that. They made all kinds of great food, some ground beef sort of like spaghetti with sauce and onions and we put that over some bread and they gave me a tusker. Then we had this awesome cake. We listened to Dhara talk about her high's and low's of her few weeks in town. She is a diver. She went to the SS President Coolidge like 10 times. Pretty impressive. It is a WWII ship that sank close to shore in 1941 or so. This is a cool video: Diving on the SS President Coolidge July 09 - YouTube Guess her (Dhara) low point was this one new born baby had some problems and the doctor said that it was low on life power so they did not want to give it the proper medicine to save it... She or they protested and demanded it be given medicine... which they did and it survived... but it might have serious brain damage now. That is pretty shitty of an experience. I am probably doing a sub-par job of retelling this but that is the jist of the story though. Then Dennis called and he joined the party... we talked about peace corps experiences they got kind of quiet it was getting late... and I sensed it was time to hit the road so we took off Dennis and I and watched some Rick and Morty at my place and crashed. It was a rad day.
(22) Friday -
Nathan had a short layover in Santo... I went into town and met him at Attar Cafe and we got some potatoes and mince meat and tomatoes and headed to my place to make some lunch and BS for a few hours. We watched uh... Neighbors. Did not complete the movie but he can watch it later. Then we walked back into town and he caught a bus and headed to the airport. But he forgot his cell phone at my house so he had to take the bus back to my school then go back to the airport.
Tonight ... hm bet we go to Aqua and dance and carry on. I will go but I hate wasting money at a bar for mediocre drinks.
So we met at Sam's and went to club aqua... the dancing was mostly lame, since it is not a local paycheck week it was mostly just a handful of people and some really boring music. So people started to thin out and soon it was only Dennis and I standing standing around. So we wandered the streets and Dennis insisted on seeing the other bar in town called Club de Santo. I warned him not to go in because the place is 99% percent drunk Nivan men with a bad reputation for getting into fights over nothing. It is almost the Mos Eisley cantina in Star wars. So Dennis so I know know... and like a lure being cast into the sea... he waded through a shoulder to shoulder, mob of Ni-van's standing around, then he attempted to get around the pool table mostly failing, as he bounced around like a pinball. Then he made a charge to the middle of the small opening that might been the dance floor, moved his arms around above his head (he's very tall 6'4" and gilligan skinny) and maybe he did a slowly half spin around once. When he opened his eyes it was like he saw a great unpleasantness, no no... more like impending doom of nothing appealing at all, he desperately made his way for the door. I think he then saw me standing at the door entrance laughing, halfway in the door, and he very seriously said to me" lets go, That was horrible." I almost died laughing. It was pretty hilarious. Then he said, "There were fifty men... no women. I was prepared to be disappointed by the club scene in Santo, I heard about it, and so I lowered my expectations... but that experience, Whew... I don't think I lowered my expectations enough."
We drifted around the streets again... ran into a kid for a bit and he showed a place to sit and chill. We were supposed to meet up with him the next day but we never did. I told him that we'd probably forget... that it was not to mean to him that we did not like him, sometimes locals might be offended if you skip on them.
Then Dennis said we have to try that club one more time. I was shocked he wanted to give that place a second shot. I said no it's just going to suck again. But he insisted. So we went and it was identical to the first description of him going in, getting creeped out, then bolting for the door like dear life was at stake. It was almost as funny as the first time.
So after those shenanigans, we headed to my place where I introduced Dennis to Rick and Morty... it was a very fun even though i had watched episodes 1-11 a dozen times it is still great to repeat the lines of that show, "hundred time over, Rick and Morty(R&M) dot com, hundred days R&M, hundred times... all day, dot com www.rickandmorty.com hundred years all the time, just running around having adventures with Rick and MOrty www, hundred times." Ok you get the drift.
(23) Saturday -
Anyway... Dennis headed over to my place, after asking if he could, I said sure. Then we went into town walked around trying to find something interesting to do... this town does not have much open or going on when Sunday's roll around.
We ran into Thomas from G21. He's a dude that served in the Peace corps, seven years ago and then extended, then moved here, then got married to a Nivan and had two kids. We struck up a conversation and Dennis asked him what there is to do here... and then we got invited to go to this beach with him, Plencant, I don't recall the name it is something like that. We walked slowly up to Sam's house and loaded up on supplied water, snacks, drinks, suntan oil... and took a trip to the beach. It was a great time, the water was perfect so many different patches blue and Turquoise and green. It is like a rainbow in the water and the sun and waves but ok... the fun part was all the great and goofy songs Dennis played. I attempted ot be a percussionist using the bed of the truck as a drum set until I my hand starting hurting from bangin on the steel truck bed. Then I found some sticks. This one tiny car load of white tourist showed up to our beach right in the middle of our concert for Thomas, his wife and sister in law, and his two pikinini (kids), they rolled up their windows and swiftly did a u-turn and retreated from the camp site. Not everyone is impressed with our musical stylings but Dennis thought it was the funniest thing.
So then Mr. Thomas posed a small challenge to me, to swim out to the sailboat that was anchored close by, maybe a football field or two from shore. The current was going out to sea. So we did a pass around the boat and spoke the french captain who was sitting on board at the helm. The white people that came out to the beach might have been friends with the boat's skipper, they were like 60ish white silver and white hair.
Going back to shore was much much harder, but the sea water here is so salty that you float so easily that it is not hard to conserve energy. We spotted the white kids that were on the beach further down. We saw them earlier but was not sure of they were at a friends house or what. But on the way in I decided to walk over and see who they were. It was Jo, Nina, Vikki, Danny and I introduced them to Dennis but he was so busy playing splash the Nivan 3 year old with water he barely even remembers the baby docs on the beach.
(24) Sunday -
Well Just waking up now... blogging about the two last days... (I know the syntax and grammar of this blog are so far from perfect, a million typos and rules being ignored blatantly but if I want to capture the ideas and the things that are going on in my head as the happen I just have to sacrifice something in order to capture the thought before i forget them. I can clean up the words after there is a moment to do so. And as you might be able to tell the way I write is basically an extension of the way I speak.)
Ok spent an hour and a half writing this blog stuff today. I should get going and do something. Ate a great hamburger though.
Held a really great girlling party, as a going away for Kelsey and Jen Nadler... made hamburgers with toasted buns, nice ripe tomatoes, tomato sauce, grilled onion, mayo optional, with idaho style potatoes from New Zealand, and Dennis made a crazy punch, and I had candy as usual for then finis... it was fun, I think everyone was happy... Sam, Mike H, Mike S., Kate, Bryan, Rich, Dennis, Jen, Kelsey... Hunter was with his girlfriend for sure, Jes was at the TOT. I had my old school music playlist going and it was decently received.
