I am going to be busy over the next two weeks, so this letter will remain posted until the New Year.
Dear Family,
. . . I'm sure that you are aware that a few weeks ago, the British Junior Minister for Health announced that eggs can be infected with Salmonella, which has always been true and I thought everyone knew. Well, British egg sales went down 60% and after a week, they had 400 million unsold eggs and the Agriculture Ministry put out £19 million to compensate the farmers (I wouldn't have given them a penny; after all, they are the ones that have been lying low about this problem and not spending anything to solve it). Anyway, you should have seen the expressions of a friend's university student children, who had just come here from England for the holidays, when I offered them some eggnog on the 23rd. I had made a huge batch, and since our guests wouldn't drink it, most of it was left over; so some other friends of ours took it home and froze it, and we drank it for Christmas dinner at their house. We seem to all still be alive. It must be that the rum kills all the germs.
The central government always shut off liquor sales on weekends and whenever they think there will be trouble, but I was forewarned of this by Radio Australia Monday morning, the 19th. I cleverly nipped into the store and got the aforementioned bottle of rum before the store manager had heard that the police had extended the liquor ban because of the attempted coup. (See the New Year's letter below for further explanation of the political strife.) I also got some gin the week before when I heard the same way that liquor sales would be banned that day because of the Vila and Lakatoro demonstrations planned for the 16th. See, it really pays to listen to short-wave radio. You have to be on your toes to survive in the third world.
I came under general ridicule on the evening of the 23rd, when we had the people over and I organized a carol-sing. Holly, of all people, led the general conversation and laughing that went on as I and a few others were singing. Nevertheless, our guests (well, the wife, anyway; you know how sentimental English women are) asked me and Brendon to bring our guitars over to their place the next evening for the Metenesel Christmas Eve party. After midnight, these four young ladies (visiting daughters and a son's girl-friend) asked who wanted to go for a dip in the pool, so I volunteered. Unfortunately, I hadn't anticipated that they were going to all find swimsuits, but it was all right, anyway. I just wore my red and green tropical-print boxer shorts, which I had shown to everyone as my "Christmas underwear". Lucky they don't have a fly. We had to clean some frogs and a wayward land crap (sorry, that should have been typed crab) out of the pool first.
When I returned, leaving the girls with all that female subcutaneous fat in the cold pool, we all sang carols again. Good thing I brought my Readers' Digest Carol Book with us to Vanuatu.
Christmas morning, we had put the plastic beauty sets you sent under the tree from Santa. We were going to put some small dolls in their stockings, but two Barbie dolls I had ordered from Vila on the 23rd (don't like to rush these things, you know), hadn't yet arrived even though I spent most of the 24th at the airport waiting for them, along with a bunch of other people waiting for packages that never came. Quick as a flash on Christmas Eve, we raided Santa's pack and wrapped the dolls as presents from us. Heather and Laurel later asked why Santa was so cheap this year.
On Boxing Day (26 December for those readers unfamiliar with British Tradition), we were lolling about on the beach off the end of the airstrip when a plane unexpectedly flew in from Vila. I hopped in the Land Cruiser and headed over to the Air Melanesie office, and there were the Barbies. The girls unwrapped them on the beach. I got the dolls for the girls because Mom and I had bought a bunch of Snow White and Cinderella Barbie clothes in Jakarta (I was there for a job interview) for the girls' Christmas, and all the girls had were these real el cheapo "fashion" dolls they had bought with their savings when we were in Vila last August. For about $3 each, they had got these dolls with Iraquoi hair that was supposed to cover the head if you parted it in the middle, and had joints that looked like two sticks with a nail through them. As you know, I am virulently anti-Barbie, but I let them buy what they want to with their money. Then, they spent the last few months sewing clothes for them, so I didn't want to stifle their creativity.
I also went against my standards (re: body mutilation) and bought Holly some pierced earrings in Jakarta. Mom probably told you that I got them. I couldn't resist these little scallop shells on studs, 6 gm. of 24 carat, for less than CAN$30. Just an investment, you understand. Of course, I've been asking for gold for Christmas for years, and nobody gives me any. I also gave her some perfume that I had thought smelled like frangipani, but doesn't seem to. It smells nice, anyway. I got it in Vila on my way home from Indonesia.
I guess I can let you in on the secret, now. Holly gave me a diving knife for Christmas! You could have bowled me over with a feather. I also got in big trouble a couple of weeks ago for stopping at a village one day and buying a carving that I wanted. Well, Holly had told me that they were ugly as sin, and she wouldn't have one in the house, and (I guess I should have clued in here) if I insisted, we might find some time after Christmas to go up and look at them. She, of course, had already bought me a similar one. I told her to just wrap them both and have each girl give me one. Funny, they didn't think it was odd at all. Later that day, we ate at the house of some Australian friends at PRV Plantation.
We had one of our best trees this year, which is very surprising. Holly insisted that we do what all the other expats do around here and go down to the Agriculture station to buy a Norfolk Pine. You know, the ones that cost a zillion dollars in Canada if you by a two-foot one in a pot? They planted about 20 of them down there four years ago. Every year, they just cut them off about three feet above the ground if someone wants one, and then another one or two grow back during the next year. They cost 500 vatu (about CAN$6.00). Holly insisted that we go down Wednesday, which I guess was one day earlier than anyone else, because we got the best one. It was great going over to the boss's place at Metenesel and looking at his Charlie Brown model, when they had been over the night before and seen ours. This spring, some departing CUSOs had given us all their tacky Christmas ornaments, which had been handed down through several generations of CUSOs. As you will recall, we have one lonely string of little lights from last year. The tree was huge, as they always are after you get them home, and we had to cut off a couple of feet to get it under the ceiling. We stuck it into a three-gallon ice-cream bucket full of sand and tied it to the wall, in the traditional manner with fishing line when it leaned over. It took up about a quarter of our spacious living room. We wound the string of lights around the trunk (rather clever use of a limited resource, in my opinion), and had just enough balls to hang one on the tip of almost every branch that was on the half of the tree away from the corner. (The girls made a few extra by wrapping foil Roger's Chocolate wrappers around eggshells.) Then I wound all the yards of about four colours of tinsel garland on the half of the tree that showed. Amazingly, it looked really good. We took it all down today, and bequeathed the decorations to Brendon. Our living room is HUGE now!
We really painted the town red last night. Not being members, we didn't get invited to the New Year's Gala at the Metenesel Estates Club. (I think they sat around the swimming pool and drank. Metenesel Estates is a large government-owned cocoa plantation about half an hour from Lakatoro on Malekula's west coast; we had declined an offer to join the Club at volunteers' rates.) We went over to Dr. Brendon's, who was on call and couldn't drink, and tried to finish off my Christmas rum. We mixed it with a bunch of sour mandarin and pineapple juice that I made yesterday afternoon. We sat around and read until Brendon and Daniel (another CUSO Dr.) finished setting a kid's arm (mango season is broken arm and eye injury season in Vanuatu: the first from climbing for the fruit; the second from knocking the fruit down with thrown sticks which return and hit the upward-turned face), and then we watched them eat. After, we played Trivial Pursuit until midnight, when Brendon turned on the radio, and we listened to the Prime Minister, Father Walter Lini, wish everyone a Happy New Year. Daniel wondered if this included the President, who is in jail for "inciting the military and police to mutiny".
Surely, you got all the details of the President's attempt a couple of weeks ago to illegally dissolve Parliament and set up a new government? (Vanuatu politics are never dull; this is part of a long saga that started on 16 May, 1988 when a Cabinet Minister, a relative of the President, incited a riot that destroyed downtown Port Vila.) I've never lived anywhere before where the President spent Christmas and New Years in jail. His court hearing is this week. They arrested about 50 people so far over all this, but have had to let most of them out on bail because there was no room in the jail (little biblical allusion there). Some have been shipped to the Norsup jail, which always happens when the Vila and Santo jails are full. There was going to be a demonstration in Lakatoro on the 16th, but it didn't get any farther than a Barbecue at our local beach, where the police went down and told them to go home. They all did, but there have been a bunch of arrests here, because they weren't even supposed to do that. Everybody is real proud of having been arrested. Now they are all martyrs, and besides, going to jail here is not considered a negative experience. It's thought of a bit of a vacation, where you get to eat free white rice and sit around pretending to work on the work crews. They actually sit around talking to Laurel (my four-year-old daughter).
Anyway, back to last night. After the PM's message, while Radio Vanuatu played the worst rendition of "Auld Lang Syne" that I've ever heard, we popped the cork on a bottle of French Champagne that Holly and I were given a couple of months ago when we held a dinner. Dr. Daniel, who is from France, pronounced it undrinkable (I couldn't tell, after the rum), so we poured all of our glasses into a Tupperware container for a use that will shortly become clear. Then, Brendon opened a bottle of Australian fake champagne that he had, and all agreed that it was low quality, but drinkable.
Then, we got into the local New Year's, which is called Bonane (pronounced a bit like banana, from the French "Bon Année"), celebrations. Groups of people (you can guess in what condition) go from door to door after midnight and sing songs. You come out and douse them with baby powder, they douse you, and then you give them a small gift, such as a kilo of sugar, some rice, a tin of fish, a pineapple, or 100 vatu. Some time in January, when it is agreed that the New Year's period is over (or the hangovers are gone from the two-week Christmas-New Year's drunk), the singers all get together again and have a party with all the stuff they collected. As you can see, they are socially very well organized here, with each party automatically providing the excuse for the next one.
We had planned ahead for the Bonane singers, with our Tupperware of fine wine, which we shared out like good white imperialists. These guys were already so well lubricated that they could hardly set up their tea-chest bass fiddle, and they seemed to appreciate the fine vintage. They didn't send the bottle back to the cellar, anyway. They sang and danced, and Brendon let them have it with the baby powder and gave them a few tins of meat.
It was about 1 am by then, so we went home to Lakatoro and to bed. Of course, at about 3, we heard a gang from Senal, the nearest village, coming up the hill to our next-door neighbours, the Mala's. I figured if we pulled the old Halloween-keep-the-light-off-and-hide-in-the-basement trick, they might not bother coming further up the hill to our place. No such luck. After coming up one side of the house and just about falling into the big hole that has been dug for a new septic sump (but that's another story - mind you, maybe I should go out and check if anyone is down there today), they came back around the other way to our other door. After a brief discussion regarding our chances of being home, they let loose on full volume. Holly wouldn't let me play possum any longer, so we got dressed and went out. They were pretty nice, and not quite as drunk as the bunch at Norsup had been. They sang a song about us going over the sea and them missing us (some of them are Council employees and they know we are soon leaving). More singing, while we all poured baby powder over each other. They were dressed up in grass skirts and had vines wrapped around their heads. Then I gave them a kilo of sugar, and we went back to bed while listening to them sing their way down the hill to the next lucky family. I suppose all of this would lose some of its charms if you had to do it standing in the snow at -30°, but of course, we had to put up with all of those night-time malaria mosquitoes biting us. I hope our chloroquine works. Almost every CUSO that has left during our stay, especially the families, have caught bad cases of malaria just before they left. I think we'd better hit the Gin and Tonic (quinine provides the bitter taste) hard for the next few days See, every party does lead to another one here.
So, now you know how we spent our Christmas and New Year's. Oh, yeah, the beach on Boxing Day morning was nice until a downpour started and we got soaked. I got in big trouble by pointing out that all the raindrops were falling a couple of metres away and insisting that there was no need to pack up because they wouldn't dare come over to us, which they didn't, ...for twenty seconds or so. Holly sets great store in her ability to sense rain coming and get the laundry in just in time. I say, what do you go to the beach for, anyway, except to get wet?
Christmas 1987, Lakatoro. ©1987, Picture by S. Combs.
The Tree, Christmas 1988, Lakatoro. ©1988, Picture by S. Combs.
Passing out gifts at the 1988 Norsup Hospital Christmas Party. ©1988, Picture by S. Combs.
Bonane Singers, New Years' Eve 1988, Lakatoro. ©1989, Picture by S. Combs.
Return to Letters Index.
©S. Combs, 1995.