Luganville - The Mighty Metropolis

You're getting lucky another post. Although this one much shorter than the previous. Now that we have an internet connection at home, I am enjoying this. One reader requested a couple of pictures of the town of Luganville. So here are seven pictures that I took when I was visiting here in October 2007 to see just what the place looked like.

This is the municipal building. I read its been under renovations for months or more. But I noticed yesterday that the scaffolding is starting to come down. I guess I'll have to go take another picture.



This is the farmers market. The village people (not the 1980's group) from near and far come here to sell their produce.



Here we are doing some shopping in the market. The market is interesting for several reasons. One is that the vendors sleep under the tables at night. They will stay a few nights until their goods are sold.




The butcher. Apparently Santo Beef is world famous for its high quality, and a specialty exporter to Japan.




Here is the fancy part of town. I'll have to get some shots of the derelict part and show that. Its interesting how media can manipulate the uniformed. I post one or two nice pics you think its a clean fancy place, I post a few others and the foreign aid will start arriving.



The Baha'i Centre were we are staying. How do you like my tan (steve`s tan)? When I live in a foreign country, I try to dress like the locals in order to blend in.



The road in front of the Baha'i Centre. Pretty good surface, not many pot holes at all.

Third World Technology - see how many you can count

Well, as you may know Vanuatu is economically classified as an LDC - Least Developed Country, a.k.a. Third World Country. Funny enough, after arriving here we purchased a cell phone, or "mobile phone" as the locals say. I say funny enough since we never had one in Canada. We were in that minority few who never owned one.

Technology here can sometimes be expensive, so when one of our friends was travelling to Malaysia we asked them to pick us up a mobile (phone that is, not trailer). You see for the price we paid in Malaysia we got a fancy fancy phone, not the bottom of the ladder one you would get here.

So yesterday after chatting on skype from the mid-most heart of the ocean with a friend in New York she suggested I post a town map I thought I'll just pop into town and take a picture of the local tourist billboard map.

But unfortunately Carren had taken the digital camera with her, then I remembered, hey, we got a camera phone, I'll just take a picture of it and bing, I'm done.

So off to town I went, took the picture (notice the guys feet under the sign) came home and then thought, hmm, now how do I get this onto my laptop. This being my first 'mobile' phone, I knew about emailing pics (pictures) but didn't think that service would be available here. Then thought, hey my laptop has a 'bluetooth' which I've never used, I wonder if the phone does too. After a few clickings around, I round it, then managed to link the laptop and phone and transmit myself the picture.

Don't you just love Third World Technology?

Anyway, that was the long version of how I got this picture of the map. I hope it comes out ok. It is also my first ever 'mobile' phone picture. Now to see if I can find where the bluetooth saved the thing.

Our New Home

Well looks like we made it. After we moved to Vanuatu, we thought, heck as long as we're on the edge of the earth we might as well go closer to the edge but not fall off. So we moved from the main island of Efate, to the second most populated island called Espiritu Santo, of Santo for short. Its actually physically the largest island and has the only other 'town' in the country "Luganville". People who live here end up saying they live in Santo rather than Lugaville, probably because its shorter and easier to say.

Here is a linke with a map of the island [the link has been moved to links section. just look to your right]. I like this map because it has the names of all the villages - sort of makes the place look like there are cities everywhere! Luganville is at the bottom of the map beside the international airport marker. Of course on this map it looks like the airport is far out of town, and I guess it is. It must be almost a 10 minute drive out of town.

Perhaps our biggest change in coming here is that we now have an internet connection at our house! Yes, its even a 'high speed" connection. Its not as fast as most western highspeed, but considering where we are it's pretty darn good!

I've been trying to google a Luganville town map but there is nothing reasonable on the web. There is a hand painted map in town I'll go take a photograph of it and post it tomorrow.

Until then here is a map of the whole country. Enjoy!

Celebration for Birth of Baha'u'llah

We had an interesting celebration on November 12 to make the Birth of Baha’u’llah, the founder of the Baha’i Faith. Celebrations for the occasion are held all over the world every year and each countries celebrations vary according to the culture and customs but usually include some common features such has reading of Baha’i or other prayers, singing, refreshments, socializing, and such. Our celebration here in that respect it was no different in that it started with some reverent prayers, followed by a short 5 minute verbal presentation about the significance of the day, some singing, refreshments and some children’s activities mixed with socialising. But the culture differences were quite an enjoyable change from “the usual” mix we have had in Canada.

First of all, our celebration was held in a community on a nearby, small island. The island consists of a single village and is called Ifira (pronounced with the ‘e’ as in legion). It is very close-by and in fact one can walk there during low tide. Although we took a water taxi today as the tide was high. It’s a pleasant little village. It has a wonderful relaxed atmosphere since it doesn’t have the hustle and bustle of nearby Port Vila.

As with most events in Vanuatu there is a substantial amount of joyous singing often with guitar accompaniment. So today we also had lots of wonderful singing. Some of the more popular songs I am already starting to get familiar with. Including an English rendition of ‘happy birthday’ they also sang for the occasion.

Later, after we had a lunch consisting of some traditional village food and some modern local food, some agreeing more with my pallet and some less, Carren had a surprise program prepared for the children. She had brought one of our English story books called, I believe, “Song of the Nightingale”. She showed the pictures and told an impromptu version of the story in Bislama. The children really seemed to enjoy it. It was interesting to watch her explain the part of the story in which the animals are preparing for a long winter by collecting food and then taking shelter during a cold winter snow storm! Here different fruits and vegetables can be harvested all year long and of course there is no snow at all.

After the story she gave out some balloons, and had some ink and stamps for the kids to do some art work with (on some blank paper she brought). The kids seemed to enjoy it lots. Especially some of the kids who put a kitten’s paw in the ink pad and made a paw print on their page.

The event was held outside under the shade of an enormous tree (not sure what type). Then later after catching another water taxi home, as we were making our 15 minute walk along the beach back to our home it started to rain. Although here rain isn’t much of an issue since it’s always warm and one is usually just wearing shorts and a shirt anyway. So there really isn’t really much to get wet and you always dry quickly when it stops. So we just kept walking and got a little wet.

Over all an excellent day!

Our first house guests

We are already having our first house guests. Everyone kept telling us when we left Canada that they would come visit, but we never expected anyone to come so soon!

After our first night in Port Vila Erin and I woke up at 4:30 a.m. The rooster crowing outside was trying to keep us awake. But since we had gone to bed early the night before at 9 p.m. we were ready to wake up anyway. We decided to go for a walk on the beach. But needed to find our flip-flops and a flash light since it was still a little dark. We went downstairs to the living room to look for those things and noticed a bug crawling across the floor. At first we thought it might be a centipede (which although not poisonous, can give a nasty sting) but on closer inspection realized it was a millipede. It looked cool since it was basically a black line like a piece of moving spaghetti. The legs are small and located under the body so you can't see them. We thought it was very unique and grabbed the camera to make a little video clip. After making half the clip the battery on the camera died. Then we found another millipede! Wow, two. Then another, and another. After a quick count there was at least 7 or 8. Then suddenly they weren't so unique, but still interesting. By that time dawn was starting so we didn't need a flash light and left for our walk along the beach and our first swim of the day. Our little A-frame house is about 30 seconds walk from the ocean and small coral covered beach.

Later in the evening just before the kid's bedtime we were on the sofa reading a book and had our next house guest adventure. Suddenly we heard a banging noise coming from behind the fridge. We thought MOUSE! Since we had seen one the night before and decided to get the cat from outside and let it have a snack. We called the cat over and lead it to the fridge then sat in our sofas being very quiet to let the expert hunter do its work. The cat heard the noise and was looking for the mouse, not having too much luck I thought I would go over and bang the top of the fridge to scare out the mouse and make an easy catch for the cat. I went over to the fridge and took a look. About half way up the back of the fridge between the back panel and the Freon tubes I was horrified with what I saw. It was dark so I could only see the outline of something that had the head of an insect, a few insect legs but had a body about 6 inches long and as thick as two fingers! Then it started jumping and hitting the Freon tubes making noise. I jumped back and ran to the sofa, telling Carren what I had seen. We thought we better get the flash light so we could be better prepared to name our recent biological discovery. With much trepidation we tip-toed to the fridge, turned on the little flashlight and saw a large gecko with a giant cockroach in its mouth. Suddenly our horror became laughs. The boys named our new friend "Sticky", since the boys said "lizards have sticky feet to help them climb". We ushered out the cat since we like the idea of something other than our shoe for killing the occasional cockroach that sneaks under the door to visit us. The roaches are somewhat large. The body is probably about the same size as your thumb measured from the base where it joins your hand to the end of the finger nail.

We can now hear our buddy Sticky calling us with an "eack, eack, eack" clicking sound to let us know he is still on duty.

Thanks Sticky!

We Made It!

So we arrived safely in Port Vila (Vila to the locals) after a long flight. All in all about 21 hours of travel. Just slightly longer than the drive from Fairview, Alberta to Vancouver, British Columbia, where we go every year to visit Carren's family.

We suspected it might take longer than usual for us the clear immigration so we listened to the Ni-Vanuatu (name for native people) sting band that was set up to greet the tourists and waited to be last in line.

After everyone else had chosen which line to go in, we got in the 'residents and citizen's line-up rather than the tourist line since we had arranged to pick-up our residence permits at the airport as instructed by the Immigration Office.

When it was our turn I told the agent who were and that we were informed that our residence permits would be waiting to be picked up from the airport. He took about one second to look around his little kiosk and then shook his head "no". I said, "are you sure, so-and-so from the immigration office said it would be here". He said, "wait" and got up and left. He went to a little office beside the kiosk and returned about five minutes later saying, "I tried to call so-and-so but didn't reach her". I'm not sure where he called since it was Sunday, then he said, "its ok, just go to the immigration office on Monday and pick them up". Then he stamped our passports and let us through. We had been worried since we were travelling on a one-way ticket and normal requirements for entry to the country are either a residence permit or a return ticket out of the country. Since we knew we were staying we didn't want to waste a couple thousand dollars on a ticket we would not be able to use.

After we got through Carren and I looked at each other and thought, "you've got to love the laid back island life!"

Some Posts

Hi Everyone,

So we made it to Port Vila and have some ocassional access to email. So here are a few posts that I wrote with our son Erin. We wrote them at different times but I'm posting all together since I have access to the internet today.

Steve