We learn culture

Other than building relationships with our new friends on Ambrym, our main job now is learning learning learning.

(Hint on the Smileboxes below - many have the option of clicking to zoom in on pictures and for the ones with multiples on a page, that's kinda the only way you can see what's going on in them.)

We LEARN CULTURE:

Weddings:

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Wedding food:

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Custom ceremonies and dance:

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I didn't have room to add these last 2 pictures into the Smilebox but this is how the Rom dance ends - with the participants killing multiple pigs and then cooking and eating them.  An uproar was caused at one point when one victim ran away, but dogs and dancers soon chased him down.  Only dancers are allowed to touch the pigs and prepare the food.  The dance seemed harmless enough but Papa, the old woman we were sitting with (white hair in my header picture on my blog) said she was afraid.  When I asked why out of surprise, she said that after these ceremonies, emotions and jealousies run high and black magic is done against some people.  We didn't hear of anyone being hurt, but obviously we aren't really in a position to hear of these sorts of things anyway.  Another point of interest during the dance was that the guys wearing the Rom masks and costumes were often in need of being pulled (by certain straighter leaves on their costumes) by those not in costume into their required place.  When I questioned Papa as to whether these were the new dances that were just learning their places, she replied that they always require assistance because they are unable to see well.  Also, she said that there are no variations in the Rom dance, that whenever they perform it, it is always the same.  The whole dance lasted around an hour.

 

We had several hours to kill on our return to West Ambrym (Craig Cove)

to catch our plane back to Vila, the capital city of Vanuatu.  We just

happened to be flying out on the day that the (Australian) Red Cross was

 opening an office up in Craig Cove.  In honor of the event, there was

singing, speeches, and a custom dance.

 

 

Houghton and Taso (our friend from Ranvetlam village up north who accompanied us to Craig Cove) watching the ceremony.

School and community fundraisers:

Just in the large village north of us, Ranon, which maybe would be considered the capital of the language group, there is both a primary and secondary school from grades 1-10.  One of the chiefs in our village is the chairman of the primary school board and so led a community fundraiser for the school.  As Houghton and I were able to see with first-hand experience, resources are desperately lacking in the schools and so they hold a few fundraisers a year.

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We learn how to live in the village

Other than building relationships with our new friends on Ambrym, our main job now is learning learning learning.

(Hint on the Smileboxes below - many have the option of clicking to zoom in on pictures and for the ones with multiples on a page, that's kinda the only way you can see what's going on in them.)

We LEARN HOW TO LIVE IN A VILLAGE:
How to get around:

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How to do chores:

Personalize a scrapbook How to plant a garden Vanuatu-style:  We bought seeds in Vila before going to Ambrym.  Once on Ambrym, we asked around about where we could plant them for our own garden.  The village had a meeting to decide where we should put our garden.  Everyone's work on the islands is subsistence farming and with it being tropical they know how to make it work for year-round.  Their way of having us plant was very different than planting in the US.  Totally different soil, rain, weather, everything.

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Florida training 10-11

In Florida in October, we did orientation with Wycliffe. We thoroughly enjoyed getting to know others who attended with us and hearing their stories of how God led them to be involved in missions! Two families are headed to Vanuatu, praise God! And we learned that Vanuatu is in the top 20 countries most needing Bible translation, so we can use you too; come on over!!

All the attendees.  Their largest group yet!

Presenting the ministry.

All those going to Vanuatu, Lord-willing!  

The Team

 Displays about Bible translation issues in what they call the Discovery Center.  

 Various words for "to carry" in a language.  They're all different based on what you're carrying and how - just imagine learning all of those!

 

 Displays of John 3:16 in various languages with translated New Testaments around the world.  You can see the verse in each language, hear it read by a native speaker, and see a model of a real person from the language group.

 All the languages of the world - the language tree.

 

The founder of Wycliffe.

Kenners made it back!

Our teammates, the Kenners, made it safely back to Washington state to stay with family as of today, praise God!  If you read an earlier post, you know it wasn't without a few complications...like an earthquake canceling their flight.  :)  But they flew yesterday AM to Fiji and caught a night flight out to the States.  Thanks for praying for them!  They'll be chilling for a while with family, then start heading around to churches to complete their sending support team (financial/prayer/encouragement support).  If you'd like them to share in your church or with a group at your home, please e-mail me at psalm96three@gmail.com and I'll get you in touch with them. 

Tania has also recently made a great new post on life in Ambrym, so check that out at:  Life in Ambrym pt. 2 - Tania's

We continue to have smaller earthquakes and tremors - actually just had 2 more just now.  We're all ok though, no real damage done in any of these, praise God!

Earthquake update

Usually I'm amazed at how fast people find out about earthquakes here.  And half the time people write and ask if all is well and I haven't even known there was an earthquake.  We get little ones all the time here, but today was the biggest I've ever felt.  It was a 7.6 lasting 15 seconds (which felt like forever!) with the epicenter about 30 miles NW from where we live on Efate island.  I was working in the office at the time and things definitely got shaken around and tipped over.  We have some friends who were mildly hurt, but everyone is ok.  A few taller buildings have been moderately damaged, but fortunately the 2 story building I live in is fine.  Here are some links about the earthquake.  This one:  Fox news article is a bit dramatic and this one: Australian Broadcast Co article  is probably more realistic.  Seven plus hours later though, we're still getting aftershocks, crazy!

Our teammates, the Kenners, were scheduled to depart at 4PM today to head back to the US.  They were late leaving, waiting on the runway for a latecomer.  As they were taxiing to go out, the earthquake hit and shook up the plane.  An engineer was called to look it over and said it looked fine, but the pilot was uncomfortable taking off.  So about 6:30Pm everyone was kicked off the plane and the flight was canceled.  The airport officials spent the next several hours calling hotels here to find rooms to put up the 100+ passengers.  I took the Kenners to their hotel around 10PM.  WOW, great place to stay, too bad they couldn't have more time there!  :)  I have all their luggage so they have to sleep in their clothes, but tomorrow AM I go pick them up early to go back to the airport and they fly on to Fiji.  In Fiji, the airline will have to put people up yet again as flights only go a few times a week from there to LA.  So pray that they will be able to sleep, relax, and enjoy these times in these great hotels and not worry about all their luggage!  Pray too that they'll make it back to the US safe and sound, in God's timing.  :)

August newsletter

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Ambrym pics and commentary - from teammates

Hey friends, check out Gretchen's first batch of Ambrym pics and commentary:  http://richardsroad.blogspot.com/2010/07/our-north-ambrym-trip-volume-1.html  Enjoy!

Also, Tania has a new post taking you on a tour of our "accommodations" in Ambrym you can read at:  http://kennerupdate.blogspot.com/2010/07/grand-tour.html

I have more pictures now since I got over my Dengue fever and ventured out of my house again.  :) The Richards and Kenners got some great shots, so I'll add more when I have a chance as well.

Learning how to live in a village

Jim and Houghton have had a few tries at learning how to live in a village.  Gretch and I were in a village overnight on Santo island back on our first survey trip in 2007, and Tania and I spent a few nights up on northern Efate (the island where Port Vila is, where we live now) in a village, but really us girls have had very little opportunity to learn about village living.  The women of Rambwe taught us how to cook creek-grown cabbage, (reminded us how to cook) laplap and scratch coconuts, wash clothes on a board, and luckily we were smart enough to figure out on our own how to use a squat toilet, do bucket showers, and rig up mosquito nets.  We also got good at pumping purified water, doing the buddy system for night toilet runs, standing around in the dark together for brushing our teeth, swatting each others' mosquitoes, and waving moths off the lantern and each others' food at night and flies off each others' food in the day.  Unfortunately we didn't get experience cooking over a fire - that'll have to be next trip.

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Island kakae (food)

The people of N Ambrym went all out in their preparation of food for us.  For what is available this time of year, we were given good variety of foods and were certainly never hungry.  If anything, there was continually far too much for us to begin to eat everything, which was a bit of a dilemma.  They were very concerned that we like the food so we continually ate to bursting to prove we did indeed, enjoy it.  Mornings meant hot water and baked little bread rolls made by John in the village.  Lunch and supper were divided between 5 groups in 3 villages so sometimes Rambwe cooked, sometimes some from Ranon did, and sometimes a group from Lonbwe did.  My favorite was going to someone's home to eat, which we did 3 times.  It meant being able to eat just until full (as they'd be finishing the rest) and enjoying storying with them for awhile, as well as sometimes being able to help with prep or clean-up.  Our main foods were taro, yam, manioc and rice.  Quite often we had minute noodles with a bit of canned tuna thrown in.  Also pumpkin/cooking banana laplap (see pictures) was common, as was island cabbage and cooking bananas.  I LOVED getting the island cabbage and also fairly often some pomplemouse (sweet grapefruit).  Every so often there was some local chicken and a papaya.  Once someone brought freshwater prawns enough for everyone to try one.  YUM!  And of course, there was the wild pig we had on our way out which had amazing flavor.  Local butchering is pretty different than in the States as pieces are just cut wherever they go and all parts are eaten.  And of course wild meat (including chicken) is somewhat tough, but the pig even without seasoning was worth the gnawing it took to eat.  I've put pics of the pig here but please be aware that they are graphic shots so don't watch if you're squemish or don't want kids to see.

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Hangin' with the villagers

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Ranbwe was the village we stayed in the vast majority of the time, although we did head into Ranon (across the creek) a few times and up the mountain to Fanrereo (an hour and a bit hike up) one Sunday.  Most of these pics are of our friends from Ranbwe, who were the main ones feeding us (along with some from a few surrounding villages) and who made sure we had a place to stay.  They were very generous with us, friendly, and always willing to story-on.  We very much enjoyed the time spent with them!  On our way back to west Ambrym to fly out, we stopped in at the hotsprings again and the guys ran (wild) pigs and speared one.  Mmmm, fresh roasted pig is tasty!

On the way to Ranbwe village

To get to Ambrym island, we took a little plane (they had to upgrade the plane size to fit all of us) from Port Vila to the west coast of Ambrym, a village called Craig Cove.  See Tania's pictures on her blog for that leg of the trip at:  http://kennerupdate.blogspot.com/2010/06/day-1-getting-to-north-ambrym.html

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At Craig Cove we hooked up with Sandy (a guy) who runs a boat between the north and west of Ambrym.  At the halfway point (about an hour & 1/2 in) we took a break at a freshwater hotspring.  Sandy and a teacher we were riding with went and dug scrub duck eggs for us and we swam a bit and headed on.  God gave us BEAUTIFUL calm waters and I felt absolutely no motion sickness, hooray!  What a pretty place, hey?

Ambyrm pics

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Pictures from the guys' Ambrym survey trip have arrived! 

Guys are back!

Well, Houghton and Jim surprised us all and returned yesterday, over a week early from their Ambrym/Santo islands trip.  I'm in the process of getting pictures from them to post soon, but as a quick update, it was a very successful trip in the sense that they made some great connections with ni-Vanuatu in the language group in Ambrym, got all of the language data they hoped to, and some good logistics information on Santo.  Thanks for praying for their safety.  They got some great documentation of the trip and we are excitedly planning now for our time as families there next month.  Pictures to come!

VBT and Ambrym meetings

We recently got to be a part of the Vanuatu Bible Translators meeting (VBT- a national organization chaired by ni-Vanuatu men).  Our friend, Pastor Peter, who went to Summer School with us last year in Australia, is the chairman so it was great to get to see him again!  We learned a lot seeing how the VBT is organized, and we had an opportunity to meet the new members who were appointed this last year, and have a chance to share with them our vision and leading for ministry here in Vanuatu.  They were very welcoming and the committee member in charge of the province that includes Ambrym island, where we are praying about serving, was willing even to go with the guys in May to further survey Ambrym.  He was interested in giving advice concerning land disputes and talking to local leaders about our coming.  It's exciting what VBT is doing in the country to reach Vanuatu with God's Word!

We also had a chance the last few weeks to reconnect with our friends Philip and Sophia.  Philip is our main contact from Ambrym island and he and Sophia were in town for a preaching conference.  The language group organized a committee with representatives from each village in N Ambrym and the chairman of this committee was also in town for the conference.  We had a meeting together to get to know one another and to answer each other's questions.  We also had several days to hang out with Sophia in particular, storying with her and getting more help on our Bislama.  She's a gem for that. :)  They've all headed back up north now, but we enjoyed our time and look forward to all being together again in the future!