Letters to Students in Vanuatu!

How many times do you get to write to a student in the South Pacific? Probably not often. If you want to check "send a letter to Vanuatu" off your bucket list (I'm sure it's on there somewhere! ), read on!

Interested in sending a letter to my 5th and 6th grade students in Vanuatu? If so, send a postcard or short letter addressed to me. In return a student will write a reply. I'll take a picture of the student with their reply, and post it on my here, on my blog.

The students are interested in who you are, how you know me, what your family is like, what your job is, if you have a pet, where you live, favorite activities, favorite sports, and/or favorite foods. They are also interested in reading about animals that live in your area, narural landmarks (like Niagara Falls), traditions, and anything else about other countries. Feel free to ask questions of them for their reply! 

The address is:
Liz Atallah
P.O. Box 60
Saratamata
East Ambae Island
Vanuatu
South Pacific

Thanks in advance!

Bislama and "Bastard Tongues"

I've been putting off writing about Bislama, the national and unifying language of Vanuatu, until I knew it better (and I had my laptop to type this out on instead of a smartphone). However, I just read a book titled "Bastard Tongues", and while Bislama wasn't mentioned in it, the pidgin and Creole languages it described reminded me of Bislama so I thought I would take a stab at writing briefly about this crazy language. 

I've heard and read that Bislama is a pidgin language, which according to "Bastard Tongues" is defined as "a much reduced form of language used when people speaking in two or more mutually incomprehensible languages have to communicate with each other". This certainly describes how Bislama developed. In the first half of the 19th century, there was contact between Europeans, Polynesians, and ni-Vanuatu in the whaling, sandelwood, and beche-de-mer (sea cucumber) industries. In the late 19th century, ni-Vanuatu worked on sugarcane plantations in Australia as indentured servents. According to "Bislama: An Introduction to the National Language of Vanuatu", over 50,000 ni-Vanuatu worked on plantations in Australia, Fiji, and Samoa from 1863 - 1911. With the workers coming from different islands of Vanuatu, with different languages, and also coming from countries such as the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea, the language now known as Bislama (or Tok Pisin in PNG and Pijin in the Solomons) developed. 

In present day Vanuatu, the main reason that a unifying language is needed is because the country has over 100 languages. This number is staggering to me, especially considering the population of only about 220,000 (according to the Peace Corps Vanuatu language training book). I can only assume that the geography of the archipelago is what led to this. From my porch on Ambae, I can see the other two islands that make up the province- Maewo and Pentacost. Dividing the islands is often rough, open water. I can't imagine back in the day that the islands would have much interaction. In my village on Ambae, there are some people from Pentacost. People from Ambae always speak the local Ambae language to each other. The people from Pentacost speak the language of Pentacost to each other. And between the two groups (and with me), everyone speaks Bislama. The ease at which people switch between languages amazes me, especially as I haven't yet started to learn the local Ambae language other than a few words, and I often stumble over my words switching between English and Bislama. I sometimes have to remind myself that when we are speaking Bislama,  we are speaking no ones first language. 

Back to definitions. The definition of a pidgin language goes on to say that it typically had "limited vocabulary  and little if anything in the way of grammar". The vocabulary of Bislama is quite limited (which I'm reminded of every time I want to say that a view is beautiful) and mainly English based. The grammar,  however, is developed, which is where Bislama differs from the definition of a pidgin language. Everything I've read about Bislama  calls it a pidgin language, so I hadn't thought of it as anything else until I read "Bastard Tongues".

Since the vocabulary of Bislama is mainly based off English and is written as it sounds, try reading these sentences! (Translations below)

1. Mi wantem pem sam capsicum.
2. Yu go wea?
3. Mi gat wan garen klosap long haos blong mi.
4. Fulap man i gat sit sit wota. 

Although much of the vocabulary is based off of English, there are some common words that are based off of other languages. What I find interesting about these  words is that many were mentioned in "Bastard Tongues" in Creoles and pidgins across the globe, even though Bislama was never mentioned. Some examples are 'save' meaning 'to know', 'pikinini' meaning 'child", and the use of 'bin' as a past tense marker.

Translations of the sentences above:

1. I want to buy some peppers.
2. Where are you going?
3. I have a garden near my house.
4. A lot of people have diarrhea.

 Although I wasn't a huge fan of the voice of the author throughout "Bastard Tongues", it has really made me think more about the structure of Bislama, its development, and its usage. I'll end with a long quote from the book about language in schools that, while it is talking about Hawaiian in the late 19th century, is something that I now think about when I constantly hear Bislama being spoken in the classrooms, instead of English. 
"Just imagine you're a Hawaiian teacher with a class of mostly Hawaiian children,  and you're trying to teach them geometry. Some bureaucrat in Honolulu has told you that you have to teach it in English,  but hardly any of the kids know any English. You start trying to explain the square of a hypotenuse and you watch their eyes glaze over. So what do you do? You're out in the boonies, there's not an inspector in sight. Do you persevere in English,  or do you switch to Hawaiian?  I mean, get real."

A Day at the Garden

On a Saturday morning, I found myself wondering what I was going to do for the rest of the day. It was 9:30 and I had already finished my Saturday washing and cleaning. Just then, my host brother came over to say that I should go to the garden with my host family. Perfect!  I love when plans are made for me here. And I had been wanting to go to the garden with them- people's gardens are essential to life here and everyone has one.

Their garden is a leisurely 40 minute uphill walk from the village. When we started walking, I was the only person wearing anything on my feet. I realized why after a few minutes when my flip flops kept getting stuck in the mud on the narrow, wet path and eventually joined them in their barefootness. The view and atmosphere from my host family's garden is incredible. When we first got there, we sat eating sugar cane my host papa had just cut, looking down at Maewo, the ocean, and the surrounding greenery. There are no villages around, and therefore the only noises we could hear were the birds, insects,  leaves, and each others chewing. 

Their garden grows taro, manioc, and yams. Compared to other people's gardens it is quite small, since my host mama is a nurse and doesn't rely on selling food at the market in town like many people. The only things we had brought with us were matches, fabric, and some big knives. The matches were used to start a fire to cook lunch, the fabric was used to carry yams down on the way back, and the knives were used for everything else. 

The goal of the day was to harvest some yams. To do that, we sat on the ground and dug with the knives and our hands. It seemed pretty inefficient, but we dug up quite a few yams. I was very surprised to see the yams that were dug up- there were a few different kinds, and none were the yam that I know from the US. Many were huge! Some were a foot long and a few inches wide, some reminded me of the shape of the state of Ohio, some looked like giant turnips. After we dug up a few, my host brother made a fire and put some yams directly in it to cook. He cut some bamboo, and then roasted some taro leaves in it. He broke a branch and whittled it into small utensils. I am also so impressed how ni-Vans always seem to make things out of what I think of as nothing! I tried to forget  the fact that the knive being used for our food was a knife that had just been digging up yams in the dirt a few minutes before.

I 'bamba-d' on the way back- carrying yams in fabric on my back. My host family thought it was hilarious to see a dudurani (white person) doing that, and laughed a good part of the walk down. All in all, a good and eye opening day at the garden!

An Uninvited Guest at a Wedding

On a Thursday morning,  I was waiting for the other teachers to arrive at school even though it was already 8:20 and school should start at 8. Anyways, that's not relevant. My host papa came over to tell me that there was going to be a wedding (mared) in a nearby village in the afternoon,  and I should go. The question of "What should I wear?" provoked laughter, apparently most people just wear their normal everyday clothes to a wedding here.  That afternoon, we went to the "nearby village" ( an hour walk away), and I sat with some women from my village who had already arrived. It felt like a giant picnic! There were people-hundreds- sitting everywhere on the ground, eating and chatting. Everyone was waiting for the bride and groom and their families to arrive. Apparently they went to the bride's village in the morning to do some kustom things and pack her stuff to bring to her soon-to-be husband's village. Once they arrived by truck, the bride changed into her wedding dress. While she was doing that, all the aunts of the groom went into the couple's house and locked the door, while the aunts of the bride walked around the house 4 times and then knocked on the door incessantly until the groom's aunts let them in. I have no idea why. 

The couple had a short church ceremony, although almost everyone stayed outside and didn't pay attention. The couple cut their cake (yum), and then the most interesting part began! In Vanuatu the family of the groom must pay a bride price, consisting of money, mats, pigs, pigs' tusks, and probably other things I missed. The bride price ceremony was chaos. Dozens of women carried mats, tied in bundles, on their heads to a central area. Some men behind carried small pigs, chickens, and pigs' skulls. The women were all in a colorful clump unrolling the mats and piling them. Unfortunately that's all I saw, because it was getting dark and none of the group I was walking back with had flashlights. I've been assured I'll have more chances to go to weddings in the future, though!