Day 4: Left Past the First Goat

Slightly tired of Vila, I decided to head for Nguna- a small neighboring island. The thing with island people is that they don’t plan ahead. This means that they’re not so good at giving information, direction, or anything corresponding to time. I headed to the market around 8am because I had heard that the trucks bring people in from nguna to sell stuff at the market and then head back. After a bit of a run-around, I headed to the store which seemed to serve as the bust stop for people heading to the other side of the island. I parked myself in front of the store and asked everyone I saw if they were going to Nguna. Just follow the locals I kept telling myself. No one could understand why I wanted to go there or what I was going to do there. “Peace Corps volunteer? Missionary?” They asked. “No, just on holiday” I replied.Finally, I found a man and a lady wearing an extra bright Mother Hubbard dress who were headed to Nguna. Yeah, the missionaries couldn’t deal with nudity so they roped the Ni-Vanuatu women into these large, unflattering, brightly colored dresses. I enjoy wearing dresses. But, the women in Vanuatu do a lot of hard work and the dresses just seem to get in the way. Anyhow, I had a recommendation to stay at the Nakie Women’s Guest House in Nguna but I hadn’t made reservations. The guy going to Nguna got on the phone (yes, everyne there has cell phones) and I could tell he was talking about me. Bislama is an extreme form of pidgin English so it’s not that hard to pick out main ideas. After hanging up, he didn’t say anything to me. We just waited. Finally around 11:30 or 12pm, the truck came. There were 10 of us piled in the back of this small truck along with tons of supplies(food, kerosene, etc.). Two and half hours of bumpy dirt roads, steep hills, and 500 vatu ($5) later, we were at the dock. One dock in the middle of nowhere. The boat was waiting for us so everyone helped in the unloading and reloading. By this point, one of the women was still intrigued by me so she was looking out for me and making sure that my stuff got put on the boat. The boat couldn’t have been more than 15-17 feet. It took about 45 minutes to get to Nguna. As we arrived, everything was unloaded and the lady who was helping me offered to walk me to the Guest house where I was going to stay. About that time, Enet, an employee of the guesthouse came to greet me. I guess that the guy on the phone talking about me must have called the guesthouse to tell them I was coming. It never ceases to amaze me how things can sort of just happen in place like this. It’s like there’s a non- system in place that no one understands except for the locals but it works.

I was really pleased with the Nakie Guesthouse. I think the EU and some Australian group had come in and remodeled it and given the ni-Vanuatu women some advice. For 3000vatu/night ($30), I had my own room and 3 meals per day. It was sort of expensive for what it was, but I felt good about staying here because the money went to the women in the village unlike the bungalows down the “street” where the owner seemed to be all about the money for himself. His bungalows were about 100 feet from the beach, but I didn’t mind the 3 minute walk from my place.

The only other white people on the island were staying at the beach bungalows. I walked down there to check it out. I wasn’t sure how far I was walking, so when I found a goat tied to a tree, I used him as my landmark. There’s no paved roads on Nguna. With only 12 villages (about 2000 people, there’s really no need. It was exactly the quiet and relaxing place I was looking for.