Island Life Social Life

Back to NZ for Sophie’s graduation

The Moon up a Coconut Tree

Friday night Happy Hour drinkies at Deco Stop Lodge is the weekly wrap up for us Santo-based volunteers – becoming an institution. And we’re the ‘old hands’ already!

The evening of 3 December was spent down behind the beach on the veranda of Stephen and Wendy Turner’s super house. Delicious canapes, bubbles, beers, 11 people and plenty of ‘cheers’. Dinner of roast NZ lamb, facing the lagoon, the descent of fine food being assisted by a cascade of red wine. Then a gluten-free Sticky Date Pudding for celiacs to live for and the rest of us to die for. What a magnificently warm evening.

Friday 4 December was the Christmas ‘lafet’ in the lower village of the farm – the first social event here that we have been invited to. We were told that it started at 4 pm ‘Vanuatu-time’. So we wandered down just before 6 to find the beginnings of the gathering taking place with a circle

of people on the grass outside the Nakamal (meeting house) – see photo on left. Considerable effort had gone into the preparations for this bash, including masses of traditional kakae (food). The party was opened with a prayer, after which we were welcomed with a ‘sel’ of kava, the shell in question being a proper half coconut shell, more usually surplanted by plastic versons.

Reggae music was playing in the background and soon enough, two vast laplaps were unwrapped on mats on the floor when it was time to eat.

 

After the feasting came the dancing. The young had been coached and we all enjoyed their collective efforts.

It was a treat for us to be able to relax with our fellow residents and to share their kalja (culture) on this festive occasion. To say that Louise was in her lelement would be a

gross understatement – here she is on the left, just outside the nakamal facing out to the ‘show’.

When we left at around 10 pm, there were fewer pikininis (children) around and the adults were still enjoying themselves, albeit with groups of men outside sharing the contemplative quiet that seems to be the post-kava ritual.

Deep into the night, bursts of reggae wafted up to our house on the warm breeze, punctuated by excited whoops.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On 8 December we begin our journey back toNew Zealand. Not to go ‘home’, as we no longer have one. But back to our home turf.

The early departure is prompted by Sophie’s graduation on 11 December in Dunedin. A much anticipated event and one that all family members are gathering for – a treat in itself.

There is marketing work lined up between then and Christmas, then more in Sydney on the return journey, before getting back here on 14 January.

 

 

Close to our house is a coconut tree, as if to remind me every morning why I’m here.

We face east over the Pacific Ocean so get to see some colourful sunrises and mesmerising moonrises. Recently the moon plucked itself out of the Pacific and climbed our coconut tree. Well, we liked the spectacle anyway.

 

Now it is time to sign off on this last posting of 2015. We return to Santo on 14 January and are very happy with that prospect.

Best wishes for a peaceful and relaxing festive season.

• The Flavour of the Month – Deceptive Photo;
• Work in Progress – November’s Gains;
• Climate Change – More Than Summer’s Arrival;
• Including a Plea For World Leaders To Lead;
• Island Life – Social life.

November has witnessed a busy and occasionally, frustrating time at work. Evenings have been exceptionally social with minimal downtime. Our friends Jim and Linda went back to New Zealand for a couple of weeks leaving us to keep an eye on their beautiful property,

water some vulnerable plants and borrow their ute when needed. The plant watering was arduous work – the exertion in the heat forced me to hand over to Louise and take it easy –  photo on left.

As I write this last posting of 2015, the Paris climate change talks progress at the speed our glaciers morph into lakes of their making-by-melting.

And melting they are. Below is a photo taken a year ago on Lake

Tasman in New Zealand’s Mount Cook National Park. Beyond our heads is the cliff-like front of of the Tasman Glacier where huge chunks break off and fall into the lake. For more on this new lake, go to a well-referenced https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tasman Lake. Despite the overwhelming weight of scientific evidence, there will be doubting Thomas’s reading this for whom no amount of proof will crack their resolve that mankind’s activities are not causing global warming, or that there is no global warming. But click onto

http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/

The right end of the graph is an unstoppable erection (“The Engineer’s Song” springs to mind) that is pointing provocatively upwards. But only unstoppable if our doubting John Thomas’s delay through doubt and denial until we’re past the tipping point, approaching frighteningly fast.

Back to the talks in Paris: A Plea to World Leaders

A Time For Greatness in Leaders

Around the world citizens hope and pray that the gathering of world leaders will facilitate a meaningful agreement on an urgently needed action plan to combat global warming. But those same citizens will be expecting rosy words that are no more than shapely sentiments.

It is time to acknowledge that the future has to be different from the past, if our grandchildren are to have a future. It is time for bold leadership that not only stands out through history as Great Leadership, but stands to afford the as yet unborn generation the opportunity to judge it as such.

Some words of encouragement from one of the 20^th century’s Great Leaders, Winston Churchill:

“If the present tries to sit in judgement of the past, it will lose the future.”

So let us not judge the past two decades of delay caused by the climate change deniers, but let us see decisions, very hard decisions, that place human consumption and reward for some, as subservient to the retrieval of a sustainable global environment for all.

“Difficulties mastered are opportunities won.”

So give parents hope that their grandchildren will have a world worth inheriting.

On page 49 of “On My Country and the World” Mikhail Gorbachev wrote: “The present system of economic management based on the pursuit of profits is destroying nature. In the West, measures are being taken to make production safer ecologically. But this occurs only when the system reaches extreme limits, or it happens under pressure from public opinion. In many cases, attempts to “solve” environmental problems are made by exporting harmful production to other countries. Thus, in the final analysis, improving environmental conditions in one place, is accomplished at the expense of worsening the world ecological situation in general.” That was in 1999. What collective global determination has been shown since to address the accelerating deterioration of our shared global environment?

The multi-decade economic norm of prioritising growth of GDP has to be radically changed by International Treaty and International Law. From here, the settings, the goals, the outcomes have to be different – by definition. To allow the same settings of maximising GDP growth and maximising personal material wealth to prevail in the future, does no more than bring forward the end of the future.

End of plea.

Lastly on this climatic note, it has been great to hear that Vanuatu has been one of the most outspoken of the Pacific Island nations. What impact remains to be seen but well done Team Vanuatu.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The EU inspired developments referred to in the October blog have, as expected, lead to me becoming ‘Acting Secretariat’ of the National Coconut Association – basically, Mr Make-It-Happen. Getting a sketch out for discussion is easy to the local processors and exporters – they have e-mail addresses! But these guys are currently moving at Vanuatu pace, the deadline of 4 December passing undisturbed by responses. Involving the actual growers out in the rural communities is another matter. Local leaders need to assemble groups of growers to facilitate presentations and discussions. The first roll out of my Powerpoint presentation, in Bislama, was 3 December up at Port Olry – our second home. The photo shows local leader Louis (of Chez Louis, well known to Dagy, Carol and ourselves) introducing me. The other is self-eveident.

There were some good questions afterwards which required a joint effort to answer. So far the acceptance of the need for the Association is uniformly complete. What the members achieve through it in the future will be up to them. The objective is for there to be robust dialogue, the sharing of informantion and concerns at a local, then regional, then national level. This is intended to lead to honest representation of the private sector at the Coconut Working Group, where productive interaction with the public sector commences. That’s the theory.

Another boost was the visit from Uron Salum, Executive Director of the Asia Pacific Coconut Community.

He was on an official APCC visit to Vanuatu with plenty of high level meetings in Port Vila. But he had an interest in the VARTC coconut progeny research data and came up to see us. Photo left, from the left is: me, Uron, Dr Roger Malapa (VARTC), Tiata Sileye (VARTC) and Philippe Panpan (Dept. Agriculture).Botched flight tickets cost Uron the Friday I had organised so Louise and I met him off his inbound flight at 7 pm and off to a superb meal at Deco Stop we went. The ‘tok tok’ was fasciniating – Uron’s life has been coconuts. From a small island in PNG, he treasures the village and rural base of the industry.

His 6 year tenure heading the World’s largest coconut organisation sees him based in Jakarta, Indonesia, so it was an easy choice to take him up to

Chez Louis at Port Olry after the morning’s VARTC meeting. The introduction  to Louis on the veranda of one of the beautiful beach bungalows was a treat to perform – photo right. Instead of staying one night and returning to the thriving metropolis of Luganville, he stayed all 3 at Chez Louis. We learned so much from him: that Vanuatu’s coconut industry is 20 to 30 years behind other coconut countries; that Vanuatu has not been paying its membership fees; that paid up membership delivers multiple benefits, for example access to technical experts; references to the countless products that may derive from this incredible tree and a lot of colourful anecdotes. It was inspirational stuff and the beginning of a valuable relationship.