Where do you go on vacation while you work on an island where some of the braver people go on vacation? Maybe to another island. So in April 2014 I went to Espiritu Santo, to the Catholic mission in Port Ory. There I met an old friend from my stay on Tanna in 2008, a missionary Father Morlini, and made some new friends.
When the village generator was working and the electricity was on, I was in the local St. Anne’s school, repairing their sick computers and projecting the future computer classroom of the school… and when the generator stopped working, I disappeared in a wooden canoe to one of the islands around Port Olry or to the surrounding jungle with a bunch of friends, hunting dogs and an old .22 rifle of Czech manufacture, which I found in the house of an elder in the village.
I enjoyed walking on the ocean side of the village. Small houses and white sand reminded me of a fishing village on the west coast of Madagascar. The best time to do this was in the evening when smoke from cooking fires hung in the air over the village and the temperature was more bearable than during the day. The sun is definitely more scorching there than on Tanna. For two days we camped in the jungle on the eastern shore of Big Bay, hunted pigeons and sea fish and crabs, let the rain soak us from head to toe and then dried us in the hot tropical sun, rode a horse at full gallop bareback, drank kava all night … and in the morning back to the school to see the poor sick computers. Perfect vacation …
