January 11

On occasion, there is 'wasem aot' served while drinking kava. The literal translation of 'wasem aot' is 'wash out', it's little bite-sized pieces of food that you can eat immediately after drinking kava to get the kava taste out of your mouth. As kava has an absolute horrid taste, wasem aot is a pretty good idea.

There was wasem aot at the nakamal two nights ago. Two different kinds of wasem aot to chose from. One was aelan kabis (island cabbage), a kale-like leaf that was boiled until it was well over-cooked then served with the water it was boiled in and a little bit of salt, very slimy. The other wasem aot option was these two small pineapples that were super sweet, cut into bite-sized pieces. The pineapple was some of best, sweetest pineapple I have ever tasted and the aelan kabis was, well, gross.

After more than a year at site, Vanuatu continues to surprise, for reasons unknown to me the aelan kabis was finished (and all the water slurped off the plate) before the pineapple was hardly touched.

In other news, Alex and I both have lice. Alex blames me for not washing my hair often enough, but I don't think that's fair. She argues that because I have more lice and don't regularly wash my hair, it is obvious that I got the lice first and subsequently passed them on to her. I point out that I have more lice only because she washes her hair regularly, thus keeping her numbers down. I also point out that she has more friends than I do that share her personal space. And that she hugs others more often than I do.