too much daydreaming at church

It's Sunday, we just got home from church. We were there for two and a half hours, and we arrived late.

I am a business volunteer and Alex is a health volunteer. We decided early on that we would work on any and all projects together. Our health projects have gone well, very well when compared with other health volunteers. Our business projects not so much. I had expected a community-led, community-initiated business project would evolve with time. Now, with 8 months left, I am not too optimistic that a business project will ever develop.

I have talked about this concern with a few of my Ni-Van friends and a few random men at nakamals. The feedback is typically the same, the essence of it being - people in Vanuatu have all of their basic needs met and they don't work well together when money, or the potential for money, is involved. It's true, everyone has enough food to eat and a place to sleep, I've noted this reality before.

It is also true that community-based business business ventures have a terribly low success rate in Vanuatu. A friend of ours can give you a list of cooperative business attempts that have failed, one after another, all off the top of his head. It's counter-intuitive in many ways. People here live and work in community everyday. They are masters of community living. There are men and women working in each other's gardens most days, lots of sharing and community meals almost nightly. I have been involved in multiple work parties myself, where 10-20 people or more all show up to work for one man, without immediate compensation or even a clear agreement of how the work will be compensated at a later date. It seems like this would be the ideal situation for a community-based business venture.

There are unwritten rules about community living on the island. Rules that I certainly don't understand. There is, of course, the idea of mandatory sharing, people have no problem giving you things, because they understand that you have and will continue to give them things. But the rules are a lot more complicated than that. For example, I believe there are some men that are designated to have more wealth than everyone else, and then they, because of this designation, would always be the first person anybody would go to when they needed something. It gets more complicated, Like I said I don't really understand it.

So here's a problem with community-based business ventures: they take their unwritten rules and try to apply them to western business.

Of course the unwritten rules don't fit well onto western business models, so the rules are bent and forced on to a prototype they have little in common with. Sadly, the misfit causes lots of misunderstandings, shortcomings, envy, and broken promises. Real anger and loss of trust can ensue, and this is really bad if you are dependent on your community for daily living .

I read somewhere recently that the only clear indicator of how well a developing country will succeed in making the cross-over to western system of governance is how closely their traditional values align with the overarching western values. The unwritten rules of community living in Vanuatu do not align well with community-based business ventures.

Perhaps, if people in were a little more hungry there would be more motivation to dismiss the unwritten rules. As it stands, the unwritten rules accomplish the task of ensuring everyone has enough to eat and a place to sleep; something western business does not accomplish!

As this island's population continues to grow, they will face the challenge of producing more food on the same finite (and relatively small) amount of land. But today, food security is the least of anyone's concerns on Pentecost island. Lots of good food grows year around, and there are fruit and nut trees planted all over the place. It is not difficult to grow food here, hard work yes, but there is no chance that you would fail at growing your own food. And the traditional governance systems ensure everyone has space for a garden. You could probably gather all the food you need without even cultivating a garden, and at the very least, the mandatory sharing ensures that all your food needs are met.

Alex and I joke that this is the only place on earth where people would build a village 30-60 minutes walk from the nearest water source. This is true, it happens here, and without logical reason, there are plenty of water sources. We theorize that because the villagers are so used to getting all their basic needs met that there is little motivation to plan ahead for things like water. And they are right, because food and housing come so easily, they have the time to walk an extra hour everyday to fetch water. (Most villages now are using water catchment systems, but these villages were established well before the water tanks were an option).

In church this morning, one of the readings was the one about how God looks out for the birds, the birds don't have to plant a garden or anything and God takes care of them, and surely we, as humans, are much more important to God than the birds, so of course God is going to take care of us. The reading was about living today and not worrying too much about tomorrow because you can trust in the Lord to look out good for you.

I would have loved to hear the sermon that followed the reading. How such a reading applies to life in our communities. Was the preacher man preaching on the value of living in the moment? Sadly, the sermon was in the local language and Alex and I haven't a clue what he was saying.