February 24

It's wednesday night, our friend Billy, another Peace Corps volunteer from another island is here visiting us. He was meant to attend a workshop this week, but the workshop was delayed a week and then officially cancelled this afternoon. So he's on the next ship back to his island, probably on Saturday.

So this is how developing world development work appears to go...(this is may not be accurate information as it's only what I understand to be true at this point; and it's not in chronological order)...A large percentage of villages in rural Vanuatu don't have water systems and don't know where to start. Peace Corps volunteers are fairly randomly placed in small villages throughout Vanuatu and they ask the community what they want. The villages that don't have water may answer "water". The World Health Organization, presumably via academics, creates this worldwide-applicable workshop and names it with some acronym, the workshop is designed to be a week-long participatory process that helps the community determine a starting point from which to begin fixing their water shortcomings. World Vision likes the workshop and creates a version of it that is appropriate to Melanesian cultures. A Peace Corps Assistant Country Director googles the internet for information to help her volunteers dealing with water issues in their village. The assistant country director finds some basic information referencing the World Health Organization (WHO) workshop and tells the volunteers about it during a training. Volunteers are told World Vision may be using a similar tool. A volunteer, on his initiative, calls world vision to inquire. World Vision says that cannot share their resources because they are copyrighted, but that the volunteer may sit in on a workshop to gain a better understanding of the WHO created acronym. The volunteer takes a ship to the island to observe the workshop and then the workshop is cancelled so the volunteer goes back to his island.