10/10/10

hey everyone
Alex and I are heading back to the island tomorrow on the cargo ship. it's been okay in Port Vila but we are anxious to get back to the island. We hear our cat on the island is missing, so wish us the best of luck finding her. We plan to be on the island until March. We will be blogging regularly on the island (no internet) and will get the blogs posted when we get back to Port Vila in March. We'll take lots of pictures too!

We wrote an article for the Peace Corps Vanuatu volunteer newsletter about our project and the work we have been doing for the last year:

"PHAST is a water and sanitation workshop that was developed by the World Health Organization and the World Bank/UNDP (field tested by Peace Corps!) as a tool to promote hygiene and sanitation at the village level.

Here's our PHAST story...Arriving at site, our community had made it clear that they would appreciate our attention being given to water supply issues. Our health surveys indicated hygiene and sanitation should be addressed. We did not see much value in education and we both agreed that environmental improvements alone wasn't sustainable. We needed a way to energize our community, to get them excited about water and sanitation. Well, maybe not excited - but at least get them talking about water and sanitation.

Our friend and fellow PCV, Billy Delancey, was having a similar experience at his site. He called our community health program APCD Sara Lightner for guidance and she suggested investigating PHAST. Billy did the legwork, he met with World Vision, the only folks we are aware of that were currently carrying out PHAST workshops in Vanuatu. Billy familiarized himself with PHAST and introduced it to the community health volunteers during a PST II presentation. We were intrigued by PHAST's participatory methods and wanted to try the workshop in our community.

We had one major problem though, we needed pictures - lots of pictures. The backbone of the PHAST workshop is the pictures, country-specific pictures. The workshop is unique in that there is no reading, writing or 'talking at' the participants. We, as facilitators, simply give the participants piles of pictures and ask them to be sorted in particular ways - use these pictures to create a story about your community, do you consider these hygiene and sanitation practices to be good or bad?, use these pictures to create a story about how this poo gets to this persons mouth, put these sanitation practices in order from worst to best. Things like that. The picture sorting gives the community the opportunity for meaningful dialogue concerning their hygiene and sanitation. World Vision, an NGO working in Vanuatu, had the pictures, but their pictures were not, at that time, available for use by other organizations. We considered stealing the pictures, but that idea was quickly shot down by Sara. We had only one choice - we had to create another set of PHAST pictures. We called fellow PCV and our artist friend Amy Orr and she graciously agreed to meet us in Port Vila a few days early (before an IST) to create a toolkit. We sat down and created about 80 pictures.

We took the pictures back to our communities and tested them during 3 different week-long PHAST workshops. Most of the pictures worked great, but some - like the man openly defecating then digging a hole afterwards to bury his poo and the pig tied to the coconut tree failed miserably. Our communities pointed out to us that in Vanuatu, one digs the hole first, that way you don't have to move the poo into the hole; and one would not typically tie a pig to a coconut tree as that means that someone has to walk through pig poo to collect coconuts.

Throughout the course of these three workshops we fell in love with the PHAST methodology and became a bit evangelical of its merits. We did a PHAST presentation at the PEACE program's in-service training. Several PEACE volunteers expressed interest in the workshop. We decided to go forward with the project. We met with Amy a second time, this time on her island, and 'fixed' about 30 pictures that were not saying what we had intended them to say. With the improved pictures from our preliminary testing, we put together 5 additional PHAST toolkits and sent them out with Peace Corps volunteers to each of the provinces for additional testing.

After the pictures are tested throughout the country and adjusted as necessary, we are hoping to laminate a number of toolkits and make them available to PCVs and anyone else that wants to PHAST. If you think doing a PHAST is for you and you want to be a part of testing the pictures, please call the folks with the pictures in your province and they can send the pictures your way!

SHEFA- Lauren
PENAMA- Billy
MALAMPA- Steph
SANMA/TORBA- Kerry
TAFEA- Arthur

If you want to stori with us about the PHAST:
Alex Amorin
Lucas Obringer"

October 2nd

Happy October 2nd everyone.

Just finished meeting with some guys from our district about a grant they've been working on. We had to create a timeline for their proposed project - building a cement water tank with money from Australia.

Felt a decent earthquake today, it wasn't a hard shake, but it lasted for a while.

Alex is doing well. She went snorkeling with girlfriends today. No snorkeling for me as I dropped a bush knife on my foot while getting off the bus on Thursday. Had to get three stitches on the top of my big toe. Right foot. The Peace Corps doctor says I should be able to get the stitches out in a week.

Spent yesterday with my foot propped up in bed, working on a PHAST PowerPoint presentation for the new volunteers early service conference - which will happen in February.

sept 27

it's monday afternoon, we are going to go drink kava in a little bit. Galaxy at 5:30, if you're in the area. Alex and I are officially in Vila until the 11th, so email us. I'm sure there's plenty to write about, but the stuff really worth writing about isn't coming to mind. Alex and I worked hard last week, created PHAST toolkits for all of the provinces in Vanuatu AND we found Peace Corps volunteers who plan to use the toolkits in every single province. Very Exciting!!

sept 18

Alex and I are stuck in Port Vila. The cargo ship is full and the plane is full. Our first way out would be on the 28th. Then yesterday World Vision announces they are bringing a PHAST expert in to conduct a training of trainers. The workshop starts on October 6th. Our supervisor invited us to attend the training. It seems hardly worth going back to the island for just a few days, especially since the possibility of getting stuck on the island and missing the workshop is possible. Peace Corps has suggested they might get us a place to stay. The training is a week long, so it's possible we'll be here until ~October 12.

New group

The new Peace Corps group arrived this morning. Alex and I's group are no longer the new kids on the block. Peace Corps staff and many of the volunteers who are in town met them as they arrived at the airport this morning.

To Our Parents..

Hi.

We have made it back to Vanuatu safely. Our bags haven't made it yet, but we are hoping they will be found and find their way to Port Vila before it's time for us to head to Pentecost.

It was so nice to visit with all of you. We very much enjoyed ourselves and we appreciate all that you did (and continue to do).

I can't believe dad really quit smoking...that's amazing!! And wonderful.

Vanuatu is nice, it feels good to be back, and fun to talk bislama again.

All the new volunteers arrive tomorrow. I am excited for them.

Alex is spending the day with girlfriends, soaking in the sun beside a swimming pool at some high-end resort.

Love you.

America

Alex and I are at the airport in DC, on our way back to Vanuatu. Our time in America has been busy and good. We have spent the last three days visiting with my parents, who were kind enough to drive down to DC for the visit.

We wondered if the traffic and gigantic cement buildings and business of life here would freak us out, and we are happy to report - it didn't. We are comfortable in the states, it's what we've known our whole life, how could a year somewhere else change that?

I will tell you what did freak me out. It is the sharp distinctions between our social classes. I started to notice it at the airport in Australia. There were three people for 50 seats in the "Gold Star" waiting area and 300 people for 50 seats in the "You don't have a gold star" waiting area. The waiting areas were right beside each other with only a little gate (that anyone could move) in between the two waiting areas. Everyone seemed to take this situation as normal and acceptable.

DC has Mc-mansions, multi-million dollar cathedrals/monuments and homeless/near-homeless living together in what seems to be an acceptable agreement. There are stores for poor people, stores for middle-income people and stores for wealthy. There are even stores for middle-income folks that wish they were more wealthy.

As we wait for the airplane now, several men and women are surfing the internet while those not wishing to pay for internet services (and those without a computer) are not. It's very different than life in our village on our island in the South Pacific. I wonder how natural it is to find our caste system acceptable. I wonder how our friends on the island would respond if they were given a level in our caste system.