Welcome to Cindyville

Cindyville is Cindy's take on life in Lorakau Village, Tanna island.

Aaron is in Tanna right now for a total of four days. While there he has several tasks that he wants to complete. 1) Getting us a Post Office box, 2) Checking on our rent price for our house, 3) Buying a gas bottle for our stove, 4) Checking to see if our beds are finished being made.

Ideally the results of these items on his personal “To Do” list would go as follows:
1) P.O. Box – set up, number given and actual box located at the post office.
2) House – rent price remains as was set in April of last year at $50 a month.
3) Gas bottle – bought, loaded in the truck and delivered to Lorokau Village.
4) Beds – completed and waiting for payment and pick up.

Wouldn’t that be nice!?

Now for reality. Actual results are as follows:
1) P.O. Box – Personal P.O. box not to be had as the Post Office is short on boxes. Instead, our mail will be delivered to the Lorokau Village RTC Post Office box and we will hope and pray that our mail actually gets to us as intended.
2) House – Rural Training Center (RTC) committee decides that $50 might not be enough rent. We are awaiting the final decision. We think $50 (no more than $100) is fair. You might be thinking that we are sliding by awfully cheap on rent. But, keep in mind – you get what you pay for. $50 rents us a house with a cement floor, un-spackled and un-finished cement walls, one room in all (two if all goes as planned) – not bedroom, keep in mind…room. In addition, we get one light bulb for the whole house, a tin roof, and windows with no screens or glass. Considering the improvements we plan to make (screens, solar lights, etc.) out of our own pocket just to make it livable in the long-term, $50 seems quite reasonable.
3) Gas bottle – Aaron went to buy, but they are all out. Next shipment should be arriving on the island at the same time as our truck…we hope.
4) Beds – Mr. Bed Maker Man ran out of timber and didn’t even begin the beds we orderd in early December. New plan. Borrow the beds from the school until RTC school starts in 2 weeks, buy our own timber and Aaron will make our beds before the RTC needs the others back.

There is a song that one of the local string bands likes to play. It is called “Oh My Vanuatu” and talks about how beautiful Vanuatu is. A really lovely song and one of my favorites. Only, the title is so catchy we find ourselves saying it at various times. You can only imagine why sometimes we say it with a head-shaking sigh of exasperation…”Oh my Vanuatu”…