Island Hoping: Quick Hits

I've been out at sight for a while so contact has been brief, as have updates. Friends I apologize, but here's the thing. Krissy and I are trying to save money while we're here and that means not coming into Port Vila too often. Shit is expensive here. The mighty dollar has fallen pretty spectacularly as you know. If I exchange $100 U.S. I get back only 9500Vatu which has the spending power of about $95. Additionally a shitty beer here is $5. a good meal at a restaurant $10-$20. Not cheap. So, sorry. Here's some quick general updates.

Time blong spell is over which means everyone is back to work. Our water committee has kicked ass and gotten the entire community to lay all the pipe we had. We have now gotten the pipe from the source 2.5km down the bigfala hill. We have just 1.5km left before we reach the village. A number of villagers have approached us sweaty and tired after hauling pipe and cement 4km straight up a hill, saying "ok our work is done, now its your turn" ...no pressure...really none at all. Fortunately we seem to be having some preliminary success with funding sources. We have a grant into the UNDirect Aid Program, they've already accepted our concept, so now we're just adjusting the format by the end of March we'll know if we got funding or not. Also yesterday I made a proposal to Port Vila Rotary in the hopes that they will fund a secondary water support system, if anything goes wrong with the piped source (fallen tree, souce gets contaminated) it will alow us a backup of potable water. Additionally we have two other funding sources as a back up plan. Overall we are fairly confidant that by the end of our time in Ekipe (July), our water project will be funded and complete.

I have been working with three primary schools on North Efate teaching Frisbee and Baseball and trying to re-establish a North Efate Primary Schools Sports Association that used to operate in the area. I've gotten our first donations of baseball equipment (Thanks Hinkle and Ruth). I have a teaching workshop at Onesua Presbyterian College (A high School) on Wednesday. A number of the students there learned baseball and frisbee with me in Emua and Ekipe so I'm hoping it'll be successful. Unfortunately, I am out of frisbees so even if I teach frisbee there I wont be able to leave one for them to play with... Anyone interested in sending Ultimate quality frisbees??? I'll name the teams after you.

We have a new puppy as a replacement for Ninja. In the Ekipe tradition, the names of all dogs have to be completely inappropriate animal names. For example there are dogs named Jim, Panadol (which is a pain releiver), Medicine, occasionally this practice can extend to children, such as the little kid named Halloween. So in honor of our 42nd president here is our dog Bill. We also have an adopted dog Oreo, and our pussy, Milo. My favorite dog name of all however is the three legged dog named ...wait for it...Dancer