UPDATE: Volcano video

With a new internet connection, I was finally able to upload a video I took at the mouth of Mt Yasur in Vanuatu. Video worked much better then pictures, further evidence that I could have had some good pictures if I had mastered the camera's settings.

 

https://tongadan.blogspot.com/2009/10/update-volcano-video.html

The Tonga Beard Experience

When I was in high school, as my smooth-as-a-baby's-bottom-faced friends jealously watched, I grew a beard through sheer force of will. And I never looked back.

Its been a decade since that first face fuzz, and it's suddenly occurred to me - through all the beard variations I've sported, never have I grown the full beard (the neck, face, and mustache, which some might call "the lazy man"). I blame social pressure to not look like a hobo. This style of beard requires a special combination of curiosity, patience, laziness.

But with three months left in my teaching contract in Tonga (in the South Pacific), I could think of no better time to grow a "Robinson Crusoe" before I left the island paradise. Making my location even more ideal for the experiment is the fact that there are no bearded hobos here! In fact, there are hardly any bearded men at all (or unbearded hobos, for that matter). Normally such an experiment would also require an ignorance of social conventions, or a willingness not to cave to social pressure. But I'm lucky enough to find myself in a culture that considers the beard a sign of virility and manliness. Although my cup overfloweth with these qualities already, I decided to risk the chance of overdose and grow a massive beard.

Thus on Friday 4 September, in anticipation of my return to Canada on Tuesday 1 December, I began the Tonga Dan Three Month Beard Experiment.

The blank slate

The experiment was off to a grand start. I shaved my face, to provide a fresh canvas for my hormones to do their thing on. By a week into the experiment, I had already grown what would take many "men" the full three months to accomplish. In fact, just two days after I started and announced the beard experiment, I already began to get comments and compliments.

The comments were usually "isn't your face itchy?" These comments came from women, who (hopefully) had no beard growing experience and instead bowed to the "conventional wisdom" on the subject. On this point, though, they were correct. It was like wearing itchy. I knew this stage would not last forever, though, and just focused on the rewards to get through it.

Compliments typically ran along the lines of "wow, you can grow a beard really FAST!" Now it's not quite the same as "wow, you can run really FAST!" or even "wow, you can eat really FAST!" This is a race that seemingly requires no practice, and can be run at any time (or even all the time). I like to do my hardest beard growing while asleep, but every athlete has their own particular preference.

And they were right, too. I'd probably have to shave twice a day if I ever wanted to be clean shaven. I imagine somewhere way back, there were a whole lot of hairy cavemen in my family tree. The kind who had lots of babies in Siberia thanks to their "super hairy" adaptation. In high school I just stopped fighting it and embraced it as a gift. If you have the ability to grow a ridiculously awesome beard, shouldn't you do so? To not would be like Mr. Fantastic saying "I could turn off the lights with my stretchy arm, but I think I'll just get out of bed and walk to the switch." Madness!

Two and a half weeks into the experiment, my beard was out of control. It was big, and thick, and it was still very itchy. Frankly, I looked like a hobo. And so, one day, after telling a friend that I would "never shave it off!" I shaved it off. If he knew, Mr. Fantastic would slap me with his super stretchy arm.

My Secret Volcano Lair

Alright, well that was about every major thing I did on my trip to Fiji and Vanuatu, which, because I'm so...lazy...took place about four months ago.  Which reminds me, I still haven't written about all the stuff I did in Tasmania almost a year ago!  Oh yeah, one more thing, on the island of Tanna in Vanuatu I also hiked up to the edge of an active volcano at night and starred into the monster's fiery maw.  But nobody wants to read about that...or DO THEY?

Well, here goes: Land in Vanuatu, or at least on the island of Tanna, is passed down from generation to generation.  So for many generations, some family in Tanna cursed their forefather who, when he got out of his boat, picked a piece of land with a volcano on it.  Nothing grew in the garden, the house always smelled like stink, and their swim suits melted in the river.  But then, one day in the 1774, the island's first tourists showed up and they were super excited to see a real live volcano.  Captain Cook and his crew paid their entrance fee in buttons and shiny beads, birthing the volcano tourism industry of Tanna.

Frankly I was more excited to see a cult that worshiped American DC-3s, but once I'd done that, climbing an active volcano was next on my list (right above riding a tornado).  A trip to the volcano was included in the tour package that had brought me to Tanna, and I knew that it was very accessible and very active.  I've since learned that the volcano has erupted many times per hour for at least 800 years.  I also knew about Captain Cook's visit to the volcano after reading his Journals (he claimed that the glow of the volcano, and not an internet deal, brought him to the island).  I was eager to follow his footsteps to yet another Pacific sight.

We stopped on the way there for some nice distance shots, before arriving at the ash-plain.  It was about as close as I imagine I'll get to the surface of the moon (in the future I won't have time to travel, as I'll be leading the human resistance after the robots rise up).

We parked at the base of the volcano and hiked up to see...a lot of smoke.  Basically during the day, the volcano is too smokey to get any good photos, and then at night you have to figure out how to use that Fireworks mode on the camera and I just gave up and took it all in with the camera of the eye.  The photo at the top of this entry I stole from some internet site, but the smokey pictures below are all mine!

The ground shook, the volcano was loud, and every few minutes it would throw enough liquid hot MAG-MA into the air to make you wonder how many people died doing this kind of tourism.  Loved it.

Ifira Primary/Secondary School

As part of some subconscious effort to break the mold of South Pacific tourism, I wanted to visit a school while I was in Vanuatu.  The Ni-Vanuatu were infinitely friendly, which made the desire very easy to fulfill.  A stranger I met introduced me to another stranger, who told me where I could catch a boat to a small island where I met another stranger who was the sister of the second stranger's mother's brother-in-law.  Despite the chain of unfamiliarity, every person I met treated me as if we'd been friends for years and years, and I soon found myself at Ifira Primary/Secondary School on Ifira island, about a ten-minute boat ride from the main island (Efate) in Vanuatu.

The teacher I met there said later that, as I crossed the field to the library, her students (10-11 years old in "class 5") were telling her, "a white man is coming!  a white man is coming!"  We were rare on this small island.  I quickly explained to her the chain of introductions that led me to her class, that I was a volunteer teacher in Tonga, and that I had hoped to visit a school in Vanuatu.  I was invited to join the class for the last two periods, library and maths.  At the library, the kids tried to catch my eye, then shyly showed me the books they'd chosen to take home for the weekend.

Returning to the classroom, the teacher told me that the kids were asking if I could teach them.  Maths is not my strong subject (which had caused much student giggling when I subbed a math class at my school in Tonga).  Instead, I offered to give a bit of a geography lesson by talking about Canada and Tonga.  At the end of my short lesson, the teacher asked if there were any questions.  Fifteen little hands shot up.  Was I really that bad at geography?  No, the kids were just that eager to practice or show off their English.

I answered dozens of questions, including, "What's your last name?" ("Post, like Post Office," which gets laughs no matter where in the world I am), "what's your favourite food?" (it's pizza, but to keep it interesting I tried to describe poutine), "what's your favourite sport?" (I already said I was Canadian!  Ice hockey!), "do you like rugby?" (only if it's Rugby League, having just recently learned the difference), and the ever popular without fail always asked wherever I go in the Pacific, "do you have a wife?" from a little girl who actually high-fived her friend after she asked, before all the girls burst into fits of giggling with their hands over their mouths.

Throughout the course of of the Q&A, I perpetuated such Canadian stereotypes as "endless winter," "all Canadians ski," "wearing toques," and of course, "the danger of polar bears" (which the kids knew as "white bears").  I think they were a little confused to begin with, though, because one line of questioning  focused on asking if there were kangaroos, koalas, kookaburras, or sharks, in Canada.

At the end, the kids belted out, "thank you Mr. Daniel" (having apaprently fogotten about Post Office).  I was ready for nap time, but maths was about to begin.  It was my answer to "what's your least-favourite subject?", but I said it was important to try hard at maths anyways, just to help the kids who now probably wanted to grow up to be me.