Vanuatu is a cluster of around 82 islands and has a population of about 21000. It is estimated that the population before the arrival of Europeans was close to 1million before dropping to 55,000 by World War Two. Now over 55% of the population are under 15 and only 2% over 60. This population explosion is putting a great strain on the medical and education services, but fortunately the islanders can grow most of the food that they need. There is minimal health support in the rural villages and the literacy rate is 74%. Only78% of children complete their primary education for which the government pays only teachers salaries, leaving the villages and parents to fund the remaining school costs.
The official languages are Bislama, English and French however there are another 113 indigenous languages still spoken. With the increasing population, fresh water and sanitation are becoming serious problems and poor basic health knowledge and supplies means that boils, head lice. scabies etc, are often left untreated. Much of the country has no internet services and poor cell phone reception. New Zealand and Australia now provide most of the international funding support with many volunteer organisations funding particular projects. Overall, the islands are very beautiful with many atolls, sandy beaches with warm water and friendly inhabitants making them an attractive tourist destination.
The rotary project I was recently involved with was building a preschool on the island of Malekula and instigated by the Rotary club of Dunedin Harbour. They sent out emails to rotary clubs in Otago and Southland asking for donations and raised 80 thousand for the project. Covid delayed it for over a year. The club had engaged a local builder Morgan, who had a building company called Total Construction and employed 10 staff. I flew to Auckland and met up with 2 rotarians from the Rotary Club of Milton - Ross Prosser (62) and Marty Clarke (49) and we flew out to Port Vila the next day. We stayed in Port Vila overnight and flew out to Malekula Island the next day. The flight took about 1 hour in a small 12 seater local plane and were met at Norsup Airport by Sam, the school Principal. The school called Amelvet has 512 students 116 of which board onsite. The boys play soccer and the girls play volleyball and soccer.
When we arrived onsite Morgan’s 3 guys had the slab down and the steel frames up. Our job was to fix the roof on and the outside cladding then line the inside. Because of the strong winds they get, the outside corrugated iron had to be screw-fixed on every corrugation (in NZ we screw it on every third). The class room we built was 20m x 15m and had shutters that came down when the strong winds were due. We were very well looked after as we had two mothers who had children at the school cook us lunch and dinner each day and made our beds and did our washing. We got the classroom finished the day before we were due to fly home and Sam, the principal put a big opening ceremony on and the school all took part.

