Schools in Vanuatu would shut down for two months during the hurricane season, Schmitz said. “For those months everyone left the school except us,” she said. This is when the couple was truly secluded. They were without phone service, electricity and running water. They had to collect rain water as their water source. They had to walk everywhere as there were no roads. “It’s not your typical Peace Corps experience,” Harris said. While Schmitz and Harris had some hairy experiences, they said they wouldn’t change their time in Vanuatu for anything. “It was fabulous. It was the most amazing experience,” Schmitz said. “I enjoyed it as much as I thought I would, and more. What I enjoyed about it was different than what I originally thought I’d enjoy. I would do it again in a heartbeat.” “You learn to relax and I learned what I can and can’t do,” Harris said. “It taught me flexibility because we didn’t have the materials there (we’d have elsewhere).” “I learned tolerance and patience,” Schmitz said. “You have to keep an open mind. It also made me aware of the kind of teacher I wanted to be.” The two believe it was a good idea for them to wait until they had been married a few years before they went into the Peace Corps. “That’s what made it work,” Schmitz said. “You have to have a strong relationship. It’s stressful to live in a new culture, and if we wouldn’t have known each other (as well as we did), it would’ve been even more difficult.” The couple has two children: 3-year-old Theron (named after a Peace Corps volunteer they served with) and 1 1/2-year-old Aran.
Amy Schmitz and Jason Harris have life-changing experience in Peace Corps in Vanuatu
Ubly teachers have life-changing experience in Peace Corps
TRACI L. WEISENBACH, The Huron Daily Tribune
04/16/2007
UBLY — Four years into their marriage, Amy Schmitz and Jason Harris took a voyage of a lifetime to an island in the South Pacific. The island was isolated, and the couple lived off the land, took walks along the beach, and enjoyed the relaxed culture of the area.
While this sounds like a dream vacation, it was anything but. However, it proved to be a very rewarding experience beyond what either of them ever dreamed of. The couple traveled to the South Pacific in 1998 as Peace Corps volunteers. They served as educators in two different schools and lived for a period of time completely secluded from anyone else. Their Peace Corps adventure lasted two years, but what they got out of it will last them the rest of their lives. Schmitz, originally from Toledo, Ohio, is currently a fourth-grade teacher at Ubly Elementary School. She also teaches Spanish part time. Harris, originally from Petoskey, teaches fourth and fifth grades at Ubly Elementary.
Joining the Peace Corps wasn’t a question for Schmitz.
“I had always wanted to go into the Peace Corps ever since I was little. I thought it would be a chance to do something I enjoy, which is travel, and it would be a way for me to help those who need it,” she said. “(I figured) I have skills I would like to share (with others).”
Harris said Schmitz inspired him to join the Peace Corps.
Getting accepted into the Peace Corps is an extended process. Both of them had a health screening and go through an interview process. Schmitz said she believes what helped them get into the Peace Corps was another volunteer experience they shared in Mexico in 1991 before they married.
“That sparked my interest again (in joining the Peace Corps),” Schmitz said. While in Mexico, the couple did projects to help the Mayan Indians and learned Spanish.
When applying to the Peace Corps, Schmitz and Harris specified they would like to serve in Central or South America because of their experience. Instead, they were chosen to go to the South Pacific to an island named Vanuatu, a country of many islands.
“We hadn’t heard of it,” Amy said. “We didn’t know anything about the culture.” While Schmitz said she’d always wanted to go to the South Pacific someday, Harris said he wasn’t too thrilled with it.
“I didn’t want to be stuck on some tiny island,” he said.
However, they knew if they truly wanted to be a Peace Corps volunteer, they couldn’t be too choosy.
“You have to be flexible and ready to take whatever the Peace Corps throws at you,” Harris said.
Schmitz said she figured she and her husband would have their work cut out for them on Vanuatu.
“I thought it would be very difficult,” Schmitz said. “I’d talked to friends who had been in the Peace Corps and I thought the experience would be very fulfilling.”
Upon arriving in Vanuatu, the couple received training on the island of Epi. The couple lived with an extended family of 15 people. A mother and father led the family. Schmitz said she actually got adopted into the family.
“I was adopted rather than Jason because I referred to the mother as ‘my mother’ first before Jason had referred to anyone as family,” she said. “I had just said something as simple as, ‘My mom cooked us fish for dinner’ to another Peace Corps volunteer. It was overheard by my soon-to-be-family. At that moment, I had a completely different role in the family. They truly treated me as their family member.”
After training, the couple went to work at a rural training center on the island of Vanua Lava. It was a school for sixth-graders who didn’t test well enough to go on to high school. Harris taught agriculture to boys and girls and construction to boys. He also worked on construction projects. Schmitz, the only female teacher at the school, taught math and English to boys and girls and life skills to girls. The school had 29 students.
The couple also lived at the rural training center, which also was a boarding school. All schools in Vanuatu are boarding schools and most of the students lived at the school they attended. Parents had to pay tuition for their students to attend school.
The school, which was located on the end of a peninsula, was a two-hour walk from the closest town of Sola.
Harris said in Vanuatu there was no law dictating children had to go to school; therefore, students who went to school wanted to be there.
“Students were motivated to do well,” Harris said.
Every day, students would work in the school gardens, including for four hours on Saturday. If they would get in trouble, they’d have to work more. Students also attended church every day.
Schools in Vanuatu would shut down for two months during the hurricane season, Schmitz said.
“For those months everyone left the school except us,” she said.
This is when the couple was truly secluded. They were without phone service, electricity and running water. They had to collect rain water as their water source. They had to walk everywhere as there were no roads.
“It’s not your typical Peace Corps experience,” Harris said.
Schmitz and Harris grew bananas, papayas, and coconuts on their site, but they needed more than just that for food.
“There’s only so many things you can do with bananas,” Schmitz said.
They had to walk to Sola to get most of their food. To get there, they had to cross the Selva River, which was known to have a large salt water crocodile living in it.
“If we wanted anything special like a Diet Coke, cheese, and peanut butter and jelly we would have to wait until both or one of us (went to) the capital (city),” Schmitz said.
Vanuatu’s capital is Port Vila on the island of Efate. It is a small modern tourist town, and it had a bit of a French flavor to it, Schmitz said.
“It was beautiful,” she said. “One of us went to the capital about every three to four months, depending on our illnesses. Otherwise, it would have only been twice in our two years or we would have had to pay ourselves (to go there) if we wanted a break from our site.”
The couple’s free time would be mostly spent reading and going for walks on the beach, Schmitz said.
About a year and a half into their service in Vanuatu, Harris and Schmitz moved to Vanuatu’s second largest high school called Matevulu College, and it also was the country’s second most important high school, Schmitz said.
“(We were moved) because our rural training center was run by the Anglican Church and the church was having administration problems. The bishop was removed from office and during that general upheaval, the Peace Corps moved us out (of that area),” she said.
When the two prepared to make the move, they took their luggage to the “airport” (which was a flat strip of land with a tin shed) to leave Vanua Lava and go to the island of Santo. The plane was too full for both of them to go together, so Schmitz went first and took all of their luggage. Harris stayed behind planning to take the next flight, and planes only came in twice a week.
“I got stranded though, because we had about two weeks of heavy tropical rains and the grass runway was flooded out, so no planes could land,” Harris said. “So for a little over two weeks I was stuck at the empty rural training center with rice and Tabasco sauce for breakfast, lunch and dinner.”
Students at Matevulu College were those who passed their year six exam. Students also had to pass a year 10 exam to go on to years 11 and 12. At the college, Schmitz taught English and Harris taught 11th grade chemistry, computers, and seventh-grade science.
At both schools, Schmitz said she found the way she had to teach was different than she liked.
“They wanted to be taught by the book and only by the book,” she said. “It’s more strict. It was as if I had to be a strict disciplinarian and that there should be no fun in school. I believe this was the way the British taught while they were in control of Vanuatu and the (current teachers) continued this tradition. It was difficult for me to get used to. I felt like I was thrown back into the 18th century.”
She said this was contrary to the country’s culture, which was very relaxed. They said unlike people in the U.S., people in Vanuatu weren’t bound by time. If something was to start at 1 p.m., it might not actually start until 1:30 p.m. or later.
“It took some getting used to,” Harris said.
The couple really enjoyed the people of Vanuatu.
“The people are very friendly, kind, generous and happy,” Schmitz said.
On the island of Santo, Schmitz and Harris spent some of their free time hiking and going to a spot called the Blue Hole, which was a large fresh water spring they jumped into. Harris also built a canoe and the couple went on canoeing expeditions.
While Schmitz never got sick, Harris didn’t have the same luck. He caught malaria (which resulted in a fever of 104 and aching muscles) and he also cut himself quite badly. The couple had short wave radios to use in cases of emergency to communicate with people on other islands.
While Schmitz and Harris had some hairy experiences, they said they wouldn’t change their time in Vanuatu for anything.
“It was fabulous. It was the most amazing experience,” Schmitz said. “I enjoyed it as much as I thought I would, and more. What I enjoyed about it was different than what I originally thought I’d enjoy. I would do it again in a heartbeat.” “You learn to relax and I learned what I can and can’t do,” Harris said. “It taught me flexibility because we didn’t have the materials there (we’d have elsewhere).”
“I learned tolerance and patience,” Schmitz said. “You have to keep an open mind. It also made me aware of the kind of teacher I wanted to be.”
The two believe it was a good idea for them to wait until they had been married a few years before they went into the Peace Corps.
“That’s what made it work,” Schmitz said. “You have to have a strong relationship. It’s stressful to live in a new culture, and if we wouldn’t have known each other (as well as we did), it would’ve been even more difficult.” The couple has two children: 3-year-old Theron (named after a Peace Corps volunteer they served with) and 1 1/2-year-old Aran.
“I hope our kids have the same curiosity about the world and cultures that we do,” Schmitz said. “I also would like to instill in our children a sense of gratitude for the country we live in and a desire to help others less fortunate than ourselves. If they should choose to serve in the Peace Corps, I would be very supportive of that decision.”
“I also hope our kids will travel independently and even join the Peace Corps to get a better sense of the world and a realization that there actually are other countries, cultures and ideas out there — not just for personal growth and sharing with others, but to develop a sense that American foreign policy matters to the world,” Harris said. “We are not alone and should not act like it.”
©Huron Daily Tribune 2007
