World Cup frenzy

It sounds like the World Cup has taken Australia by storm. The Ni Vans have also adopted Australia as their own showing full support for the socceroos.

We have managed to see two of their games. We are back in the capital now, so last week we went to a local pub to watch their game vs Italy on the big screen. Although they had a disappointing end to their quest for gold we should all be proud they reached the final 16.

We also had a fun adventure on Ambrym trying to watch the game vs Brazil. There are only about five TVs in the whole of North Ambrym all hooked up to generators. We had some volunteer friends stay with us for a week and we all decided to do a 2am night walk through the jungle to the nearest TV. We walked up to the old custom village, Fanla (home to some of the high chiefs) and managed to wake up every dog and person in the village! One of the locals stumbled out of their homes to ask what we wanted. He told us that they couldn’t get the satellite dish to work and that we would have to walk to the next village if we wanted to see the game. We had only walked this track once (in the daylight) so it made for quite an adventure walking in the middle of the night in dim torch light at each intersection trying to decide whether to take the path to the right or left. After about 20 minutes of exploring, we finally found the Rural Training Centre and could hear the match was underway.

We walked into the hall and shuffled our way to the back behind about 100 passionate Ni Van Socceroo supporters. The TV had good reception but was quite small so we shared a pair of binoculars to see what was going on. It took us quite awhile to realise that Australia wasn’t the ones wearing yellow!

Although we lost and could hardly see a thing it was a great adventure and a totally unique experience! The next morning we were blurry eyed but had to attend heavy going meeting followed by the arrival of the National Geographic cruise ship.