Dear Sailing Friends, 2002 was the second full operational year for Project MARC (Medical Assistance to Remote Communities) in Vanuatu and we ended up with nearly 100 volunteers from at least half a dozen different countries and no less than 10 cruising vessels helping out some way or other. If this sounds like a big crowd, one has to take into account the large geographical area covered and the relatively long period of time (nearly 5 months). The typical MARC volunteer team stays 4 weeks and has no more than 3-5 members. This year we also had help from Youth Challenge International, an Australian/Canadian nonprofit organization assisting with some of the screening in the remote coastal and mountain villages of N Ambrym and SE Malekula. The attached image shows the 70+ ft steel schooner "Siome" leaving Port Vila with some 30 YCI volunteers on board. Both "Siome" (skippered by New Yorker Allan Meyer and his wife Martha) and a second 70-footer "Ranui" (skippered by New Zealander Richard Allen and his wife Liane) participated throughout the "dry season" (May thru October) and gave us strong sealegs to move volunteers, patients, suplies and clinic construction materials. 2003 should be the last full-scale support year for our current target areas. At the end of the 2003 season, we hope to have done sufficient infrastructure rebuilding to switch over to a much more limited assistance mode, primarily by trying to get local clinics and schools adopted by sister entities in the industrialized world who promise to keep sending supplies and a little money plus an occasional volunteer or two. Whether we will also be able to switch to a new set of target areas for 2004, as the Vanuatu government would probably like to see us do, will depend on funding, political stability and the availability of sufficient volunteers. Besides treating some 2000 patients, screening another 1000 for cataract blindness, training more than a dozen new Village Health Workers and constructing two small outpatient clinics, Project MARC teams put in two strong moorings in hard-to-anchor reef areas, installed several solar power and telecommunication systems, taught a large number of workshops (hygiene, nutrition, STDs) for villagers and suported a handful of local elementary schools (largely through adoption by US schools). Not everything went without a hitch, of course. Bad weather kept our vessels tied down for nearly a week on several occasions, Ranui lost her main anchor and chain in The Maskelynes (which set the clinic building program there back by nearly 2 months), land disputes on North Ambrym threatened to shut our newly built clinic down, 3 YCI volunteers came down with malaria, 2 Siome crew members contracted dengue fever and quite a few volunteers battled leg infections and other tropical nuisances. On the positive side, however, nearly everyone who participated enjoyed the once-a-lifetime opportunity of being welcomed into some of the most remote and traditional South Pacific communities, where life pretty much proceeds the same way as it did 100 years or more ago (with the exception of active cannibalism, of course). Next season the first "clinic-based teams" (typically consisting of 1 medical, 1 educational and 1 technical volunteer) should start operating in all three locations in June, to be succeeded by a new team every month throughout September. In addition, there should again be several small land-mobile teams hiking to some of the more remote villages for various screening and assistance purposes. Finally, there may be a limited number of slots for sea-mobile team members aboard "Siome" and "Ranui", largely focusing on intert-island transport and building/repair tasks. A particular fun task should be the planned construction of several 20 ft sailing catamarans or wakas on the beaches near the clinics. Anyone interested in learning more about the 2003 projects is encouraged to visit our Bulletin Boards (see link) and check the illustrated trip reports and other stories or background information as well as hundreds of photographs. The new brochures and volunteer application forms, as well as updated operational plans for 2003 should get posted on the site during the first week of January. We can always use more volunteers, more cruising vessels, more supplies and, especially, more adoptive sister schools and clinics! Season's Greetings, Henk and Nelleke Meuzelaar (Project MARC Coordinators)
