Idyllic Independence Field

I had a great moment playing ball yesterday.

It was our former country director Kevin George's last game before he leaves for the States. He has been here in Vanuatu for seven years and has been playing baseball with his team of kids in Port Vila for 5 years. There happens to be a lot of volunteers in town right now because a new group just swore in and an old group is leaving. So along with the 15 or so kids we had playing we also had 10-15 Peace Corps volunteers at the game watching or playing.

So I'm standing in Left Field with my back to the descending sun. Barefoot in the grass, shouting encouragement to the kids we work with on a hot Sunday afternoon. The sky has started to turn it's peculiar Pacific Sky Blue/Purple/Pink color with not a cloud in sight. We've got White Americans, a Black American, Black Ni-Vanutu, Asian Americans, a Puerto Rican, and a bunch of "Halfie-Castes" (Which is what they call people like me who are half white and half something else) all playing baseball together on the same field: Independence Park in Port Vila, Vanuatu. I was sitting thinking about how amazing this all was and suddenly I hear "America the Beautiful" drifting on the drafts of humid air faintly into my ears. I really thought I was imagining it at first, it even sounded like an organist at a baseball game. I turned around and saw a congregation coming out of the big church across the street, and for whatever reason that Sunday afternoon, their church keyboard player was playing "America" on the organ setting. And just like in that scene from the Sandlot where they play the 4th of July game by the light of the fireworks,and Ray Charles starts singing "O Beautiful for spacious skies..." and all the kids turn around and stand mesmerized as the ball sails up into the fireworks, just like that, I stood mesmerized gazing off at the setting sun over Port Vila Harbor, and the happy laughing kids doing handstands on second base, and the Peace Corps Volunteers giving up two years of their lives to their country, all playing together on this idyllic, beautiful day.

Thank you God, for moments like this.

Port Vila Harbour on a particularly beautiful night (Thanks for the camera mom, it's doing great things)

Pair of Aces

Elijah and Jackson are two friends in Ekipe village, they're both in 5th grade. These two kids have absolute cannons. Since we don't have baseball gloves or helmets it's a little too dangerous to play with real baseballs, so we make do with tennis balls. In one recent game I had these two face off as the starting pitchers for their teams. I played catcher and umpire because none of the other kids were willing to catch the tennis balls because they were throwing too hard. One pitch nearly broke my finger (it's still sore a week later) and all I could think was "imagine if these kids were throwing real baseballs from real mounds." After three innings I had to switch pitchers because only one person on either team had gotten a single hit, and only a few even made contact. While in a real game this would be great, when you're trying to teach kids how to play, it'd be nice if they actually have a chance to hit the ball.

Jackson

-written by Javier Alaniz