Island tour featured at museum

News

May 17, 2013 - 12:00 AM

Former Iolan Sheridan (Larson) Brull and husband Justin will tell about their experiences while serving with the Peace Corps in Vanuatu at the Osa and Martin Johnson Safari Museum in Chanute at 2 o’clock this afternoon. The museum is in the old Santa Fe depot.
They have had a display of things they brought back from their stint of service in the South Pacific at the museum since April. The display will remain another month or so.
“We will talk about some of the things on display and what we did while living in Vanuatu,” Sheridan told the Register.
Her parents are Lonnie and Stephanie Larson. She teaches English at Mulvane High School; her husband, a native of Hays, is studying education at Wichita State University.
The display at the Safari Museum parallels in many respects artifacts Osa and Martin Johnson carried back to the United States and Chanute, Osa’s hometown, from their groundbreaking documentary experiences in the South Pacific during the first half of the 20th century.
The Brulls were married in 2008, after both graduated from Kansas State University. They left for Vanuatu that September.
“We lived in Vanuatu two years and three months, typical Peace Corps service,” Sheridan said.
Their permanent site, after three months training, was Maewo, one of the country’s least developed islands.
“Our project work was mostly with teachers, many of whom had not received any sort of training on how to teach or run a classroom,” she said. “Many of our pictures and artifacts relate to the exceptional people we met in Vanuatu. Learning how to slow down and take time to ‘story’ — just sit and chat — is one of the most valuable lessons we learned from the people of Maewo.
“Having lived in Vanuatu for over two years, we can honestly say that our time there was a roller coaster,” Sheridan continued. “There were moments of sheer bliss — eating fresh pineapple, watching the sun set over the ocean, storying under coconut trees in the moonlight — and moments of complete frustration — being misunderstood, missing ice cream and flush toilets.
“The people of Vanuatu are some of the happiest I have ever met and I am still amazed at their selfless hospitality,” she said.

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