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14 September
While Ranwadi slumbered during the holidays, I heard that a big fundraising
event was being organised at Bwatnapne. Nobody seemed sure what was being
planned, but this being Pentecost, it seemed likely to involve dead bullocks,
kava, and long 'talk-talks' by local dignitaries who had acquired their
positions on the basis of their family connections or their willingness to
slaughter pigs rather than their ability to give speeches. I decided to go
along. My intention was to complete the ten-mile walk to Bwatnapne in the morning,
stay for an hour or two at the event, and turn around and walk back. Sara and
her father, who were also going to Bwatnapne, suggested that I walk with them.
They planned to leave Melsisi at 11 o'clock in the morning, as soon as Sara
had finished a meeting with her teaching colleagues. Of course, Sara's meeting
overran - meetings in Vanuatu always do - and it wasn't until after lunch that
we set off over the hill to Bwatnapne. Conscious that it was getting late, I
began to walk on ahead. By the time I arrived the afternoon sun was slanting
low against the headlands at either end of Bwatnapne Bay. No problem, I
thought: I'll have a quick look around, turn around and head home. Unfortunately, I had arrived just in time for the speeches. In a clearing on
the shore, a long succession of minor chiefs and government officials dressed
in their finest Hawaiian shirts were taking turns to ramble into a microphone,
while a gathering of villagers listened lazily. A large set of loudspeakers,
turned up to a high enough volume to drown out the noise of the generator
powering them, sent the speeches resonating across the bay. (Judging by the
air freight stickers plastered on them, the loudspeakers had been brought in
specially from town.) Slabs of dismembered bullock hung from the trees, and at
the back of the crowd a group of men with bush knives hacked kava roots into
tiny fragments, ready for grinding. I stood at the back of the crowd, trying to look inconspicuous as I prepared
to slip away. Being white, I failed. "You come," a man whispered. I was led to the front of the audience and seated
on a plastic chair, next to Ian the Peace Corps volunteer (the only other
white person in attendance), and a garland of leaves was hung around my neck.
Though nobody knew I was coming, I was being treated as a VIP guest. There was
no way I could leave now. "Don't worry," Ian whispered. "When the speeches are over, there'll be plenty
of kava." "That is a worry," I told him. "I need to be back at Ranwadi first thing
tomorrow morning." I sat back and listened to the speeches. One speaker was reading statistics
from a recently-published booklet about Vanuatu's education and its economy.
As a piece of public oratory it was appalling (twenty minutes into his speech,
he apologised for being unable to talk in more depth on the grounds that he
had been given a five minute time limit), but he made some interesting points. Economically, Pentecost is doing well, it seems. Thanks to the high price of
kava - Pentecost's main export - plenty of cash is flowing to the island.
There is only one sensible way to invest that money, the speaker told his
audience: in educating our children. Yet, when it comes to education,
Pentecost ranks among the worst islands in Vanuatu. If I was interpreting the
morass of statistics correctly, nearly a fifth of Pentecost's children don't
even attend primary school. "From kava, plenty money ee come 'long Pentecost," he told the villagers. "Me
want'em ask'em: money here ee go where?" Where has all the money gone? The portable DVD player that I could see through the doorway of a nearby hut
hinted at the answer. In between the speeches, I asked Ian what the event was all about. The aim, I
discovered, was to raise money for a local fish marketing co-operative. (The
scheme appeared to have got off to a good start: at the mouth of the river
nearby was a newly-built bamboo hut, containing three or four big freezers
that definitely smelled as if they were full of fish.) The fishermen liked the
idea of a co-operative insofar as it helped them to sell their produce, but
didn't like the suggestion that they ought to invest their own money in
setting it up. Throwing a party seemed like a much better way of raising
funds. I had to agree. The final person to take the microphone was a singer who had flown in from
Santo Island for the occasion. As the sun set and reggae music (the soundtrack
of tropical islands everywhere) drifted across the beach, the party got
underway. Parcels of food wrapped in giant leaves were bought and sold, a
crowd of men gathered around a bucket of kava, a dancing ground was prepared,
and a group of villagers debated which freezer in the fish hut to unplug in
order to free up a socket for the DVD player. I wandered around chatting to
people I knew (many of Ranwadi's students and teachers come from villages
above Bwatnapne), and to people I didn't know who were keen to find out who I
was and where I had come from. "Name b'long me Andrew," I said to a group of children who were staring at me
with particular curiosity. "Me b'long England." The children stared blankly. They don't speak Bislama yet, explained one of their mothers. "Hak Andrew," I repeated. "Nama atsi at England." My garbled pronunciation of their native language was unintelligible to the
children, but entertained their mothers greatly. "By-and-by you dance?" they asked. I couldn't stay for the dancing, I explained: I had to leave. I needed to go
to the airfield the next morning to collect mail, and the next afternoon I had
arranged to give a tutorial to the Year 13s, who were still at school. (When
the Year 13s subsequently failed to turn up to their tutorial, I was furious.) I said my goodbyes, explaining to various horrified partygoers that, yes, I
really was planning to walk back to Ranwadi in the dark. Pentecost is one of
the safest places in the world to walk alone at night (for men, at least), but
the locals don't see it that way. They inhabit an island populated by
imaginary ghosts and devils. My main torch was out of batteries, and clouds had covered the moon, but I had
one of my miniatures keyring lights in my pocket (I always do), and the little
LED illuminated the ten-mile trek home. I began to appreciate why the locals
value the tiny torches so much. Soon after I began the uphill trek out of Bwatnapne, it began to rain. It
wasn't a pleasant walk home. I returned to Ranwadi, exhausted and soaked, just before midnight, and found
the house strewn with baggage and sleeping Australian girls. Five gap volunteers from Ambae Island had come over to Pentecost for the
holidays, and since there was little room for guests at Dani and Nat's house,
I had left them the keys to ours. Three of the gappers were sleeping in Hugh's
empty room (he had gone away for the holidays), while the other two crashed in
the dining room, amongst my piles of half-mended Maths textbooks. The next day, the crowd of teenagers hiked up the mountain to a waterfall high
up the river, startling a local chief in his garden. The chief hid in the
bushes until they had gone (he told me afterwards with a smile), frightened to
talk to them. (The chief was not the only person hiding on the mountainside that day. A
policeman had come to Pentecost to arrest the arsonist who had run away from
his trial at Melsisi a couple of months earlier. The fugitive was tracked down
in a house in the jungle, and apprehended. The policeman hadn't brought any
handcuffs, but the dangling roots of a nearby banyan tree were cut and used to
bind the prisoner's hands. He was led down the hill and onto a ship, bound for
Luganville prison.) Unsure whether or not I liked having the house invaded by teenage girls, I
spent the evening down at the nakamal, where the villagers sat and chatted
about refreshingly male topics. First there was talk about electronics. A
man's uncle had recently bought a solar panel for his house and wanted to know
if I could find out the price of an inverter to plug into it; I said I'd look
on the web next term (Internet access isn't available at the school during the
holidays). The conversation then moved on to football. Somebody had heard that a court
had ordered the World Cup final to be replayed; we suspected that this was
"coconut news", but with no regular news media (and currently no Internet
access) on Pentecost there was no way of disproving it. We debated for a while
whether or not a court had the power to order a World Cup replay. Another news story that was discussed at the nakamal concerned HIV. A new case
of the illness had recently been announced in Vanuatu, bringing the country's
total number of HIV sufferers to three (although health workers suspect that
several more remain undiagnosed). HIV is a new problem in Vanuatu - the first
official case was only four years ago - and the potential for the virus's
spread is causing considerable alarm. At the nakamal there was a long and
uninformed discussion about the disease, accompanied by some unnecessary and
slightly offensive advice about how I should take precautions if I was ever
tempted to use prostitutes when passing through Port Vila. Talking of girls, the villagers wanted to know, where on earth did all those
"white misses" come from? Were they sleeping in my house? Were any of them
sleeping in my bed? And (from the younger men at the nakamal) if not, why not? I explained that the Australian girls were merely taking advantage of spare
beds and floor space. Guys and girls sometimes share houses in countries like
ours, I said; it doesn't mean that they're sleeping together. "You should take'm one with'em glass," one of the men suggested. (When I later
found out which of the gappers had been wearing sunglasses that afternoon, I
was interested to note that despite our cultural differences, the villager and
I had come to the same conclusion about which girl was the most attractive.) As if to complete the evening of masculine conversation, the topic of burping
and farting arose. (I'm not sure how.) The villagers asked me about Western
attitudes to these bodily functions, and explained their own customs. Farting
is OK amongst friends, they reassured me. However, doing it in front of one's
father-in-law is a serious transgression, for which the "polluter" must pay a
pig in compensation. - - - After three months on Pentecost, I decided that it was about time I bought a
'bush knife' - one of the long machetes that the islanders carry and use for
just about everything from slicing fruit to mowing lawns. I wasn't exactly
precisely what I would use it for - I have kitchen knives to slice fruit and
students to mow the lawns - but I was sure that it would come in handy sooner
or later. Sadly, a use for the knife turned up the next day, in the form of a stray cat
that hauled itself weakly onto our doorstep. The helpless creature was badly
injured (probably the result of a stone thrown by some bored child) and
clearly in pain. There are no vets on Pentecost. I slept badly that night, haunted by sounds and visions of invading rats,
scurrying cockroaches, marauding hounds and dead cats. The next morning, I was
unsure of how many of these animals had been real, and how many I had dreamt. I was fairly sure, for example, that my encounter with a giant rat in the
bathroom at one o'clock in the morning had actually happened. The scratch of
its sharp little feet against my skin as it used my hand as a stepping stone
to jump down from the door frame to the floor, and the silhouette of the
desperate rodent scuttling round and round the tiny room in search of a
bolthole while I tried unsuccessfully to corner the creature and cast around
for something to whack it with
these were too vivid to have been dreamt. The hounds, too, did exist - I woke the next morning to find our dustbin
overturned and muddy paw prints around it - but in reality I had merely heard
them outside my window. In my dream they were visible and slavering. I piled rocks around the bin to keep the dogs from overturning it again, and
indoors I set a rat trap, baited with peanut butter. (Rats, like Americans,
are extremely fond of peanut butter.) The rat in the bathroom was not the
first that I had noticed in the house; I had been wrong to think that the
cracks in the walls were too small to let them in. When I first moved in, the
house's main pest problem had been cockroaches, but my extermination of the
roaches appeared to have opened up an ecological niche. Just like in the
aftermath of the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs, small furry mammals
were soon poking their heads out of crevices and taking advantage of the
opportunities now available to them. - - - On fifth anniversary of my first arrival in Vanuatu, I spent the day doing a
very Vanuatuan thing: waiting. The gap girls from Ambae wanted to return to
their island, and since there was still a week of the holidays left, the two
Ranwadi gap girls and I decided to go with them. As usual, the little planes
that hop between the islands were fully booked, but we heard that a cargo ship
bound for Ambae was coming past on Saturday. Maybe. Shipping schedules in
Vanuatu are frustratingly vague. When Saturday came, there was no sign of the
ship, and when we tried to phone the shipping company to ask about its
progress, we found their office closed for the weekend. For nearly forty-eight hours, the eight of us took it in turns to look out for
the ship. Meanwhile we read books, and watched the magical adventures of Harry
Potter - one of the most fabulous pieces of escapism ever invented - on my
laptop. We invited our next door neighbours and their children to come and
watch the DVD with us, and I did my best to translate the dialogue into
Bislama. (I wonder if they spotted the many parallels between Hogwarts School
of Witchcraft and Wizardry and their own institution: the fear of black magic;
the unquestioned existence of ghosts and demons; the abundance of rats, bats,
and spiders; the fact that the school answers to "the Ministry"; the relative
isolation from the modern world; the frequent use of old-fashioned artefacts
like candles in place of electrical technologies; the relative disregard for
safety; the occasional use of curses to punish misbehaving students; and the
psychological gulf between magically-minded locals and 'Muggles' such as
myself.) Late on Monday morning, the ship finally appeared. We rushed down to the
landing spot - a point on the beach where there is a slight gap in the reef -
and piled up dead palm fronds and coconut husks into a flammable heap. Like
the lost boys Lord of the Flies, people in Vanuatu light fires as a way of
attracting a ship's attention: during the day the smoke is visible for miles,
and at night it's hard to miss a glowing fire on an otherwise utterly black
shoreline. The ship - the M.V. Halice ('H' is often silent in Bislama) - idled
in the water, safely beyond the reef, while the crew sent ashore a small
motorboat to pick us up. We clambered on board and settled down for a long
trip. By the standards of Vanuatu's inter-island vessels, the Halice was a
reasonable boat. In addition to a cargo area stacked with boxes and petrol
drums, there was a small passenger deck where a few sleepy looking islanders
slumped on wooden benches, or hunched on pandanus mats on the rusty floor.
Many had been on the ship for days, yet few were reading books, or playing
games, or listening to music, or watching the scenery. Most didn't even chat
very much. They simply sat, showing off the Melanesians' most remarkable
talent: their contented ability to do absolutely nothing. As a Westerner tormented by time, I seldom travel anywhere in Vanuatu without
a book. Carrying reading material to protect myself against the local languor
is almost as essential as carrying sunscreen to protect myself against
burning, or carrying insect repellent to protect myself against malarial
mosquitoes. On this occasion I amused myself with the story of Paul Theroux's
travels in this part of the world, The Happy Isles of Oceania. "The Australian Book of Etiquette is a very slim volume," Theroux wrote, "but
its outrageous Book of Rudeness is a hefty tome. Being offensive in a matey
way gets people's attention, and Down Under you often make friends by being
intensely rude in the right tone of voice." I tested this theory by reading this passage, and various similar ones, out
loud to my Australian companions. Their reaction wasn't friendly. Clearly I
was using the wrong tone of voice. For the rest of the day, the Halice chugged northwards along the coast, its
crew keeping a lookout for fires on the beach and stopping every couple of
miles to send a boat ashore for cargo or passengers. Flying fish jumped out of
the way, flitting and twitching their fins as they skimmed the water. A
fishing line was trailed from the back of the ship, and at one point an
impressive marlin was hauled aboard. The marlin disappeared into the galley,
and emerged at dinnertime in the form of juicy slabs atop plates of greasy
rice. Meanwhile, the coast of Pentecost rolled past like a tapestry - familiar
villages and landmarks painted from an unfamiliar perspective. From the water,
it looked quite unlike a tropical island. The dark, forested mountainsides,
with inky water reflecting the grey sky, resembled the walls of a Scottish
loch or a Norwegian fjord. The palm trees lining the shoreline and dotting the
jungle seemed incongruous and ugly in such surroundings. It is not surprising
that Captain Cook, who must have had a similar view of Pentecost from the deck
of his ship, named Vanuatu the New Hebrides, after the bleak Scottish
archipelago. A lot of Melanesian islands look like this, yet somehow people do not expect
the South Pacific to be mountainous; the tourist-brochure image is of thin,
sandy atolls. Friends from home who've never heard of Vanuatu occasionally ask
if it's "the place that's going to disappear because of global warming". In
truth, Vanuatu is probably in less danger from global warming than any other
coastal country. Not only is much of its land area high above the ocean, but
(unlike in most countries) its population and agriculture are not concentrated
in floodable lowland cities and farms. Migrating up the mountains to escape
rising sea levels will cause a lot less hassle to the villagers of Vanuatu
(who have to rebuild their wooden huts every few years anyway as cyclones and
decay take their toll) than it will to the citizens of London and New York. Just after nightfall, the Halice reached Laone, at the northern tip of
Pentecost. Here it took on board sixty Anglican women who were on their way to
a church conference on Ambae. The women sang choruses of "Jesus ee number-one"
and other favourite 'sing-sings' as the ship left the sheltered coastline and
struck out into the rolling strait between the islands. Outside, the water was
black and menacing; the land beyond was blacker still. Looking out over the
deck, the ship suddenly seemed small, and the Pacific Ocean gigantic beyond
comparison. The waves swelled and subsided, not ferociously, but strongly
enough to remind me that I had put myself at their mercy. As the churchwomen
chanted their hymns, I felt as if I was on a boat of departed souls saying
their last prayers as they crossed the river into the Underworld. It was after midnight when the Halice reached Lolowai, at the eastern tip of
Ambae. There the ship anchored for the night. "Do you want to go ashore now, or in the morning?" the Captain asked. The
grimy deck of the ship wasn't a comfortable place to sleep, but the shoreline
outside was black and unknown, and I didn't fancy trying to find accommodation
at such a late hour. We chose to stay on board. I was woken in the usual Vanuatu way - at dawn, by the crowing of roosters
(were there roosters on the ship?!) - and got my first close-up look at Ambae. From Pentecost, I had seen the island many times in the distance; it looked
smooth and blue and inviting. I was not the only one who had once gazed
dreamily at the island's misty silhouette. The writer and serviceman James
Michener also had a distant view of Ambae from his World War II base on
neighbouring Santo. He dreamed of sailing out to that mysterious island,
falling into the arms of a beautiful woman and finding an escape from the
misery of wartime. Thus the legend of Bali Ha'i was born. I don't know how James Michener, who never actually visited Ambae, pictured
his fantasy island. However, the images of Bali Ha'i in the minds of those who
read his 'Tales of the South Pacific' are probably quite different from the
reality of the place that inspired it. Ambae is certainly beautiful, but not in a paradisial way: you will find no
golden sands or turquoise lagoons there. The island is volcanic, and has the
dark, primeval look of a freshly-erupted landscape. The rocks on the shoreline
are black lava, with the appearance of barely-congealed treacle, and its
beaches are like powdered asphalt. The surrounding sea, reflecting the
island's blackness, is the colour of children's paint that has been too
thickly mixed. Lolowai harbour is a sunken crater, surrounded by dark cliffs. At Lolowai the gappers teaching on Ambae, whose school is further along the
island, remained on the ship, while Dani, Nat and I got into the little
motorboat to be ferried ashore. (Down on the cargo deck, I noticed crates of
livestock amongst the boxes and petrol drums. There were indeed roosters on
board the ship.) We landed at a beach the colour of pencil lead, where disgruntled brown pigs
sat in crudely-constructed cages awaiting shipment to Port Vila. Uncertain of
where to go (there are never any signposts in rural Vanuatu), we trudged up to
what seemed like the centre of the village, along what seemed like the main
road. "Hello, Mr Andrew," said one of the passers-by. Many of Ranwadi's students
come from Ambae. It's bizarre that I can spend a day and a night on a ship, land at a
mysterious South Pacific island that I've never visited before, and encounter
people who know me. Lolowai is a well-developed village, with a bank, a post office, a small
hospital and a sleepy commercial centre, all housed in sturdy concrete
buildings. Many had clearly been built with foreign aid money; a plaque on one
building proclaimed friendship between the Republic of Vanuatu and the people
of Japan. (I wondered which of Vanuatu's natural resources the Japanese wanted
in exchange for their friendship.) The concrete amenities were not the only signs of modernity. On a nearby hill,
I noticed a mobile phone mast (probably newly installed as part of the
American-funded programme to bring mobile networks to Vanuatu's islands), and
down in the village a crude laser-printed sign on one concrete doorway
announced the existence of "Lolowai Internet Café". The café's two computers
weren't actually connected to the Internet access yet - Telecom Vanuatu
promised to hook up the phone line "tomorrow" - but the owner was hopeful
about his new venture. We sat outside, watching volcanic dust billowing along the road (the stuff
wrecks his computers, the owner complained), and chatted about the
opportunities that the Internet access could offer to people in rural Vanuatu.
Unfortunately, at the prices the Lolowai Internet Café would be forced to
charge in order to recoup its costs, it seemed unlikely that many locals would
be able to take advantage of it. The owner expected his main customers to be
the yachties who frequently anchor in Lolowai's natural harbour. Public
Internet access seemed destined to be the latest in a long list of foreign
technologies introduced to Vanuatu primarily for the benefit of foreigners. It was a shame that the Internet café hadn't opened a week earlier, when
people from all over Vanuatu (including most of the country's dignitaries) had
come to Ambae for the Provincial Games, a national sports extravaganza. Back
down on the beach we met Mr Noel, who had come to Ambae to help with the
scorekeeping at the tournament, and was now waiting (alongside the pigs) for a
ship to take him to Vila. Accompanied by Noel (whose didn't expect the ship until late in the
afternoon), we walked to the sports stadium, which was a couple of miles away,
along a badly-eroded dirt road that clung precariously to the rim of an
ancient crater. The roadsides were as thickly forested as anywhere else in
Vanuatu, yet remarkably, the trees and vines appeared to be growing out of
pure, brownish-grey dust. It was as if somebody planted a jungle on the moon.
The road was choked with this filthy dust, which stuck to sweat and sunscreen
to form a grimy layer on our feet and legs. From Vureas we set off inland. Our aim was to see Ambae's famous crater lakes,
which sit on top of the island in an enormous volcanic caldera several miles
wide and nearly a mile above sea level (making the lakes the highest in
Oceania). We travelled uphill in the back of a pick-up truck, and then
continued up the road on foot. (The truck's suspension was damaged, the driver
told us, and it couldn't cope with the roads.) Up on the mountain, where
conditions are wetter than on the coast, the dust had coagulated into thick
mud. For a couple of miles, we passed through homely, rural scenery - village
garden and meadows of cattle - interspersed with patches of tangled forest. In
places, spectacular banyan trees draped with mosses and ferns arched over the
road. As we ascended, the scenery became wilder, and the road (which had only
been a dirt track to begin with) deteriorated into a slimy footpath.
Eventually we reached the settlement of Duviara, the last outpost of
civilisation on the mountainside. Beyond it lay a dripping green wilderness,
and beyond that, the volcano. Duviara is the home of the energetic Paul Vuhu - schoolteacher, tour operator,
churchman, gardener, cultural fieldworker, and football fan - and his extended
family. Their little hamlet comprises a family home, a big thatched hut that
serves as a kitchen and a nakamal, a tin-roofed chapel that doubles as a
schoolhouse and library, various shacks in the bushes that function as
bathrooms or toilets, and a bamboo-walled guesthouse. This is the Last Stop
Bungalows: the last place at which travellers can stop and rest on their way
up the mountain. Paul greeted us enthusiastically at the door of the chapel, as if he'd been
expecting our arrival. (In fact we'd failed to let him know that we were
coming, but since his guesthouse is miles from the nearest telephone, Paul
must be accustomed to unexpected visitors.) He was especially welcoming when
he had discovered where we had come from. Paul knew Ranwadi well: he worked
there himself as a trainee teacher, and his two eldest sons attend the school
(one is in my Year 7 Science class). In the thatched hut, Paul and I shared stories over a couple of shells of
home-grown kava (a distinctive Ambae variety with a faintly peppery taste),
while his family prepared dinner. The two gappers, still fairly new to
Vanuatu, listened to the Bislama and watched the cooking with interest. Pieces
of taro (the starchy local root vegetable) were grated into a paste and
wrapped in banana-like leaves. The package was tied up using twine made from
the midribs of the leaves and then baked in a fire under hot stones to make a
chewy slab of laplap, which was topped with freshly-made coconut cream. The
fire filled the hut with smoke, which made our eyes stream, but the warmth was
welcome - nights on the mountainside are surprisingly cold. One of the boys
killed and plucked a chicken, which was also cooked on the fire, while another
went fishing for prawns in the local streams. After the delicious meal, we
said "bon karea" (goodnight, in the local language) to Paul and his family,
and retired to sleep in the bamboo guesthouse. We woke early the next morning, and were met outside by Simeon, the local man
who would be our guide on the trek to the top of the volcano. For three hours
we picked our way along a slippery footpath that climbed through misty cloud
forests, where everything we touched was green, absorbent and dripping with
moisture. It was the kind of jungle in which you would expect to find David
Attenborough whispering to a camera while peering through the fronds at a
family of gorillas or an unusual species of parrot, or maybe a
computer-generated dinosaur. I was disappointed to learn that this forest was,
in fact, almost devoid of animal life - not even wild pigs lived up here. The
treetops were damp and silent; even birds and insects were scarce. As we neared the crater rim, the forest began to lose its lushness, and the
dripping boughs gave way to thin, sickly-looking tree trunks. Many of the
leaves were brown and dead, and the place had the general appearance of a
landscape poisoned by pollution. This pollution was not man-made - we were
thousands of miles from cities or factories - but came from the gases belched
by the volcano. The acrid, eggy stench of sulphur drifted down through the
trees. Much of the damage to the forest had probably occurred at the end of last
year, when Ambae's volcano erupted dramatically, making news stories around
the world and prompting the government to order the island's evacuation. I
asked Simeon what had happened to his village at the time of the eruption. "Time way volcano ee fire-up big-one, you-fella i go 'long some 'nother-fella
island?" I asked. He shook his head. "Me-fella ee no go." Although Simeon's village was one of the closest to the volcano, the people
there had opted to stay behind while the rest of the island was evacuated.
They knew the volcano better than anyone, and realised that their village was
not in danger of destruction. It was a good thing that they stayed, Simeon
told me, since the villagers' local knowledge proved valuable to the
scientists who came to monitor the eruption. "But volcano ee no chuck'em shit 'long all garden b'long you-fella?" I asked. (Bislama evolved from 19th-century sailor talk, and its vocabulary reflects
this. "Shit" - or "sit" as it's normally rendered - is a legitimate word
meaning ash or detritus, not to be confused with "shit-shit", which is the
genuine article.) "Oh yes, him ee chuck'em," Simeon said. "But him ee no spoil'em garden." In
fact, small doses of volcanic ash actually help to nourish Vanuatu's soils,
and partly account for the islands' spectacular fertility. However, there is only so much volcanic 'shit' that a forest can take. When we
reached the crater rim and saw down into the caldera, the trees looked
tormented and brown. In the distance, plumes of steam marked the position of
the lakes. Do not speak badly of this place while we are walking, Simeon warned us, as we
scrambled down muddy slopes into the caldera. We do not want to offend the
spirits who live there. For another hour we trailed through the haunted landscape of the crater's
interior. It was a tortuous journey: clambering up banks and sliding down
gullies, ducking over and under the stems and branches of fallen trees,
tripping on rocks and roots, and squelching through poisonous-looking mud. It
was a relief when we ascended a final slope and reached the rim of Lake Vui,
the lake in the centre of the caldera. It was a deeply unnatural sight. The lake was far below us, at the base of
steep cliffs rimmed by the white skeletons of long-dead trees. In the centre
of the lake was a mound of ash, tinged with yellow sulphur, with a vent on top
from which white steam billowed high into the air. The mound was an island
within an island, a volcano within a volcano. The lake itself was crimson red,
especially at its margins, where the water was like blood. This redness is a
new phenomenon, I was told, one that has only emerged since last year's
eruption. I ought to have been awe-inspired, yet somehow I wasn't. Perhaps I was simply
jaded by experience: I've seen crimson lakes and smoking volcanoes before.
However, there are many other sights in Vanuatu that continue to amaze and
impress me - waterfalls on Pentecost, for example - even though they are
hardly new. The main problem with Lake Vui was that it just didn't look like a
natural phenomenon - it looked like a polluted pit. The scene reminded me of
quarries and mines, viewed from the windows of English railway trains, or of
pictures in posters put up by environmentalists warning society not to create
sights like this. I have become so accustomed to regarding smoking heaps, dead
trees and discoloured water as ugly and undesirable that I was unable to
appreciate that they occasionally form a legitimate part of Nature's beauty. Having travelled for days to get there, I could not even take away an accurate
picture of the place. The lake's amazing red colour, Simeon told me, does not
show up properly in photographs. Sure enough, when I looked at most of my
pictures only a hint of crimson could be seen. Instead, the water shone blue -
the reflected blue of the sky. The human eye (or rather, the human brain)
compensates for such reflections far better than a camera can. My mental image
of the place was the only accurate picture I had, and by looking at the
photographs I have probably corrupted even that image, leaving me uncertain
about how red the lake really was. Unless I return, I will never know. - - - The next day we got a truck down the mountain, and then hiked westwards in the
direction of Londua School. After three or four hours - a long, hot, dry walk
- we reached the village of Nangire. Beyond Nangire, the road came to end, and
we hired a speedboat to take us the rest of the way to Londua. The gap in
Ambae's northern coastal road isolates the villages of north-eastern Ambae
from those in the north-west: people talk about East Ambae and West Ambae as
though they are separate islands. When I first saw a map of Ambae, this gap in
the road seemed bizarre, but after seeing the terrain it no longer surprised
me. Looking at the coastline from the speedboat we saw perilous cliffs of
volcanic rock, convoluted like curtains, falling steeply into the sea. Only
the Scandinavians would attempt to build a road in such a place. For the
ni-Vanuatu, with far less money and dynamite at their disposal, sailing around
the cliffs in canoes and speedboats makes far more sense. At Londua, we clambered out of the speedboat onto black rocks that looked as
if they had cooled only yesterday from molten lava. As we made our way up to
the school, in search of the gap girls, we saw a stocky, smiling figure
walking towards us under the coconut trees. His dark, round face had an oddly
familiar appearance. "Welcome to Londua, Andrew." Londua School is run by Graham Bule, whose elder brother Silas is the
Principal at Ranwadi. Both Principals are relaxed, friendly and thoroughly helpful men. However, in
other respects they are notoriously different characters. Silas upholds the
values of the Churches of Christ by refusing to touch alcohol or kava, or
allow them to into his school. Graham upholds those values by stopping in a
nearby coconut plantation to finish off the tins of rum cola that he buys on
his way home from the kava bar, so that he does not have to bring them into
the school. His approach made a refreshing change from the uptight (and,
according some Churches of Christ members, scripturally misguided) attitude
towards kava-drinking that is taken by many of my Ranwadi colleagues. That night, I accompanied Graham to the kava bar, together with some of the
gap girls and Graham's daughters, one of whom is in my science class at
Ranwadi. (I felt awkward drinking kava in front of one of my students for a
second time that week - the sight of teachers getting stoned on narcotics
struck me as the kind of thing that might normally result in letters to the
school from furious parents. However, since on both occasions the drug had
been offered to me by the father of the students involved, I didn't think that
such complaints were likely!) The atmosphere of West Ambae was quite different from that of the east. The
shoreline is cut from the same black volcanic rocks, and the roads are coated
with the same filthy dust, but in other respects the west of the island is far
gentler in its scenery. Flat roads wind amongst groves of coconuts and cocoa,
and alongside the traditional thatched huts there are well-built,
suburban-looking houses and stores. The signs of Westernisation are slight and
superficial - most of the villagers still live primarily from their gardens
and follow their traditional habits - yet on Ambae there is a forward-looking
sense of modernity that Pentecost somehow lacks. The people of Ambae are
equally as friendly as those on Pentecost, and in many cases seem more
comfortable and open in the presence of visitors. On Ambae, old women on the
road do not avoid eye contact with foreigners for fear that they will be
spoken to in a language they don't understand, and young children do not react
to the sight of white people as though confronted by ghosts. - - - Dani, Nat and I passed the rest of the week with the gappers at Londua,
waiting for a ship back to Pentecost. (When typing the first draft of the last
sentence, I ended it unthinkingly with the word 'home'.) Life at Londua was a lethargic mixture of reading, writing, cooking, walking
to neighbouring villages, swimming in the sea and (for some of the gappers)
'sunbaking' from 12 until 2 every afternoon on the scorching black rocks below
the school. The sunbaking astounded me: Australians are taught from a young
age about the dangers of overexposure to the sun, and are well aware that it
not only puts them at risk of life-threatening cancers but will leave their
skin wrinkled and unhealthy in later life. In the spirit of friendly
Australian rudeness, I pointed out to the girls how stupid their daily
activity was. They merely shrugged, and explained that they couldn't possibly
return home without a thorough tan. When a ship came past, bound for Luganville, Dani and Nat jumped on board.
They spent the last couple of days of the holidays in town, eating hot pizzas
and drinking cold smoothies. I preferred the quietness of Ambae, and opted to
remain behind and wait for a ship going directly back to Pentecost. I made
myself useful to the Ambae girls by showing them how to bake chocolate cakes
on an open fire (their house had no oven), and in return they put up with my
periodic ranting about the inexplicable and seemingly-idiotic habits of
Australian teenage girls. On Sunday night, I hear rumours that a Pentecost-bound ship was expected the
next morning. Uncertain what time it would arrive, I got up at 1 a.m. and
spent the rest of the night snoozing on the shore below the school. It was a
clear night and the rocks were drenched in moonlight. I found a flat spot by
the shore and rested there on a head of dry palm leaves, listening to the
sucking of the tide around the rocks, and watching the flying foxes and the
shooting stars. Just before dawn, I saw the lights of the Halice in the distance. I jumped up
and set fire to my makeshift bed to attract the ships attention. I needn't
have hurried. The indented coastline concealed some large villages, and the
ship idled at these for three or four hours, loading and unloading cargo,
before arriving at Londua. When the Halice eventually approached, I hauled
some more coconut fronds down to the rocks to make a second fire, and the ship
sent ashore a motorboat to pick me up. Thirty hours and two thick books later, I was put ashore at Ranwadi, along
with about twenty students returning from Ambae. (The motorboat was so
perilously overloaded with students and their luggage that I seriously
contemplated jumping out and swimming ashore.) Officially, term had begun the day before, but I knew there was no danger that
I missed any classes. Many of Ranwadi's students and teachers were still on
other islands. Even those who had booked flights to Pentecost in time for the
start of term had failed to return, since once of Air Vanuatu's little
aircraft was out of action and several flights had been cancelled. The students and teachers who lived locally, meanwhile, were at Melsisi
watching a week-long sports tournament, and had no intention of returning to
school until the tournament was over. Noel and Neil, having no classes to teach, had come down to the beach to meet
the boat. "We had a staff meeting yesterday," Noel told me. "Only five teachers were
here." I had plenty of time to recover from my trip before classes resumed.
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