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18th December
"Welcome to Auckland, where the temperature outside is 15 degrees Celsius." I'm going to freeze, I thought. The previous day in Port Vila, it had been 34°C (93°F). On Pentecost it was
similarly hot, and with no fans or air-conditioners or chilled drinks I had
been exposed to - and adjusted myself to - the full force of the climate. 15 degrees? Wasn't Auckland supposed to have a mild climate? And wasn't it
midsummer here? Even Scotland occasionally manages to be warmer than 15
degrees in summer. As the plane descended into land, I was struck by the colourlessness of the
landscape. On clear days, Vanuatu's greens and blues are as bright as those
on the surreal backdrops that come with Windows XP. New Zealand's colours
were mingled heavily with brown. With hastily piled-on layers of clothing designed for the tropics, and hair
that hadn't been cut for seven months, I must have looked a mess when I
stepped off the plane. Fortunately, New Zealand is a country of odd-looking
people. Kiwis are like their houses: homely and welcoming on the inside, but
ever-so-slightly incongruous on the outside, with the appearance of having
been cobbled together too hastily from spare parts. You can't help but
wonder if their forefathers, the early settlers who chose to abandon Europe
in favour of a lonely life on an island outpost, were the ones not
attractive enough to find themselves a good partner back home. (I can
sympathise.) I spent that afternoon wandering around the city centre, doing some
Christmas shopping and reflecting that each store I entered probably held
more goods than every single store on Pentecost put together. The strangest thing to get used to, at first, was the lack of Bislama. When
trying to communicate with people who didn't speak English as a first
language (of whom there are quite a few in Auckland), being unable to fall
back on a common lingua franca made me deeply uncomfortable. Within a couple of hours of landing on the richest island in the South
Pacific, somebody had stopped me on the street and asked me for money.
During my time in Vanuatu, one of the poorest countries in the South
Pacific, nobody ever attempted to beg from me - unless you count the
schoolkids who regularly knocked at my door to ask for "scotch" (sticky
tape) and similar bits and pieces. Even in Port Vila, the people who accost
you on the street generally want nothing more than to wish you good day. Whilst in Auckland, I did what the ni-Vanuatu usually do when they go to a
strange place - I stayed with one of my cousins. Over the next couple of
days, I realised just how many little things had been absent on Pentecost
without me ever really noticing their absence: toasters, irons, sofas,
carpets, cushions, wall paintings, soft toys, signposts, street lighting,
and (at this time of year) Christmas decorations. The appliance I had most difficulty readjusting to, bizarrely, was the light
switch. These exist at Ranwadi, but are rarely touched: people leave the
switches permanently on so that the lights come on at sunset when the
generator is started and go off at bedtime when the generator is turned off.
(Another reason people at Ranwadi don't use the switches is that if some
lights are turned off part-way through the evening they cannot then be
turned on again - the surge in voltage when the generator is first started
is needed to kick the ailing fluorescent tubes into life.) Entering darkened
rooms at my cousin's house, I would fumble around in the dark or reach in my
pocket for a torch before realising that there was a light switch on the
wall, and that there would be electricity to power it no matter what time of
night it was. Back in Scotland, with its eighteen-hour winter nights, I will probably
rediscover the use of light switches quickly enough. Fortunately, I don't have to get too well readjusted to Western life. I have
already promised the Principal at Ranwadi that I will be back on Pentecost
in time for the start of the new school term. "Choose a big television," said Ewan McGregor in 'Trainspotting', during his
famous 'Choose life' soliloquy. (I've deleted the expletives.) "Choose
washing machines, cars... electrical tin openers... Choose a starter home.
... Choose a three piece suite on hire purchase in a range of fabrics. ...
Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, sprit-crushing game
shows, stuffing junk food into your mouth. ... Choose your future..." I chose none of these things. I chose Pentecost Island instead. I chose
life.
16th December
After a week of thunderous rain, Pentecost's rivers were at a higher level
than I'd ever seen them before. Waterways that I could cross during the dry
season without even getting my ankles wet became waist-deep torrents, and new
rivers sprang up in places where they had never existed before. The waterfall
became even more spectacular than usual, filling the gulley below with searing
mist. When Hugh and I went for a swim in the pool below the waterfall, the
sensation was like sitting in a giant toilet bowl while somebody pulled the
flush. I was due to fly home for Christmas, but with the airfield once again closed
by waterlogging, I worried that I might have to spend a day or two on the deck
of a cargo ship in order to get off Pentecost. Fortunately, a few days before
my departure the rain relented and the weather became brighter. At this time
of year, hot days in Vanuatu are really hot, and the airfield quickly dried. I
watched the sky nervously for further signs of rain, but the sunshine held. With the rivers still too high for the school truck to drive through, I walked
the six miles (11 km) to the airfield in the melting afternoon sun, a water
bottle in each hand. Unbalanced by the huge rucksack on my back, I was
frightened that I would stumble over in one of the rivers and that my
belongings would get drenched. In the end I managed to stay upright, but I
wrapped my laptop and my camera carefully in waterproof plastic bags just in
case. I reached Port Vila, Vanuatu's capital, and spent a couple of days there,
wandering amongst the resorts, restaurants, shops and souvenir stalls. On the
radio, cheesy French pop songs were playing, local politicians were giving
long speeches in Bislama exhorting their latest projects, and on the
English-language news every second item was about the recent coup in Fiji.
People in Vanuatu sympathise with the way their Fijian neighbours are
suffering economically as a result of the coup: hotels are empty, foreign
students are being sent home, and sugar farmers warn that they will go out of
business if Europe decides to withdraw the subsidy it currently provides them.
(I wonder if Ranwadi's senior students, whose exams are marked in Fiji, will
be affected by the crisis.) A few pessimistic newspaper reporters warn that
there could be a similar upheaval in Vanuatu unless the government listens
better to the wishes of the people, butt seems unlikely. Vanuatu's democracy
may be a shambles, but it's hard to see who would bother overthrowing it. In
any case, you only have to glance around Port Vila, a town built on the money
brought in by foreign tourists and tax dodgers, to see how much Vanuatu would
have to lose. During the middle of the day, the centre of Port Vila resembles a Queensland
resort town, with bronzed expatriates driving around in their SUVs while
holidaymakers dripping with sunscreen mill around in search of a beach.
However, you don't have to fly to islands to Pentecost in order to see 'the
real Vanuatu'. Taking a shared minibus from the airport into town, zigzagging
through shanty-like suburbs where brothers and sisters and cousins crowd
together in tin shacks and women in island dresses sell pineapples by the
roadside, will give you an insight into local life in this overgrown
Melanesian town. Alternatively, get up at dawn, while the tourists are still
snoozing in their hotels, and you can watch the locals going about their
business much as they would in their home villages, making the most of the
daylight in a place where electric lighting is expensive. And at dusk, you can
venture out to one of the dimly-lit little shacks with lanterns at the door to
gulp down a few shells of kava while exchanging stories with the other
drinkers, then pick up a slap of laplap or some pieces of cooked banana from
one of the local food stalls. I attempted to go shopping for souvenirs in Port Vila, but couldn't find much
that I wanted. Going home laden with T-shirts and mugs and pens and playing
cards imprinted with pictures of palm trees on beaches and the words "Vanuatu
- untouched paradise" would give my friends the wrong impression about what
kind of place I'd been living in for the past few months. I'm working on a theory that the extent to which a place is genuinely an
untouched paradise is inversely related to the number of times you see the
word 'paradise' in print. In Port Vila, the word is everywhere. Billboards
welcoming you to paradise stand by the roadsides amidst the dust and the
litter. I can only guess as to what the town's poorer residents, struggling to
make a living in their grimy little suburbs, make of it all. On Pentecost, I don't remember ever seeing 'paradise' written down (although
admittedly, you don't see many things written down on Pentecost, except in
schoolbooks and on tins of food). Visitors to Pentecost do not need to be
repeatedly reminded that they have come to a wonderful island, and the island
is made all the more wonderful by the fact that they are not. I left Vanuatu with the words of The Eagles running through my head... "You can leave it all behind, sail to Lahaina
Just like the missionaries did, so many years ago.
They even brought a neon sign: "Jesus is coming",
Brought the white man's burden down, brought the white man's reign
...
And you can see them there, on Sunday morning,
Stand up and sing about what it's like up there.
They call it paradise, I don't know why;
You call someplace paradise, kiss it goodbye."
13th December
While Ranwadi emptied of students and teachers, up the coast at Melsisi a big
Youth Conference was under way. A thousand young people from all over Vanuatu
had come to the village to hold meetings at which they discussed, amongst
other things, the importance of respecting Jesus and resisting temptation lest
they should all die of AIDS. (Being teenagers, a number of them would then go
out in pairs to the bushes at night and give in to the aforementioned
temptations.) Accommodating a thousand extra people in a rural village is a considerable
challenge. The school classrooms were converted into makeshift dormitories,
with curtains of clothing hanging up outside. Melsisi's always-temperamental
water supply creaked and sputtered under the strain, and several of the taps
higher up in the village ceased to flow. Sara and her neighbours had to trek
to the communal taps further down the hill in order to wash themselves and
fill their buckets. It rained heavily at the start of the week (once again
Pentecost was on the fringes of a small cyclone), and Melsisi's roads were
soon trampled into brown slime. The mud, the lack of running water and the
fact that the rain had washed dirt into the river made it difficult to keep
clean, and the smell wafting from the makeshift dormitories was abominable. In spite of all this, there was a great atmosphere in the village. Nearly
every house seemed to have put up a shack outside offering food or kava for
sale, and two or three newly-built bamboo huts in the village served as
restaurants. In contrast to the usual situation, the stores were well-stocked
(some even had beer, much to Sara's delight) and kept open for long hours. In
addition to their meetings, the participants in the Youth Conference organised
singing, dancing, and small shows. For the first time, it became possible to have a Western-style night out on
Pentecost, meeting friends for drinks in bars then going out together for
dinner. In fact, I enjoyed these nights out in muddy little Melsisi far more
than I enjoyed nights out during my student days in glamorous Edinburgh. This
was partly because I could socialise with nearly everyone I met: most of the
locals at Melsisi now know me, and the visitors at the Youth Conference were
keen to chat and make my acquaintance. Nights out at Melsisi were also
cheaper: an entire night's worth of kava cost less than a single pint in a
trendy British establishment, and a hot plate of eggs and rice (eaten with a
spoon at rickety bamboo tables) could be bought for less than a dollar. Best of all, the pointless Western habit of permanently jet-lagging yourself
by staying out late on some days and getting up early on others has yet to
reach Pentecost - at Melsisi the drinking and merry-making began as soon as
the sun set. By nine or ten o'clock the drinkers were stupefied and sleepy,
the pots of rice and stew at the stalls were empty, the village's electricity
generator was switched off, and the entire village was ready to go to bed. On the Saturday at the end of the week, a new priest was ordained in a service
at Melsisi's Catholic church, which was followed by an afternoon of
traditional dancing. This brought a further influx of visitors into the
village. By one estimate there were four thousand people at the event, making
it the largest gathering ever held on Pentecost. On a Pacific island four
thousand is a lot of people. On the previous evening, Hugh and I went on a bar crawl, sinking and sliding
in mud as we picked our way from one dimly-lit shack to the next. The bars had
watered down their kava and were charging the same prices as in Port Vila (an
entire 25 pence for a shell-full), but were nonetheless packed. Everywhere
there was activity. Cooking fires were burning, lumps of taro were being
peeled and bullocks were being dismembered in preparation for the feeding of
the four thousand the next day. Trucks were grinding their way up and down the
hill, dazzling stoned men with their headlights. The pounding of kava roots
boomed through the village. Hugh and I spent the night at Sara's house, together with a visiting Peace
Corps girl from Ambrym, a random Frenchman who turned up from somewhere and
disappeared mysteriously the next day, two boys from a village down the coast,
and an excitable dog. Sleeping space was in short supply in Melsisi that
night. Sara's house has only one spare bed, but after several shells of kava
the concrete floor seemed comfortable. The next morning, so many people attended the ordination ceremony that not
even the huge church, which is by far the largest building on the island,
could accommodate them all. The pews - a grid of simple wooden slats onto
which several hundred people could be tightly packed like fruit in a shipping
container - were full, and more people were standing on the narrow concrete
balcony above. Others crowded into the doorways. Paper bunting had been strung across the church, and coloured leaves and
balloons hung from the balcony. There was a sermon expounding the importance
of the priesthood, followed by praying and singing. The rain stopped, the sun
came out, and (thanks to the clever arrangement of windows in the church)
heavenly light shone down on the giant cross behind the altar. The sound of
the hymns rolled around the building, blending into a wordless, choral hum,
but thanks to the nun sitting at the front of the church with an overhead
projector, I could make out what was being sung. Some hymns were in French,
some were in Bislama, some were in the local language, and one or two were
even in English, although if it hadn't been for the lyrics projected onto the
wall I would have had a hard time recognising my native language. The man who was being ordained stepped up to the altar, dressed in white. This
was like his wedding, I thought - the wedding he will never have. He was asked, in Bislama, whether he was sure that he wanted the life of a
priest. I wondered if any would-be priests had ever had second thoughts and
run away from the altar during their ordinations. "Yes, me want'em," he replied. I do. When the ordination was complete, everybody applauded. After more songs of
praise the priests and the visiting bishop filed regally out of the church,
followed by the congregation. Outside, we were joined by a crowd of semi-naked
dancers, with red mats wrapped around their shoulders and nuts tied around
their ankles. The shuffled brown dancers followed the serene, white-robed
priests through the squelchy mud in a bizarre-looking procession. The priests
and the bishop went off to a private party where they celebrated together with
a group of local dignitaries, the two American girls, and several bottles of
undiluted whiskey. The rest of the crowd dispersed to their houses and food
stalls to eat lunch and prepare for the afternoon's dancing. Soon afterwards, I left. Once you've seen one traditional dance you've seen
them all, and after many hours of dances there comes a point where even
extracting test tubes from bubble wrap in an empty science lab becomes a more
exciting way to spend the time. I saw almost nobody on the road home, except
for the local idiot (the man who went mad after accepting money from white
ghosts) who sat by the roadside silently contemplating a patch of shrubs. With
nearly everybody else still at Melsisi, neighbouring villages were deserted,
like a series of empty landscape paintings dripping in the midday heat. - - - A couple of months ago, while kava drinking at Waterfall Village, I notice a
curious handwritten notice stuck at the entrance to the nakamal. It was
written in something resembling the local language, of which I now understand
a little, but I could figure out very little of what it said. I put this down
to the arcane spelling. "Me try'em learn'em language b'long you-fella," I explained to the villagers
who noticed me puzzling over the notice. "Him here ee no language b'long me-fella," they told me. That isn't our
language. The notice was written in Sowa language, they explained. Sowa was once spoken
in this area of south-central Pentecost but has since been displaced by Abma,
a language which came down from higher in central Pentecost. Up until then I'd had no idea that the language currently spoken by the
villagers was not their ancestral one. However, after hearing about Sowa a
couple of things suddenly made a lot of sense to me - and not just the bizarre
spelling of the notice at the door of the nakamal. Given that Ranwadi is
geographically more accessible from the flat coastal plain of southern
Pentecost than from the mountains 'up central', it had always surprised me
that the villagers living nearby spoke a Central Pentecost and not a South
Pentecost language. I had also been surprised at how few of the local place
names appeared to mean anything in the local language. The existence of Sowa
accounted for both of these things. I was a little embarrassed with myself for not having figured this out sooner.
It was as if a visitor had gone around the Scottish Highlands for a year
assuming that English had always been spoken there, and never questioned why
all the lakes are called 'loch', the valleys are called 'glen' and the
mountains are called 'ben'. I scribbled down a copy of the notice and e-mailed it to a linguist I know who
studies Pentecost's languages, in case she was interested. "I'm not entirely sure what it means," I said, "and the spelling is presumably
non-standardised. Its accuracy is probably not helped by the fact that it was
dark and I was stoned when I copied down the notice." "You should know your stoned, in-the-dark transcription of the notice is a
significant
contribution to Vanuatu linguistics," she replied. "There are few/no records
of Sowa, and until now it wasn't clear that there were any Sowa speakers
left!" I resolved to find out more about Sowa language. Trying to track down speakers of a language presumed extinct is like trying to
track down the Tasmanian tiger or some other recently-exterminated beast. I
spoke to many old men who vividly remembered encounter the language in their
youth, and a few who thought that a speaker of it might survive in some remote
corner of the island. However, when I went to those places, I found that the
rumoured Sowa speakers were dead, or that they actually knew Sowa only as a
second language and no longer spoke it fluently. Eventually, I was forced to
conclude that there is nobody left in the world who speaks Sowa as their
mother tongue. As a living thing, Sowa language is extinct. Sowa was a victim of the disease epidemics that swept Vanuatu after Europeans
arrived, bringing germs to which the islanders had no natural resistance. Some
villagers were reduced to half a dozen people; others were wiped out
completely. "The only people left in this area were my father, his uncle, his uncle's
cousin and one other man," a man at one village told me nonchalantly, pointing
around the nakamal. With so few people left in the area, the local men were forced to marry women
from further afield - women who spoke Abma language rather than Sowa. "While our grandfathers were in their gardens or at the nakamal," one villager
explained, "their wives were at home, teaching Abma to their children". The
children grew up speaking their mother's language, and within a generation,
Sowa had been displaced. Fortunately, the old language has not been totally forgotten. Wandering around
Pentecost and talking to people, I found an encouraging number of men who
still know something of Sowa, and some who had even made attempts to write
down their ancestors' language or teach it to their children. It was touching
to see the effort of these people, who saw that a part of their culture was
dying, to try and keep the language alive. In the past, I have been cynical about attempts to preserve minority
languages. When I saw that Gaelic translations had been painted at
considerable expense under all the signposts in the Scottish Highlands - which
were perfectly well understood by everybody in English - I was (and am)
horrified that there was someone in the local council who was genuinely unable
to think of a better use for the money. However, it is one thing to hear in
books about something's demise, and another thing to talk to the people who
have watched it die. Extinction is a terrible thing. Sowa, in any case, is not in the same position as Gaelic (or any of Europe's
other minority languages). A vast body of literature already exists in Gaelic,
and detailed dictionaries of it have been printed. Even if the last Gaelic
speaker dies out, the language is in no danger of being forgotten. And Gaelic
has ten times as many speakers as even the most prolific of Vanuatu's
indigenous languages. Most of the speakers of Sowa, by contrast, were illiterate. No linguist has
properly studied the language, no thorough dictionary of it has been compiled,
and (to my knowledge) no stories or poems in it have ever been written down.
If the local people forgot their ancestors' language, it would be totally and
irredeemably lost - and they are harrowingly aware of this. However, some have
not given up hope that their language can be preserved, and might one day even
be revived among their children. In Europe, furthering a cultural agenda by bringing up your child to speak a
quaint local language instead of a widely-useful one raises moral issues.
However, in Vanuatu all the indigenous languages are as 'bad' as one another
when it comes to their usefulness in the wider world, so it makes little
difference to a child's chances in life which language they grow up to speak.
The children of south-central Pentecost who currently speak Abma might just as
well learn Sowa and keep their heritage alive. My enquiries about Sowa led me back to Waterfall Village and to a man named
Isaiah, who is at the forefront of efforts to resurrect the language. Isaiah
encourages men who still know a little Sowa to speak it together in the
nakamal, and was responsible for the notice that first sparked my interest in
the language. He is also hopeful that Sowa will someday be taught to children
in the local primary school. Isaiah's father was a native Sowa speaker who never learned Abma and died when
Isaiah was in kindergarten; his mother is a speaker of Seke, a south Pentecost
language closely related to Sowa. Isaiah began writing notes on Sowa back in
1998 when he was at high school, where he was encouraged by one of his
teachers. "One day," the teacher told him, "white people will come and want to
see what you have written". By visiting him I was unwittingly fulfilling a
prophecy. With the help of a recently-deceased local elder, Isaiah has now compiled a
book containing about 900 words and phrases in Sowa, with Abma translations.
The listings are neither alphabetical nor divided into clear sections, and for
a few words the Sowa translation is missing (nobody could remember it), but
the book is intended to cover all the basics of the language. It was typed up
on a friend's computer, but only five copies were printed - the villagers
could not afford more. The book was launched earlier this year at a small
ceremony in the nakamal, and Isaiah hopes to put together further books on
Sowa in future. "Our mother tongue [is] our identity. Therefore, this booklet encourages our
young generations to...unite and help develop the resurrection of our
language," the book's introduction concludes. Some locals see Isaiah's efforts as a waste of time, he told me, and he seemed
pleased and surprised to discover that there might be people from outside
Pentecost who care about the preservation of its languages. With Isaiah's permission, I borrowed his book, took it to the school and
printed several more copies. I gave six to him, which he intends to give to
other communities within the Sowa area that have yet to receive his book. I
also offered to take a copy to be filed at the Vanuatu Cultural Centre in Port
Vila. Before leaving, I used by little MP3 player to make recordings of Isaiah
reciting a few of the Sowa words and phrases from his book. Isaiah seems hopeful that his father's language and culture will not be
forgotten. In Port Vila, he tells me, there is now a Sowa Association,
consisting of people from south-central Pentecost who help one another out in
times of difficulty. The association's members do not actually speak Sowa, but
they recognise their common heritage. Wantokism - granting of favours to people who share your native language - is
a widespread feature of Melanesian society. With so many languages around
(Vanuatu has around a hundred, in a country with half the population of
Edinburgh), the people who share your language ("one-talks" or wantoks) are
your family and your neighbours - the other members of your clan. It was
interesting to see that wantokism can survive even when the language around
which it was based has gone. As Melanesia's indigenous languages continue to disappear, I predict that
groups such as the Sowa Association will become common in the future - tribes
united by the ghost of a common language.
8th December
With the school now empty of students, I devoted my last few days before the
Christmas holidays to unpacking the boxes of equipment recently donated to the
school by AusAID - the last stage in the Australian government's
million-dollar programme to transform Ranwadi into a proper modern college. In the science lab, there were new test tubes, measuring cylinders, compasses,
flasks, pipettes, microscope slides, molecular models, indicator paper,
pipettes and textbooks to explain to students how all these shiny and
fragile-looking pieces of apparatus are supposed to be used. There was also
fancier stuff: an oscilloscope, an electrical pH meter, and set of
sophisticated-looking digital thermometers. Having come to Vanuatu full of self-satisfying notions about going to help the
poor in the Third World, it was a little disconcerting to reflect that the
science department I was now working in was now better-equipped that of some
Western schools. Better still, the school's new computer room now had actual computers. A dozen
shiny new PCs had been unloaded from the ship a few weeks ago, and were
stacked in boxes waiting to be unpacked. For a while, the Principal held out
some vague hope that AusAID would send a technician to set up the machines,
but in the end the job fell to the person somewhat dubiously regarded as the
school's resident computer expert: me. Extricating a dozen computers and their keyboards, mice, screens, speakers and
cables from their polystyrene-padded boxes, wire ties and polythene wrappings
is a remarkably tedious business. By the end I had accumulated a sizeable heap
of superfluous plastic, each piece carefully printed with "choking hazard" in
a dozen languages, just in case some greedy infant or greedy lawyer should
happen to get his hands on it during its five-second journey from box to
dustbin. If anybody from Samsung, Asus, Computer Alliance, BTC, X-Sonic or
Canon happens to be reading this, please let your bosses know that they are
indirectly responsible for a pointless heap of waste being dumped on a
beautiful Pacific island, and ask them to have their products packaged more
biodegradably in future. One of the new computers went into the Principal's office. ("It's not really
for me," he explained, beaming like a child with a new toy. "I want everything
set up ready for the person who takes over my job when I eventually retire.")
Another computer, with an interactive encyclopaedia installed, went into the
Library. Two more replaced the ailing, cobwebby machines in the office and the
staffroom, which crash so often that their reset buttons have been broken from
overuse. The remaining eight were set up in the computer room for students to
use. Ranwadi, it seemed, was now fully equipped for the twenty-first century.
Except for one thing: during class time, there is no electricity to power the
computers. The school can only afford to run its generator for three and a
half hours a day (fuel is expensive in Vanuatu), which is done in the evenings
so that the electricity can be used for lighting. Since the students spend
much of each evening eating dinner, saying compulsory prayers in the chapel
and getting ready for bed, the computers are only likely to be used for a
couple of hours each day, and even this will only be possible if teachers can
be found who are willing to spend their evenings supervising the students in
the computer room. (Though Ranwadi's students are aware of the difficulty the
school has in obtaining equipment, they are as reckless with school property
as teenagers anywhere else in the world; if they were left alone in the
computer room the place would be trashed within days.) To make matters worse, the Internet access that the Vanuatu government
provides to schools so that students can be trained in the use of the
technology is available freely only during the daytime. All of these issues could have been solved, of course, if AusAID had had the
insight to send laptop computers, which could have run off their batteries for
a couple of hours during the day as well as being used in the evenings. Six
laptops would have provided the school with as much use as a dozen desktop
machines. They would also have been easier to set up, and easier to take into
town if they needed repair. For the hundredth time, I was left moaning about foreigners' inability to
appreciate what life is like on Pentecost Island. I pictured the scene in Australia when the goods were dispatched. "Vanuatu?
Vanuatu
oh yes, that's the island where people go for beach holidays, isn't
it? Better not send laptops, they might get sand in them. Besides, we're
sending these to the Third World, aren't we? The poor sods will be grateful
for anything they get. The natives probably haven't even seen a computer
before. And look, there's a desktop model here that's a hundred bucks cheaper
than the laptop version. The shipping cost? Never mind, that's not our
department
" Having said all this, I am of course grateful to AusAID for its efforts to
help Ranwadi. A dozen half-useable new computers are infinitely better than
none at all, and for students who grew up in huts in the jungle but aspire to
get well-paid jobs in schools and offices, even brief contact with such
technology is extremely useful. I look forward to a long line of students and teachers knocking at my door
asking me to "Show'em how b'long make'm computer ee work" during the year
ahead.
2nd December
With teaching finished, the three gap volunteers and I set out to explore the
southern end of Pentecost Island. Setting out from Ranwadi, we walked for five
or six hours along the gritty coastal road, negotiating muddy puddles and
wading stony rivers. Beyond the airfield we passed the village of Hotwata (Hot
Water), where a scalding, sulphurous stream welled out of the black rock and
trickled into the sea. After this there were other villages, many of them home
to Ranwadi students who had already returned from the holidays. "Hello, Mr Andrew!" teenagers shouted as I passed. "You got small torch?" asked a passing truck driver. People from the southern end of the island had seen their relatives returning
from Ranwadi with my tiny keyring lights, and now they all wanted one too. I
wondered how many other parts of Vanuatu the small torch mania had spread to. We passed other villages - Rangisuksu, Panas, Wali. I had travelled this way
once before, on a bicycle, but on that occasion I hadn't got the chance to
look at the places properly. (It's hard to admire the scenery when you are
preoccupied with the challenge of keeping up with the athletic Australian
ahead of you while skeetering to avoid the rocks, ruts, holes, chickens and
children that appear in the middle of the road with dangerous frequency.) South Pentecost is land-diving country: it is in this part of the island that
the local men perform their ritual dives from tall towers with vines trailing
from their feet. Tourists will pay appreciable sums of money to witness "the
most remarkable custom in all of Melanesia" (I quote the Lonely Planet
guidebook), and the villagers of the south are relatively well off as a
result. However, unlike in many other parts of Vanuatu they haven't rushed to
spend their money on cement and corrugated roofing iron. Instead, a surprising
number of their buildings are constructed in the traditional way, with
straw-coloured walls woven from bamboo strips and palm thatch on the roof. Not
just small houses, but school buildings and even large churches are built in
this way. The buildings have a playhouse appearance to them, and some look as
if they wouldn't fare well if the Big Bad Wolf (or, more plausibly, a tropical
cyclone) tried to huff and puff and blow them down, but they are cool and
breezy and beautiful to look at. The southward road rounded a point, where an eroded pillar of stone jutted out
of the ocean, with spiky palms and grasses on its summit waving against the
tropical sky. It looked like part of the set from Pirates of the Caribbean.
This was Captain Cook's Rock, perhaps sighted by the famous sailor on the
eponymous Whitsunday on which he first discovered Pentecost. Looking back in
the direction from which we had come, a wide arc of beach curved away like a
lens into an infinite-looking series of hills and headlands. Beyond the point of land was Homo Bay, lined by the sandy villages of Pangi
and Salap. Feeling that we had walked far enough for one day - we were now
over fifteen miles (24 km) from Ranwadi - we checked into the Pangi
Guesthouse, another beautiful bamboo-and-thatch building with a floor of
shingle and woven mats. The guesthouse's owner was away on business, but we
were looked after by his wife, a cheerful lady named Evelyn with an intriguing
collection of local artefacts (including flying fox traps that resembled a
cross between a bird cage and a lobster pot). She apologised profusely for the
lack of electric light or running water; on Pentecost I hadnt expected
either. Evelyn made our beds and shooed out the large dog that had settled
down for a snooze in the outhouse, while her smiling five-year-old daughter
showed us around and took the two gap girls for a swim. ("She likes playing
with white people," her mother explained.) Another bamboo building next door to the guesthouse served as the local
restaurant. Eating in restaurants isn't something I associate with Pentecost
life - there are none in the vicinity of Ranwadi - but the place was
delightfully Pentecost-like in every way. The cook was a smiling woman in an
island dress, who brought out steaming plates of 'kakae' while her husband
staffed the shop next door and her children milled around making themselves
useful. The only food on offer was laplap (vegetable pudding) with rice and
stew, served at a big table by the light of a kerosene lantern. The 'local
fowl' in the stew was so local that we had heard it squawking outside earlier
that day. It was delicious. Jutting out into Homo Bay was a sturdy, new-looking wharf. The name "Queen
Elizabeth Landing" had been scratched into the cement at the entrance to the
jetty, and a plaque nearby proclaimed that this was the spot on which Her
Majesty had come ashore during her 1974 visit to Pentecost to watch the
land-diving ceremony. (It was the wrong time of year for land-diving, and one
unfortunate jumper had plunged to his death in front of the Queen after
misjudging the elasticity of his vines.) "You been talk-talk with'em Queen?" asked one villager, after discovering that
I was from England. I've never even seen her, I said. Although I did once have a brief
conversation with her daughter. "Me been look-look him," the villager told me. (Speakers of Pidgin English do
not distinguish between "him" and "her".) "Time way him ee come 'long
Pentecost, me been look-look." It seemed that almost the entire population of southern Pentecost (which may
have been only a few hundred people at that time) had turned up to greet their
royal visitor. Nearly everyone old enough to remember the occasion reminisced
about seeing the Queen. The new jetty had been built to receive less illustrious visitors - tourists
on cruise ships. Thankfully, none were scheduled to arrive until next year. As
we sat on the end of the jetty at sunset, watching small fish poppling the
sky-coloured water and distant thunderclouds sparking over the volcanoes of
nearby Ambrym Island, the bay was empty and calm. Our destination for the next day was the village of Bunlap, across the
mountains on the far side of the island. Bunlap is one of a number of 'custom
villages' in Vanuatu - places where people are reputed to live entirely
according to their traditional customs, unspoilt by the influence of
missionaries. The men there are naked except for nambas (penis wrappers made
from leaves or woven grass tucked into a belt around the waist, with the
testicles dangling freely below), and the women wear nothing but grass skirts.
Food is grown in local gardens, houses are built in traditional style, and the
economy is based on the exchange of pigs and ceremonial artefacts rather than
coins and banknotes. Customary rituals and taboos are strictly adhered to,
whilst Christian ones (such as "conceal thy nakedness") are not. Four gawking Westerners could hardly turn up unannounced in such a place. We
therefore went to see Chief Willy, one of a handful of south Pentecost leaders
who have built lucrative businesses out of showing off the sights of their
native island to foreign visitors. We walked along to the Naghol Bungalows,
Chief Willy's private resort, located just beyond Salap at exactly the point
where the good road southwards ends (in other words, where stony wheel ruts
deteriorate into overgrown, muddy wheel ruts). It wasn't tourist season, and
Willy's bungalows were lonely and deserted. The late afternoon sun slanting
through the trees onto the faded wooden buildings gave the place an autumnal
feel. We found the chief kneeling in one of his huts, while a holy man stood
with one hand on Willy's shoulder and a Bible in the other, chanting prayers. "Him ee pray from health b'long me," Willy explained, after we had
respectfully waited for the prayers to finish. He wheezed and patted his
chest. "Me got short wind." After various negotiations, Chief Willy organised a guide - his eldest son -
who could take us over the mountains to Bunlap and arrange our entry into the
kastom village. We set out early the next morning. When I went into the store next to the
restaurant to buy a packet of biscuits for the journey, the family's eldest
daughter, who is in my 9B Maths class at Ranwadi, was behind the counter. "How much is the change?" I asked her, handing over money with one hand and
covering up her calculator with the other. She smiled and gave me the right answer. - - - Traditional life on Pentecost is damp and muddy. After trekking up the rutted
main road to the top of the mountain ridge, we left the 'road b'long truck'
and descended into Bunlap via a series of increasingly steep and slimy
mountain paths. It was hard not to 'glis' (a delightful Bislama word combining
'slip', 'slide' and 'glide') as we scrambled diagonally down slopes of loose
mud, especially after it began to rain. We descended the hillside with the
slowness of a cautious mountaineer, sliding precariously from one slimy
foothold to the next. Pentecost a narrow island - only 6 miles (10 km) across at its widest point -
yet in nearly a year of living on the island this was only the second time
that I had crossed it. I know people who have spent many years living and
working on the west coast of Pentecost without ever venturing to see the other
side. That gives you an idea of how bad the 'roads' on eastern Pentecost are. Along the path we came across small groups of topless, grass-skirted women, on
their way to gardens up the mountain. They stared at us far more than we
stared at them. One old woman squeezed the two gap girls by the arms, sizing
them up like livestock destined for the market, perhaps assessing whether or
not they had the strength for the journey. "White people!" the younger women shouted excitedly. (They were speaking their
native language - a different one from that spoken around Ranwadi - but it's
not hard to pick up the local word for 'white person' when visiting new areas
of Vanuatu. It's what small children shout to their friends when they see you
coming.) Answering shouts came from unseen villagers in the bushes nearby. Across enormous areas of the mountainside, the forest had been cleared to make
way for gardens of local root vegetables - taro and yams. For city-dwellers
whose food is shipped to them from distant, industrialised farms, it's easy to
forget how much land it actually takes to feed a human being. By the time we reached the village, we were filthy with mud and sweat, and the
rain had become torrential. Thunder from the clouds on the mountain above
mingled with the thunder of waves crashing on the coastline below. We were
still far above the sea, but through gaps in the trees we could see a fearsome
swell rolling in off the (misnamed) Pacific. Whilst western Pentecost is
shielded by other islands from the full force of the ocean, here on the
eastern side of the island there was no land at all between us and Fiji,
several hundred miles away, and no substantial landmass between us and South
America. We were taken to the Bunlap Guesthouse and sheltered there, waiting for the
rain to stop. A succession of half-naked men and women came by to shake our
hands and introduce themselves, while groups of bare children - round-bellied
as a result of their starchy, low-protein diet - gathered in the doorway to
watch the white people. Rain dripped cleanly off the villagers' bare skin; our
own clothes were clammy and soaking. When the rain eased off we were given a tour of the village. Bunlap is built
on a steep mountainside, and the paths between the buildings were just as
awkward and slippery as the mountain track down which had come. What passed
for the High Street resembled a garden water feature: a narrow cascade of
boulders (coated in the slippery film that grows on damp rock in the tropics),
terrifyingly steep, with rainwater gushing down it. On the few flat surfaces,
mud and water - with at least a hint of pig shit mixed in - coalesced in warm
brown pools. While the locals accompanying us negotiated their perilous home
with complete ease, the gappers and I picked our way nervously around the
village like toddlers in an adventure playground designed for older children. Most of Bunlap's residents live in long thatched huts, with low, triangular
roofs reaching almost to the ground. The triangular-roofed houses are built on
terraces on the steep hillside, packed closely together, and from a distance
the village has a vaguely Oriental appearance. Pigs wallow in the gulleys
behind and between the houses. At the top of the village are three dark
nakamals (men's meeting houses) with flat ceremonial grounds outside. None of the buildings have hinged doors; instead the doorway is built about
half a metre off the ground, and the overhanging roof extends down to about
the same level. This arrangement keeps out driving rain, wandering pigs and
high-flying chickens, but allows human beings (with a certain amount of
effort) to scramble in and out. Villagers in various states of nakedness came out of their houses to greet us
and shake our hands. There was a very foreign atmosphere to the place, but the
lack of clothing wasn't the reason for it. In fact, being surrounded by
half-naked people seemed remarkably natural. Of course, I courteously kept my
eyes at face level, but I would have done the same with fully-clothed people
back home. The only awkward moment came that evening, when I only narrowly
avoided accidentally shaking a man by the penis as he bent down to shake my
hand in an extremely dimly-lit nakamal.) The braces on Nat and Hugh's teeth attracted great curiosity among the
villagers. When Nat took out her removable brace, there were squeals of
surprise from the children, who then followed us around the village, shouting
to their friends to come out and see the amazing white girl who could take out
part of her mouth and put it back in again. (They were speaking their native
language; I'm guessing at what was being said.) Nat repeated the trick, and
the children stared. My tiny LED keyring torches, predictably, were another source of fascination.
I gave one of the torches to one of the villagers in exchange for a
traditional penis wrapper (though I declined to wear it in public for fear
that it might fall off as I clambered up and down the treacherous paths). Hugh
accused me of corrupting the villagers' traditional customs; I saw it as more
of a cultural exchange. I certainly wasn't the first person to introduce foreign goods to the village.
Life in Bunlap is not exactly as it was in pre-colonial times (and not just
because of the lack of tribal warfare and cannibalism): Western imports abound
in the village. The traditionally-built huts are held together with iron
nails, the traditionally-grown vegetables are cooked in metal pots using water
fetched in plastic buckets, and after dark many residents use electric torches
to navigate the treacherous footpaths. The guesthouse has a tin roof and
electric lights (although no electricity at the time of our visit, since the
generator was on loan to a neighbouring village). Nowadays Bunlap even has a
telephone. I know of no community in the world that totally and unequivocally rejects new
technology (even people such as the Amish and the desert Aborigines allow a
few selected modernities into their lives) and the inhabitants of Vanuatu's
custom villagers are no exception. In fact, apart from the clothing (or lack
of it), life in Bunlap was not noticeably more traditional than in many of the
settlements in the mountains above Ranwadi. The difference between a custom
village and an ordinary one was more a matter of attitude. In ordinary
villages in Vanuatu, people tend to covet the lifestyle enjoyed by white
people, or by their wealthier cousins in Port Vila, and if they continue to
live like their ancestors it is only because they have no choice; they can
afford no better. In custom villages, by contrast, the residents do not aspire
to change their traditional lifestyle, although they are happy to adopt new
technologies such as nails and cooking pots that will make that lifestyle
easier. So far, the villagers of Bunlap seem to have done a reasonable job of blending
their customs peaceably with the realities of life in a modern world. They
continue to believe in their traditional god, but respect the Christian one
too, regarding the two as one and the same. They do not wish to send their
children to school, but are keen for a Peace Corps volunteer to come and teach
them the basics of reading, writing and English. (Some of the villagers I
spoke to were manifestly illiterate. "What do you call this kind of dog?"
asked one man, pointing at a picture on the face of a souvenir clock -
presumably a gift from a past Australian visitor - under which the word
"kangaroo" was written in large letters.) When traditional healing techniques
fail to cure illness, they are happy to turn to Western drugs (although,
sadly, Bunlap's medical dispensary is currently locked up and unused because
nobody can be found who is qualified to hand out the medicines). They welcome
white visitors into their community, but insist that they respect traditional
taboos. (Whilst Hugh and I were invited into the nakamal in the evening, the
two girls were forbidden even from walking along the path leading beside the
building.) There is no rule against being modern in Bunlap. Villagers are free to put on
Western clothes or to supplement their local pork and vegetables with packaged
foods if they wish, and a few choose to do so. Most, however, are well aware
of the benefits of their old way of life, developed over thousands of years to
suit the local environment. "Some visitors who come to Bunlap choose to put on nambas and grass skirts,
just because it's so difficult to keep your clothes clean here," one of the
villagers told me. Travelling to a custom village is not a trip into the past. Rather, it is a
journey into an alternative version of the twenty-first century. Personally I
prefer my own version, the version with computers and aeroplanes and
supermarkets and paved roads. However, to the villagers of Bunlap on their
muddy mountainside, the local version of twenty-first century life seems
equally satisfying.
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