Andrew Gray's travel tales

3rd November

- from the first song ever played on MTV
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"Have you ever been at home during a power cut?" asks one of the
British-authored science textbooks used by the junior students at Ranwadi.
"Life's not much fun without electricity."

The majority of the students have not had the experience of being at home
during a power cut. Their homes don't have power. Even at Ranwadi, where the
buildings do have electricity wired into them, nobody uses the word "power
cut". Instead, they talk about "power on"; absence of electricity is the
normal state of affairs. Power on is from sunset until half-past nine in the
evenings, and sometimes for a couple of hours during the daytime if the
teachers need to use the photocopier or the computers and the school can
afford the fuel for the generator.

With poorly-installed circuitry, corrosive humidity, and generators that
struggle to cope with the load (twenty or so houses and an entire high
school campus are run on a wattage that probably wouldn't light even half of
Al Gore's house), electrical problems are common. In some rooms, fluorescent
lights spend the evening flickering pathetically, their power supply
insufficient to kick them into life. Students from certain classes wander
the school during evening study times because every single one of lights in
their classroom is out. The boys' dormitories were without lighting for the
whole of last term, due to an electrical fault caused by one boy's attempt
to hack into the power cables running through the wall beside his bed and
wire in an extra plug socket. ("Him ee danger little-bit," commented the
school mechanic, with typical understatement.) Sometimes computers and DVD
players flick off and on as the voltage coming out of the sockets drops
critically and teachers rush around the school trying to find and stop
whoever is overloading the power supply - the handyman using power tools
perhaps, or too many people opening and closing the freezer in the school
store.

Qualified electricians do very occasionally visit Pentecost, but at other
times the job of operating the electricity generators and repairing faults
is done by a combination of the handyman, the mechanic, the boarding master
and the Technology teacher. The handyman is experienced at painting and
patching up holes, the mechanic is skilled at disassembling engines, the
boarding master is good at odd jobs, and the Technology teacher has a
certificate in woodwork. Their knowledge of electricity is limited, but they
all know how to use a screwdriver, and through their combined efforts they
manage to keep the majority of the lights on.

In addition to its main generator, the school has two or three small
generators, one of which, on average, is in working order at any given time.
These are not enough to power the entire school, but will run parts of it at
times when somebody needs electricity for a specific purpose, such as
photocopying an important exam, and wants to economise on fuel. They are
also a useful backup when the big generator breaks down.

Twice in the two years that I've been at Ranwadi, all the generators have
broken down simultaneously, and the school has gone completely without
power, on one occasion for nearly a month. However, apart from the
frustrating lack of contact from the outside world (the only times I've ever
phoned home from Ranwadi rather than e-mailing were during power outages
when I used the mere two or three minutes of international call time
provided by local phone cards to reassure my parents that I was still
alive), I quite enjoyed the absence of electricity. Evenings were quiet and
candlelit, and instead of doing battle with temperamental computers and
being called out of lessons by colleagues who need help unjamming the
photocopier, I wrote my notes by hand and chalked them on the blackboard for
my students to copy.

Nearly everything that people on Pentecost need to do can be done without
electricity. Light can be provided by battery-powered torches, or by candles
and lanterns. (It was only after seeing the little orange flames shining
from teachers' houses late in the evenings that I realised why people talk
of "burning the midnight oil".) Heating is rarely necessary - the coldest
temperature I have ever known on Pentecost was 18C (65F) - and villagers who
do feel the cold on winter nights can wrap themselves up in a blanket or
huddle around the fire. Air-conditioning would be nice, but in its absence
those who don't want to sweat in the heat can cool themselves by reptilian
means like sitting in cool breezes or jumping in the river. The stove or the
fire can do the job of an electric kettle, a toaster or a microwave. With
most food either gathered straight from the gardens, or bought in packets
and tins with Methuselan shelf-lives, fridges and freezers are seldom
needed. Many of these can be powered with gas or kerosene anyway. Instead of
vacuum cleaners there are bush brooms; instead of hair driers there are
towels and the sun and the wind. Musical entertainment can be provided by
stereos running off chunky batteries, or by the old-fashioned means singing
and playing the guitar.

In spite of all this, an number of villagers are now using the increasing
amounts of money earned from selling kava to buy themselves small
electricity generators. However, this is not because electrical gadgets are
more convenient than their old-fashioned predecessors: most owners of new
generators continue to cook on wood fires and light their houses with
lanterns. The real reason for the slow but noticeable spread of electricity
across Pentecost in recent years is the invention of the DVD player.

Television and videos are one of the few things for which the islanders have
never found a non-electrical substitute. You can run stoves and fridges and
lights on wood and paraffin and gas, but to my knowledge nobody has ever
invented an oil-fired TV.

Until recently, few people bemoaned the inability to plug in televisions,
because there would have been little to watch. Pentecost is too far from
town to receive terrestrial TV broadcasts, and satellite TV is beyond the
means of most of the islanders. A handful of people used to have
videocassette players and tapes, but these were expensive, and didn't last
long in a jungle environment. When I was required to show a video to my Year
13 students last year using the school's ancient VCR, I had to stand beside
the screen like a weatherperson explaining to the students what the blurry
pictures and inaudible fuzz were supposed to be showing them. This year, I
refused to do the exercise unless the exam board sent me a copy of the video
on DVD.

Even in a country where import duties double the price of most electronic
goods (don't let any of the Australians who have offshore bank accounts in
Port Vila tell you that Vanuatu is tax-free), DVD players can now be bought
at Chinese stores in town for no more than the price of a couple of sacks of
good home-grown kava. Even very cheap DVD players are more robust and
portable than the old VCRs, and their discs can be copied and distributed
with far greater ease than videocassettes. People in Vanuatu have a
sophisticated notion of copyright when it comes to traditional artefacts -
those wishing to copy a particular carving were traditionally required to
pay pigs as royalties to the chief who owned the design - but the concept is
non-existent when it comes to music and videos. A few well-equipped
storekeepers buy packs of "empty DVDs" (the word "blank" has yet to enter
the local vocabulary) onto which they burn whatever movies their customers
feel like watching, which not only saves money but allows them to respond
effectively to local demand, a rare thing on an island where warehouses and
suppliers are a long ship journey away.

Approaching a village in the evenings, it is now common to be greeted by the
sound of a rumbling generator and the sight of a group of people sitting
fixated in a pool of blue light. At the increasing number of food and kava
nights that local people put on to raise money for community projects or
their children's school fees, video showings are a regular attraction. At
Ranwadi, meanwhile, a couple of the teachers have become such video junkies
that they will run small private generators even when the school's main
generator is off, just so that they can watch a DVD.

The most popular DVDs are "stories belong fight". The ordinarily gentle
ni-Vanuatu have an astonishing love of on-screen violence of all kinds,
whether it comes from black-suited gangsters raiding casinos, Oriental
martial arts masters, a giant computer-generated gorilla, rebellious Roman
legions thrown into the gladiator pit, Bruce Willis and a noble troop of
well-armed American soldiers splattering their way out of an awkward
military situation, or blue-painted Scotsmen baring their cheeks at the
English enemy before running them through with swords and spears. People who
have seen the movie before may actually fast-forward through the parts where
people are talking rather than killing, and stop the movie not when it
reaches the end but when it reaches the point where the last bad guy has
been killed.

The local taste for violent movies is partly, though not entirely, because
they are straightforward to understand. As far as I know nobody has ever
produced a movie in any of Vanuatu's languages, and even well-educated
islanders struggle to follow the English of Mafia bosses or William Wallace.
Subtitles help, but on cheap discs imported from Asia these are often
unavailable, or at least not available in languages that the locals
understand. I recently came across a group of Francophone villagers
squinting at a movie subtitled in Portuguese and muttering that French was
hard to understand. In addition, the dialogue of the average movie is so
loaded with idioms and foreign concepts that it would thoroughly confuse
even an islander who understood every individual word, just as I get
confused when villagers are describing customs to which I don't know the
cultural background.

Whilst the villagers will happily sit down with their children to watch
movies containing the most hideous violence, sex is another matter. Although
privately there is a keen demand among local men for "rubbish movies" (by
which they don't mean the kind in which Kirsten Dunst and Orlando Bloom go
on a journey of romantic self-discovery), at video nights the slightest hint
of on-screen intimacy has the villagers scrambling for the fast-forward
button. Not only are sex scenes embarrassing and distasteful to the locals,
they're also not very entertaining, since they seldom culminate in anybody
getting killed.

At video nights, it's customary to play a few music videos before the main
movie begins. People watch these avidly, and not just because they enjoy the
songs. Try spending a few minutes watching MTV sometime and think about how
many of the seemingly-mundane images that you see - a person riding a subway
train, for example, or sending a text message on a mobile phone - would be
fascinating to a person who grew up in a village in the jungle. Such
glimpses of Western life also occur in movies, of course, but the villagers
are well aware that Hollywood mixes fact with fiction, and that moviegoers
can't always tell which is which. People ask me whether Scotsmen really wear
skirts, and in the same tone of voice ask whether there really are islands
still inhabited by dinosaurs. Music videos are more interesting, one
islander told me, because they show "things that are true".

What must Britain and America look like through the lens of a pop video, I
wonder? Dangerous, colourful, decadent, fast-moving, extravagant and
hyperemotional, perhaps. Full of Englishmen who talk like Americans,
Irishmen who talk like the English, and black people who wear hats and
sunglasses indoors and make weird gestures with their hands (which are
imitated obnoxiously by Vanuatu teenagers when they get the chance to pose
in front of a camera) in order to look cool. A culture obsessed with youth,
beauty, money and sex? A lifestyle that is frightening and strange, or one
that is simply alluring?

How would it feel for the islanders to travel to these glamorous places and
find out that, just like in their own countries, the majority of the
inhabitants lead dulls lives, wear ordinary-looking clothes, and concern
themselves with the mundane routines of earning a living, bringing up
children, dealing with their friends and families, and growing old? Perhaps
something like the way it would feel for a Westerner who'd grown up on Band
Aid images of the Third World as a place whose inhabitants struggle humbly
to maintain their traditions and work themselves out of poverty to go there
and find that, just like his own country, it is full of loud and
fashion-obsessed young people who squander their education and desire money
mainly so that they can buy a bigger TV screen.

Last year, AusAID sent Ranwadi a dozen new computers to help with students'
education. Developing computer skills - which are still rare among
ni-Vanuatu - could be a real asset to students when they leave school and
seek good jobs in town. Interactive learning exercises could also help the
students get over the immense difficulty they have in trying to
conceptualise ideas when presented to them in a strange language. At first,
working with the students on the new computers was fun: they were eager to
learn, took obvious pleasure in their ability to use the new technology, and
mastered it extremely quickly. However, after it was discovered that the
computers could play music and videos, nobody wanted to use them for
anything else. Students who were allowed into the computer lab to study
would start playing music and games as soon as they sensed that a teacher
was no longer looking over their shoulders. Getting the students interested
in using computers for anything other than entertainment became so difficult
that I and the other expat teachers largely gave up bothering. It's no fun
trying to teach a student to type a letter or fill in a spreadsheet when the
student is paying little attention and enduring the lesson only in the
grudging hope that the teacher will give them permission to click on "My
Videos" when their work is finished. The lovely new Computer Room now sits
largely unused, except when the teachers want to play space invaders or
watch a video CD.

Fortunately, Pentecost is not an island of telly addicts yet. The cost of
fuelling their electricity generators means that, for the majority of the
villagers, watching videos remains an occasional treat rather than a daily
pastime. However, the spread of newer and cheaper solar panels and of
communal electricity supplies such as the school's will eventually overcome
this limitation. Now that there are potential viewers in so many villages it
is also only a matter of time before the Vanuatu government (or one of its
many foreign friends) builds a TV transmitter on Pentecost, providing
continuous entertainment even to those who have run out of DVDs to watch.
The French would probably pay for the transmitter, if they were given a
guarantee that plenty of its output would be en français. Or the government
could try asking for help from China, which has already begun generously
supplying viewers in Port Vila and Luganville with CCTV9, its poisonous
English-language news channel. Perhaps Benny Hinn could chip in a few
dollars, in return for the chance to beam his televised sermons to 15,000
virgin viewers who have fallen too hopelessly in love with their new medium
to realise that it might be capable of lying to them. And don't bemoan the
naivety of islanders who would allow themselves to be manipulated in the
interests of cheap entertainment: we all do the same every time we watch an
advert on TV.

The most often-repeated lie on television, anywhere in the world, is that is
output is not to be missed.

"I couldn't go and live in a place like Vanuatu," several of my friends back
home tell me. "I would miss television too much."

The majority would not.

Television is like caffeine. For those who are used to it, a day or a week's
deprivation is painfully frustrating. However, go without for a month, or
for a year, and you'll forget that you ever wanted it. There is no longing
to watch the next episode, no fretting that you have lost track of the
fortunes of your favourite soap-opera characters. You lost track ages ago,
the episodes passed you by, and after a while you found that it didn't
matter any more. The series you were following came to an end, and although
you know that new series have replaced them, you no longer care what they
are. Hearing friends discuss the latest programme is like hearing them
discuss someone you don't know - you might prick up your ears if something
particularly salacious comes up, but by and large you just ignore them.

Admittedly, I am not an ideal guinea pig in which to study the effect of
televisual deprivation in humans: I was never a particular fan of
television. I dislike unnecessary background noise, and back home I would
get irritated by people who automatically switched on the TV when they sat
down in a room even if there was nothing they really wanted to watch. (I, in
turn, would irritate those people by switching off TVs that nobody appeared
to be watching.) As a student in Edinburgh I went for a year without a
television set, and enjoyed it, except for the regular annoyance of people
trying to start conversations about what they'd seen on TV and an offensive
stream of letters from the TV Licensing Authority insinuating that I was
lying when I told them I didn't own a television. Yet ordinarily TV-loving
expats who I meet in Vanuatu say the same thing: it's strange how little we
miss television.

Television may not me missable, but its absence is something that I
certainly will miss as new media spreads across Pentecost. Already, the
experience of tranquil tropical evenings spoiled by rumbling generators and
videos turned up to full volume to drown them out has led me on many
occasions to wish that the DVD player had never been invented. To the
locals, however, silence is primitive: loud entertainment is the future. And
cheap DVD players would be the best thing since sliced bread if the latter
had yet made it to Pentecost. (Sliced bread, incidentally, is another
invention that I will lament when it eventually does arrive on the island
and replaces fresh, crisp, wood-smoked loaves. One enterprising local baker
has already asked me if I know where he can order a slicing machine.)

To describe TV entertainment as a drug would be clichéd and wrong. (Drugs
stimulate the mind in novel ways.) Yet there is undoubtedly something
narcotic about the glowing blue screens and the way they draw you in.

On my last evening in Pangi, as I lay in my bed in the normally-peaceful
thatched guesthouse recovering from the effects of inadvertently drinking
paraffin, the sounds of the crickets and the waves on the beach were
interrupted by the splutter and drone of a generator being started. In the
hut opposite, villagers had gathered to watch music videos on DVD. Unable to
relax amidst the lawnmower-like noise coming through the window, I did the
only thing I could. I went across to the neighbouring hut, sat down amongst
the villagers, fixed my eyes on the screen, and began to watch.