Tanna

Tonight, the night of Earth Hour incidentally, i wanted to revert to talking about my trip to Vanuatu. i need a break from the earthquakes.

i flew from Efate to Tanna and noticed the difference immediately. People are materially poorer. Travel is mostly on foot, horseback or 4WD. The air is cooler and dryer. i stayed in a resort where power comes from the generator only. They managed hot water and excellent food. Their employees were all local, and the wages went back to the village to be distributed by the chief. i attempted snorkelling. i spent hours watching fish dance among the coral. i sat at night on the porch of the bure and watched the wildfire. At last, proper rain and a real thunderstorm. Storms on Efate were very polite, or maybe just too chilled out. In the tropics i expect to be drenched, gasping, my high tech raincoat a soggy mess, and to see lightning sear the air.

My main purpose in going to Vanuatu was to see Mt Yasur, the world's most accessible volcano. i set off mid afternoon with the driver and two men to pull the Landcruiser out of the mud. i now have a new respect for Landcruisers. The two men were never needed. We drove for hours up rutted tracks, and every few clicks there was a village, with pigs and chickens and horses (there are wild horses), and people waving and calling to us. And in every village there was sign saying Digicell. Hours away from electicity and shops, you can buy a top up for your mobile. There are three telcos in Vanauatu and they market very aggressively. There was also a Baptist church and schools, one for every few villages. On Tanna, people live all the way up into the inland hilly regions. They even live on the black ash plains.

The black ash plains herald volcano country. Suddenly, we went from jungle to black desert, with actual dunes. Scrub clung to the tops of sand blown ridges. i found some to go for a half-hidden pee, and as i finished a family wandered past. Nearby, the volcano. Smoke wreathed it and wisped into clouds, and every few minutes it would roar. And, impossibly, a river, skirting the bottom of the mountain. Back in the awesome Landcruiser, we began to climb. And as we trudged through the blasted land towards Mount Doom, our thoughts turned to Aragorn and Legolas and ... oh hang on, wrong script. It was, however, totally Mordor. i was amazed.

There is a fairly easy walk up to the top of the crater and thence to a rather narrow ridge where we could look right into the double caldera. The ground would shake and the volcano would spew glowing fiery magma into the air, and the magma would land on the sides, and smoke, and cool, and new rocks were thus born The sun set. Down in the valleys we could see the jungle, and the cooking fires. Up where we were, the volcano was everything. i am very lucky to have seen such a thing.

i also attended a John Frum worship service. The John Frum sect is described in two ways (at least). One is that some Tannese responded to the more brutal aspects of missionary Christianity by developing a prophetic faith that really caught on when the Americans came during World War Two. Tannese saw black American soldiers who appeared to have the full benefit of this new, materially sophisticated society. They formed the idea that John Frum (from America) would return with blessings and material goods. The other description of the John Frum sect is that it is a real cargo cult, where people pray for specific items eg a fridge (so i was told). Regardless, the sect is popular and its members are represented in Parliament.

i went to a village on a rainy night. Services are on Fridays. i sat in a hut with no walls while the men sang accompanied by guitars, a hand held drum, coughing and the sound of the rain. The scene was lit by their cell phones and the lights of Landcruisers. (i so love Landcruisers now!) Gradually the women came, sat around the edges, clapped and sang the 'choruses'. The songs were in a minor key and closely harmonised. What else can i say? There was little speech and all of it in Bislama. i did not feel capable of a theological or even an anthropolgical discussion. It was one time in my life where i really had no idea what was going on.

Back to Efate, which seemed slick and urbane in comparison. Roads, cars, shops, clean clothes, TV, lights. And then home.

Efate

Efate is the main island of commerce in Vanuatu. It is the perfect South Pacific island with white coral beaches and coconut trees. i told a serious young man i met on a tour that more people in Vanuatu are killed by falling coconuts than by traffic accidents, and the poor chap believed me, but maybe i was right, with my made up statistic. There certainly don't seem to be many accidents, although the fabulous ring road around the coast of Efate is another story.

Built by the Americans, it has connected villages in a way the internet first connected the cyber world. Before the ring road, if you wanted to see your friends you bush bashed with a knife for hours. Now, you walk along the ring road. So on the ring road people sit, and play, and dogs wander, and a famous elderly man is wheeled in his chair, right down the middle as befits his age and status. Vehicular traffic is almost secondary, and needs to watch out for picnics.

The other lagacy of the American invasion of World War Two is botanical. The main plant on Efate is morning glory. With its big, heart shaped leaves it can grow a metre in a day. It coats the canopy like a net, smothers the trees, and make the landscape uniform. Tendrils grow onto the roads. There are no plans for its eradication, as there is no money. If the Americans wanted to do something for Vanuatu, they could exorcise their own botanical demon. i could get quite exercised about it myself!

i took several tours including climbing the gorgeous Mele Cascades. You climb hanging on to ropes, and at the base of the main cascade is a limpid pool of cool water deep enough to swim in. There are also small caves behind the waterfall. Undine fairyland.

Other tours involved kastom villages where ni-Vanuatu people perform in 'traditional' style. You enter the village, and the men and boys leaps out and threaten you, brandishing spears, clubs, ukeleles and the terrible tea chest bass. The idea is to evoke scary cannibal shit. Some of the tourists are quite sophisticated and mug for the cameras, pretending to be speared and eaten. i photographed Seru the guide, photographing the tourists, being photographed with the villagers. Actually i thought the jumping-out-and-scaring-people ritual was more like the Maori poowhiri, the welcome ceremony where the visitors are challenged, and once the challenge is met, they become part of the village and are no longer visitors.

Kava does not agree with me. i lay in my hotel room as the hotel band played Livin' on a Prayer (the windows are shuttered, so there is no sound proofing), exhausted from trips to the toilet, and decided from now on i would live a blameless life, and was grateful for the 'Gudfela toilet paper blong yumi ' and for clean sheets. A travel tip: food is expensive In Vanuatu but it is totally worth paying for something that stays down.

i had three nights in Port Vila, on Efate, and then went on to Tanna - and the volcano!

Wan Gudfala Nasen: Vanuatu

The title refers to a sign i saw in a van in Port Vila, Vanuatu. In its entirety it read :

Tugeta long loa tugeta long jastis
Wan gudfala nasen.

A sensible call to nationhood.

Bislama, the language of the ni-Vanuatu, began as a pidgin. It looks amusing but it is a language with considerable historicity and is not as easy to understand in spoken form as you would think from reading it. There are some words i could pick up, from prior knowledge, like 'picanini' which means a child in most pidgins, and 'save' which is in every pidgin and originates from the Portuguese. It means 'know', like our term 'savvy'. i have no particular talent for languages, and to me Bislama sounded like any other foreign language ie: incomprehensible, nuanced, complex.

i photographed two other signs, one on a cigarette packet which said:

Sigaret i kilim man

No specifics, but no punches pulled either.

And the other, in the toilet at Tanna airport:

PISPIS
LONG
TOILET
BOWL, NO
PISPIS
LONG
FLOOR

which was a wise sign, because from the look and smell of the place many people had pispis long floor.