Vanuatu - Red Nose Days

I was once a clown. I have told my ni-Vanuatu colleagues about that era in my life. They laugh at me a lot. Perhaps I carry my clown closer to the surface than I realise. I'm okay with that. Sometimes there's a danger with giving yourself a label. Some people might use it as an excuse to dismiss you and diminish what you have to offer. That doesn't worry me either. I trust my colleagues to judge me by what I do.

On this my fifth trip to these islands I sense that I have gained some respect and trust with this group of workers. So on the second day of our preparations for our five day workshop I whip out a red clown nose and place it in the middle of the table we work around. I tell them a story. The story of the Court Jester, who is the King's fool; the one, and only one, in court vested with the right to speak the truth with impunity. I tell them that this red nose can be a very powerful symbol. That, if used wisely, it can become a metaphor, a tool for them in tackling tricky situations in their role as facilitators; in dealing with chiefs.

This group is comprised by a few who have chief status but the majority are ordinary community members,  young and old, men and women. They are aware of the protocols of Vanuatu life. Society appears very relaxed but the rules are clear. Women do not speak directly to chiefs; young people do not have a voice in decision making; the chief's is the ultimate voice. I ask them where that leaves them as facilitators. Do they have a mandate to disagree with a chief? Can they raise contentious topics? When are they empowered to take control of discussion groups? Can they step in when the discussion goes off track?

They like the clown story. They understand that there are times when the obvious might not be stated for fear of offending. They are a little afraid for the 'Fool' in the King's Court. Is immunity guaranteed? They note that the 'Fool' is alone. Who will support him?

We don't go into role as clowns but Christian picks up the clown nose and dons it, immediately inventing his own gibberish language. On his large oval face and shaved brown head he has become an instant clown. It's a perfect illustration of the form. The red nose has obviously crossed cultures before my tabling of it. I ask them to think about using it, not literally, but metaphorically, during the next week when they want to remind themselves that they are giving themselves permission to speak 'out of turn' but with good intentions.

Over the next week I too, literally at times, grab the red nose and warn them that I am about to comment on aspects of the workshop that may make them feel uncomfortable and which I am seeking to bravely draw to their attention.

It's a work in progress.

Strangely when I arrive back in Brisbane a week later I am looking for a new book to read and pick up a novel that my wife recommends. It's called Mister Pip by New Zealand writer Lloyd Jones. It's set in a Melanesian village on the island of Bougainville off New Guinea and within the first five pages there is a startling image of a lone white man wearing a red clown nose pulling his Melanesian wife along on a cart through the village. It's only in the last five pages that the significance of this is revealed.

It's a great book, based around Charles Dickens Great Expectations woven through traditional village life in a time of civil war. It's a book of great hope and redemption and explores how lives and concepts can exist across cultures and ultimately the power of a story to transform lives. 

Vanuatu Tuesday - Working between cultures

I am almost overwhelmed at the thought of writing down an account of our work. At one level it is so simple - we are in Vanuatu to help our ni-Vanuatu colleagues prepare and deliver a program about community development, or as they have termed it 'Komuniti Aksen'. Our skills are in facilitating, in helping people think through things, in asking some challenging questions about purpose and strategy. We have skills in helping people develop effective working relationships; we have our individual experiences and knowledge about community work; we have a strong set of guiding principles to work from. We are not content-free but in terms of Vanuatu culture and Vanuatu thinking we are certainly not the experts. Mark knows an amazing amount about the local culture and, in some cases, knows more than about the history of particular islands and their progression from pre-missionary to post independence than some of the locals. But even with that body of knowledge he is challenged as to how to combine that information with the needs of our hosts.

The challenge for each of us is exactly that. How can we be helpful without imposing our western values and assumptions on our colleagues while not shying away from sharing what skills we have? Our unacknowledged assumptions manifest themselves in surprising ways. I ask one of the chiefs during a planning session why he has chosen to build a meeting house rather than install a water tank in his village. He looks at me strangely and, try as I might to encourage him to articulate the why of his choice he thinks my question absurd. He just knows. It's not even a question he can contemplate. My logic, his certainty. Another time I ask a question about relationships within families and I get two answers - first the western father mother son cousin uncle etc I am familiar with (and which is taught in local schools), and the real picture which is a statement of responsibilities; where, what I would call my uncle, can be named as brother to my son but be regarded as father to me. I probably have that all wrong but it is about who is watching out for whom.

We're absurdly out of our depth in that we are working under the umbrella theme of strengthening Kastom and Tradition at the community level. How that is managed in what, even in Vanuatu, is a global and changing environment (including modern democracy as their chosen form of government) staggers me. We are all in a constant, though sometimes ignored, dialogue between government and governance, between tradition and modernity, between sometimes idealised 'old' ways and the daily evidence of influence by the church and colonialism. Tradition is constantly in flux but some prefer to idealise it as fixed, created by a Christian God - part of the missionary story.

Chiefs, the guardians of tradition, are a case in point. Before the arrival of missionaries people lived in family groupings in small village communities. There was a set of relationships and a social structure and a leadership figure/elder. It was only with the arrival of the missionaries that these, often warring, families, were brought together to live around the church building that the era of the Chief took hold. It was a convenience for the churches, and they often appointed a supportive member of the flock as the new chief.

The result is ongoing confusion and conflict as to who is a 'real' chief and who is an appointed chief. As all land is still vested in the family, and the family "chief/leader' has final say as to its use (and that there are no land titles or survey pegs) this creates constant conflict as unauthorised chiefs sell land which is not theirs to sell and violence sometimes ensues or equally sadly the court cases mount up.

Over our five day workshop, where we are merely the back-up team, approximately 40 leaders will participate in negotiating some of the challenges of this landscape, exploring how Kastom and traditional values intersect with community aspirations for improvements in community life.

It is always a more than interesting week. Each time I come away amazed at the passion of the participants and of our presenting team of facilitators. Each time I am humbled by how little I understand and how articulate and insightful these people are.

Vanuatu Sunday - Nguna Welcome

Four boats, thirty people, luggage, workshop materials and a windy afternoon. The Emua wharf is a length of concrete pushing beyond remnant coral reef. Last time I was here I was staying in a thatched bungalow with Missus A. We had a great four days, each morning waking to see the sun sparkling on the strait of water between us and the island of Nguna. At times Nguna disappeared behind a gossamer of mist and rain. At others it jumped up from the surrounding waters shining like a piece of polished jade. That day it had taken ninety uncomfortable minutes riding in the back of a Toyota Hilux fitted out with wooden bench seats and a canopy. We were on the milk-run. This time we were in a Toyota Hi Ace ten seater and we covered the distance in thirty five minutes.

There are four boats lined up for us to share. Ours is a fourteen foot aluminium fishing dingy with a forward canopy. We sit shoulder to shoulder around the perimeter. Do you have life jackets? I ask the operator. It's okay. It's safe, he assures me and we set off.

We leave from a tongue of concrete and arrive on a sandy beach, met by fifty members of the local village including the paramount chief. He offers our coordinator a cluster of crocus leaves, the plant always used on these occasions. Our leader accepts this offer and after shaking hands offers it back. The agreement is complete. We have been welcomed and we have assured the chief that we come in peace.

Our bags, which have been littering the beach like a pod of beached seals, disappear and the throng dissipates and moves towards the centre of the village. We visitors process along a back path lined with vivid green hedges. As we near the village the sound of a conch shell blasting a long sweet foghorn note sounds out accompanied by shouting. We are being challenged before we enter the village. Again we pass the test and move through a palm fringed arch emerging onto a ridge overlooking a large traditional meeting house twenty five metres long and fifteen wide. It's constructed from huge timbers and ribbed with timber held together with hand woven pandanus ropes. The roof is thatched with thousands of individual clusters of pandanus leaves woven together into metre long flaps which overlay each other. It is open at the front and tapers towards the back. I later learn that this tribe has the whale as their totem and the Nakamal references that shape.

In the space between us and the Nakamal stands a warrior, a man who has applied charcoal to his body to become even blacker. He has become a moonless night. Now the real Kastom welcome begins.

Fifteen men accompanied by the same number of children and a handful of women rush from behind us and, dressed in full skirts of rustling banana leaves and anklets of dried seed pods, begin a circling dance stomping and thrumming to the sound of clacking sticks, chanting and the haunting call of the conch shell. The little ones run around the dancing adults circling them. On a signal they all stop and join the vocal chanted chorus. The little ones who are having a great time miss the cue and there's a pile up as each one bumps into the body in front. The crowd is in stitches. The welcome is complete. The village has welcomed the new arrivees who will spend the next five days as guests in their village.

There is no mains power here. No permanent water supply, no flush toilets, no roads, no motor vehicles. Life is lived by the rising and setting of the sun. The only nods to the modern world are the aluminium and fibreglas boats and their outboard motors lined up along the beach. That and the ubiquitous mobile phone. To my surprise most of the delegates and village leaders carry one and coverage is remarkably good.

Once during the following week I am surprised by the sound of what I guess is a small chainsaw. I hear it for five minutes and then its gone. Occasionally I spot a Yamaha generator quietly humming. It powers our printer and digital projector and a single fluorescent light. The only other evidence of modernity is the power cable bisecting the open space beneath an enormous mango tree as it runs towards the block-built church hall where our workshop will take place.

We three Aussies in Paradise

There are three Australian facilitators on this trip to Vanuatu.

Gabrielle has spent most of her adult life in PNG and Indonesia and Timor as an educator and Community Development worker. Most recently, in East Timor, she lived on the remote island of Atauro, two hours by boat off the coast of the mainland. She lived loved and worked there until she recently returned to Australia to be nearer her three grandchildren and her daughter and son-in-law. She's had all the real world experiences that give her a great understanding about how communities in countries like Vanuatu work. Her language experience in PNG means she can understand the local Bislama speakers.

Mark has been here many times and Melanesian history and culture is his PhD thesis topic. He left school at 15 and set off to gain some life experience. He travelled around Australia, sailed across the northern seas to Papua Nui Guinea, fell in love with the culture and now at 42 is nearing the end of his great anthropoligical adventure. His next life begins after this. As a father of three children below the age of ten and a partner to a very supportive woman he will soon be looking for a real job. For academic anthropologists that's not an easy task. Mark is so well read and researched that it makes my head ache. In a strange way he almost knows too much. That's not to say his knowledge is only book based. He has lived in remote villages for extended periods doing his research and experiencing the culture first hand. Naturally he is a fluent Bislama speaker.

And then there's the Team Leader. Me. This is my fifth trip as a facilitator to Vanuatu. I was one of the University of Queensland team who initiated the Community Development training package here so I am "the expert". Luckily I don't believe in experts except when it comes to building large structures like bridges and sky scrapers. This is fortunate because, given my background, no one else would quite believe it either. I don't speak Bislama beyond what you would call tourist level - I can ask for things, tell people where I am from and use a reasonable range of greetings but in conversation I am lost. I understand more than I can speak, which is pretty typical of people immersed in new languages, and it makes it easier that Bislama is based on English, my native tongue. So with limited language, no formal studies in anthropology and 50 days in the country I am the least experienced.

But I have lived. and I think I have some natural communication and facilitation skills and I reckon I know a bit about people and relationships. Now I hadn't intended this post to be "all about me" but I am interested in the sets of skills we all have and how we use them. We three aussies are, in a sense, mentoring each other. Mark helps me uncover some of the less obvious aspects of Vanuatu culture, Gabrielle brings a calm and grounded common sense to the process and I see a role for myself helping us to learn from each other and, without being patronising, helping guide Mark to be a better facilitator and helping Mark and Gabrielle work quietly and effectively with a team of locals whom I have come to know and trust.

It's not without its challenges but we are, each of us, committed to becoming better leaders and learners. We've completed the three days training which we were responsible for. We now travel with the large ni-Vanuatu team to Nguna (Pronounced with a silent g) where they will lead a five day training program for a group of 40 leaders from across the region with us as the observers and back-up team. Nguna is reputed to be a beautiful island. We've been told we'll be staying in two thatched bungalows on the edge of a pristine white sandy beach. Wish you were here.

More about the workshop next post.

Vanuatu Trip No 5

I'm off to Vanuatu for 12 days for work. I'll try and post a few thoughts on my experiences when I have access to the internet.

Temperature in Efete and Port Vila - Min 25 Max 27. Haven't packed anything warm. Have a bag full of reports to read, my Bislama dictionary and enough pills to open a local pharmacy. And a pair of flippers and a snorkel and goggles.

We'll be on the small island of Nguna for a week.
www.positiveearth.org/bungalows/shefa/nguna.htm

Vanuatu 7 Kava

Monday 26 (evening)
The drum sounds its hollow call again. I hear no difference in the rhythm but everyone knows that this heralds dinner. Its 7:30pm. Paul and I accompany out ni-Vanuatu colleagues once more through the entrance to the Nakamal. This time the building hums with quiet activity. Smoke drifts towards the high roof from the three fires. Women busy themselves over steaming pots and among piles of banana leaves. Groups of men sit on the side benches sharing stories. The kava makers continue grinding.

We sit on the slatted bamboo bench on the right hand side of the building and watch and wait. There are about forty people in the building. Half of us are visitors, the rest, our hosts. Time is not of the essence here. My gaze traverses the scene and I become mesmerised by the slow kava ritual in front of me at the men's end of the building.

Outside two young men with long machetes slice and prepare the thin tubers of the kava plant. Each stroke peels away the earth coloured surface to reveal the pale flesh beneath. Inside four or five men sit on the earth floor, each with an oblong shaped wooden tray before them. A small mound of shaved roots sit beside each tray. The kava preparation continues without interruption. In one hand the craftsman holds a clutch of tubers and in the other a grinding tool. The village proudly follows century old traditions in this ritual. The tool is a shaft of coral about ten centimetres in diameter (a natural handspan) and forty centimetres long. It is tapered at one end. This tapered end sits int the cup of the kava filled hand and, one twist at a time from the right hand, grinds the roots to a pulp. These islands are mountains of volcanic rock and ancient coral deposits. It is slow rhythmic work. If kava is a relaxant this ritual is perfectly suited to the task.

I watch the pulp on the tray slowly grow in size. Then watch as water is added to the tray and kneaded to a wet doughy consistency. Finally the maestro takes a half shell of a small coconut, places it on the ground and, wrapping the kava pulp in a spiral of pandanus leaf, pours another cupful of water through the mixture and directs the filtered juice through the pandanus funnel to the cup.

Kava is drunk every day in these villages. Originally used only for ritual purposes to mark the resolution of a conflict or a significant event (marriage, achievement of chief status, death) it now has a central place in the daily life of the men of the community. It's a relaxant and mild hallucinogen. Pentecost kava is reputed to be the best and strongest. Our colleagues have mixed connections to this ritual, and much of it stems from which missionary group held dominance. The Seventh Day Adventists (SDA) eschew alcohol and intoxicants and decline, others only drink at traditional ceremonies, and others are willing regular partakers. I choose to be SDA for the moment.

I am already in a mild state of shock without the benefit of kava. My experience of travels in India and Indonesia in the seventies with associated stomach and bowel disruptions is still fresh in my mind thirty years later. I have premonitions of medical emergencies and dashes to the latrines and the last thing I need is a gutful of a mind altering substance.

As well as my Indian bowel experiences I am catapulted back to Nepal (on the same trip) where I walked alone to a remote village (having left my now wife to her own devices hovering over a squat toilet for two days - she has only recently begun to forgive me) and foolishly shared a joint being passed around a room full of young overland travellers. Anyone who remembers the streets of Katmandu lined with hashish in those years will understand that this was not a gentle local Australian mix of grass clippings and marijuana. This was a potent brew chipped from a block of refined and condensed chocolate coloured 100% madness. I had succumbed to hippie peer pressure. That night I clung to my straw covered bed, tied my foot to my backpack as I resisted the mad urge to walk out of that hut and traverse the ridges of Pokhara in the pitch black. I was not keen to repeat that episode.

I'm not sure why I'm so fearful. In two days I'll look back on this and wonder why it seemed such a big deal. My colleague Gideon promises to keep tempting me. "you haven't experienced Pentecost until you drink a shell of kava." he says. Tonight I decline.

Vanuatu 6 Death

Monday September 26 (evening)

Bong Bong Bong. A drum sounds across the evening air. It's five-thirty. At six-fifteen it sounds again. I know this slit drum with its low throm will call us to the evening meal but no one moves. I am waiting for a sign. My colleagues will call me, I'm sure. Before seven it sounds twice more.

I'm wondering if the cooks are getting impatient with our tardiness. I crawl out from my mosquito net cave to see what is happening. I wander out to the front of our accommodation, pause and take in the scene of clusters of men in quiet conversation and go back to my room. By now it's dark.

Soon, one of my colleagues comes by to explain that the drum announces more than a call to meals. What we are hearing is the announcement of more deaths in the region. The news has reached us through neighbouring villages and, no doubt via the ever-present mobile phone. The drum marks the arrival of this information. It is a mark of respect.

I am told that a big chief has recently died and that the belief is that this will herald a string of other deaths. The big chief, it is held, should not travel unaccompanied into the next life. A wise man, a magic man, who claims to see the fiture says ten people will pass away over the next week. I am a sceptic when it comes to the paranormal, but sure enough the drum will beat out new deaths each day we are here. I lose count.

I am reminded of my parents deaths, both of which held an uncanny sense of timing. My mother's descent into a coma was slow and painful to watch. The dreaded breast cancer had come back to take her years after her masectomy. Though it was inevitable, the timing was unknowable and yet, she seemed to know. In her final hours she held on until all the family had arrived back from holidays and other out of town activities before offering us her last breath; my father, a man who acceded to my insistent urgings and lived two years more than he would have chosen, eventually made his quiet exit two weeks before my long planned overseas trip with my wife.

He was our big chief. He was also a believer in reincarnation so he knew he wouldn't lack company on the other side - requiring none of us to accompany him. He was always such a considerate man.

Vanuatu 5 Mourning

Monday 26 September (late afternoon)

Our plans for the week have been thrown into some confusion as the mother of the project coordinator has passed away. She died as we traversed the blue Pacific. We unpack our bags and create a rudimentary sense of home in our concrete floored room. We don't have any family photos to hang on the wall but with a rearrangement of chairs and the rough bush-built side table it feels pretty good; despite the fact that our tent style mosquito-proof beds dominate the room. It feels like we should be outside under the stars with these contraptions but, as the area has a reputation for sudden heavy downpours, the locals advise against it.

Our colleagues ask us to follow them to the Nakamal. The village has been summoned by a series of simple strokes on a slit drum, a hollowed out log with a lengthwise cut in the top to create resonance. The length and diameter of the log determine the pitch. Our coordinator's mother lies in Port Vila but there will be a Kastom mourning ceremony here this afternoon as a mark of respect for this well known old woman. She was a Pentecost woman (woman blong Pentecost). I am 'man blong Australia' - 'man Australia' for short.

As we approach the entrance to the large unlit building we are greeted by a wailing and crying which sets my teeth on edge. Our group enters quietly with Paul and I at the rear watching for cues as to what is expected. We join most of the group sitting on a bamboo bench sited along the side of the building. As I take my seat, two or three of my colleagues join the mourning with such intensity and suddenness that I am taken by surprise. A moment ago I had been in conversation with them seeking a little advice as to where I should stand, what was the local custom re head-cover etc.

I can remember being intimidated at large Catholic funerals by rows of elderly women, the stalwarts of the church, chanting the Mysteries of the Rosary from the Sorrowful through the Glorious to the Joyful, from beginning to end, for over forty minutes in the lead-in to the funeral of a local 'big man' of the community. But this was beyond that. Their chanting was just a mumble, a burble compared to this.

I see a woman rocking back and forth and swaying as she sobs and presses a handkerchief to her reddening eyes. One of my colleagues is transformed, transported into another state. Other women, and men, close relatives, are also sobbing and convulsing in a deep and shuddering tribute to the deceased. It is an odd feeling. I am a stranger. I have no real emotional connection. I am intent on being respectful, but at the same time I am a curious bystander.

As the keening settles our host Chief John, invites Paul and I to follow him. He leads us through the mourners to a small slightly built woman standing alone. She looks to be in her eighties. Her eyes meet mine. They carry a deep sadness in their brown and still gaze. She extends her hand. John introduces her as the sister of the deceased and she clasps my hand above the wrist and gently holds on. I know this is a moment of introduction and of expressing condolences but we have no shared language. My rudimentary Bislama deserts me. Sori, I say, and wait until I feel her grip relax and we softly let go, our hands sliding apart, the touch exchanging a kindness that my words are not capable of.

John then directs Paul and I to a rough bench-top table occupying the centre of the upper half, the women's half, of the Nakamal. Paul and I have missed the traditional welcome ceremony earlier in the day and this is our combined welcome, introduction and expression of condolence. We are being invited to share this food first. I feel humbled. I should not be given this status, especially given the circumstances, but John is clear. We must eat. I select something from two dishes. On one side of my plate I place a piece of chicken, on the other a rectangle of lap lap, a ground tuber (manioc or yam or taro) mixed with coconut milk, formed into a slab and baked in coals. It's soft and mild, not beyond my Western palate, but an acquired taste nevertheless. The chicken, highly prized I expect, is bony and chewy. In my stay in this and other traditional locations I will never see chicken breast - I wonder if the nation has a population of wingless chickens, chickens whose wings miraculously grow back, as this is the chicken piece served consistently with rice and in other dishes.

I eat respectfully. I eat everything. After a period people begin to drift out of the Nakamal leaving a team of men sitting on the dirt floor hard at work grinding kava roots to prepare kava for later consumption. Kava is a mild relaxant and hallucinogen, a drink consumed by the men as a sunset ritual. The women exit from the top of the building, the women's end ; the men from the bottom, the kava end.

Outside I learn that the older woman I have met is, in fact, Chief John's mother. John expresses his deep and sincere thanks for observing the traditional customs of the village. I also know that kava drinking is part of traditional culture and I will be faced with a decision about participating in this men's business before the end of the evening. I am conscious of being under observation. It's four thirty.

Vanuatu 4 Ataftabunga Village

Monday 26 September

The trip up the range from Sara airport is a demonstration of the toughness of Japanese 4WD vehicles. Standing and hanging on to the cabin rails Paul and I ride in the back of a Toyota utility seeing ahead of us what looks like a path only passable on foot. A brown strip, graded and cleared of vegetation and then left to fend for itself. It looks like my worst efforts at cooking pavlova. Every peak is outstripped by a trough twice as deep, the roadway ahead crumbling and cross hatched with holes big enough to swallow a small car. I stand bracing myself for every ditch, every bump, every certain roll-over as we inch up the path. I am planning my exit as we approach each obstacle. Will I leap left or right?

In the meantime a few locals in the back with us chat and laugh and introduce themselves. One is a young chief, the other confides that he thinks the whole chief thing is a bit overrated. On Pentecost there are a series of rankings that a young man can progress through. If you can provide the required number of pigs and demonstrate your wealth by hosting a big celebration you can get to the next level. The younger one thinks this is a waste of good pigs and money - both of which are hard to come by in a largely subsistence economy.

Forty minutes later we have travelled about ten kilometres and reached the level road which follows the ridge to our village. When we suddenly swerve off the road and pull up on an open expanse of grass I am taken by surprise. A collection of thatched huts are scattered across a plateau, their browns and ochres creating a rich contrast to the deep green of the grass and the surrounding wildness. Everything is in order. Family huts are surrounded by a cleared area freshly raked free of leaves and sprouting recently planted saplings sporting an array of variegated leaves. They appear to be off cuts which have simply been stuck in the ground. If only gardening were so simple back in my tough burnt off back yard in Brisbane.

A series of rectangular mounds marked out by piles of volcanic rock, sit in front of the concrete building which will be home for the next seven nights. I'm told they are burial sites. Someone has had the poor judgment to build this building (a former kava export business) over a pre-existing burial ground.

Inside the blockhouse I inspect the room Paul and I will share. It has two beds, two mattresses and a thin cotton blanket with each. We've been told to bring an extra if we feel the cold. The building has four former office spaces which are now accommodation. There's a pedestal toilet and bathroom at one end of the building and a kitchen beside that. The kitchen has a sink and crockery and a few pots. Everything is plumbed ready for water but there's no power, so a pump has never been a reality; nor is there any high point or tank stand to create any water pressure. Each morning and afternoon, one of the young women of the village will cart a dozen buckets of water from a rainwater tank nearby to fill a large plastic drum in this toilet/bathroom for manual flushing of the toilet and for beautifully simple bucket showers. A thermos of hot water appears every morning in the kitchen for coffee.

There is a large open space which takes up half the building where fifty people will gather to join our community workshop. No power outlets, no light fittings; John supplies us with a battery powered light for each room. Paul and I set about setting up two free-standing mosquito proof tents in our room and move the mattresses off the beds and on to the floor. I text my wife to describe our arrival and paint a fairly basic picture.

She's joining me for a week after this workshop. She wants reassurance that I haven't planned one of my 'challenging' or 'extreme' experiences. She hates sleeping on floors. She's looking for a relaxing week. She wants to be pampered. I assure her that the bungalows I have booked on Efate will be simple but delightful.

I have no evidence for this save the comments of people I've never met on a website I've stumbled across in the week before leaving Australia. In Australian parlance I'm trusting that "She'll be right mate".

Vanuatu 3. Flight

Monday September 26.

Yesterday we flew from Port Vila on the island of Efete to Sara on North Pentecost. The Twin engined Hawker de Havilland (Twin Otter) roared and strained as it took to the skies and headed towards our destination.

Like my carnivore life, I am out of touch with the up close and personal aspect of flying. I've been seduced into a false sense of complacency by many trips on large interstate and international carriers alongside hundreds of fellow passengers with faith in the gods of engineering and electronics. In these sardine cans I relax and listen to my iPod or watch the films on offer while sipping wine and eating altitude food. I'm only ever a little disconcerted on these flights; mainly when I turn my mobile phone off and wonder how such a simple device could be the cause of my demise. What if someone on board accidently overlooks this apparently serious request? What if someone accidently dials home as they toss and turn in their allotted one square metre of cabin space (dreaming of falling). Why haven't the stewards frisked each of us for these devices? why haven't we been required to stow these lethal weapons in our check-in luggage? why haven't these killers been confiscated?

On board the Twin Otter I have the dubious pleasure of sitting in the front seat. I am seated behind the two pilots who have left the door to their cabin wide open (or perhaps there is no door). I would like to be reading my book (I'm reading 'Atlantic' by Simon Winchester and here we are only a few thousand metres above the much bigger Pacific) but I'm transfixed by the scene before me. A dozen dials offer themselves and I have no idea what any of them tell me.

The younger of the two pilots keeps reaching above and behind him and making adjustments to various knobs and levers. He seems relaxed and after a takeoff, having reached an altitude of about 4500 feet (metres?) he pops open a packet of Twisties and settles in for the afternoon. About half an hour into the flight, with my eyes still glued to the altimeter (the only dial I have guessed the name of - only because it is the only one whose dial rotates and rotates clockwise as we rise) I notice the very dial begin to wind backwards. I have understood this to be a direct flight and my ticket tells me it is an hour plus trip.

The dial rotates back through 4000, 3500, 3000, 2500. 2000. I have a feeling of unease as we continue to lose altitude while still clearly over an unbroken expanse of water. Baby pilot seems unaware of this development and continues to stuff his face with bright orange Twisties. 1500, 1000. 900, 800. I can see the dark shapes of cruising sharks in the water just out of reach below.
I am tempted to reach out and tap him on the arm and point to the altimeter with a quizzical look on my face. Or I could just scream. But I look around at the 19 other passengers, all of whom show no signs of panic so I suppress mine in the interest of 'not looking silly'. I later wonder at the wisdom of 'not looking silly' in a critical situation. I would look even worse if we did ditch in the Pacific and I could have been the one to avert certain disaster.

As it turns out we make an unexpected landing on Ambae. We're island hopping. What a relief. Ten minutes later we take off and turn sharply eastward and head over more open waters. I am less concerned by the altimeter this time and get back to reading about the Atlantic and the perils of flight over expanses of open ocean, but this is short lived. Before us, fifteen minutes later, what I presume is Pentecost looms below and we begin another descent; this time towards what appears to be an alarmingly short grassy runway.

The Twisties completed, our twin pilots wake up and, out of my sightlines, daddy pilot eases the steering wheel forward and back (is there another name? Joystick - sounds right but feels all wrong) and places the Twin Otter gently on the volcanic and coral runway and with the engines working even harder than on take off slows us before we run off the end of the green strip and into the fast approaching jungle and taxis us towards the terminal, a concrete building the size of the average footie change room. I love flying.

Vanuatu 1.Kastom House 2. Butcher

I've returned from three weeks in Vanuatu with a swag of notes and a journal swollen with stories. My week in a remote village on Pentecost was quite amazing.


I'll post a few and write up the rest for my "one day I'll publish a book of travel stories". Some of the early ones are a bit graphic. I hope you enjoy them.

1. Kastom House

Tuesday September 27

The dismembered carcass of a bullock lies at one end of the Nakamal, its eyes staring at me from its head lying alongside a bloody pile of flesh.

Three fires burn at that end of the meeting house. A small one burns 24 hours a day and has spiritual significance. I am told it is the same fire that burns in the national council of chief’s Nakamal in the capital Port Vila on the island of Efete. We are on Pentecost Island.

The other two much larger fires occupy the far end of the 30 metre long building. One is a pit fire in which the bullock will be cooked wrapped in banana leaves on hot rocks. The other is a smaller fire used to heat giant iron pots of hot water, of rice, of kilos of taro, enough to feed the fifty attending the five day gathering in this remote highland village.

Seen from the outside the smoke and steam rising through the thatched roof creates an ethereal feeling in an environment infused with magic and the forces of nature. Above us, storm clouds swirl across the rainforest slowing the passage of daylight and time.

2. Butcher.

A group of young men, shirtless and wielding large machetes, work to one side carving and preparing the sides of beef hanging from the bamboo beams.

It’s like any butchery in any culture except the offal lies in a pile on the dirt floor and there is no refrigeration. I recall the sawdust strewn floor of butchers’ shops of my childhood and am comforted by the similarity; and yet I am somewhat disconcerted, a little confronted.

As a meat eater I know perfectly well that the meat on my plate has been slaughtered for my consumption. I know that the best meat is slaughtered in abattoirs where animals suffer minimal distress. I know that the best meat is fresh and, a day previously, will have been wandering a paddock or standing mutely in a holding yard awaiting its fate. I know all this but have never been quite close enough to witness the process.

My father was brought up on a farm and worked in a small goods factory as a young man. He had seen animals slaughtered, had begun his working life on the factory floor in the killing room. For him this was life. I too worked in the boning room of the local bacon factory as one of my stints of student employment. This was one step removed from the slaughter yard but as a young 18 year old the scene of lines of men carving and preparing the sides of beef was mesmerising, not to mention the loud and cheeky banter between the lads and the young women. The atmosphere was charged with energy.

My father had no hesitation in helping, what had become, the pet duck to the chopping block in the backyard. This waddling feathered friend had shared our sixteen perch block for a month or more leading up to Christmas unaware of its fate. We fed it bread and water and scraps and became quite comfortable with its company. But when the time came, I remember the sight of the headless body careering around the yard after my father's swift and accurate blow with his axe, as comic rather than tragic. I can still smell the rich musky odour of the feathers plucked soon after, having been scalded in my mother's large copper full of boiling water. The copper was a family essential, one day scalding a duck, another boiling a sugar bag full of crabs and then another boiling the white coats my father wore as a small goods salesman; heavily soiled from lumping sides of beef and pork into local butcher shops on his daily round.

This afternoon I had become distracted from our workshop program in Ataftabunga by a parade of young men, like my father (even of his then age), crossing the open village green-space, each carrying a hind leg or a side of beef towards the thatched roofed Nakamal. The last of these carried the head, horns circling his own head like a pair of reindeer antlers.

I'm here for seven days as part of a community development project. I am one of the two westerners who are accompanying the team of thirteen Ni-Vanuatu facilitators who will deliver a training program. My colleague Paul and I are here as the back-up team. We'll help when asked.

Pentecost Island Vanuatu

I am a lucky man. I am off to Vanuatu for the fourth time in twelve months to work with the local National Council of Chiefs (Malvatumari) on a community development capacity building project. My colleague, Paul Toon, and i will spend three days in Port Vila working with our twelve ni-Vanuatu colleagues to review and develop a five day Komuniti Aksen workshop to be delivered to a group of forty leaders on Pentecost Island.


Pentecost is the home of the original bungy jumpers. Young men dive from tall towers built from local materials and hurtle towards the earth attached by a length of vine tied to one leg. It is a fertility ritual and to be most effective the diver is required to graze the ground below with his head. Predictably this sometimes goes terribly wrong.


My wife will be joining me at the end of our 12 day program for a week of well deserved R&R.
We will rendevous in Port Vila andl then spend eight days exploring the island in an anti-clockwise direction ( I'm not superstitious!). We'll have four nghts in P. Vila, then three in a village bungalow on the beach in the north, and a final night at a resort within striking distance of the airport. Andrea wants to relax, snorkle and be pampered. I hope we get at least two out of the three in spades.

Million Dollar Point

At the end of WW II the Americans, 100,000 of whom had been based on the Vanuatu Island of Santo (pop. today less that 20,000) offered to sell a mountain of equipment to the British and French colonial powers. As New Hebrides, the nation was ruled jointly with two legal systems two police forces etc. Neither took up the offer so the Americans bulldozed the lot into the waters off Luganville (the major town). This included scuttling a major passenger liner the SS President Coolidge which lies peacefully a mere 5o metres off shore as a mecca for scuba divers. I don't scuba dive. I did spent two hours, however, snorkelling over acres of military equipment including bulldozers, forklifts, landing craft etc etc. It was remarkable. Now home to tropical fish and masses of new coral growing in colourfull displays over every surface.

My moment of panic came as I cruised past a large landing craft and there lurking quietly below was a two metre barracuda, long snout and razor sharp teeth causing me to back paddle urgently and check in my rear vision mirror that I wasn't being stalked as lunch as I gently but purposefully headed for a new destination.

Vanuatu - Kastom Practices

I've just returned from 10 days in Vanuatu working with the local chiefs and community leaders on a project about Kastom Practices and strengthening relationships across villages and islands and families. Vanuatu is an island state in a process of change. The partnership project brings Australian facilitators and local Vanuatu facilitators together to learn from each other. It's a long term project and this past visit was my second but the first where I was in the role of watching and supporting the locals to deliver a 5 day workshop ("Storian") to 35 leaders from the Island of Santo.

It was great. We three Australians were largely irrelevant - a mark of success for us. The most exciting and challenging aspect of the 10 days was the intentional use of local tribal languages and practices where appropriate. At one stage I had tears in my eyes as I watched a powerful reconciliation process unfold while not understanding a single word uttered over about a fifteen minute period.

We return next week to help facilitate a Community Development (Komunity Akshun) 10 day program. This will be on the island of Tanna.