Vanuatu – Port Vila II

Sorting so many impressions into something coherent in such a short time is already a challenge. But well, I think fast, not always correctly, and I write even faster, so this now has to work, because tomorrow it all moves on again and I need room for whatever comes next. When I left New Caledonia, I was still cursing the fact that I had already booked everything for the coming weeks, at least the flights. Now I do not mind anymore, because I simply would not leave if I had not already booked it.

So now let us get to the essential part, and here I have to differentiate. A skill many people no longer seem to possess, at least from where I stand. I have to distinguish between the resort, for me the first time, and Vanuatu, or rather just Port Vila, also for the first time.

Okay, let us start with the resort. I have never had a longer stay in what one might call a luxury resort, and I probably never will again. And no, it is not because there are only Australians running around here. It is more because a resort on your own is kind of stupid. People look at you so pityingly when you sit alone at dinner. But I am simply not a herd animal, that is just how it is. And this being served from beginning to end is not really my thing either. I actually prefer doing things myself. On top of that, you become a number. The staff do not ask for your name, everything always runs through your number. Coffee, one oh eight. Food, one oh eight. Excursion, one oh eight. Reduced to a number.

On the other hand, everyone is super eager and engaged, just not quite from the trade. That is different in other countries. But it does not really matter, I do not expect it, it just stood out to me, the way trays are carried, the way things are served, and so on. The politeness, though, is chosen and excellent. They also have to deal with Australians here, heaven help them if not, straight complaint behind your back to the supervisors. That is how it works with them. They cannot do directness at all, and addressing someone face to face even less. They are fairly sneaky, one would say where I come from. We are direct, they would say. Anyway.

And since I was staying in the resort after all, I made use of the service and booked a few tours, contrary to my usual habit of doing everything myself. That is what is being sold here. And now we get to the real stuff. Morning after breakfast, first tour, cultural village. What I imagined and what it actually was, two very different things. I am not going to say what I had in mind, I think each of us has a different picture, though maybe also somehow the same one.

Into the resort’s own banana boat and around the island once, then dropped off at the neighboring island. There you are, standing on the beach, greeted by a local, smartly dressed in a shirt and speaking very good English. Dave, that was his name, studied business in New Zealand and, as he kept repeating, “runs the show here.” What followed was a sales performance. About himself, about the circumstances, about jewelry and everything else. He was skillful and knew how to catch people. He had the Australians wrapped around his finger very quickly. That part was easy. After the earthquake, the first thing he saw, the first help that arrived, was five hundred Australian soldiers coming ashore here. And just like that they were hanging on his every word. He tried it on me too. Ballack his favorite player. Back in the 1970s it had apparently been a German who gave his father the idea of doing tours, and a few more things like that. Why? Really, he did not need it at all.

But let us get to the program. First he told us about the family structure. He had, I do not know, the numbers kept changing, three hundred and fifty direct relatives here on the island and loads of kids. And then he proudly went on, “I smack my kids when they don’t behave.” That was aimed at the Australians, where corporal punishment of minors is punishable, which given my own history I fully support. Small anecdote, criminal responsibility in Australia begins at ten years of age, no social networks for minors, but criminal responsibility nice and early.

In any case, he emphasized that point and explained it too. He said, you know, we have a different order. The kids start helping around the house at six, that teaches them responsibility, and if they make trouble, then he smacks his kids. I still have not decided what I think of those statements. I mean, getting slapped as a child, that was just how it was. But if, as I experienced it, it serves only to vent frustration and you as a child are beaten nearly unconscious with a dog chain, with wooden spoons, with a hand, then that is something else. I stood there and listened without judging. Inside me it was working.

Then he invited us into his house, self built, as he said, a hut made of a few wooden poles with a straw roof, dried coconut leaves, and motioned for us to sit down. There was fresh lemon juice, untreated old style peanuts, and he kept talking. Then back into sales mode. Pointing at the tables. If you like something, amulets, rings, wooden figures, go for it. If you do not have any money on you, my wife can come over to your place tomorrow morning and collect it, what is your room number? He showed us how to open a coconut with a knife while his dog had already started howling. And yes, it is true, more people on the island are injured by falling coconuts than by cars. Then he showed how to get the flesh out and how to squeeze the milk. Everything done with coconut based materials, except the extraction of the flesh.

Then we cooked together. The first thing was a sweet potato banana coconut casserole, the second, sorry, I did not really catch anymore. And the women, at least the ones in traditional dress, pushed the food wrapped in banana leaves into the fire. Then the tour around the island, with his dogs, yelping flea balls covered in flies, but they loved him, and he kept chasing them in all directions with fallen fruit while he talked. He had built a hospital, and schools, and his dream was to send children to Australia to study medicine and to bring laptops and Australian teachers to the island, but for that, of course, you need money, wink wink. He had charm, that much is true.

In the end he led us around the island, and none of it was cultural in the sense one might expect, it was simply the current state of things, stone buildings and corrugated metal, somewhere in between. Similar to the Kanak favelas in New Caledonia. When we got back to the wooden hut, we ate, with our hands at least, which was something. The food was cooked through, and the smoky flavor our potatoes get when we bake them in aluminum foil over the fire was there as well, though not quite as dominant. Banana leaves seem to handle heat better than aluminum foil. Water is the secret. But the banana coconut sweet potato thing was genuinely really good. Really, really good. Delicious. The other thing was edible too, just a bit bland. Then around came the hat, and as expected it filled up nicely. The man knew what he was doing.

Now and then in between we got into conversation, because I was interested in other things, like environmental pollution and climate change. And about New Caledonia he said, you know, if they want to grow up and become independent, then they should decide whether they really need the money from the French. That ended the topic right there. Money or independence. Some in New Caledonia see it the same way, you cannot have both. As for climate change, he said it is present, you can already feel it, it is warmer than before, the water is higher. And environmental pollution, plastic everywhere in the sea. You have to say, his little island too is almost covered in plastic waste. The children, he said, on the one hand he always sends them out to clean up, otherwise they would never learn, and on the other hand they would just spread the rubbish around. Looking at the trash, I very much doubt a can of whisky cola came from children or was washed into the middle of the island. In his own words, the truth content of his stories, seventy five percent, though I will leave it open whether that means true or made up.

At the end, and once again being the people catcher he was, he asked what I had noticed in my travels, what the biggest problem of human beings was. My answer? Inequality and selfishness, and the fact that everyone thinks the other has more, although in truth everyone has enough. At least those who have the time to think about such things.

So after four hours the banana boat returned and brought us back to the resort. The captain got the leftovers of our food packed up in banana leaves, and he was absolutely delighted about it. He was in a genuinely good mood because of that, that is how good the food was.

At midday I walked around a bit and had booked a sunset boat tour. I thought I might take some nice photos, of the sunset, obviously. Once again things turned out differently than I had imagined. The whole thing was delayed because, well, because that is how it is. At some point we, meaning me and eight Australian couples, some with whining toddlers, were all sitting in the banana boat while the sun set unspectacularly and unphotographed into the sea, because on the wrong side of the island we first had to listen to a history lecture by Patrick, our guide. It was then that I learned that parliament stands right on the hill in front of our nose, vis à vis the resort on what I was going to call the mainland, though I should correct myself and say the larger island, Efate.

And what he told us was this: Vanuatu has been inhabited for thousands of years, archaeological finds go back to well before our era, and by around 1300 before Christ there were already communities of the Lapita culture living here. In the early seventeenth century the first Europeans reached the island world with Pedro Fernández de Quirós. Patrick always thought he had been Spanish, but he was really Portuguese, only traveling on behalf of the Spanish. How did he know? A Portuguese tourist had corrected him. Later James Cook coined the name New Hebrides.

From 1906 onward the country fell under an unusual joint colonial rule by France and Britain, the so called Anglo French Condominium, a double administrative system later described, not without reason, as a kind of political chaos. That is why English and French are official alongside Bislama. Bislama is both the national language and one of the official languages. On top of that there are over a hundred local languages, one hundred and thirteen according to the internet. Bislama is above all an English based creole language, a mix with an English base, Melanesian substructure, and a bit of French on top. Parle? Only on July 30, 1980 did Vanuatu become independent and sovereign. That history still lingers today, even though the country long ago found its own rhythm.

A small example? In Vanuatu people drive on the right. That is laid down clearly by law. Where did it come from? Patrick had an unverified story ready for that too. The English and French governors had to decide on one side, so each of them loaded a horse onto the same boat, and when the flap was opened, apparently the French one ran across the finish line first, and that is why they drive on the right. I do not know whether that story is true. But it is a nice one.

Then Patrick opened the drinks cooler and off the party went. Correct, I was sitting on a sunset cruise even though the sun was already gone, surrounded by Australians and their slang, and to top it all off there was also free alcohol. The couple next to me knocked back a bottle of white wine in the first five minutes. They can drink, no question. And as if it was not already enough in my own little personal hell, one of the children started bawling and throwing things around. Perfect. My small evil brain started singing “smack it,” but Patrick had a much better idea, he handed the steering over to the child, four years old, what could possibly go wrong.

So there was drinking, the couple next to me got started on the second bottle, drunken Australian English was slurred all around, the accent does not improve when they are wasted, loud eighties pop songs were playing, and a four year old was steering the suddenly violently swaying banana boat. Hallelujah. At some point I actually started enjoying it. It was so absurd and surreal that it became good. Eventually we got back to the pier, everyone got off, only Patrick and I and the four year old remained, with tears welling up in the child’s eyes. I looked at Patrick, he looked at me, helpless, I shrugged and got off. Then they came running back already. “Oh, we forgot the child.” So that is what happens with naughty children, they get abandoned.

The next morning. I really did not feel like getting up early, it was raining and I was grumpy. Is that the right word? At some point I dragged myself to breakfast and then on to the next tour group. The humidity was already intense again in the morning. And there they were again, the same Australians who had been on the same tours with me, some from yesterday morning and some from yesterday evening. Then into a small Japanese van with plastic covered seats. It was fully booked and some of the Australians, seventy five percent of them, were oversized. That was funny.

I forgot the driver’s name, but he too taught us a few important things about Vanuatu. First, there are no traffic lights in this country, and no speed limit. I do not think there are any zebra crossings either, at least I did not see any. Anyone already imagining paradise should know that the traffic is so dense and the potholes in the road do the rest to keep the pace moderate. What else did he tell us? That the Ni Vanuatu are football mad, they love playing it, they have a stadium too, and they are already looking forward to the World Cup. That is why the flags of their favorite teams are already decorating the cars. And friends, what can I tell you, the German flag is very present here on boats and cars. Just behind the Brazilian one. They have taste here and know what is what, that much I can say. And this time, this time everything will be different. This time one will not become world champion in Russia or Qatar, now there is once again a tournament name one can proudly put in the résumé. Switzerland, Germany, Italy, Brazil and now North America? Hm, at the moment America unfortunately has a strange aftertaste too. But Russia or Qatar, please.

Anyway, we headed, I think east, toward the Blue Lagoon, with turtles beforehand. The turtles? Well, that was a hatchery and nice enough to look at. Then on to the Blue Lagoon, and that was great. It was basically some kind of water park, a lagoon really, with trees and ropes and such, and contrary to my usual habits I was up the tree and in the water relatively quickly. It was probably six or seven meters to jump, and I had not brought swimwear. Never mind, shorts and underwear it was. Swinging into the water was really fun. And yes, there are photos, including of me landing beautifully flat on my back from six meters up. At some point I had handed the camera, the proper one, to somebody else because I wanted to do it particularly well. And yes, those photos too will at some point find their way onto the internet. Hilarious. Like a whale that wants to fly but actually just crashes. Splendid.

After two or three hours everyone had had enough, then on to eat a lunch prepared in Tupperware boxes at a beach a few kilometers away, and then back. Back to the resort, and I used that great gym one more time, with a view of parliament, the building with the red roof, as I now know, and boats passing by with German flags.

My conclusion after the three days in Vanuatu? I like it here. It is so entirely different and so completely itself. Okay, they try to sell you something at every corner, but hey, nothing comes from nothing. If I had more time, I would grab a boat and see more of the islands, get properly cultural. Maybe even see a few cannibals, the kind Dave told us about, or understand why he thought colonialism was a good thing. At least, since then, they no longer eat each other. In that spirit.