[LOG] October 31st, 2008

A day at the Village

On my third and last visit to the volcano, I met at the top, a local guide who was leading three Australian tourists on a hike. Josiah was friendly and invited me to come to his village the next day for some Kava and a meal at his house. The village was quite a bicycle ride from Port Resolution but I took him up on his offer nonetheless. Josiah met me part of the way and we traveled on foot the last hour since the trail was rough and not suitable for a bicycle. Furthermore, Josiah did not have a bicycle. We arrived at his village around 3 pm and I was introduced to his wife, father, mother, stepdaughters, adopted daughter and 9 year old son Michel. What is peculiar about Vanuatu is that you never know what language the inhabitants will be fluent in until you ask. Due to the earlier French and English rule, there are two systems of school. One French and the other English. Depending on the distance from the village, the children will be sent to one or the other. Many times though, they will speak neither but only Bislama (the official language which is a mixture of Pidgin English and a little French) and the local language. In Josiah’s family for example, his parents and wife speak the local dialect, a little English as well as Bislama. Josiah also speaks these 3 languages but his English is much better. Michel on the other hand is more fluent in French than English because the French school is 5 miles closer than the English one.

Josiah’s two houses are located at the bottom of a small valley and are built one foot off the ground on stilts to avoid being swamped during rainy season which last from January till April. The ground in the area is composed of gray ash from the volcano. The kitchen is outside and is very rudimentary. The kitchen situation should improve soon since Josiah is in the process of building another hut to house the kitchen. Water is scarce and carried from the village water supply which is in turn fed twice a week by a distant water source. I felt bad accepting the offer of a shower given the scarcity of water but the bike ride and walk through the jungle had completely drenched me in sweat. With no running water, the shower consisted of pouring over oneself water taken with a small cup from a 5 gallon bucket of water. Very economical and not unlike a shower on Whistler when the shower tank is dry!

After the shower and some conversations with the member of his family, Josiah took me up the hill for some Kava with the male members of the village. Kava drinking is part of the culture in Tonga, Fiji and Vanuatu. The kava root grows in damp places and is related to the pepper plants family. It is mildly hallucinogenic, numbs your lips and also relaxes you. A kava ceremony is held to welcome visitors, seal alliances, begin chiefly conferences and commemorate births, deaths and marriage.

In Fiji, the kava roots are grounded up into a powder. The powder is then placed in a type of sock and squeezed out in a bowl of water. It looks and taste a little like muddy brown water. In Josiah’s village and in many villages of Vanuatu, kava is prepared in a different and even less hygienic way. The kava roots are peeled using a bush knife then chewed by the participants including yours truly in this instance. The mush is held in the mouth for a little while then spitted onto a leaf. When there is a sufficient pile of the chewed mixture on the leaf, it is put into a sock and water is poured over it. The sock is further squeezed in the water mixture to extract as much of the drug as possible. The kava drink is then poured into a split coconut shelf and offered to one person at a time, usually the guest of honor, in this instance me, goes first. It is customary to drink it in a one gulp not to sip it. I was a little reluctant to play the honored guest given the hygiene situation and the fact that most of the male villagers present at the ceremony had yellow eyes, a telltale sign of hepatitis A also called jaundice. But as the honored guest, I could not refuse and downed it in one gulp. Time would tell if the peppery nature of the plant would kill any microscopic bad guys and/or my hepatitis A vaccine would protect me. Everybody present was so eager that I enjoy their kastom (customs and culture) and kept asking me how I was doing and if I like Tanna. After 4 rounds of the stuff, I was glad when Josiah and his father took me away from the all male group. Women are not allowed to drink kava and alcohol in Josiah village. When I asked why, Josiah told me that it was because the women would only complain about money if they were allowed to drink. We went back to Josiah house and were served a typical meal of laplap as well as the rice and tuna I had brought. Vanuatu’s national dish, laplap, is mixture of manioc grated into a doughy paste. The mixture is then put onto taro leaves and soaked in coconut cream. Leaves from the laplap plant are then wrapped around the doughy mix, tied up with strands of vine and place in a ground oven.

The women seemed to already have eaten so Josiah, his father and I, surrounded by Michel and a few of his friends, ate sitting on the floor of the veranda of one of the hut. The conversation revolved around me for a while but turned more interesting when Josiah’s father started telling the legend of the volcano. The father would speak in Bislama, a few sentences at a time, then, Josiah would translate in English for me. The darkness had come, a kerosene lamp was lighted. The children stood mesmerized by the flame, listening with one ear to the story they had probably heard a hundred times.

Two more stories followed before the conversation came back to me and my marital status. When it was understood that I was single, Josiah, to my embarrassment, suggested that I bed or marry (I am still not sure if one was contingent upon the other) his 22 year old step daughter. I politely refused and could only wonder at the difference in customs and culture where a father could offer his daughters (or step daughters) to a westerner he had just met.

After I had sidestepped the matrimonial issue, the conversation veered towards making money. You see, the only monetary income available to Josiah’s family was his occasional stint as a guide to tourists staying at a small basic resort a few kilometers away. I say occasional because the frequency of his guiding was less than once a month. Apparently that frequency rested with the Australians owners of the resort and was limited to the tourists who wanted to hike to the volcano instead of riding in the back of a 4x4. As you can guess, most chose the 4x4 option. I suggested that they could market their village to the more adventurous and eco-friendly tourist through the internet. Josiah did not have internet access since there was no electricity in the village but he had a cell phone (incredible as it seems, many villagers did too) and his 2 brothers living in the capital of Port Vila did have internet access and some computer skills.

I don’t know if it was because they thought I knew what I was talking about but after a while, another unusual proposition came my way. That time from Josiah’s father. Apparently they owned a lot of land and he was proposing to give me a sizeable portion for me to start a business. It was not said but understood, that they would be a silent partner and share into the revenue. Once again, I had to politely refuse saying that I was honored by their trust but that I could not settle down yet since I had not completed my circumnavigation. After more talks about how they could make it work without me, I was led up the hill to one of their family bungalow where sheets and pillow had been laid out on the floor. It took me a long time to find sleep that night, thinking about hepatitis A, malaria, their two surprising offers and how incredible this week had been.

Woken, it seems, just a few minutes after I had dozed off, by some roosters on the wrong time zone, I tossed and turned the final two hours before dawn. When I came out of my hut, Josiah and I shared a breakfast of laplap washed down with very sweet tea. After some sad farewells, I headed back the way I came, hiking first then riding back to Whistler and her crew. I was relieved to find her in the same spot since the night had been broken by heavy thunderstorms. It seemed to me I had been gone much longer as I listened to the adventures of my crew and told some of mine!

Cheers!
~Eric