Enjoying Life and Visiting Villages

Saturday was a much more easy going day with the cultural festival. The women did their kastom dances, sang and demonstrated their many skills all in a separate location than the areas designated for men's activities. They corn rowed the hair of the AusAid young women, wove the mats and balls and decorations. We learned how houses were constructed. The women weave the mats from various plants making the walls and the roof. Then the men put it all together to make the structure. Walls made from small, tightly woven palm would last 20 years but mats made faster and looser would last 2-3 years. Of course, Barry thought he would make a house that lasted 20 years but, alas, his house would probably be destroyed by a cyclone every 2 or 3 years anyway.

The festival days were long enough that we had to visit the loo. The toilets are in outhouses and are various types of holes in the ground or hollow stumps. They were fine.

There are 14 of us tourists attending the festival. Three are young women from Sydney, Australia working for AusAid, similar to our Peace Corps. 2 are a doctor and his wife sent by NZ, 7 of us are yachties and the rest are very adventurous tourists. All are fun and interesting people and we enjoyed the intense time we spent together. We compare notes about our respective countries and cultures. The people from the UK love their health care system as do the New Zealanders and Canadians. They feel sorry for our country having such a poor system. Just reporting what they say. The Aussie women had their flat in Port Vila broken into and had to call the police 5 times before the police would even come out. First time they called the police were having devotions, second time they didn't have transportation, then no one working at that time, etc. We complain, but our British based systems all work beautifully when compared to other countries.

On the last day of the Lamap festival we spent a long time toktoking with George, the main organizer and MC of the festival. He looked to be about 45. He had been all over the world for years working as a fisherman on boats from Taiwan, Singapore, Japan and Vanuatu. He came home to this village and never wants to leave again. His country is the most beautiful, he says, and life is good. He has a good family. We chatted with him while the other people were drinking kava and beer. George thinks kava makes people lazy. Ditto beer, which is why he doesn't drink either. We think it is human nature that cultures have about 3 per cent of the people being the movers and shakers getting things done and making life better. That's George!

We met another doctor and wife on the yacht, Rireana, who were in Vanuatu studying the prevalence and treatment of yaws, a disease I've added to my list of things not to get. Google it - very yucky.

The British couple on the yacht Impala said they rescued 2 niVans when their canoe started sinking. They were desperate to be taken out of the water because they were afraid of being eaten by sharks.

The leaders of the villages we visit all have a different take on history. For sure, life changed with the arrival of the Christian missionaries. The missionaries had the villagers move from the hills to the coast. In the mountains, there was water for the niVan gardens and the areas were mosquito and malaria free. The coast was convenient for the supply ships that served the missionaries, but had a negative effect on the niVans. Still today, malaria is prevalent on the coast, and now many niVans have to walk 2 or 3 hours, sometimes more, to get to their gardens each day. The missionaries also told the NiVans to take on Western names and wear expensive, fully covering Western clothing, instead of their grass or leaf skirts and penis wrappers that are so well suited to the local climate and which cost nothing. The churches are rectangular boxes made of very expensive concrete with small window openings and metal roofs, suitable for the missionaries' homes in England or New England. Why the churches cannot be made of the free local vegetative building materials that are used for their own houses and other structures and are so well suited to the local climate is beyond me (Barry). The poor people must really swelter in the warm, humid season. It can be bad enough on a sunny day in the current cooler, dry season.

We spent the next night in Gaspard Bay at the south end of Malekula. We saw 4 dugongs on the way in and 1 more after getting the anchor down and another when leaving the next day. Dugongs are much cuter than their relatives in the US, the manatees. They swim like slow dolphins and have tails like a dolphin, but a nose like a pig. Manatees have a tail shaped like a ping pong paddle. We took Rubber Ducky around Gaspard Bay birding and exploring up the rivers and inlets. Beautiful.

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