Vanuatu Continued ...

Vega
Hugh and Annie
Sun 2 Sep 2018 19:59
Away from Port Villa we are back in rural Vanuatu.
An overnight motorsail got us up to the island of Ambrym where we were just in time to catch the final day of the three day “Back to our Roots” festival. At this time each year villages on Ambrym perform dances and magic in an effort to keep these traditions alive. The highlight is the Rom Dance for which some of the dancers wear huge masks to represent their spirit ancestors.
Travelling through the South Pacific it is possible to gain an inkling of life in the past and the (largely Western European) influences that have shaped the present. There is plenty of literature to help with this and my recommended good reads are as follows -
*Any of the biographies of James Cook and his travels in the South Pacific
*Ditto for William Bligh
*Typee by Herman Melville for an insight into island life in the Marquesas at the time the French were moving in
*Omoo by Herman Melville for further travels in the South Pacific after the Marquesas
*Hiva Oa by Thor Heyerdahl for life in the Marquesas 100 years after Melville
*Tales of the South Pacific by James Mitchener for a fictional account of life with the Americans during WW2 (set around true events and people in Vanuatu and upon which the musical South Pacific was based). Mitchener also wrote a fictional historical odyssey through events that shaped the Caribbean and called Caribbean that I also thoroughly recommend
*A Pattern of Islands by Arthur Grimble. An account of life in the Gilbert and Ellis Islands at the turn of the 20th Century under British governance. Return to the Islands concludes the story but doesn’t quite have the romantic appeal of Pattern - maybe because it is a conclusion.
*The Teatime Islands by Ben Fogle. This covers all the remaining island outposts still under British protection of which only Pitcairn is in the Pacific. Still a good read though and an interesting insight into the British treatment of its overseas territories post Empire
*Pacific:The Ocean of the Future by Simon Winchester
It was said that the sun never set on the British Empire; it covered 25% of the world. This journey has brought home to us just how extensive our influence was. From Europe through Africa, the Caribbean and South Pacific we have been in or near to countries shaped by us (together with the French, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch and others). Some former parts of the Empire, like Australia and New Zealand, have emerged as strong countries in their own right. Others, mainly the smaller ones, have fared less well and it is interesting to speculate about whether they are better or worse for the experience. It is beyond my knowledge and understanding to give an answer and any assessment would inevitably be by comparison with the UK. The impact of colonisation (British and others) upon indigenous people in many countries was pretty disastrous through anhiliation, displacement, marginalisation, disease and loss of culture. 
What Vanuatu and the other Pacific islands we have visited seem to show is that people can be very happy living a more simple and less material lifestyle. Melville was only too aware of this back in 1840. The UK has also been shaped by its past (we are one of the most genetically diverse populations in the world!) and  we have a shared history with our former colonies. The economic benefits were pretty much all one way as far as I can tell and therefore we owe a greater debt of gratitude to these former colonies than I suspect most people in the UK now realise - or benefitted from at the time. The world is even smaller than I thought it was and I am convinced more than ever that it is in the best interests of everyone to think globally for foreign and economic policy. Nationalism and “populism” will only exacerbate the very problems that lead to the tensions now being exploited by the unscrupulous. Interestingly (and without any apparent sense of irony) many people we have met in and from Australia and New Zealand are really concerned about the economic and political influences of China. As the worlds second largest economy China is getting back to the position where, for most of history up until 200 years ago, it represented 25% of the total world economy! China will certainly be the biggest factor shaping the immediate future of the Pacific region.

All the islands of Vanuatu are of volcanic origin and many are still active, including Ambrym. An attempt to see more glowing lava was unfortunately thwarted by low cloud and mist and so we moved on to the island of Malekula and Port Sandwich. Port Sandwich (named after the Earl) is a long, sheltered inlet and one of the loveliest anchorages we have been in. Thatched village huts along the shoreline, coconut plantations, dense vegetation, fishermen in dugout canoes - proper tropical paradise. We turned a small headland into a bay to anchor and a helicopter roared overhead seemingly inches above the masthead. A helicopter?! As we anchored it made several short trips with cargo slung underneath, the clearly skilled but cocky pilot turning below mast height between the half dozen or so yachts at anchor and pinpoint landing on an old jetty on the beach. Others gained the impression he hadn’t seen us coming around the corner and had to ascend sharply to avoid our mast. There wasn’t a superyacht that the helicopter could be attached to and it transpired that it was ferrying new equipment up to a mobile phone mast; such a contrast between the old and the new!
The other aspect of Port Sandwich that the yachting guides are keen to emphasise is that swimming is definitely not recommended. 30 years ago there was an abattoir next to one of the rivers flowing into the bay and offal floated down to the sea, attracting a vibrant shark population. Sharks must have long memories because the abattoir has long gone but the bay is still a no go area for swimming. A young girl from a yacht was attacked and killed while swimming off the jetty about 10 years ago and a woman was attacked in the same area, flown to hospital and was lucky that her partially severed leg could be saved. We read somewhere that several locals have been attacked and, unusually for these islands, no one now swims. Dugout canoes on the surface seem to be ok and yachties happily ply to and fro in their dinghies.

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