Bibles and bonfires
Kokamo's Pacifc Meanderings
Tom and Rachel
Wed 13 Oct 2010 09:01
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Kokamo was, until this morning, at
15:56.8S 168:11.4E
Most important things first.
Anna, my sister arrived with us safe and sound on Monday, excited and not too
exhausted after flying first to Sydney, then straight on to Port Vila and then,
after a night's kip, on a little plane up to join us on the island of
Pentecost. It's great to have her here to join in our last bit of
exploring Vanuatu.
On the day before she arrived,
Rach and I decided to go to the Sunday service in the village we were anchored
off, Pangi, as we were going to be there a few days, and it is always a great
way get to know the community better. It was a typical Vanuatu style
evangelical service - singing to a guitar, sitting on rows of coconut palm logs
under a corrugated iron roof, the sacrament of coconut and berry squash.
The sermon was given by an American, who I'd seen in the village the previous
day, and was liberally illustrated with verses from the New Testament.
Chatting to him afterwards, it turned out that he and his wife were bible
translators. The Book of Mark had already been translated into 'Sa,' the
one language (one of six on
Pentecost) spoken in the south of the island, so they were
attempting the remaining three Books. They reckoned it would take at
least 15 years.
After Anna had had a chilled
afternoon, and tasted our ever-tastier pina colada, we set out the next day for
a traditional Kastom village the other side of the island called Bunlap.
This is involved an hour long ride in a pickup, and then a 45 minute walk.
All fine, except that the rains seem to have suddenly arrived in style, and we
were all drenched to the skin by the time we slithered down the mudslick path
into the village.
Chief Bebe showed us around, and it
was very interesting to compare life here with life in the Kastom villages on
Tanna. The thatch houses are much bigger, but perch precariously on a
steep slope which drops away to the crashing waves on the windward side of the
island. The paths between houses are made up of rough limestone blocks all
on a 45 degree incline, more resembling streams in the heavy rain, and for us
clumsy 'waetmen' requiring hands as well as feet. I chatted for a long
time to Chief and the other men who were about (many were out of the village, as
they'd taken grades to go up a rank the week before, and therefore had to
stay out of the village in the bush for 10 days.) They were facing many of
the same dilemmas as on Tanna: should the kids go to school outside the
village (the general consensus was no, although a few parents did
buck the trend); what are the right responses to new technologies (a mobile
phone mast is currently being erected at this end of the island); how can we
make enough money to buy extra pigs for our big kastom ceremonies (answer:
charging tourists).
One difference from Tanna
was that nickel has recently been found on Pentecost, and the government have
started to lobby the Chiefs for permission to mine it. The initial response
of the Chiefs has been to say no, but it felt like the discussion was only just
beginning. Judging by experiences in New Caledonia where strip mining for
nickel has cleared huge swathes of the main island, the tailings have been
pumped out into the lagoon, and Kanak culture has all but disappeared
(admittedly from complicated influences), if mining were to take place,
Pentecost would quickly become somewhere very different. The big
similarity with Kastom on Tanna, however, is that a vital
part of the community's identity is
their success in rebuffing the approaches of missionaries over the
last two centuries. One of the Chiefs coyly admitted to burning a couple
of boxes of bibles they'd been sent just a few weeks ago. As we left
through another downpour, I couldn't help feeling that the most
likely result of the American bible translator's next 15 years of
toil, in this village at least, was to be another hearty
bonfire.
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