Lakatoro is our very own slice of the western life here in on Malekula. It promises such amenities as ice, cold drinks, cheese, alcohol, ice cream, and internet (although, thanks to the arrival of Digicel, Lakatoro no longer has the monopoly on this). When I first began my service, I probably spent about as much time in Lakatoro as I did in Tautu. These days going to Lakatoro is a once or twice a week event (in some part thanks to the fact that there is no longer a Peace Corps volunteer living in Lakatoro) and is more of a chore than a treat. Lakatoro is south of Tautu and is most commonly reached by hailing a passing a truck and paying them 100 vatu to take you there. I'm one of the few who tend to forgo the truck and either walk or ride my bike. The walk (or ride) is pleasant as long as it's not too hot a day, as shade is often scarce. Tautu sprawls southwards almost as much as it does northwards (towards Norsup) and about a third of the walk is just spent clearing the village. Although most of this stretch seems uninhabited, there are actually large family compounds set back from the road all along it. So, while it looks like a bunch of unmanaged bush, chances are it's someone's garden or something. Early on in the walk you come to a mysterious sign that has intrigued me for most of my service. It's pretty large and (relatively) well made and proudly declares, in bright blue letters, “e-Shop” and advertises movies, computers, and other electronics. The arrow on the sign directs you to a follow a narrow, overgrown road off into the bush that seems rather unlikely to lead to much of anything, much less an electronics store. More baffling still is that there's an identical sign along the road between Tautu and Norsup which also points off into the bush, seemingly in a totally different direction. As it turns out, however, the signs do actually point towards the same thing, a fact I discovered one day when I decided to investigate the anomaly and set out along the tiny bush road indicated by one of the signs and emerged, some five minutes later, at the other sign. While the area that I walked through was not exactly bush, it was not exactly developed either. I passed by several bamboo and thatch houses, some complete with old ladies out front grinding yams to make lap-lap, but nothing that seemed like an establishment that might sell computers.
The end of Tautu is indicated by the Norsup Airport (like I said, nowhere near Norsup). Although having a paved runway is become increasingly common in Vanuatu, when I first arrived I considered myself very fortunate to be near an airport with a paved runway as flights would be considerably less likely to be canceled due to heavy rain. As it is, the runway is the only paved surface on the island. A small tin shack houses the airport office (with an all-in-one ticketing counter, check-in counter, arrival counter, gate counter, and baggage counter). Another small tin house is home to the airport tax collector, to whom you must give 200 vatu every time you board a flight. Attached to these two structures is a large cement outline of a building. The upper portions of the frame are in a gently sloping triangle, indicating that it may have once supported (or been intended to support) a roof. Rectangular holes in the walls at about eye level suggest the idea of windows. On the ground a cement floor is engaged in a slow, losing battle with the weeds and papaya trees which force their way through cracks in the stone. There's not much wood present in the frame, but what little there is is black and charred. The airport is the subject of a heated land dispute between a few families in the area because, as I understand, everyone really wants a piece of those 200 vatu departure tax payments (approximately 100% of Vanuatu's legal activity revolves around land disputes because of a clause in the constitution that states that all land must return to ownership of whoever owned it before the colonial government showed up. This seems like a good idea on paper until you realize that there wasn't any paper before the colonial government and so the only way historical land ownership can be established is via oral legends and hearsay. Thus, mayhem ensues), which a few years ago resulted in the airport being firebombed. Still, Norsup airport has its advantages. I can easily walk there, I can wait at the beach for my plane to come, I only need to show fifteen minutes before my flight, and no one asks me to take off my shoes before going through security.
The airport is located right on the water on the edge of a crescent bay that's home to what is, in my opinion, the nicest oceanfront in the area. A thin, pristine white sand beach encircles a bay of clear turquoise water. On especially calm days the glassy blue surface of the water surrounded by the stark white of the beach looks like a giant gemstone that somehow spontaneously formed on the coastline. Large trees grown on the fringes of the beach and provide pleasant shade on a hot day. At high tide, some of the trees even reach out over the water, allowing one to climb out over the ocean and watch the waves break below you. The opposite side of the road from the beach is covered by the ubiquitous coconut plantation, which offers little shelter from the sun and the constant dust kicked up by passing trucks clings eagerly to sweaty skin and quickly coats you in a fine sheen of dirt. Thus, it's usually more pleasant to walk along the beach when heading to Lakatoro on foot and join up with the road later. At the far end of the beach from the airport is Aop river which, according to Duncan is haunted and should be avoided, especially at night. I've never seen any evidence to support this, although Aop river does have the potential to swell considerably in heavy rain and last year knocked out the earthen bridge that connects Tautu with Lakatoro. A coconut log bridge was hastily erected in response to this to accommodate foot traffic over the river while the truck bridge was being rebuilt. At the time I predicted that, given the haphazard nature of the truck bridge that I watched public works build, the coconut bridge would outlast the new earthen one. A year and then some later, however, the coconut bridge is rotten and drooping while the earth one has yet to be washed out again.
Just outside of Lakatoro there's a Jehovah's Witness house, which is funny not only because it indicates the presence of Jehovah's Witness in Vanuatu but also because the phrase “Jehovah's Witness House” doesn't translate very well into Bislama, so they have this really big sign so that they can spell out the entire Bislama translation, which is “Haos blong Kingdom blong ol Witnes blong Jehovah.” The first thing you see when you arrive in Lakatoro is the LTC (Lakatoro Trading Center), the largest store on the island. It's kind of like a Wal-Mart in that, not only does it stock a lot of random junk, but it's also open 6am-7pm every day, even Sundays and holidays. A low wall separates the LTC's yard from the road on which Lakatoro Trading Center is spelled out in large block letters, except the first letter of each word is missing so it actually says AKATORO RADING ENTER. The LTC has a nice big building which is pleasant to walk around in, and it is the only store on the island that sells cheese, but, for the most part, I avoid shopping there because anything they sell can almost always be had a lot cheaper at one of the other stores in Lakatoro. Next to the LTC is a sort of strip mall that contains the Post Office, Bank, Air Vanuatu Office, the main office of the power company, and, in a recent addition, a customs office, which is odd because exactly zero vessels and/or aircraft arrive from overseas each day to the island of Malekula, but I suppose if an international flight crashes somewhere nearby and some survivors get washed up here and need to get their life jackets cleared by customs we'll be covered.
Across from the strip mall is Kimberley's, the one (pseudo) restaurant on the island. They've got maybe six tables inside and, if you show up in the afternoon, you can usually get a plate of rice topped with meat or fish for 300 vatu or so. If you're looking for something in particular, or if you want to come for dinner, you can make arrangements in advance with the chef, who actually does a pretty good job as long as you're specific about what you want. Next to the restaurant is a meeting area which, according to the sign, seems like it should be the offices of Vanuatu's People's Progressive Party, but is actually a nakamal. After the PPP nakamal is an auto repair shop which always seems to be doing brisk business, probably because the roads on Malekula are rarely kind to the trucks that drive upon them. Across from the auto shop is another nakamal, this one marked by a revolving yellow light on top of a wooden pole, which we like to call Cancun. Most nakamals consist of a little tin shack where the kava is served and a collection of coconut wood benches outside for people to sit on and ponder how disgusting kava is. Cancun, however, looks like something from a spring break special. Its seating consists of several, circular, thatch-roofed, open-air huts which look like they should be peopled by bikini-wearing, sunburned, inebriated college students sipping complicated-looking frozen drinks served by Mexican waiters instead of gruff, shabbily dressed Ni-Vans pounding cupfuls of mud-water and hocking loogies.
After the Cancun nakamal there's a roundabout and a road splits off from the main road to the right and heads uphill to the provincial offices The main road continues on to the second half of Lakatoro, which is separated from the first half by a good stretch of nothing. I once ran into a tourist in between the two bits of Lakatoro who stopped me and asked me which way town was. I just nodded sadly and kept walking. The beginning of the second part of Lakatoro is marked by the school on one side and a nakamal on the other. When I first got here this nakamal, Jean Louis, was by far the most popular in town. The benches were always full, they made several buckets of kava each night, staying open late into the night until all other their customers left, and sometimes there was even a line to get served. The kava crowd, however, is fickle and recently Jean Louis lost its luster. We'd show up to find it totally deserted, its single bucket of kava going unsold night after night. These days they've stopped making kava altogether there. The coconut benches are rotten and broken and the sheets of corrugated metal that used to cover some of the seating areas have all been removed.
Next to Jean Louis is the department of agriculture and fisheries, an agency who's function I'm still uncertain of. Across from this is our Stadium, a large field overlooked by a stand of bleachers on the far side. Up next is the market, a big, open concrete structure that's home to not one, but two signs. Of course, neither of them advertise the market. The first is a giant, side-of-the-highway-style billboard advertising Digicel and the second is a hand-painted pink wooden sign which says something to the effect of “Welcome to Malekula. Please Be Aware That People Here Have AIDS,” which, aside from being more or less completely untrue, has got to be pretty detrimental for the tourism trade. The market itself is painted in a sort of Christmas theme with dancing Santas, Christmas trees, and decorative bells because, I guess, someone decided it would be a good idea to paint it one year for the holidays without thinking ahead to how this would look after the holiday season was over. There's another bank of stores next to the market, the first in the bank, and my favorite, is the PIM, which I like because it's about the size of a ticket booth and yet somehow manages to have a larger selection than any other store in town. You walk in to find the entire store full of towering stacks of stuff, most of which looks like it's about to fall over and bury you along with all of the store clerks under a mountain of retail goods. Generally I walk in, take a look around, trying to spot whatever it is I want to buy and, unable to locate it, I ask, skeptically, “do you have any lawn tractors?” To which the clerk will respond, confidently, “yes, of course,” and then wander over to a tower of powdered milk tins, push it aside and, sure enough, there they'll be, a nice, neat stack of eight lawn tractors. No matter how many times this happens, I never cease to be impressed. There's another store, the MDC (yeah, I don't know what the deal is with the initials either), in the same block which is about six times bigger and has about six times less stuff.
There's another roundabout, this one marked by a large pillar which, for some reason, is painted with a bunch of World War II images, with a road continuing south to Litz Litz and another heading to a third block of store up the hill. Between the three blocks of stores, it's usually possible to find whatever it is you happen to be looking for, although this can sometimes involve a lot of walking around in the heat and dust to check all the stores. Sometimes though, you're willing to do just about anything for a bottle of wine or a cold beer.
Friday, August 21, 2009
Sunday, August 9, 2009
Yu No Kick Part 17: Tanna
Ni-Vanuatu from other islands have something of a mystique regarding Tanna. Although it's probably the second most visited island after Efate, Tanna maintains a reputation of being primitive and steeped in custom, two of the big reasons why it is such a popular destination for tourists. Ironically, Tanna is being exposed to large amounts of western influence and is becoming increasingly western because of its reputation for being so un-western. Among other Ni-Vans, people from Tanna (“man Tanna” in Bislama) are often looked down upon for being primitive, uncivilized (and yes, it is kind of strange to hear people living in bamboo houses accuse others of being primitive. The deciding factor seems to be whether or not you have a DVD player in your bamboo house), and practitioners of black magic and old customs. There have even been several occasions where I've heard man Tanna discussed in terms that bordered on hatred and fear. Despite the best efforts of the various branches of the Christian Church in Vanuatu, strong belief in black magic still persists (or perhaps, to some extent, the church is encouraging these beliefs. Pastors often stress the importance of attending church and praying because it is necessary to combat black magic, without realizing that this is somewhat counter-productive, as their arguments are implicitly acknowledging the existence and validity of magic), and islands that are perceived as having strong magic (namely Tanna and Ambrym) are viewed with suspicion.
Any evidence of Tanna's primitiveness was not visible from the airport, however. The airport was an impressive structure that was significantly nicer than our airport in Norsup, mostly because it had not been recently firebombed, but also because it had two stories (and as an added bonus the second story showed absolutely no signs of an impending collapse on the first), two sets of bathrooms, and even a customs and immigration counter. The latter, apparently, had just been installed in preparation for the opening of international flights between Tanna airport to New Caledonia which, due to Tanna's extreme southern location, is actually about as far away as Port Vila. In celebration of (or at least in some way related to) the opening of this new flight route, Lenekel, the largest town in the area, was hosting a joint arts festival with New Caledonia showcasing Tafea (Vanuatu's southernmost province, which includes Tanna) and New Caledonian culture, which had been generating a lot of excitement over the past few weeks.
Justine, a volunteer who was accompanying me on this expedition, and I caught a truck from the airport into town and right away I was struck by the large differences between the northern and southern islands of the country. The islands of Vanuatu are spread out laterally over a length about the same as the state of California, which means fairly large difference in climate between the northernmost islands (which are essentially on the equator) and the southernmost. Tanna was noticeably cooler than Malekula, a fact that I welcomed, and the weather seemed to actually be acknowledging the fact that it was supposed to be winter. The flora was also noticeably different, gone (or at least not as dominant ) were the reckless, heat-loving, vines, creepers, and shrubs that preside over the Malekulan bush and in their place were larger, more responsible trees that see the wisdom in growing slowly and protecting their assets with things like bark. Our truck driver dropped us off at the market in Lenekel, which, again, proudly sported its differences with the one in Lakatoro as, instead of the usual collection of bananas, coconuts, and grapefruit, it was stocked with produce more familiar to the American palate. Things like carrots, lettuce, and tomatoes were abundant and I'd heard that even things like apples, grapes, and wild raspberries are sometimes available.
As a town, Lenekel was pretty similar to Lakatoro. It sported a number of stores (more stores than Lakatoro, actually), all of which pretty much sold the same thing: rice, canned food, and packaged crackers and cookies. Unelco even provides power to the town using the same pre-paid power card system as Lakatoro. Unlike Lakatoro, however, which is laid out in a line, Lenekel was more of a square, which made it a lot more convenient to get around. Because of the festival, Lenekel was crawling with people, more people than one usually sees in Vila, much less on an outer island, which made our arrival a little intimidating. Some of the Tanna volunteers met us at the market and escorted us back to the stadium, where the festival was taking place and where one of their families was running a food stall. The arts festival showed really no signs of containing any actual art, however, and looked pretty much exactly like every other event I'd ever attended in Vanuatu, except on a bit of a larger scale. Food stalls arrayed the edges of the stadium (which was actually quite large) selling the standard Vanuatu festival food (chicken wings, fish, plates of rice and meat, fried dough, and strange-tasting cakes and other baked goods), and kava. The field was occupied by soccer players working their way through a tournament and a stage had been set up on which a band was to appear later. The entire festival seemed to be served by only two outhouses with pit toilets which, judging by the stench, had filled up long ago. The only sign of any sort of ongoing cultural-related activity was a small area where representatives from various places in Tafea had erected houses built in the traditional style of their island. For the most part the construction materials were all the same, uncut wood and coconut leaves (unlike in the north where natangora, which makes an excellent thatch, and bamboo, which is naturally grows in nice, straight, beams, are abundant, in the south coconut seems to be the staple building material), and only the shape of the houses varied. Standing next to all the Vanuatu structures was the New Caledonian contribution, a large, circular, concrete building with a thatch roof that looked like it had been erected with aid of cement mixer and a union-certified construction crew. Now, I don't know much about New Caledonian history, so I suppose it's possible but that they developed cement, along with the Romans, a few thousand years ago and have been using it as a building material ever sense (granted, at least in Vanuatu, there is an abundance of limestone from the coral reefs, which is the crucial ingredient in cement), but I kind of doubt it. Really it seem more like the New Caledonia contingent was just showing off that, since they're still under French rule, they have more money than they know what to do with. On a less cultural, but more pleasant, note, we were directed by the Tanna volunteers to a food stall that was making and selling hamburgers, which were excellent as, much to my surprise, they didn't skimp on the meat and included such extras a lettuce, tomato, onion and ketchup.
The festival proceeded pretty much as expected. The main act was a Vanuatu pop band that played a set of reggae-ish music that was heavy on the synth and included mostly covers. After they finished other, more amateur groups took the stage and the music continued into the early morning. Myself, I had my fill come about 11 o'clock and Justine and I pitched a tent in a quiet area behind the stadium and went to sleep. The next day we were planning on heading to the other side of the island to a village called Port Resolution, about 15-20 miles away, which is close to Tanna's volcano. Since it was Sunday, we were outside of the schedule of the usual service trucks, and, being volunteers, we were loath to spend the money that drivers usually charge tourists for charters. It was a nice day, however, and there was a lot of traffic because of the festival so we set out on foot, knowing that we'd probably end up in Port Resolution eventually if we were patient. The road crossing the island was in excellent condition, another testament to Tanna's booming tourist trade, and trucks passed frequently. Unlike on Malekula, where two white people walking outside of town is a rare sight and cause for much consternation, we merited little attention and very few trucks stopped to speak to us (many of the trucks were even carrying other white people and some had done up their truck beds with rain covers and cushioned seating). Tanna is shaped kind of like a hat. We had a steep climb initially, but it leveled off as we got farther from the coast and then sloped down again on the opposite coast. We gauged our progress by how insistent Ni-Vans we spoke to along the way were that what we were doing was impossible. Close to Lenekel we were told that we'd never, in a million years, be able to make it to Port Resolution on foot, towards the middle of the island we were informed that Port Resolution was really, really, really far away, and by the time the opposite coast was visible we were down to people giving us pitying looks and nodding their heads sadly. The highlight of the walk was when we rounded corner and the coastline with the volcano came into view. It was a nice, sunny day and off to the left the ocean sparkled magnificently and looked invitingly calm and peaceful. White beaches were like walls separating the green of the middle bush from the patient turquoise of the ocean. To the right the volcano jutted out rudely from the coastline, smoking ominously and covering the surroundings with a dark haze, seeming to hide something terrible and mysterious. A few minutes later an SUV rounded the same corner, pulled to a stop a few meters ahead of us and a collection of tourists got out and began photographing the vista. The driver, a Ni-Van, came to talk to us an insisted on giving us a ride. Having come this far, Justine and I were somewhat set on finishing our journey on foot, if only to say that we'd done it, and were a little hesitant. “Where is Port Resolution?” I asked. The driver pointed to the smoldering volcano blanketing the landscape in fog and said “On the other side of that.” We looked at the strangely malignant peak for a few more seconds and then got into the car.
As it turns out, it was a good thing we got a ride when we did as the nice packed coral surface of the road soon gave way to the black sand of the volcanic ash plain, and hiking through sand is notoriously difficult. For a while vegetation persisted to poke its way through the sand, before suddenly giving way to a desert of ash. The landscape in front of us was pure black and quickly turned into a minefield of sharp-looking volcanic rocks carelessly tossed onto the smooth sand. To our left, the volcano rose up like a gigantic black sand dune. I had no doubt that we had just crossed into Mordor proper and would soon begin ascending Mount Doom (although it turns out that Mount Yassur, as Tanna's volcano is called, is filled with far fewer orcs and far more Australians than Tolkien's Mount Doom). Our driver skillfully navigated through the potentially tire-puncturing rocks, following some road that I could not, for the life of me, discern. We rounded the base of the volcano and came to a road junction on the other side. One road obviously led up to the summit of the volcano, while the other made its way away from it. The driver explained that he'd be taking his carload of tourists up to the volcano, but that we should follow the other road to get to Port Resolution. As it turned out, we actually weren't even particularly to our destination, as it took another two hours of walking to reach it. We were both pretty exhausted by the time we pitched out tent and went to sleep that night.
The next day we set out to experience the strange volcanic character of the area around us. Across the bay from Port Resolution, where we'd spent the night, was a volcanic vent that had led to some interesting natural features. First, we hiked up to a large, rocky rift where volcanic gases mixed with water to send up wafts of egg-scented steam that seemed oddly refreshing (or maybe it was just that when the wind brought in breezes from across the ocean they seemed refreshing by comparison). Next we were directed to a patch of volcanic mud, a stretch of strangely spongey multi-colored earth. A little digging revealed that the upper layers of clay-like mud were warm and an inch or so away from the surface were downright hot. You could dig around to find pretty much any color of clay you wanted and its consistency made it kind of like a naturally-occurring Play-Doh. Finally, we climbed a ladder down a cliff-face to the ocean below where the tide-pools were dotted with springs of boiling water that occasionally let out sulfurous belches. That evening we caught a truck up to the top of the volcano, the event that was my motivation for coming to Tanna in the first place. The black sand road wound its way up the slope of the volcano, where the air became steadily cooler and more biting. We jumped out of the truck a couple hundred meters from the summit and continued on foot. At this point, the winds were quite strong and, even though I was wearing I jacket, I felt the coldest I'd ever felt in Vanuatu. Mount Yassur is billed as the world's most accessibly volcano. I don't know if this is true or not, but it certainly seemed plausible to me. Unlike the volcanoes I'd visited in Hawaii when I was little, which were carefully controlled with areas where it was safe to stand nicely roped off and park rangers ensuring that no one wandered off somewhere where they might be hit by a bit of flying magma, Yassur (in typical Vanuatu style) was just there. You were free to explore at will. We hiked all the way up to the rim of the volcano, where being shoved in by the strong winds seemed like a very real possibility, especially given the slippery footing offered by the volcanic sands. Unfortunately, you could not, as I'd hoped, stare down from the rim into a boiling pool of lava. The volcano was essentially a very large, circular sand dune. It slowly sloped up on the outside, finally coming to a peak at the rim, and then sloped downwards, somewhat more steeply, into the the volcano. A ways downwards a sort of flat, circular shelf was visible which separated the slope of the inner dune from a giant, dimly glowing pit in the middle. It seemed possible to safely walk down the interior slope of the volcano and stand on the shelf overlooking the pit, and we briefly considered this option when a deep grumbling sent hundreds of chunks of flaming magma flying up out of the pit. For a moment these glowing fragments hung still in the air and then descended, blanketing the shelf where we'd just been considering standing in brilliant, burning embers, and we decided that the view was just fine from the rim. The volcano's activity apparently fluctuates week-to-week (or even day-to-day) and we caught it during something of a quiet spell. I was told that it's not unheard of for the volcano to fling magma up over the rim where we were standing and onto the outside of the volcano and the assortment of volcanic rocks that dotted the outside flank were a testament to the truth of this. As it was, however, while we were there the bursts of magma never came close to the rim. We watched the volcano for about an hour and it fell into a sort of pattern. It would spend a ponderous five to ten minutes plotting its next outburst. Rumblings and tremors would announce that it was about to fire up. A sort of crashing boom accompanied each flare and chunks of burning red rained upward in one mammoth firework. Then the glowing rocks tumbled downwards, their bright forms twisting and turning in the short evening light. They peppered the shelf and sometimes the inside flank with flaming dimples which dimmed slowly as they cooled before finally going out. It was an awesome sight, but the novelty soon wore off as the wind became colder with the setting sun and soon enough we were ready to head back down to our ride.
Tired of walking, we caught a truck back to Lenekel to visit the last item on our agenda: a giant banyan tree. The banyan is a strange tree, not content to grow slowly thicker with each year, its branches attempt to create satellite trunks to support their rapid growth. Thin wooden tendrils worm their way down from the banyan's branches and, when they hit ground, begin to thicken and eventually form sturdy trunks which then sprout more branches. Older banyan trees are a mess of intertwined trunks and branches that form a sort of wooden jungle gym. The giant banyan on Tanna is supposedly the third largest in the world, a fact that I'm sure some Ni-Van just made up at some point and is now endlessly repeated. Third largest or not, however, it was a pretty impressive sight. Its network of trunks covered an area on the ground approaching half of the schoolyard at which I teach and the canopy was much larger. Intertwining woodwork formed thousands upon thousands of rungs which made the tree easily to climb up and maneuver around. Basically, it was the ultimate tree fort, the kind of thing every eight-year-old wishes they had in their backyard. Even at 23, I spent a couple hours climbing around it and could easily have spent several more.
After visiting the banyan, we headed to the airport. I liked Tanna, although my Peace Corps service has made me somewhat desensitized to natural wonders and I appreciated the plate of hot fish-and-chips that I got just off the plane in Vila almost as much as I did the volcano. Really, though, the only true disappointment was that, due to the geometry of Mount Yassur, throwing a coin into the lava pool had not been feasible, and thus my lifelong dream remains unfulfilled.
Any evidence of Tanna's primitiveness was not visible from the airport, however. The airport was an impressive structure that was significantly nicer than our airport in Norsup, mostly because it had not been recently firebombed, but also because it had two stories (and as an added bonus the second story showed absolutely no signs of an impending collapse on the first), two sets of bathrooms, and even a customs and immigration counter. The latter, apparently, had just been installed in preparation for the opening of international flights between Tanna airport to New Caledonia which, due to Tanna's extreme southern location, is actually about as far away as Port Vila. In celebration of (or at least in some way related to) the opening of this new flight route, Lenekel, the largest town in the area, was hosting a joint arts festival with New Caledonia showcasing Tafea (Vanuatu's southernmost province, which includes Tanna) and New Caledonian culture, which had been generating a lot of excitement over the past few weeks.
Justine, a volunteer who was accompanying me on this expedition, and I caught a truck from the airport into town and right away I was struck by the large differences between the northern and southern islands of the country. The islands of Vanuatu are spread out laterally over a length about the same as the state of California, which means fairly large difference in climate between the northernmost islands (which are essentially on the equator) and the southernmost. Tanna was noticeably cooler than Malekula, a fact that I welcomed, and the weather seemed to actually be acknowledging the fact that it was supposed to be winter. The flora was also noticeably different, gone (or at least not as dominant ) were the reckless, heat-loving, vines, creepers, and shrubs that preside over the Malekulan bush and in their place were larger, more responsible trees that see the wisdom in growing slowly and protecting their assets with things like bark. Our truck driver dropped us off at the market in Lenekel, which, again, proudly sported its differences with the one in Lakatoro as, instead of the usual collection of bananas, coconuts, and grapefruit, it was stocked with produce more familiar to the American palate. Things like carrots, lettuce, and tomatoes were abundant and I'd heard that even things like apples, grapes, and wild raspberries are sometimes available.
As a town, Lenekel was pretty similar to Lakatoro. It sported a number of stores (more stores than Lakatoro, actually), all of which pretty much sold the same thing: rice, canned food, and packaged crackers and cookies. Unelco even provides power to the town using the same pre-paid power card system as Lakatoro. Unlike Lakatoro, however, which is laid out in a line, Lenekel was more of a square, which made it a lot more convenient to get around. Because of the festival, Lenekel was crawling with people, more people than one usually sees in Vila, much less on an outer island, which made our arrival a little intimidating. Some of the Tanna volunteers met us at the market and escorted us back to the stadium, where the festival was taking place and where one of their families was running a food stall. The arts festival showed really no signs of containing any actual art, however, and looked pretty much exactly like every other event I'd ever attended in Vanuatu, except on a bit of a larger scale. Food stalls arrayed the edges of the stadium (which was actually quite large) selling the standard Vanuatu festival food (chicken wings, fish, plates of rice and meat, fried dough, and strange-tasting cakes and other baked goods), and kava. The field was occupied by soccer players working their way through a tournament and a stage had been set up on which a band was to appear later. The entire festival seemed to be served by only two outhouses with pit toilets which, judging by the stench, had filled up long ago. The only sign of any sort of ongoing cultural-related activity was a small area where representatives from various places in Tafea had erected houses built in the traditional style of their island. For the most part the construction materials were all the same, uncut wood and coconut leaves (unlike in the north where natangora, which makes an excellent thatch, and bamboo, which is naturally grows in nice, straight, beams, are abundant, in the south coconut seems to be the staple building material), and only the shape of the houses varied. Standing next to all the Vanuatu structures was the New Caledonian contribution, a large, circular, concrete building with a thatch roof that looked like it had been erected with aid of cement mixer and a union-certified construction crew. Now, I don't know much about New Caledonian history, so I suppose it's possible but that they developed cement, along with the Romans, a few thousand years ago and have been using it as a building material ever sense (granted, at least in Vanuatu, there is an abundance of limestone from the coral reefs, which is the crucial ingredient in cement), but I kind of doubt it. Really it seem more like the New Caledonia contingent was just showing off that, since they're still under French rule, they have more money than they know what to do with. On a less cultural, but more pleasant, note, we were directed by the Tanna volunteers to a food stall that was making and selling hamburgers, which were excellent as, much to my surprise, they didn't skimp on the meat and included such extras a lettuce, tomato, onion and ketchup.
The festival proceeded pretty much as expected. The main act was a Vanuatu pop band that played a set of reggae-ish music that was heavy on the synth and included mostly covers. After they finished other, more amateur groups took the stage and the music continued into the early morning. Myself, I had my fill come about 11 o'clock and Justine and I pitched a tent in a quiet area behind the stadium and went to sleep. The next day we were planning on heading to the other side of the island to a village called Port Resolution, about 15-20 miles away, which is close to Tanna's volcano. Since it was Sunday, we were outside of the schedule of the usual service trucks, and, being volunteers, we were loath to spend the money that drivers usually charge tourists for charters. It was a nice day, however, and there was a lot of traffic because of the festival so we set out on foot, knowing that we'd probably end up in Port Resolution eventually if we were patient. The road crossing the island was in excellent condition, another testament to Tanna's booming tourist trade, and trucks passed frequently. Unlike on Malekula, where two white people walking outside of town is a rare sight and cause for much consternation, we merited little attention and very few trucks stopped to speak to us (many of the trucks were even carrying other white people and some had done up their truck beds with rain covers and cushioned seating). Tanna is shaped kind of like a hat. We had a steep climb initially, but it leveled off as we got farther from the coast and then sloped down again on the opposite coast. We gauged our progress by how insistent Ni-Vans we spoke to along the way were that what we were doing was impossible. Close to Lenekel we were told that we'd never, in a million years, be able to make it to Port Resolution on foot, towards the middle of the island we were informed that Port Resolution was really, really, really far away, and by the time the opposite coast was visible we were down to people giving us pitying looks and nodding their heads sadly. The highlight of the walk was when we rounded corner and the coastline with the volcano came into view. It was a nice, sunny day and off to the left the ocean sparkled magnificently and looked invitingly calm and peaceful. White beaches were like walls separating the green of the middle bush from the patient turquoise of the ocean. To the right the volcano jutted out rudely from the coastline, smoking ominously and covering the surroundings with a dark haze, seeming to hide something terrible and mysterious. A few minutes later an SUV rounded the same corner, pulled to a stop a few meters ahead of us and a collection of tourists got out and began photographing the vista. The driver, a Ni-Van, came to talk to us an insisted on giving us a ride. Having come this far, Justine and I were somewhat set on finishing our journey on foot, if only to say that we'd done it, and were a little hesitant. “Where is Port Resolution?” I asked. The driver pointed to the smoldering volcano blanketing the landscape in fog and said “On the other side of that.” We looked at the strangely malignant peak for a few more seconds and then got into the car.
As it turns out, it was a good thing we got a ride when we did as the nice packed coral surface of the road soon gave way to the black sand of the volcanic ash plain, and hiking through sand is notoriously difficult. For a while vegetation persisted to poke its way through the sand, before suddenly giving way to a desert of ash. The landscape in front of us was pure black and quickly turned into a minefield of sharp-looking volcanic rocks carelessly tossed onto the smooth sand. To our left, the volcano rose up like a gigantic black sand dune. I had no doubt that we had just crossed into Mordor proper and would soon begin ascending Mount Doom (although it turns out that Mount Yassur, as Tanna's volcano is called, is filled with far fewer orcs and far more Australians than Tolkien's Mount Doom). Our driver skillfully navigated through the potentially tire-puncturing rocks, following some road that I could not, for the life of me, discern. We rounded the base of the volcano and came to a road junction on the other side. One road obviously led up to the summit of the volcano, while the other made its way away from it. The driver explained that he'd be taking his carload of tourists up to the volcano, but that we should follow the other road to get to Port Resolution. As it turned out, we actually weren't even particularly to our destination, as it took another two hours of walking to reach it. We were both pretty exhausted by the time we pitched out tent and went to sleep that night.
The next day we set out to experience the strange volcanic character of the area around us. Across the bay from Port Resolution, where we'd spent the night, was a volcanic vent that had led to some interesting natural features. First, we hiked up to a large, rocky rift where volcanic gases mixed with water to send up wafts of egg-scented steam that seemed oddly refreshing (or maybe it was just that when the wind brought in breezes from across the ocean they seemed refreshing by comparison). Next we were directed to a patch of volcanic mud, a stretch of strangely spongey multi-colored earth. A little digging revealed that the upper layers of clay-like mud were warm and an inch or so away from the surface were downright hot. You could dig around to find pretty much any color of clay you wanted and its consistency made it kind of like a naturally-occurring Play-Doh. Finally, we climbed a ladder down a cliff-face to the ocean below where the tide-pools were dotted with springs of boiling water that occasionally let out sulfurous belches. That evening we caught a truck up to the top of the volcano, the event that was my motivation for coming to Tanna in the first place. The black sand road wound its way up the slope of the volcano, where the air became steadily cooler and more biting. We jumped out of the truck a couple hundred meters from the summit and continued on foot. At this point, the winds were quite strong and, even though I was wearing I jacket, I felt the coldest I'd ever felt in Vanuatu. Mount Yassur is billed as the world's most accessibly volcano. I don't know if this is true or not, but it certainly seemed plausible to me. Unlike the volcanoes I'd visited in Hawaii when I was little, which were carefully controlled with areas where it was safe to stand nicely roped off and park rangers ensuring that no one wandered off somewhere where they might be hit by a bit of flying magma, Yassur (in typical Vanuatu style) was just there. You were free to explore at will. We hiked all the way up to the rim of the volcano, where being shoved in by the strong winds seemed like a very real possibility, especially given the slippery footing offered by the volcanic sands. Unfortunately, you could not, as I'd hoped, stare down from the rim into a boiling pool of lava. The volcano was essentially a very large, circular sand dune. It slowly sloped up on the outside, finally coming to a peak at the rim, and then sloped downwards, somewhat more steeply, into the the volcano. A ways downwards a sort of flat, circular shelf was visible which separated the slope of the inner dune from a giant, dimly glowing pit in the middle. It seemed possible to safely walk down the interior slope of the volcano and stand on the shelf overlooking the pit, and we briefly considered this option when a deep grumbling sent hundreds of chunks of flaming magma flying up out of the pit. For a moment these glowing fragments hung still in the air and then descended, blanketing the shelf where we'd just been considering standing in brilliant, burning embers, and we decided that the view was just fine from the rim. The volcano's activity apparently fluctuates week-to-week (or even day-to-day) and we caught it during something of a quiet spell. I was told that it's not unheard of for the volcano to fling magma up over the rim where we were standing and onto the outside of the volcano and the assortment of volcanic rocks that dotted the outside flank were a testament to the truth of this. As it was, however, while we were there the bursts of magma never came close to the rim. We watched the volcano for about an hour and it fell into a sort of pattern. It would spend a ponderous five to ten minutes plotting its next outburst. Rumblings and tremors would announce that it was about to fire up. A sort of crashing boom accompanied each flare and chunks of burning red rained upward in one mammoth firework. Then the glowing rocks tumbled downwards, their bright forms twisting and turning in the short evening light. They peppered the shelf and sometimes the inside flank with flaming dimples which dimmed slowly as they cooled before finally going out. It was an awesome sight, but the novelty soon wore off as the wind became colder with the setting sun and soon enough we were ready to head back down to our ride.
Tired of walking, we caught a truck back to Lenekel to visit the last item on our agenda: a giant banyan tree. The banyan is a strange tree, not content to grow slowly thicker with each year, its branches attempt to create satellite trunks to support their rapid growth. Thin wooden tendrils worm their way down from the banyan's branches and, when they hit ground, begin to thicken and eventually form sturdy trunks which then sprout more branches. Older banyan trees are a mess of intertwined trunks and branches that form a sort of wooden jungle gym. The giant banyan on Tanna is supposedly the third largest in the world, a fact that I'm sure some Ni-Van just made up at some point and is now endlessly repeated. Third largest or not, however, it was a pretty impressive sight. Its network of trunks covered an area on the ground approaching half of the schoolyard at which I teach and the canopy was much larger. Intertwining woodwork formed thousands upon thousands of rungs which made the tree easily to climb up and maneuver around. Basically, it was the ultimate tree fort, the kind of thing every eight-year-old wishes they had in their backyard. Even at 23, I spent a couple hours climbing around it and could easily have spent several more.
After visiting the banyan, we headed to the airport. I liked Tanna, although my Peace Corps service has made me somewhat desensitized to natural wonders and I appreciated the plate of hot fish-and-chips that I got just off the plane in Vila almost as much as I did the volcano. Really, though, the only true disappointment was that, due to the geometry of Mount Yassur, throwing a coin into the lava pool had not been feasible, and thus my lifelong dream remains unfulfilled.
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