Malakula Waiting

Taxi Hey Taxi

George Our Wala Guide

Finding a taxi on Malakula Island's jungle roads is not an easy task.  We had waited about an hour and a half with our guide, George, before the revelation.  We were sitting on an old cement roadside drain on some banana leaves - the kind that don’t stain your clothes- that George had cut.

George put the banana leaves over the fern fronds used by other jungle passengers.  There were more disposed of fern and leaves rotting in the culvert opening.  This was obviously the bus stop/ taxi rank for Wala.  Others had waited here before.

We were headed up the coast on a fine Saturday morning to catch a boat out to one of Malakula’s most culturally rich islands, Vao.  Our taxi, the pick-up truck that had taken us from Norsup to the Wala landing the day before was supposed to meet us at 9 am.  We came across just after nine.  It wasn’t there.   George wasted no time in suggesting he walk to the road and bring back a taxi.

This should have been our first clue to a problem since it would not be odd for the taxi to been late.  Anyway, we insisted on walking out to the main road with him.  It was a nice day for a walk and I certainly needed the exercise.

We sat there by the road taking in the scenery.   We said “Allo” to a young couple heading off to the gardens.   George and I chatted about the usual Vanuatu small talk topic- family.  A family of five walked by – Dad with his bush knife, Mum carrying a sack on her back and a smouldering quarter coconut shell in her hand and three boys ages 6 – 10.   They too were off to work in the gardens.  The embers in the smouldering coconut shell would be used to start the garden fire for cooking and cleaning up the cuttings.

After about 45 minutes we heard a vehicle in the distance.  As it rounded the corner and headed down the hill toward us we saw that it was a taxi and noticed only the driver inside.   Our ride was here or so we thought.  It carried on right past us as the driver waved hello.

Island Time 

I recalled our discussion from the night before with the only other guests at the Wala Island Resort, a young Australian couple.   A traditional meal cooked with hot stones had been prepared for the four of us. 

Wala Island Resort 

The banana leaves in which the meal was cooked had been folded out and red hibiscus flowers had been dotted around the “platter”.   A whole chicken, the same chicken I had seen being plucked behind our bungalow just a few hours earlier had been cut into portions and placed in four separate piles.  Laplap and sweet potatoes where scattered around the bowl.  In the centre, coconut cream now filled the bowl-like cavity in the laplap where the chicken had been cooked.

As we sat on the mats devouring the feast by taking pieces of chicken or rubbery laplap in our hands and dipping it in the coconut cream, the Australians told of their stay on Wala.  They had loved it.  They told us of their visit to the Small Numbus cultural group and their experiences paddling a traditional dugout canoe.  They had sunk it off shore and had to swim back dragging the canoe.

Traditional Wala Canoes

Their good-natured explanation of the wait they had had on the beach next to Norsup Airport was what I was remembering now as I sat on my banana leaf on the side of the road.  When they arrived earlier in the week they waited two hours while the Wala Island Resort people tried to find a taxi.  Coming from Sydney’s winter they hadn’t minded a bit waiting on the beach in the Malakula sun, but I began to wonder. 

As I wondered, a slim-lined bird with a longish beak landed on the top of a coconut palm across the road.  George pointed it out and said, “Bird ia hemi kilim ol snek.”    It looked pretty harmless, but it was actually quite the killer.  Apparently, it dispatches snakes by stabbing them in the head with its beak and then carries them off to be stored hung on trees for later consumption.

An old man walked by wearing a blue baseball cap.  George greeted him in the local language.  A truck and a taxi passed going in the wrong direction.  According to George the truck had come from Vao and maybe we would get a lift on its way back from the market.

We knew we were in for a wait, when I asked what time the market closed and was told 12 noon.  Rob walked off up the road to see what he could see.  I stayed and chatted with George wondering if we’d ever see Vao.  I started to wonder if maybe this was the Wala Island people’s way of keeping us from going on their competitors’ tour.

I mean Wala Island had some amazing things of its own to see and we planned to do that later that afternoon.  At one point George mentioned that sometimes tourists go from Wala to Vao by boat.   A little light went off in my head.

Island Safaris in Vila from whom we had booked the tour had said we were going to Vao by boat, but when we got to the Wala Island Resort they arranged for the taxi.  We had played along as you do when you have no other way of knowing how to get there yourself, but George’s comment about the boat signalled what a friend of mine labelled circle-talk. 

Ni-Vanuatu rarely take a problem on in the most direct manner.  They will bring things into conversations and talk all around it.  For them it works and everyone knows what is being said even though it is not being said.  For the “white man”, however, it is often a real test to figure it out.

Once you recognise an issue is there to be discovered you have to play Twenty Questions to try and get to the bottom of what a Ni-Vanuatu would have understood in seconds.  So, I started to ask about the boat.   Where does it go from?  How long does it take? 

Now We Get It!

Rob came back from exploring and announced he’d found a Catholic shrine along the road.  He wanted me to go see it, but I wasn’t that bored.  I explained about the boat.   How long would a boat take?  George thought about 2 hours.  Just then another taxi went by in the direction of Vao.  Again, no passengers, again it didn’t stop.  We had been waiting an hour and a half at this stage.

At this point George decided to drop the final clue on us.  He explained that members of the Seventh Day Adventist Church had a virtual monopoly on public transportation on Malakula and they do not work on Saturdays.  Since today was Saturday they would not stop – of course, how stupid of us not to know.

This explained why the boat had made its way into the conversation.  George wasn’t going to tell us directly that our wait by the road would be in vain, so he had started to hint of a solution.  Because we had insisted on going with him, he had hoped that maybe one of the few taxi’s not owned by SDAs would come by, but none had.

It was all too clear now.  I asked if the taxi driver from yesterday was SDA.  Sure enough he was.

I didn’t bother to ask why the driver agreed to pick us up at 9 if he knew he would not be working.  That would have been pointless, but it explained why George did not wait for the taxi at the landing. 

Friends Helping Us Wait

We walked back to the landing to catch the boat back to Wala.  George was going to set up the boat to Vao for after lunch.   Of course, at the landing the saga continued. Because he hadn’t expected us until close to one, the boat’s owner had gone to tend his gardens in the jungle.  Various people took off to find him.

We waited and chatted to villagers who were there.  We waited and waited.  An hour later the owner returned.  We made it back to the resort just in time to have lunch at the time we had planned to be back from Vao - 1:30.  The Australians were in the restaurant and anxious to hear about our visit to Vao.  They showed no surprise that we had not made it there yet.

Finally Vao

After lunch we piled in the boat with the Australians who were on their way to the Airport to head back to Vila.  They were a bit distressed by now that the taxi situation would mean they were stranded, but the resort manager assured them that the transportation was arranged.

However, as we left Wala we could see that there was no taxi at the landing.  We off loaded them and as we set off to Vao we saw the two Australians and two resort staff wading, baggage on shoulders, across the stream that emptied into the bay.  George said they were off to the Mission a mile or so away to see if they could use their truck.  Rob and I were sure we’d see them again tonight, but we never saw them again.

We were now on our way to Vao in the same boat which had taken us across to the landing that morning to catch the taxi to Vao.  I tried not to think of how much time we would have saved had we just gone by boat in the first place.  Wala Island was getting smaller and smaller and I knew we would not be taking any jungle walks there to investigate the rich culture of that island, at least, not this afternoon. 

We would not be visiting Wala’s ancient nasaras, ceremonial-dancing grounds that contain the ceremonial stones of eight chiefly generations of Wala Islanders.  At one nasara it is said that the earliest stones, which are granted during the ngamege, pig killing ceremony were first erected over 400 years ago.

We would not be visiting the coastal caves where devils hide or the battlegrounds where the people of Wala fended off invaders from the neighbouring island of Rao.  The tour of ceremonial and medicinal uses of plants was off too.  It would have to wait.

The trip up the coast to Vao was fascinating, yet nerve racking - for me anyway.  I’d never travelled in seas with metre high swells in a 13-foot aluminium boat.  I wasn’t sure I wanted to now either especially in a boat with an outboard motor that you had to take the cover off to start.  Rob being ever so helpful tried to calm my nerves by telling me not to worry until the swells were so high that you could no longer see land.

We landed just below the mission just 45 minutes after we had left Wala.  We were taken first to a carvers house to see some of the wooden masks Vao is famous for.  There was no one there when we arrived.  His workshop was under a tree.  The half-finished masks, tools and shavings were strewn all about.   

A few moments later and a woman came in off the reef in a dugout canoe.  She was the carver’s wife.  She laid out the masks that were available for sale.  A dealer had been through the day before and cleared most of them out, but there was still a nice selection.  Business before pleasure had been forced upon us and we bought three very nice masks further depleting the carvers inventory.

Then it was off to see the nasara.  We walked through the village along paths that were lined with knee high coral stone fences.  The fences were there too keep the pigs out of people’s living areas and to make it easier to get the pigs to the nasara for ceremonies.

Pigs play an important part in many ceremonies in Melanesia and Vao is no exception.  We followed the “road blong pig” up a hill.   We walked into the Nasara and stood on the dancing ground made perfectly level by centuries of use. 

Taken For A Ride

Huge banyon trees blocked out the sun. Three tamtams with carved faces (drums made out of tree trunks) stood in the centre of the nasara. You could almost feel the spirits of the Vao ancestors watching us.  Not wanting to offend any spirits, I asked permission to take a photo of the tamtams and was told my our guide, “Oh, no.  Sorry, it is tabu.”

The tabu warning was quickly followed by, “It is tabu, but if you pay 200 vatu per tamtam, then it would be ok.”

I hesitated and the price quickly dropped to 100 vatu per tamtam.  George, the boat owner and the Vao guide climbed into the photo one at each tamtam.  They each asked for a copy later.

Vao Nasara with Tamtams

I related this story to our ‘haos gel’, Marie, back in Port Vila.  She is from Malakula and when I mentioned the money she looked at me with that knowing look she has that says – “You really are a sucker.  Aren’t you?”   She said it would have been ‘kava money’, that is money that would have gone to purchase Vanuatu’s mind altering drink of choice – kava.  I had suspected as much, but I had my photo.

We moved on a few hundred feet to look at the Nakamal or men’s meeting house located just behind the nasara.  It was tabu for the “white man” to go inside the nakamal and this time there was no doubt that that was true. No amount of money was solicited to lift the tabu.

We walked further into the jungle.  At a junction in the path our guide said good day and headed off home with the 300 Vatu that would get him 3 shells of kava.  He left us in George’s capable hands for the rest of the tour.

Circumcision House

The four of us carried on to the next Nasara.  Off to the left there was a small hut.  It was here that village boys who had completed the circumcision ceremony lived for a month following their circumcision.  On most islands in Vanuatu, young men are circumcised when the reach puberty.

George asked us to look up and above us in the banyon tree we could see several arrows stuck into the branches.  When they complete their month in the boy’s house, the men who emerge shoot an arrow into the tree as the final step in the initiation. Before they lived with their mothers.  After they live with the men and take their place in the nakamal.

We continued down more paths, past more huts, past more pigs on the road and entered a small family settlement where another carver lived.  After stopping to look at more masks and carvings, including some very nice stone carvings we headed back to the boat.  Vao is amazing and was well worth the wait.

Search for Petrol

We loaded into the boat and shoved off heading toward the Vao landing on the ‘mainland’.   This was not the way we came, but George explained we needed to get some petrol.  On the way we passed families in dugout canoes heading home to Vao from the mainland.  Some of the canoes were stacked high with bananas, taro and yams from the gardens. 

When we reached the beach George jumped out with a small plastic petrol can and disappeared into the jungle.  He came back several minutes later with an empty can.  No petrol available.

I started to wonder if we would spend the night adrift at sea or spend it on the road waiting for the SDA sabbath to end so that we could get a ride back to Wala.  It was decided we would stop at the next island, Aitchen. 

We could see rain on the horizon.  The sky to the north and east was purplely black and a fuzzy grey rain squall was visible between us and Malo Island 20 or 30 miles to the north.  The swells were bigger.  George assured us the rain was not headed our way.  We carried on toward Aitchen skirting the coast this time.

We motored past more people in canoes.  We waved to people on the beach of a village on Aitchen.  It became clear that we were not going to stop as we were now going parallel with the beach past the village.

I looked at George curiously and he said, “The people here are SDA.” 

 “Oh, so, the shop will be closed”, I said.

“We will go back to Wala,” was his only reply.

We went very close to a guy in a canoe who was setting his fishing nets.  George and the owner thought this was funny and so did the guy with the net.  As we came around the Western tip of Aitchen we came upon a mission.

I asked if it was an SDA church.  I was really just making conversation.  I mean if the people there were SDA, it had to be an SDA church, right?  “No, that is Catholic mission,” George said.  I didn’t bother to follow that up and still have no idea why we didn’t stop for petrol.

Back to Wala

The trip back to Wala was wrenching.  Each time we got to the top of a swell the boat banged down sending shock waves through the bottom of the boat, into the wooden plank we were siting on and then into our spines.

When we finally got back at about 5 o’clock we headed off to our bungalow to rest up before dinner.  The rain that “was not coming our way” arrived at half past five.  It poured.  Our bungalow made of bamboo with a pandanus leaf roof kept us nice and dry. 

It didn’t last long, so George was basically correct.  We headed off our flashlight in hand to dinner at the restaurant.  Our one choice of meal that night, they don’t even pretend to have a menu, was chicken curry with baked breadfruit and more sweet potatoes.  Again it was basic but very good. 

We talked to Charlie the manger for quite some time and then headed back to the bungalow.  There was only a kerosene lantern for light so we were in bed under the mosquito net by about 9 o’clock.


Wait Some More

Wala Island Ancestoral Stones

The next morning we awoke to sunshine and the sound of chickens and pigs searching the grass outside the bungalow for breakfast.  After our more civilised breakfast, we met up with Loren, a Cultural Centre Field Worker, charged with studying, promoting and protecting the culture of his island.  He gave us a great but short tour of Wala’s ancient cultural sights and fascinating information on the local plant life.

The red ginger flower, “loklok” in the local tongue, for example, is used to adorn only the highest-ranking men on the island.  Lower ranking men must use the pink ginger flowers in their costumes. Wala Island offers quite a few things to see for such a small island.

After lunch we headed over to the landing.  The taxi driver who had brought us up on Friday was there at the landing waiting for us.  Rob and I crammed back into the front seat.  I got to sit almost on top of the gearshift this time and we headed back down the road to Norsup.

For our departure we were two hours early.  There was not a soul in sight, but the doors to the airport were open.  We sat down and waited once again.  You can’t win really, but we had a great time and will certainly be heading back before we leave Vanuatu.

[Note: This tale was first told in July 2000]

Copyright 2000

Just Let The Kava Sing

My first experience was memorable.  Rob and I were invited by another couple to share in some of Vanuatu’s best.  We’d never done this before, but we trusted the intuition of these new found friends and decided to give it a go.

We drove down the hill and met them just behind Wilco Hardware and then followed them up the hill on the other side.  We had been in Vanuatu a couple of weeks and we weren’t quite sure where we were headed.  We ploughed through potholes, the size of bomb craters.  It was before the Toyota Prado.  The low clearance of the car we were driving meant it grounded a few times on the deep ruts caused by Vila downpours cutting into the steep coral surfaced roads.

We turned a corner and our friends parked along side a tall hedge.  It was a beautiful night.  The only light apart from that coming from the billions of stars above was from a single naked red light bulb on a pole sticking out from a tree just opposite us.  We followed our friends across the road, through the gate and down the path towards the glow of the dim light coming from the window of a small traditional hut just ahead of us.

With the light bulb now on the other side of the hedge and the tree canopy blocking out the sky, we were enveloped in darkness.  As we walked along the path I became aware that we were not alone.  You couldn’t see them, but you knew they were there… in the darkness – silent, but definitely there. 

As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I could see that the garden was arranged in a way that formed these little alcoves all along the path.  There were people in them, but it was only the occasional shuffle or mumble that gave them away.

We carried on toward the hut.  Just before we entered, though, a horrendous noise erupted from the bush behind us.  It was the deep guttural sound of a man preparing to hoick.  Then he spat, followed by a few “peh, peh” as he tried to get out the last of whatever the terrible thing was that he had in his mouth.

This gave me no confidence that I would be able to go through with it.  Let’s face it this was not my scene.  We entered the door.  There was a woman behind the bar, but no one else inside.  We took a table.  We chatted the typical small talk of those who had just met and then it was time.

Thomas asked if I wanted a 50 vatu or a 100 vatu.  I chose the cheaper since I still wasn’t sure I wanted to do this.  Rob, being Rob, jumped in boots and all and ordered a 100 vatu.  We went up to the bar.  The woman ladled the appropriate amount into the glass bowls and we headed out the back door into the darkness.

The liquid ladled into the bowls looked like it had just come from one of the many potholes we had passed through on the way.  It was a greenish muddy brown and certainly didn’t look like something you would want to drink, unless of course, you were into drinking from sewers.

Out back and facing a chest high hedge, our hosts explained it was the custom here to drink it all in one go.  So, I tilted the bowl back and immediately thought, “What the hell am I doing?  Am I completely mad?”  The taste was foul and what was worse was that I couldn’t take it all in one gulp.  I had to gulp two, three, four times and with each gulp another wave of that taste went over my tongue.  And, I had the half size!

I now knew exactly why the guy behind the bush was hoicking.  There is no way to describe the taste of kava.  Some people say earthy.  Others say it tastes like mud, but then can you really trust the opinion of someone who has recently been eating mud? No, the taste is indescribable really.

Although the mud analogy is not a surprising one considering the kava here is green kava, that is straight from the ground.  Kava is found through out the Pacific, but generally it is dried and later mixed with water something like a tea.  In Vanuatu, the fresh roots are ground up – in places like Tanna that grinding was traditionally done by chewing and spitting, but we won’t go there – then placed in a piece of material and squeezed into a bucket of water.  The resulting liquid muck is sold in half coconut shells in measures of a full shell or half shell.

All everyone can really agree upon is that it is not a good taste.  So, one might ask why is the national drink of Vanuatu such a foul tasting concoction?  Well, it is not for the taste.  It is for what follows after you manage to keep it down.

Kava produces a mild high.  By the time we got back to the table to gobble up the peanuts that were there to kill the taste, my lips and tongue were going numb already.  The world kind of slows down with kava.  You mellow and life just happens around you as you sit in your own headspace.  It’s not alcoholic.  So, you don’t get a hangover the next day, although it makes some people like me very groggy in the morning.

For ni-Vanuatu kava is a tradition.  It played and still plays a big part in custom ceremonies and its traditional uses are as varied as the 100 language groups that make up the country.  In most localities kava was for men only and even today in the outer islands its use by women is frowned upon.

Following independence in 1980, kava came out of the solely traditional role and entered the popular culture.  Kava bars, like the one we went to for our first kava experience opened up and today there are well over 100 kava bars or nakamals just in Vila.  Kava has replaced alcohol as the drug of choice in Vanuatu and since it mellows you out rather than hypes you up like alcohol can, street violence on a Friday night has really dropped off over the past 20 years.  Of course, I wasn’t here then so that is second hand, but I feel a lot safer walking the streets of Vila on a Friday night than I do the streets of Wellington or Auckland.

For the typical expat kava drinker, kava is viewed more or less as legalised marijuana.  Don’t get me wrong, the ni-Vanuatu treat it as a social drug as well, but with a long tradition of use it’s nothing new, it’s just there.  Expats treat it like a drug.  This is probably best illustrated by the lingo.  In Bislama, ni-Vanuatu will say some one is “drong long kava” or drunk on kava, where expats are likely use the word “high”.  Where we say, “Did you get a hit yet”, ni-Vanuatu will asks, “yu harem kava”.  “Harem” means feel or hear, which leads to some asking, “If you can hear the kava singing”.  The expat kava culture has also added the word, “kavahead”.

Probably the best example of the expat drug culture approach is to go into one of the stores that sells dried kava on a day when the cruise ship is in town.  The yabbos that arrive here from Western Sydney and Queensland head straight to these stores.  They pick up the tourist packages of dried kava in little decorative baskets and ask the nearest staff member if “this is good stuff”.  Wanting to make a sale, the staff member says, “Yes, of course.”  The tourist makes the purchase, looks around for the coppers and discretely slips the little pink or blue basket into his bag.  You can just see him going back to his cabin with his mates, locking the door behind them and then trying to smoke the stuff.

For ni-Vanuatu, kava is just something to do with the boys on a Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, … night.  That is the pub scene I’m talking about, its not the kind of thing you’d do sitting in front of the telly watching a rugby match.  Although, thinking about it, it might not be a bad idea.  For those of us that don’t see the point of getting all excited about little people running back and forth across the TV screen, life would be a lot quieter if the couch potato fans were zonked on kava.

Speaking of zonked, kava can zonk you big time.  Generally, one or two shells will get the kava singing to you and smart people stop there.  Experienced drinkers can go on to three or four shells. 

The place is full of stories of over zealous expats on kava.  One friend of ours loves to tell the story of her first experience.  Since I don’t have a Haitian-Miami accent I can’t really do the story justice, but she tells how she went to her first kava bar.  She is one of the few people who say they liked the taste, Rob is another.  So, she had her first shell and loved it.  She said, “Whao, this is great.  Give me another.”  She had another and then another.  Her story usually stops with four shells, but her husband says it was more like six.  Completely legless she was taken home and put to bed and there she stayed for four or five days.  She was so sick she could not get up and she hasn’t had another shell since.

Fortunately, Rob and I are a bit more moderate in our kava drinking.   We go to kava probably only once a month and it is much more for the social setting than for the “hit” or to hear the “singing”.  It is a very social event.  Kava is taken in the evening and loud music and bright light are definite no-noes, so you have your kava and then sit down and have a chat with whomever. 

When we first arrived we tried a few different kava bars, like Mickey’s, Ronnie’s, and The Northern Light.  All have different atmospheres and different types of kava.  Depending on the island it comes from and how it is made, kava can have different strengths.  In my experience Maewo kava is the strongest, but ask any ni-Vanuatu which is best and he or she will tell you it is the kava from their island.

Over the past two years though, we have settled on two particular kava bars, Bob’s and Friday night kava at the University of the South Pacific (USP) Campus.   Bob’s is on the lagoon and you have your kava over at the bushes, rinse your mouth out and then sit on the deck over the lagoon.  The sun sets behind the hills on the other side  and it is a fabulous setting for the end of the day.  The sky glows in oranges, yellows, pinks and purples as the palm trees turn to shadows.  It is a great place to take visitors

USP has a different ambience.  It is an end of the week work thing, but friends of employees and students, like us, are welcome too.  We go there largely to catch up with a few friends who are pure kavaheads.

I can’t say I’ve ever really gotten into the stuff, but that will save me from the kidney stones, dry skin and slow mornings associated with the heavy kava drinkers.  It’s a great social event, though, so we will keep going occasionally. 

Hey.  Yeah man, how’s it goin’…  Yeah, I hear it singin’ tooooo….

[Note:  This tale was first told in early 2001.]

Copyright 2001