The World as It Used to Look

Not wanting exactly to refer to Hollywood nonsense, but my first close glimpses of Erromango from the water as we approached started the words ‘Jurassic Park’ knocking around in my head, and the more I saw seemed only to increase that knocking. The island gave me such an ancient feeling, a sense of looking at the world as it used to be: covered in rich forest, sparsely populated by humans, dominated authoritatively by nature. Clefts and canyons cut by rivers opened all along the coastline, each a potential harbour and settlement. It was easy to imagine being on one of the first visiting European sailing ships looking at that coastline with hungry or thirsty eyes, relieved to see potential watering stops where food could also be obtained. These coves have black sand, brought down from the volcanic hills (up to 800m high), whereas a hundred metres along the coast in either direction the beaches are of white as white tropical sand. Everywhere the water is exceptionally clear. The huge, rough shapes of the stony land are echoed under water, and these rocks are sparsely covered in mostly hard corals, which does not seem to be a foundation for larger fish, but the diversity of smaller fish was truly astonishing.

The story goes that back in the day Erromango men used to lure sailors off their ships with enticing piles of valuable sandalwood on the beach, then kill and eat them, increasing their wealth with some pretty fancy stolen rowing boats in the process. When the locals talk about the early contact with white sailors (and later, the colonists), in a light mood I bring up this story, hinting to ask about its veracity. In response they simply laugh. This is clearly not a denial, but said in more of a ‘ha-ha! Those were the days! Of course!’ sort of way, which is, naturally, hilarious. Even I catch the hilarity of it.

But, over all, I found the mirth of the Erromangans more limited than that of the locals of Tanna that I had just left. They are less friendly, less contented, more interested in me as a westerner (and possible source of information on desirous things they haven’t got), they talk more of property and ownership (rather than community), and they want money, assuming I have money to throw around, asking for a ‘donation’ to help them build their house, for example, and even suggesting an amount.

They gladly express their gratitude to the missionaries for saving them from their cannibal ways (a line they have been taught through long repetition I suspect), which is coupled with a resigned sorrow that they actually killed and ate the first bearer of the Christian message when he alighted on their shore, mistaking him for just another one of those exploitative ‘white skins’ who had a tendency to turn up, murder and steal from the them and scoop up scores of them away into slavery in Australia. Perhaps realising a potential mistake, they carved the outline of his corpse in stone before he went into the pot.

Whilst the church is central for everybody I meet, kastom (custom, tradition) seems considerably less in their consciousness than I would expect. For instance, behind a nearby beach there is a large cave painted with hand designs and bearing the skeletons of their ancestors. Although David tries to charge a fee to take us there (in our own boat I hasten to add), others say that there is nothing tapu (forbidden) about these places and we can freely go there. It seems to me that the residents don’t care too much about their ancestors somehow. I don’t visit.

Something which is very much cared about is women’s empowerment! My visit coincides with a well-attended, several days long meeting for women to discuss how to go about this in the community and in business. A whole hall full of women are elegantly dressed, prepare beautiful food for one another, and I hear the peals of their enthusiasm ring across the bay.

A visit into the interior with Matthew, Justin and Chris is very enlightening. Chris (a secondary school teacher in the village) is a wealth of information about everything from the social situation to the local flora. I hear enticing stories of caves in the mountains, and tunnels that open in high lookouts over the ocean. But there is no time to explore all this (we are leaving for bureaucratic visa reasons in the afternoon) and I readily content myself with a tour of their mountain gardens and wild forest. I see many skeletons of dead trees – one remainder of cyclone Pam four years ago – and learn that it is only just this year that normal life and bounty is returning properly to the island. Apparently, even root crops rotted in the ground due to the damage inflicted by the moving foliage above them, so food was very scarce for a long time, and foreign aid slow to come through the capital, if at all. It’s so easy for me to drift into a lush-looking place, admire its wonder and never imagine the hard times that are the other side of the coin: most tropical island nations suffer cyclones, and this one suffers earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, and malaria and parasite outbreaks as well.

The flora shows all the signs of being deliciously strange, endemic, and of primitive lineages. Among these are the giant kauri trees, related to the kauri of New Zealand with a recent common ancestor when the land masses were still joined millions of years ago.

Chris explains the kastom use of its foliage in ritual and gives a strong impression that these trees are much revered in Erromango, to the point where he sees a tiny seedling tree and carefully packages it in a banana frond to plant elsewhere, which is very touching to witness.

I had already noted that there are several key businesses here that are foreign-owned (NZ usually), and many of the locals work for ‘white skins’, which I sense has an erosive impact to their sense of Ni-van indentity. One exception to this is Justin (also on our trip into the hinterland), who owns a mobile timber mill and fells the native tamanu trees: a very rich red hardwood. The whole operation seems a bit chaotic to me, but we have a lot of valuable conversation about the local trees and their protection. The native tamanu is the only tree Justin fells, and he clearly watches the native population closely for its continued health.

Our last stop in ‘Erro’ is an uninhabited one, a stunning cove that visually epitomises tropical paradise, full of wild fruit trees, palms, marine life and more. We named this ‘Bug Sex Bay’ because, yes, flies are our friends, and there were innumerable pairs, and even threesomes of them copulating in the water tension, amongst the trees, on the rocky shore, about the boat… in my hair… everywhere. Life is a rich tapestry of many things.