Decreased Island Loveliness, and Places Where Loveliness Lives

The direct correlation between increased contact with the developed world/ its moral and economic systems, and the increased problems/decreased loveliness of a place is nowhere more apparent than in a small island nation capital after you’ve been through a few of the more remote islands (where contact has been much less and traditional values and lifestyle is better preserved). Port Vila, on Efate, is no exception. It has changed dramatically since I last saw it four years ago: foreign aid money and local programmes have rebuilt much of the town after the direct hit of the catastrophic Cyclone Pam, and, perhaps most strikingly, all the greenery has returned to the hills. In this sense, it is not nearly as grim as it was, and especially a NZ-funded new waterfront promenade walk, with nice benches and a public park behind it, has added a cleaner, spacious feel. (The downside of this is that a stage area with amplification has been installed here which blasts out techno-rubbish at night sometimes until 04.00am, and by day Jesus bands and shouting Christians rule.)

Although Ni-vans seem to have a habit of burning all their plastic rubbish, all the usual first world ‘trash’ that the island has no means to deal with is evident everywhere.

One downpour is enough to set my imagine going as to what the whole place must be like throughout the rainy season. Living with constant mud in the countryside is one thing, and perhaps not the best, but living with town mud which is full of waste and toxic crap is another. The busy inter-island cargo dock epitomises the pitiful mash-up of local meets west.

The town is over-run by, and often clogged up with, old minivans that run as shared taxis taking people wherever they want to go on a shared basis and without a timetable. It is commented to me that the town is unpleasant because there is no space for people, to which I can only reply that actually there never was space for cars, so the cars now occupy the pedestrian zones (something which could be said of so many places in the developed world too). Shops run the gamut between dozens of miscellaneous cheap Chinese goods stores, duty-free and bottle shops aimed at tourists, and a couple of head-scratchers like an interior design shop, no doubt wanting to flatter the ego of expat residents. From a local perspective, the prices of the latter two are craaaaazy.

A couple of hundred metres from the water frontage of the town is the small Iririki island which has been developed as a resort where the Ni-van staff turn up daily to serve mainly white visitors and help to line the pockets of the Chinese owners. The Iririki casino faces into our mooring field.

Paddling around the island reveals a few things: the remains of many boats left from Cyclone Pam still ashore, a solar power facility bigger than anything else in the whole country, and the stinking grey-water effluent from the resort running directly into the ocean. The water is surprisingly clear though, despite the swimming ban at the town in force ‘until the problem is rectified’, which turns out to mean E coli, meaning shit in the water. The ban does not include the waters around the resort island for some, presumably economic reason (only a couple of hundred metres from the town waterfront).

If Iririki is not enough to upset me, on the other side of the harbour on a peninsula is expat-dream-house-with-a-water-view territory. These are not the homes of the super-wealthy, but it is what I call wannabe millionaires’ row, and homes typically feature high walls, huge electric gates and large dogs.

What is not apparent to the casual glance here is that there is a local village within this, presumably the former owners of the waterfront. I spend some time here because this is the home of my dear friend Beatrice. She, her neighbours, her children and her relatives are all intelligent, loving people who live very respectably in every way, welcome me with such heart and openness. Far from being the pleasant grass houses of the outer island villages, their homes are like this:

They no longer have gardens and therefore must use the shops for their food and other needs, so I ask Beatrice about how her wages cover this. She works for a South African-owned business, 8-5 every weekday, and earns the equivalent of $73 US per week (minus a pension payment), the same as she earned when she began the job at least six years ago. I’m uncertain how many mouths she is feeding, but there is a lot of white rice involved.

Still flustered with this new disgrace, I am somehow lured to the big supermarket for shopping. I ask an employee who is cleaning the floor to direct me to the plain flour and observe her hanging around, slacking off her sweeping duties for long periods to fondle various products and packages: I’m not sure if it is longing on her face, or wondering what on earth the packet contains. Another colleague tells me that he earns considerably less that Beatrice and describes how they were promised holiday ‘but there were too many customers’ so it was not forthcoming. He has a choice between a 1 ½hr walk each way to work each day (better when his friend comes with him), or fork out 2hrs worth of pay for the bus, and when I ask him if it is a good job he quickly affirms, ‘oh yes!’ I spot a single bag of cashews nuts inside that cost his entire week’s salary. And this is all not to mention that it is a French supermarket, so the bigger profits are leaving the country altogether.

I am relieved to finally sail away from all this and head for a northern anchorage in hopes of surroundings that stimulate me in a calmer way. Sadly, I instead discover where some of the perhaps better off out-of-town expats live in their wannabe millionaires’ row houses, looking out over the lonely water and backed by the lonely road. I can only imagine that they spend their time playing with their imported commodities. A big item in this respect is the sport fishing boat, for which a few of them have even got together and built a walled harbour (not charted). It all has the look of being a whole lot of ‘stuff’ without any love, warmth, friendship or meaningful activity.

On reflection, I do, of course, find lovely memories on Efate, not least my friendship with Beatrice and contact with some other great people, but also my ever-inspiring morning paddles on the kayak: even the ugliest situations might have wonderful sunrises,

and my explorations almost always find treasured spots.

The fruit and veg market is a very populated, thriving zone of healthy commerce which was, as ever, a big draw for me: the produce was beyond excellent and the vibe exuberant. They have a flower section which sells the kind of tropical blooms that compare to a European florist’s wares like a finch compares to a toucan,

and a take-away home-made lunch section where local ladies spread out meals on banana leaves and hoosh the flies away with a small bunch of thin branches. One starring vendor had made purple laplap (from naturally purple yam) that perfectly matched her dress. How I smiled!