Delving into the Shadows and the Light

Malekula is one of the larger islands in Vanuatu, and at its south-eastern side there is a smattering of small islands called the Maskelynes. I go about my sunrise kayaking here as usual, but I am far from alone with my paddle: everyone has an outrigger dugout canoe here (made by themselves, naturally), massive, both long and built up higher than the original tree trunk to increase the freeboard.

There are no outboard motors, and I think this is partly because their money income is not enough to buy such things, but also there may be a problem about having fuel delivered (it usually comes in oil drums and is landed on a beach by a landing craft-style small cargo boat, or brought ashore in a sturdy tender). This would not be possible here due to no good landing beaches. Which brings me to the most probable reason that the use of dugout canoes has persisted, and that is that they live in a pocket of small mangrove-surrounded islands with very shallow waters and limited landing possibilities of any sort at all. The dugouts are the time-worn answer to getting around hereabouts and serve for fishing, taking children to school daily on the neighbouring island, and popping across to the other side to work on the garden, which is found, inevitably, through the mangrove, which must be cut through to gain access.

The many dugout outrigger canoes in this area range over the long seascapes all day, and sometimes into the night as well, each far from the other, gently plying their way toward dinner, or breakfast as it might be, not looking lonely so much as peaceful. Paddling pace is always slow, and shouts, whoops and songs can often be heard coming across the water from their contented crew. All is not well in the Maskelynes though. The price of copra (coconut meat) is down, and Chief Sofren tells me with a sad gesture toward the coconut grove that ‘we have copra, but we don’t...’ - it is not worth their while.

The copra drying shed, where a fire lit in a couple of old fuel drums low down under the mesh coconut-meat shelf lying the roof dried quantities of copra for export in the recent past, now stands idle next to the shore.

Instead their only money income is in small reef fish which a little cargo boat takes away from time to time. They have no refrigeration on the island: I don’t ask, but this must put a very short storage time on their catch. One of their main expenses is school fees, concerning which I hear various figures, all of which seem exorbitant. Having been in a few of the schools in these islands and seen the class sizes and facilities, putting this together with my limited knowledge about the level of local wages simply puts any of the fees I am told about in the bracket of total rip-off. I, of course, lament that the local government might have learned this trick from the developed world. And the developed world is also causing them perpetual problems with their own limited exposure to products. Arriving at many anchorages we are approached by sometimes several different people who want to know if we can fix their torch/solar panel or other small electrical device. The questions are so preposterous to us because, obviously, all white people do not necessarily have a complete knowledge of all products and because the products that they have are not only of momentously poor quality (destined to quickly fail) but also horribly abused by incautious usage, for instance, they are simply very dirty, inside and out. One man wonders if we can fix his solar charger after smoke was seen coming out of it (but he is the same man who repeatedly tries to convince us that Germany is close to California). There is something I find saddeningly ignoble about products in general anyway, but here amongst these otherwise dignified and clever people my sadness feels magnified. To top it all, I find that Maskelyne islanders often keep their gardens (upon which they depend for food) on the mainland, but there is a new invasion of wild pigs there who dig up any crops and ultimately render the land useless for anything but bananas. The normally beaming Chief Sofren from Awei island looks worried and grumpy, especially after he has a bad fishing day. Round the rocky corner, on the east side of Malekula is the large inlet known as Port Sandwich, where the mangrove resumes with a new ferocity. There are three places where I can reach deep into the ancient, mature, weird, otherworldly-to-the-point-of-seeming-fictitious mangrove, one of which is suspiciously called Murder River for reasons I deliberately dont’t ask about before I enter its gloomy shadows, rippling light, strange hoots, clicks and groans and endless gloopy mud.

It is here that I find the seedpod to end all seedpods hanging from it’s parent vine. I reach it from my kayak, and am therefore not sure if this is the vine that is choking Epi and Malekula because I cannot follow it through the dense green, but it certainly is a vine, and a very vigorous one at that.

All in all I consider that this mangrove is not only spooky (in a thrilling way), but a place naturally suited only for species other than myself. I am ill-adapted in every way to travel through the mud studded with shoots and netted with aerial roots, stems and trunks, or even through the murky water where head clearance is often minimal and the risk of becoming disorientated is high, twisting and turning to follow an open way.

Farther north I enter what I am told is one of the most populous areas of the country. It has ceased to puzzle or surprise me by now, but I see almost no sign of habitation or human being almost everywhere, not until we drop the anchor in front of some small beach somewhere, the local hub. There on the sand are usually a few dugout canoes, one or more of which will push off and come and say ‘hello’ (or ‘can you fix my something-or-other?’ as it may be) within a couple of hours. It is at these times that we hope to establish not just the beginnings of some local knowledge, but often a personal and/or trading relationship. Trading happens more or less comfortably: small fishing gear, secondhand clothes or packets of vegetable seeds typically bring us a few papaya, grapefruit, drinking coconuts or bananas. I know that an abundance of grapefruit and papaya are falling from the trees and being wasted in lots of places, meaning that they are worth virtually nothing. Just as the early white Westerners ripped off islanders horribly (‘I’ll buy this island for the price of an axe head!’ and suchlike), when locals ask for something absolutely ridiculous I do not want to be ripped off either, and nor do I think it is kind to islanders to ‘donate’ to them willy-nilly, especially money. Doing this not only corrupts their culture unnecessarily, but it damages any existing possibility that we can have a personal relationship as two human beings on any kind of equal footing because I (or any white tourist or sailor who comes after me) then become seen as a walking wallet, or an opportunity to collect ‘cargo’. I very much want to support islanders, and I need their support too, but finding a way through this can be delicate. At Banam Bay, one of the canoes that comes out to greet us is children in torn t-shorts and grubby underwear, having leapt straight into the canoe when they departed school. They are, of course, delightful, and win my heart, some hair ribbons and some coloured pencils when they later run across the beach bearing two drinking coconuts that they have climbed to get for us. They, and everyone in these villages seems so happy. Even the young toughs (who appear to me to be modelling themselves on a rap star look) break into beaming, humble and very genuine smiles at the slightest acknowledgement. The village beach or landing often has something of a perpetually changing party atmosphere of laughter, high jinx and come-and-go. I feel very safe in Vanuatu, very very safe, unusually safe in ways that I usually don’t notice that I feel a hint of unsafeness. Behind the shoreline trees, there are indeed quite a number of people living in some of the villages, but measured against what numbers were before Western sailors brought fatal diseases (killing up to 95% of populations with STD’s, smallpox, TB and other communicable diseases), the populations are, at most, moderate. However, in some weird twist of fate, it is now I who am ill, although thankfully not with anything serious at all. I can only put it down to some of the small children I’ve been hanging out with and their runny noses, but I catch a cold, and then another one just as soon as I’ve recovered from the first. Taking it easy on a boat in a beautiful anchorage is not the worst of worlds though...