From the Sublime to the Military
In need of laundry and a vegetable market, we pull into Luganville on Espiritu Santo island, Vanuatu’s second largest town, and a tiny, sleepy ‘large’ town at that. The vegetables are not as diverse as I have become accustomed to elsewhere in Vanuatu, but nevertheless provide me with all the bananas and root vegetables I could dream of, not to mention a few things, like live crabs tied up in bunches, that I was happy to avoid!
Having been to this town and these anchorages before, I am shocked to discover in the tiny WWII museum the extent of my ignorance about the scale of the US military presence here during in the second world war. Basically, there was no town of Luganville at all prior to the US troop arrivals, there were only plantations. Despite the sometimes raging currents between the islands in the area, there is considerable protection from wind which, in conjunction with deep water, lit up the eyes of the US generals who, surveying the area from the air, promptly ordered a naval/air base to be built there, whose size was only second to Pearl Harbour in the Pacific. 42,000 troops and uncountable hardware and materials were shipped in to build it, four runways, an extensive suite of docks, floating docks, repair yards, etc to constitute a naval harbour, a hospital, and much more. Personnel were given just twenty days to complete it, and the first plane landed on one of the new runways on the 17th day. The remains of old docks are everywhere,
and some of them are still used to this day, broken down as they are.
The odd semi-circular US military ‘Quanset hut’ is still in evidence either in ruins or still in use here and there,
the massive boat-haul-out ramp and rails lies dead.
I shudder to think of the amount of blasting of the locals reefs (for hardcore) they must have made to achieve this.
However, as I have seen elsewhere in Vanautu, the locals were very much enamoured of the Americans, first and foremost because the US personnel treated them as equals (whom they trained and employed for instance), not just lower class human beings and slaves, as the Condominium (French/British) colonial powers did.
Marina, the knowledgeable and enthusiastic leader of the team in the museum, is from Malo Island. Her grandfather was one of the many locals who worked for the US, and she tells me that hers is one of the families who still use the household utensils that were spread out along the shore for whomever could use them by the departing troops. Conversely, in the same area, the same troops dumped a catastrophic quantity of military hardware into the water – plant machinery, jeeps, boats, planes, etc – rather than give it to the French colonial power, to whom it had been offered at a most silly price, but who were still holding out for a freebie. US patience ran out and it all went in the water for eternity. The dump site is now affectionately called Million Dollar Point.
Having seen major US military ‘trash’ sites before, snorkelling on Million Dollar Point was not startlingly new, but this does not mean that it does not deeply shock. The wastage in terms of money, useful hardware and simply the resources from which all that stuff is made are all colossal, not to mention the environmental impact that all those toxic fuel tanks/oil-filled engines/lead acid batteries/etc must have had on the local environment. I felt seductively drawn to look at it, but it certainly gave me the shivers to be amongst it.
My sense of immorality runs quickly over this kind of thing. However, I am also aware that the local point of view is very different. They understand, and probably not incorrectly, that the wave of Japanese forces spreading through the Pacific at the time was poised to invade Vanuatu and, had the US not acted as fast as they did when they did, the story could have turned out very differently. On a note less understandable to me, they are grateful retrospectively to the Americans for giving them their first Western clothing, as though their traditional dress made from local materials (and perhaps sometimes scanty) was not good enough in some way. Overall, I try to imagine being a local in a grass skirt watching the arrival of 42,000 troops with all that ‘cargo’ who then smartly levelled the ground, built structures and docks the likes of which had never been seen before, all in a matter of days. It must have been like gods with supernatural powers had turned up from wherever Ni-van gods turn up from.
Optimistically, it would be hard to look under the water at Million Dollar Point and not notice that all that machinery of war is being reabsorbed into the natural world, and serving as ecological niches for countless species on the way.
One other point which Marina at the museum is helpfully informative about is the vine: that vine, the one which is choking all the native vegetation. Apparently the locals call it ‘American Vine’ thereabouts. She tells me quite clearly that one vigorous and damaging climbing plant was introduced by the US military in order to camouflage their runways. In the end, this may be the most harmful part of the US legacy from that period.
I find examples of US military detritus in every place I go on the island, as far away as Hog Harbour, about 40 nautical miles from Luganville, their main centre.
Interspersed with this are large areas which have been deforested for beef farming, a slightly more up-market take on wannabe millionaires’ row for white expats, and large quiet areas where nothing is happening apart from a few white people drifting 20m offshore on a paddleboard or swinging in a hammock on a beach, due to rather a lot of holiday resorts. None of these fill me with any sense of joy, but I try to focus on the major impression, which is very much of a wild and beautiful country, not least of the attractions of which are the mind-blowing ‘Blue Holes’.
Vanuatu’s Blue Holes are massive freshwater springs, so big that they create huge freshwater rivers that run to the sea. Living on the sea and being surrounded by, and often wet with, salt water, fresh water holds a magical place in my heart quite over and above its life-sustaining properties, and the stunningly blue and eerily clear waters of the Blue Holes certainly hold sway over my imagination. Paddling or dinghying up the river sets my eyes wider and wider open as the water clears and blues,
strange new fish skitter away, mangrove yield to rafts of irridescent green plants, some with long, thread-like, clean, white roots, and watercress to eat.
Perspective is difficult to gauge floating here, it is as though I am hovering in air above, or perhaps below the level of the green rafts at the surface. It intensifies until the end, the source itself, is suddenly there, like a blue temple of nature ringed in green, a paradisical playground of ultimate abundance, and a source of vibrant life all rolled into one.
A few thick, dark eels go about their temple duties, fish hang in mid-nothing, a vivid yellow leaf floats by like a sunken sun, and the high forest hums all around in a tight, loving embrace.
At the largest Blue Hole I visit, Matevulu I dive down to the 18m bottom and search for the source of the source and, as it were, poke in all the corners and cubbies of the giant upturned cone of space, but I cannot really find where all this water is coming from. The owner, Peter, points out to me the area where he says it comes out and I investigate, but still nothing conclusive. The watery mystery deepens yet still.
With Peter come members of his family and small parties of locals of all ages, all arrived to do what I am doing: playing in and enjoying this sublime place on the Earth. Meaning it in the fullest way possible, these locals REALLY know how to enjoy themselves here! Over lifetimes, these ni-Vans have developed a considered, measured, relaxed and completely present pace at which to play at the Blue Hole. Yes, they whoop and cry out a little, but their impulses are meted out slowly, anticipation is revelled in and safety considered as they climb the highest trees in hordes, hang out on the thinnest branches they dare, think about it, talk it over, look around, be there, then finally jump one after another in quick succession. Matevulu boasts the rope swing to end all rope swings too, which Peter claims to have rigged from the massive banyan tree years ago, a feat that makes me goggle-eyed just to think about. Children, youngsters and adults alike gravitate to it and collectively achieve peak moments for each as they make the great arc over the deepest part of the blue.
Under such a spell, I believed that not even the grand follies and wastage of war (the remains of which I had witnessed elsewhere on Santo), and not anything that eternity might come up with could spoil this is very real, completely natural magic.
Click here for larger version of the pictures above and lots of others from Espiritu Santo:
