In Vanuatu, the locals are delighted if visitors speak their lingo – even if you’re making it up as you go along.
Pangi land-diving cheerleading squad
It turns out I speak Bislama, which I found handy when I got to Vanuatu. Typically, you say something in English, throw a few “m”s and “o”s on the ends of certain words, try to sound like the big Indian chief in an old western movie andyou’re there.
One of the first things you see on arrival at Port Vila’s airport is ads for the local beer – that’s bia, of course: Mi wantem Tusker. Bia blong yumi. (Our beer.) It’s important to know that blong means “for”, as in “belongs to”. This little word took me on lots of adventures. When I went snorkelling, I wore leg blong duck-ducks (flippers) over my fingaa blong legs (toes), a winpaip (snorkel) and a glas blong daeva (mask).
On Espiritu Santo’s exquisite Champagne Beach, I met a New Zealand woman who is helping kindergarten teachers in isolated villages. Dressed in a long T-shirt and sarong so as not to stand out, she told me my basket blong titi (bikini top) was considered pretty racy by the local women.
This piece of paradise was described by James Michener in Tales of the South Pacific as “the most beautiful beach in the world”, and I think he might have been right. It was everything your dream beach should be: white of sand, turquoise of water, green of palm – and just about empty of visitors. The local women had pegged out dozens of sarongs for sale, which waved in the breeze like suggestive laundry. Then the young men performed some endearingly unprofessional “kastom dances” and showed us how to split and prepare coconuts, which they presented to us with a homemade straw sticking out the top, ready to drink.
Elyn, our land-diving guide at the village of Pangi on Pentecost Island, informed me that “womb” is basket blong pikinini. This is why anxious mothers cradled their stomachs and paced as their teenaged sons threw themselves off a 30m tower with vines tied around their ankles: supremely athletic and as brave as lions, they were still just their mums’ little boys – and sometimes the vines break!
Land-diving (or Nangol) is an ancient tradition practised by men to ensure a good yam harvest, and the villagers gather to form a unisex cheerleading squad to ensure their safety. Not a basket blong titi in sight: the women were bare-breasted and the men wore a peculiar arrangement of leaves, suggesting you shouldn’t be shy about having testicles. Christianity equals covering up. Kastom equals letting it all hang out.
Bislama – one of several pidgin languages spoken in the Pacific – evolved during the 19th century when European traders came to the region and wanted to communicate with the locals. (It was further developed during the “blackbirding” decades later that century when young Ni-Vanuatu men were forcibly taken to work on the Queensland sugar-cane plantations.)
More than 100 different languages are spoken in Vanuatu, and Bislama is the one understood by everyone. I reckon this is why they say “Ni-Vanuatu” are among the happiest people on Earth – speaking Bislama makes you smile. In fact, if everyone learnt Bislama instead of recycling internet jokes and attending “laughter yoga” classes, pretty soon half of the world’s problems would be solved.
“Nem blong mi Diana,” I said to several startled children, who couldn’t believe we shared the same name, but were prepared to break into uncontrollable giggles just to prove my theory. My favourite Bislama phrase is the supremely logical ass i kam fastaem (reverse).
No matter what you’re doing in Vanuatu, you can talk about it in mangled Bislama and you won’t get those down-the-nose stares of derision that you risk when trotting out your schoolgirl French. In Vanuatu, they’re just tickled to death that you can speak their lingo, even if you’re making it up as you go along: wearing leg blong duck-ducks, I had to go ass i kam fastaem to get out of the bot and into the solwota where I saw plante fis. No translation needed!
But I wasn’t exactly relying on my ability to blag my way through Bislama: English as she is spoke in New Zealand was the order of the day aboard the Island Passage, the 40m ship that plies the waters of Vanuatu when it’s winter at home. It carries a maximum of 20 passengers, which makes the prospect of an afternoon on a “deserted” tropical beach all the more tantalising. You won’t get killed in the rush to relax.
Virginia, one of the Kiwi crew on the ship, studied locally for a boatmaster’s -certificate with a group of Ni-Vanuatu men and had insisted the course be run in -Bislama, not English for her benefit. She was pretty fluent by the end and came up with this little beauty, the Bislama for “saw”: wan samting wea hemi gat tet, taem yufala pusum long wud go kam go kam taem yu kam bakagen hemi kutem wud (something with teeth, two people push it backwards and forwards, by the time you come back again, you’ve cut the wood).
Sadly, the opportunity to use this one didn’t present itself, although if I’d needed one in a hurry, there could have been a problem. “Kwiktaem, give me a wan sumting wea hemi gat tet, etc …) But emergencies in Vanuatu – those requiring saws and otherwise – seem few and far between. No hari ap is frequently heard and everyone seems to live by this maxim. On the outlying islands, people get about in dug-out canoes or on foot; there is often no electricity and nobody cares how many friends you’ve got on Facebook.
We visited Waterfall Village on Pentecost Island with Silas Buli, recently retired after 23 years as principal of the secondary school there. The people grow most of their own food and send copra, kava and taro to Port Vila. Unlike in the villages where land-diving is practised, they rarely meet outsiders, so we were a bit of a novelty.
The chief had the job of welcoming us in English, but he was so nervous he lost his train of thought and had to start again. We seemed to freak out young and old, as I discovered when I tried to give away toys to the kids. One little girl looked suspiciously at her new teddy and burst into tears when she saw me. She was more afraid of us than of the live snakes one guy was juggling for our entertainment, until I realised the sneks weren’t posen. I’m not sure if she realised we weren’t, either.
The people of Asanvari, on Maewo Island, are more used to fasin blong waetman (the ways of the white man), as boaties from all over the world drop anchor in the bay and hang out at the splendid Asanvari Yacht Club – a shack decorated with mouldy pennants from fancier organisations.
Here, the men grabbed us for kastom dances whether we liked it or not, swinging us wildly around the room and rattling their nut-and-feather ankle adornments like Morris dancers having a religious experience. We still felt like funny strangers but at least not frightening ones.
The kids posed for fotos while their mothers showed us the different stages of preparing and cooking lap lap (a rather slimy pudding made from taro, yam, -cassava or banana), which was offered with fresh fruit straight off the trees. Tangkyu tumas, naes pipol.
So now I can tok tok Bislama, I’d love to kam bakagen, bifo the aelans get bagarap by waetman who want to bildim big haos. That would be nambawan.
Diana Balham was a guest of Island Escape (www.islandescape.co.nz) and Aore Resort (www.aoreresort.com) and travelled with assistance from Air Vanuatu (www.airvanuatu.com).