I said a quick prayer to the Mormon god—why not? It couldn’t hurt—and soon we were high above the ocean, where the pilot steered a course toward every squall in the greater Vanuatu area. It was remarkable flying. I could see through the cockpit window, and I noticed that if we flew just a little to the left, we would avoid flying through a billowing black cloud, the kind of ominous dark mass that would give even a 747 a good shake. Instead, we plied right through it, lurching wildly, and when we emerged, the pilot immediately turned his plane toward the next squall. Indeed, I believe we may have even turned around to fly through the same squall twice. Needless to say, I had curled myself into a fetal position, closed my eyes, clasped my hands, and spent a long hour muttering, I am in my safe place, until the pilot, with a move that would make a kamikaze pilot proud, took us into a steeply pitched dive, engines screaming, and aimed the plane toward a mountain on what I took to be Malekula. Then up we went again, barely cresting a dense growth of trees, thumping in the turbulent air, until suddenly we were following the coastline toward the airport at Norsup, where we landed on a slab of jagged coral. Emerging from the plane with trembling knees, I felt immeasurable relief that the ordeal was over, and then it occurred to me that in five days I would have to do it all over again. This better be an interesting island, I thought, and when I noticed the airport building, I realized that it would be.
The building, which had once been a tidy single-story cinder-block structure, had been reduced to a slab of stones and burnt embers. It was not decayed. It was destroyed, though this did not prevent the Vanair representative from conducting his business. He had set up a table in a roofless room, surrounded by rubble and clucking hens, and there he checked in the passengers who were continuing on to Santo. If this had been the scene in Port Vila, I would have turned around right then, my confidence in Vanair shattered, but this was an outer island, said by many to be the most “primitive” in Vanuatu, and now that I was here, with the terror of air travel behind me, I was feeling positively ebullient, eager to experience the raw Pacific.
I grabbed my backpack, made my way past the chickens and assorted onlookers, and immediately wondered how I was going to get myself to Rose Bay, where I had made arrangements to stay in a guesthouse. There were a couple of battered pickup trucks idling beside the airport, and seeing that there was no one here to take me to the guesthouse, which was some twenty miles north of Norsup, the main village on Malekula, I asked the drivers in my rudimentary Bislama if they were heading in that direction. I knew enough about the outer islands to realize that if there’s a vehicle going in your direction, get on, because it could be days before there’s another. Soon I found myself in the back of a pickup truck, holding on for dear life as we careened along a gravel road. Past the coconut plantations that surrounded the airport, the gravel gave way to a deeply gutted dirt path, and as we barreled over every pothole, I found it was all I could do to remain inside the truck. How do they do it, I wondered as we passed another pickup fully laden with people. There I was, tucked into a sort of Ninja crouch, my arms encircled around a steel rail, and still I flailed alarmingly, whereas the locals managed to sit on the rim, and not only did they not fall out but they weren’t even holding on, just leaning their bodies in accordance with the truck’s movement.
After about a half-hour of this, the driver suddenly came to a stop, which nearly sent me hurtling over the hood. His other passenger, a barefoot, bearded man carrying a bushel of yams, emerged from the passenger seat, disappeared up a footpath, and was soon swallowed by the bush. The driver indicated that I could join him in the cab. He didn’t have to ask twice. His name was Gerard, and as we proceeded toward Rose Bay, following an increasingly narrow path that cleaved through the jungle, we got to talking. Malekula is predominantly francophone, and so I asked him, in French, about the airport.
“Land dispute,” he said. “The landowner wanted more money from the government. When the government refused to pay, the landowner destroyed the airport building.”
“And is this a common way of settling land disputes?” I asked.
“Very common.”
Gerard asked me about what I intended to do on Malekula. I mentioned that among the places I hoped to visit was the island of Vao, just off the northeast coast of Malekula. Vao was a kastom island.
“You cannot go to Vao,” Gerard said.
“Why not?”
“There is a dispute with the chief. No one is permitted to go to Vao.”
“And are there many disputes on Malekula?”
“Many. But do not worry. Peter will take care of you.”
Peter was the owner of Rose Bay Bungalows. Bungalow might be a rather extravagant word to describe the rudimentary shelters he had constructed, though they were certainly ingenious. It’s funny how accustomed one gets to electricity and running water, and as I contemplated the bamboo walls, the mosquito net, and the courtesy kerosene lantern, I marveled at what a different world Vanuatu was outside Port Vila. This wasn’t quite as primitive as the outer islands of Kiribati, but I still felt far away from the world beyond the reef.
“Is malaria a big problem here?” I asked.
“Yes,” Peter said. “It’s a very big problem. And now is the malaria season.”
Of course it was.
I immersed myself in a toxic cloud of mosquito repellent and followed Peter as he showed me around. There were several other Gilligan’s Island–style bungalows, connected by a series of stone paths that looped through the trees in an amusingly complex manner. Malekula is a remarkably fecund island. Some twenty thousand people live there, and on the drive from the airport, I had wondered where, exactly, were these twenty thousand people, until I peered a little more closely through the trees and realized we were passing through a village. Even the villages were difficult to distinguish from the lush growth that seemed just one rainfall away from swallowing everything. Within minutes of following Peter, I was thoroughly disoriented.
“Dinner will be at six,” he informed me. This left a little more than an hour to ramble about.
“I can hear the ocean, Peter. But I can’t see it. Could you point the way?”
The beach was just fifty or so yards from where we stood. The sand was an ash-gray ocher color festooned with driftwood and shells. A short distance offshore were two lush islets, Wala and Atchin, both inhabited. Strolling along the beach, I wondered if I could swim here. The air was still and humid, and after the excitement of flying Vanair I fairly ached for a plunge. Normally, I would have dived right in, but Malekula has a well-deserved reputation for shark attacks. Tiger sharks, bull sharks, even great white sharks were known to prowl its waters. About a half-mile farther, I noticed what appeared to be a group of women and children. Curiously, none of the kids were swimming in the ocean, which told me all I needed to know. There were sharks.
I walked toward them, and as I neared the women they waved hello encouragingly. Between us there was a swift-moving stream that emptied into the ocean. How to ford it, I wondered, without drenching my clothes? It was waist deep. Boys were swimming and diving into the freshwater, and the women, who had been fishing with hand lines, gathered with great smiles of amusement, beckoning me across. I paced back and forth, searching for the shallowest crossing point. Giving up, I marched in, and noticing the mirth and laughter of my spectators as I emerged with sopping shorts, I felt very pleased that I was able to provide the afternoon entertainment.
“Alo, alo,” they said.
Most of the boys were naked, and they stopped their play for a moment. “Whiteman,” they whispered. I stifled an urge to say “Boo.”
“Yu tok-tok engglis?” I asked no one in particular. A half-dozen fingers pointed toward a shy young woman carrying a toddler. Her name was Sally, and she hailed from Paama, a small island to the east of Malekula. Her husband was from the village just up the hill.
“Is this a Small Namba village or a Big Namba village?” I asked her.
“This is a Sm
all Namba village,” Sally said as her little boy and I made googly eyes at each other.
Though twenty-eight languages are spoken on Malekula, most of the island’s inhabitants are roughly divided among Small Nambas and Big Nambas. I found it curious that a people’s identity could be defined by the size of the leaf that men wore wrapped around their penises. And what exactly was the difference? Did the Big Nambas have more to hide, or were the Small Nambas just a little prouder of their members? Historically, the Small Nambas and the Big Nambas were engaged in constant warfare. The hatred seemed rather perplexing to me. “Hey, look,” I imagined a warrior saying. “He’s got a tiny leaf on his dick. Let’s eat him.” Clearly, this needed further investigating, but I sensed that this wasn’t quite the right forum for such a line of inquiry, and instead I asked about the fishing.
“Only small fish,” she said, showing me her catch, a handful of silvery fish, each no more than three inches long.
“Are there any sharks here?” I asked, getting to the crux of the matter.
“Yes. There are sharks.”
“Have there been any attacks recently?”
“Yes. A man was killed off Vao,” she said, pointing in the direction of the island, which lay a little ways to the north of Rose Bay. “And there was another who was killed off Atchin, and another off Wala.” Atchin and Wala were within hailing distance of where we stood. “There was also one whiteman who was bitten off Wala.”
“Really,” I said.
“Yes. He was bitten in the leg, but it wasn’t a shark.”
“What was it?”
“A barracuda.”
Well, that settled it. The ocean was placid and beckoning and alluring. And it was full of monsters. Nothing could induce me to take a swim here. On Tarawa, I had happily swum in an ocean that functioned as a toilet. True, that could kill you too. But it hardly compared to the terror of seeing a fifteen-foot tiger shark barreling toward your naked torso.
“Are there saltwater crocodiles to worry about too?” That would complete the tableau of oceanic terror for me. Crocodiles periodically swam down to Vanuatu from the Solomon Islands.
She laughed. “No, there are no crocodiles.”
“Well, thank goodness for that.”
I gave a thoughtful glance at the ocean, wondering about all that lurked below the surface, when I noticed something odd. The presence of Wala and Atchin and the encircling population of sharks suggested there was a coral reef. And if there was a reef, then there were fish, fish much larger than the meager pickings the women had managed to catch with their hand lines onshore. But there weren’t any canoes or boats of any kind. No one was on the water fishing, which seemed very strange to me. On Malekula people lived off what they caught and grew themselves, and so it seemed peculiar that no one was taking advantage of what I assumed would be a bountiful catch.
“Do the men here go out to catch fish beyond the reef?” I asked.
“Not very often,” Sally said.
“So who does the fishing?”
“We do.”
“And the gardening?”
“The women.”
“And the women take care of the children?”
“Yes,” she laughed.
“So what do the men do here?”
“They tell stories. And drink kava.”
There’s the good life.
“Look,” Sally said, pointing behind me. “Your friend is here.”
My friend? I had a friend on Malekula? Across the stream, my friend, a fleshy Ni-Vanuatu man of about forty with a bald dome that glistened in the sun, waved, encouraging me to cross. What, I thought, my friend doesn’t want to get his shorts wet? I bade goodbye to Sally and marched back through the stream to greet my friend, who was sitting on the sand, resting his legs.
“I am George,” he said curtly. “Do you have a Lonely Planet?”
I did indeed have the Lonely Planet guide to Vanuatu. We had brought it out from the U.S. Remarkably, they had a chapter on Malekula, which I had read thoroughly, highlighting all the references—and there were many—to the dangers posed by sharks.
“Turn to page one-fourteen,” he said. “Do you see?” He jabbed at the page. “That’s me.”
The entry to which he referred read, in its entirety: “In the village on Wala Island, George’s Guestroom is small, for one or two people.”
“Well, George,” I said. “I’m pleased to meet you.”
We ambled along the beach back toward Rose Bay Bungalows, which was also described on page 114 of the Lonely Planet guide to Vanuatu, just below the entry for George’s Guestroom. “Traditional bungalows,” it read, along with “intoxicating surroundings” and, most important, “the food is good.” I thought of suggesting to George that it might be time to hire a new publicist.
“So what do you want to do on Malekula?” George asked. He was, apparently, the self-appointed guide for this part of the island.
“Well, I think I’d like to talk to a cannibal, if there happens to be one around.”
George nodded. “Yes, we eat the man here.”
Really.
“In time past.”
“Ah…well, is there anyone around who remembers eating a man?”
“Yes,” George said. “There is an old man on Wala Island. He eat the man.”
“Do you think I might be able to talk to him?” I asked hopefully. I hadn’t the remotest idea of what exactly I would say to him. Cultural sensitivity and cannibalism, I found, did not blend easily.
George indicated that it wouldn’t be a problem. This pleased me, and I happily agreed to all his suggestions for enhancing my stay on Malekula—kastom dancing, a trip to Wala Island. What I really wanted to do, however, was to learn as much about cannibalism as possible. I had read that there was an old cannibal village up in the hills above Wala.
“Botko,” George said. “It is a Small Namba cannibal village.”
“Could I go up there?”
“I will see.”
George joined me for dinner, canned corned beef and rice with slices of pumpkin and papaya, prepared by Peter’s daughter. I made a mental note to send a letter to Lonely Planet. This was the typical outer island grub I had been hoping to avoid eating. It was, in fact, that promising phrase “the food is good” that had induced me to stay here. What was it about Pacific Islanders and their canned corned beef? Paul Theroux theorized that the people of Oceania enjoyed corned beef because it reminded them of human flesh. Could be, I thought as I picked at the gristle. I washed the victuals down with rainwater. George and Peter spoke together in their language. It was quite a serious discussion, I gathered. At length, Peter said, “You want to speak to one old man who eat the man?”
“Yes,” I said, wiping my mouth. “If it’s not too much trouble. I’m curious about the traditional customs on Malekula.”
“That old man,” Peter said, “he died last month.”
“I’m sorry to hear it.” I paused for a moment. “Is there anyone in this area who may have witnessed the eating of a man? Could I speak to that person?”
“Yes,” George said. “There is also an old woman on Wala Island who saw her father eat the man.”
“Do you think I might be able to speak to her?”
“Yes,” George said. “I will arrange it.”
He and Peter discussed the matter further. Something was afoot, I deduced. Either George really wanted to get me over to Wala Island, or Peter really didn’t want me talking to cannibals. I left them to their discussion, thanking them effusively for their hospitality, and made my way back to my bamboo bungalow.
Within moments I was pathetically lost. It was a moonless, overcast night. I had forgotten to bring the courtesy kerosene lantern, and I stumbled about in the darkness for a small eternity. Somehow I had lost the footpath. I walked into trees. I had a half-dozen thrilling encounters with spiderwebs. I found myself inches from toppling down a steep gully. Okay, I thought, listening to the waves fracturing on the beac
h. The ocean is there. If I turn around and walk diagonally away from the ocean, I will reach the food hut, where Peter and George will be able to set me aright. With a triumphant yelp, I eventually stumbled upon the food hut, only to encounter more darkness. Life on Malekula, I discovered, ended at sunset. Cautiously, I reentered the forest, straining my sensory capabilities as I sought to stay on the footpath. Whenever I was in doubt, I did a sort of crab walk, using my hands to figure out the path’s parameters. I did, of course, finally find my bungalow, where I spent a good ten minutes wrestling with a mosquito net, and when I heard the buzz of a mosquito ringing in my ear, I thought, Please be on the outside of the net. And then I smacked myself to sleep.
THE FOLLOWING MORNINGspange led me up a bush trail to a dusty kastom village in the hills above Wala Bay.
“Here you will see the kastom dancing,” he said as I settled on a bench. “The men will wear their nambas.”
In his ship’s journal, Captain Cook described the nambas worn on Malekula:
Getting Stoned with Savages Page 10
