tanna and the toka

Time, to a large extent, is a moveable feast in Vanuatu. The Toka festival on the island of Tanna is a serious kastom festival. It doesn’t happen every year and when it does happen it is a big event on the island. When and where it happens is decided by the ‘paramount’ chiefs. How you find out about it if you are not from Tanna was, as we found out, pretty tricky. There are some kastom festivals in Vanuatu where tourists are welcomed and the dates are given out in advance to tour companies but the toka is different. We had heard that it might be happening and it took us 4 weeks to find out the right date having been given a series of wrong dates beforehand. We did however have some help thanks to Lawrence who is a Kenyan VSO volunteer on Tanna – he has been on Tanna for two years and appears to know everyone. Even then, he only found out the date a week before it was due to happen. In the end we took a bit of a gamble booking the flights for when we thought it might happen, in case they sold out if we waited for absolute confirmation.

Lawrence had said he would take us to the Toka. We arrived on Tanna on Monday and all afternoon and all night there was heavy wind and rain. This meant that Lawrence who is in Tanna as a road maintenance engineer had to spend all of Tuesday organising trucks to be driven to the bits of road that had been washed away to be patched up with large piles of gravel. So we spent Monday and Tuesday walking around Tanna. I spent most of the time commenting on the numbers of mangos in the trees – hundreds of them. We kept passing groups of people with giant sticks trying to knock mangoes on to the ground.
When we met Lawrence on Tuesday morning he said we would leave for the Toka at 9am on Wednesday. When we went for kava with him that evening he said we would leave at 12pm on Wednesday. On Wednesday morning he said 3pm. We eventually left at 4.30 stopping for kava on the way. On Wednesday morning, which was a beautiful sunny day, we rode around in the back of Lawrence’s truck (which is now my favourite way to travel if its not raining) seeing how the roads were looking and driving through the incredible lush green landscape in Tanna. We drove half way across the island into Middle Bush and from one of the highest points in the island we had an incredible view of the volcano, Yasur.

We were getting a bit nervous about getting to the Toka because it really doesn’t happen very often and not many non-Tannese get to go. However at 4.30pm we were finally underway, riding in the back of Lawrence’s truck with four Peace Corps volunteers who are living on the island, and Moses, another VSO volunteer. The peace corps were much better prepared than us with rucksacks full of the ubiquitous peanut butter sandwiches, biscuits and warm clothes. The toka began on Tuesday with some of the women’s dances and I think various small-scale dancing had continued until Wednesday when we arrived at about 5.30 in the afternoon. We were pretty apprehensive riding up to the festival as we had heard a couple of stories as to what goes on. The main one being that it is a ceremony where, from dusk until dawn, anything goes with no questions asked. So old scores can be settled and assignations in the bushes can be had. Then, at dawn a large number of pigs are killed and life reverts to normal. Apparently it was originally a way for the chiefs of different tribes to try and bring peace to the island.

As it turned out any apprehension about the Toka was quickly replaced by apprehension about just getting there. The Toka was taking place in a large nakamal (village meeting/ kava drinking area) in a village in the south of Tanna. The drive in itself was quite an experience, once we turned off the main road (“main” being a relative term here as there are no sealed roads in Tanna) which circles the island we were driving up a steep, muddy track, Lawrence’s colleague Nixon from the public works department was doing some expert off road driving. The rain had made this track into a bit of a quagmire and we slid and lurched our way up the steep slope, trying desperately to ignore the sheer drop on one side. I was inside the truck for this journey, it was even more exciting for john and the peace corps who were outside hanging on to the edges of the truck bed as the truck slid across the road. (Lawrence had done some repair work on the road to the toka, apparently the village chiefs had said that if he sorted out the road they’d sort out the weather and stop the rain!). We eventually made it to a house (which appeared to be the only house in the area) where one of Lawrence’s colleagues had said we could stay and dump our stuff. We walked on up the muddy track for about 10 minutes and then came out into a large grass clearing on the side of the hill that led onto an area of packed mud that was surrounded by huge banyan trees. All around the edges of the open space were small wooden and mat huts selling lap-lap, kava and meat stews.

We could hear the loud chanting of men and the sound of their bare feet pounding the ground. As we walked up close to see them there were a hundred or so men all with large sticks walking forward and back and occasionally running to different ends of the nakamal. It was a fantastic sound and there was a strong sense of excitement. Some of the boys taking part were really young, probably the youngest were about 7 or 8. At this stage the men involved were just wearing standard Vanuatan dress which is basically board shorts and some kind of slogan t-shirt (including several Barcelona football shirts, auzzie rugby shirts and bob marley t-shirts). The nakamal itself was surrounded by trees all of which had treehouses and platforms in them from which people were watching. After a couple of hours the men ran out of the nakamal in a big whooping crowd and were replaced by groups of spectacularly dressed women and girls whose dancing was also far more disciplined and better choreographed. The women were wearing banana leaf skirts and brightly coloured wraps of material, and head dresses made from flowers, leaves and that old Melanesian traditional accessory, tinsel. Their faces were painted bright red and yellow. Rather than banging the ground with their feet like the men the women had small woven mats in their hands, which they smacked in time with their singing. By this time the moon had come up, an incredible full moon, which as I looked at it I realised wasn’t just a lucky coincidence. Gradually over the next few hours more and more groups of women filled up the nakamal until it was just one moving mass of dancing women and girls. I was surprised that such young children were taking part. One of the peace-corps girls who is working as a tourism advisor in tanna said that they got the children involved really young so that they grow up knowing about the dancing and traditions to ensure their continuity. After a while, at about 11.30 the men came back and circled the women walking around and making sure that nobody else got into the nakamal. I think there must have been about a thousand people now dancing. The singing was loud and it was quite a hypnotic atmosphere. There was probably a crowd of a thousand people around the edges, very few non- nivan people there, probably only about 30 foreigners. But impressively given the difficulties in establishing when the toka would be happening this included a bbc cameraman and sound man. I spoke to them briefly; they looked knackered having been up at the village for three days. They said they were filming for a series on the south pacific to be screened in 2009.

We walked back to Robert’s house for a couple of hours to lie down although I couldn’t sleep because of the distant noise of the chanting and the immediate noise of a houseful of people snoring. We went back up to the toka at about 2.30am, everyone in the nakamal was still dancing and singing with as much energy as ever. We watched them for the next few hours, it was incredible as the dancing got more complicated. At about 4.30am the chiefs from Tanna took over the nakamal, they were wearing tribal dress which consisted of a leaf skirt and headdress and danced a complex sort of war dance clashing their spears. Just before sunrise at about 5am a large group of men carried in the kweriya which was a woven post about 10 metres tall with a load of feathers on top. Thursday was another absolutely beautiful day and the atmosphere was fantastic, everyone looked delighted and there was a lot of laughter. The children who had spent the night singing and dancing were still running around. We had to leave mid-morning for our flight back to Vila. The dancing was coming to an end and we had to miss the last part of the ceremony, which is when the pigs are killed. Apparently over 200 pigs had been assembled; each pig was to be killed by a club to the head. I had mixed feelings about having to leave at this stage, obviously it wouldn’t have been pleasant to watch but it’s a crucial part of the ceremony. The killing of the pigs represents the communities wiping the slate clean: once the pigs are killed all wrongs are forgiven. We flew back to vila filthy and knackered but pretty excited to have had the privilege to see such a special event.

Three months in

Apologies for a bit of a delay in posting another blog entry, we have settled into a pretty regular life of going to work and the days seem to have flown by. However, rest assured that over the next couple of weeks there should be some good entries as we are off to Tanna (an island to the south of Efate) for a festival at the start of next week. Most of the islands of Vanuatu are unique, with their own cultures and languages, however Tanna is possibly one of the most famous (apparently Channel 4 will be showing a documentary about a group of people from Tanna at some point soon). It fought for independence back in 1980 and still maintains quite an independent mindset from the rest of the country. The very mention of 'ManTanna' seems to have people fidgeting nervously as befits the reputation of the toughest men in the country. The island is famous for its volcano, the John Frum cult and the Prince Philip cult - hopefully we will be able to report fully on our return next week.

And so to life in Vila. The weather has been amazing for the last week although we are both a bit concerned that we might already be heading into summer as it is getting pretty hot. We generally get up about 6 and go to the small shop near our house to get some bread for breakfast (or at least one of us does - the other one appears to have some problems getting out of bed - plus ca change). At about that time of the morning it is the sort of heat you get on a nice hot august afternoon back home. Our walk to work is therefore pretty melting, but this is compensated by the fact that we can see the lovely blue sea for most of the journey. The other indicator that the seasons might be changing is the market which is now absolutely stuffed with produce. We appear to be entering tomato, pawpaw and carrot season - the carrots are so big you feel a bit like you're in Wallace and Gromit and the Curse of the Wererabbit - oranges, mangoes and avocados are on their way. There continues to be a plentiful supply of coconuts, island cabbage, sweet potatoes and yam - we both try to ignore the odd bound coconut crab or chicken that tends to be lying around slowly suffocating.

The 'mamas' come to the market during the course of the week, bringing their produce from all the different islands and will then stay for a few days, sleeping in the market. They never seem to get bored of us asking "wanem emi ia" although we both felt a bit stupid when we asked "wanem emi ia" and the reply came back "brocolli" - it was pretty bloody obvious to all of us that it was brocolli. The only part of the market we haven't tried is the area at the back where they serve laplap - maybe later!
And so, three months in we are feeling pretty settled; playing a bit of scrabble without seeming to get any better at it and trying to find different ways to cook yam and pumpkin.
Three cheers to the Vanuatu football team who took the bronze medal in the South Pacifc Games which means they get to enter the regional qualifying competition for the world cup. Having predicted that the Soloman Islands would win they failed to even get a medal.

namele leaves

I thought I would share with you an ingenious invention that, if ever discovered in the UK could bring the whole country to a grinding halt and pure pleasure to all those with the drudgery of 9-5 work: Namele leaves.

There has been an ongoing saga in the Lakatoro province on the island of Malakula - its about halfway up the chain of islands and looks a bit like a dog (on the map obviously) - and it involves the family of the former minister of foreign affairs. Like quite a lot of things here it is quite convoluted but as far as I understand it, all the government buildings in Malakula - including the provincial headquarters, the police station and the courthouse - are on land which is owned by the family of the former minister. That family became disgruntled with the government who have (allegedly) not paid any rent for some time and resolved to do something about it. However, such tactics as legal proceedings or even sending in the heavies were not considered an option, they instead decided to place namele leaves on the buildings.
In Vanuatu namele leaves have a very ancient and powerful tradition. They are the leaves that you can see on the Vanuatu flag and they symbolise peace. However, they are also traditional "tabu" signs. Often you will see them placed on the beach to signal that fishing in that area is tabu for a period of time to let the fish restock. In the case of the Malekula government buildings the disgruntled family placed namele leaves all over the buildings. As a result the buildings became tabu and no-one can go into them until the leaves have been removed by whoever put them there. That was about 6 weeks ago. So for that period of time no-one has been to work in any of the government buildings, no one has cut the grass round the buildings and by all accounts the place looks like a ghost town - which I guess to a certain extent it is.
The matter was taken to the Appeal Court last week and is being appealed to the Supreme Court. However, an interim order has been issued to try and resolve the matter so that people can go back to work. The interim order states that the government must provide a tusked pig to the family immediately and in return the family should take down the leaves. So far no tusked pig has appeared and those workers affected have expressed their disappointment at the unresolved issue (whilst stuffing more namele leaves into their pockets and sipping a shell of kava). So along with the fraud trial (which has been adjourned for a month) we are also awaiting the outcome of the namele leaves case. If anyone wants to put in an order for namele leaves please let us know. (come to think of it there are a couple of local authorities in London who probably already have their own supply)
SPG Football Update - Vanuatu 15 (thats fifteen) - American Samoa 0