happiest place on earth....my arse

I’ve been meaning to blog about the whole happiest place fallacy for ages. In 2006 the new economics foundation came up with their Happy Planet Index; Vanuatu came top of a list of about 180 countries. nef said the HPI was a global measure of progress and measured environmental impact (carbon footprint)and well- being (life expectancy + personal satisfaction). The valid point they were trying to make was that increasing consumption doesnt necessarily lead to greater well-being. So Vanuatu coming top is basically an indicator of how much the country hasn't been physically developed (i.e. i'd have thought a pretty good indicator of a distinct lack of progress - a massive percentage of the land is pristine and untouched, the interior of most islands look like this photo of efate), coupled with reasonable longevity (68.6 years). A hint about the report's credibility is that Colombia came second.

Vanuatu has wilfully misconstrued the actual findings of the survey so that no government announcement, marketing, tourism opportunity is complete without mention of Vanuatu as the happiest place on earth. More seriously the report has given the government a strong defense of its achievements, "yes we might have failed to provide decent basic services for the vast majority of our people, but hey these are the happiest people on earth they're ok without much in the way of healthcare, education, communications etc..."

Just a few days in Ambae was enough to dispel any romantic myths about the reality of life in Vanuatu. It was a really fascinating few days and a really good reminder of how tough rural life is for most Ni-Vans (80% of the population). The village was a mile up into the bush off the one dirt track road that encircles the island. The truck that was meant to come and pick me up on the Friday afternoon didn’t appear because of heavy rain that meant the road was impassable except by foot. So the next morning a village woman called sarah and I walked down to the road for almost two hours until we came to a village with a truck who agreed to drive me the ten or so miles to the airport.

Clearly I am completely soft and westernised and although I felt incredibly isolated and claustrophic in Ambae the villagers who knew no different didn’t miss the radio, newspaper, possibility of a phone call and I guess if John and I had been based on one of the outer islands we’d have got used to it too (maybe). But its not just modern conveniences; its essentials like schools (one of the daughters of the woman who was looking after me was having her school fees paid for by an Australian woman who'd visited ambae the previous year, her older sister didn’t get to finish school because there was no one to pay her school fees); and healthcare, there was a dispensary in the village but the nurse left last year and as yet there is no replacement... Im not trying to say Vanuatu is a really unhappy country but that it has its fair share of particular problems and although its true that people are generally very friendly and happy I'd argue that their contentment is more about lack of opportunity than anything. Certainly the women in my workshop whose husbands voted on their behalf during election time and the woman on my return journey to efate who was leaving her husband with her baby and a small bag of possessions after having been beaten with a stick one too many times might have a couple of reservations about nef's pronouncement...