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The tale is told of a man who, during the 1930s, saw the winds of war about to blow over the world. Where could he go to get out of harm’s way, and live an enjoyable life? He chose the most obscure place he could find, and bought a copra plantation in the Solomons, on the island of Guadalcanal. The Solomons are just west of Vanuatu. Vanuatu was known as the New Hebrides Islands, a condominium of France and Britain, until independence in 1980. It remains one of the world’s most out-of-the-way and, outside the capital of Port Vila, more backward countries. You’d think it might have gotten a jump start when, during WW II, the Americans used the place, in particular the town of Luganville on the largest island, Espiritu Santo, as their major staging area for the counter-invasion of the South Pacific. But the main things the GIs left were the raw materials for the John Frum religion and thousands of tons of heavy equipment which—in the best tradition of government thrift—was pushed into the ocean off what’s known a Million Dollar Point outside Luganville. It’s supposed to be a great place to dive, but I didn’t have time to do so on this trip, my third in five years. My purpose was mainly to look at real estate. That, and take the political temperature of the place. Some estimates are that the population of the approximately 83 major islands in this group, totaling about 4,700 square miles, was as many as a million people before the Europeans came in earnest in the early 1800’s in search of four things: sandalwood (a rare sweet smelling wood popular with the Chinese as incense), beche-la-mer (or sea slugs, a very tasty and expensive delicacy, also traded with the Chinese), cheap labor (or blackbirding, where natives were rounded up for use on plantations), and conversion to Christianity. The net result, because of diseases against which the indigenous people had no defense, was the population collapsed to a low of about 40,000 by the 1930’s. It's now about 175,000. Each of the islands had, and still has, a distinct culture. John Frum Cannibalism was a part of local folkways here until only this century; missionaries were often a main course. That was because, in their close contact with the natives, they predictably transmitted Eurasian diseases, like smallpox. The natives figured, quite logically, that the newly imported God from the Middle East, Yahweh, didn’t like them very much since its adherents were hurt worse than those who stayed away, and stuck to native (or “kustom”) religions and local deities.

Doug Casey has visited more countries than anyone I know. He goes to the most far-flung reaches imaginable. What does he look for? Real Estate, bargains, possibilities, surprises, opportunities, ideas, adventure.  At last count he has visited almost 200 countries and lived in seven. It would difficult to find anyone who knows more about international investments & international living than Doug. His book, The International Man was instrumental in inspiring this website. What makes Doug unique is that he goes far from the beaten track. He looks at African nations that no one else would consider, he travels to remote locations and looks at real estate. He publishes what he learns in his newsletter, "The International Speculator."  Those that follow Doug's advice end up making money.  His advice is on the edge of adventure and entails ideas and tips that no one else has bothered to consider. His courage has brought him a large following of investors and expats that follow Doug around the world, in print and in profit. Doug Casey is also the founder of the Eris Society - Eris is the Greek goddess of discord, whose golden apple was marked, "to the fairest" (Kalliste). The squabble over this apple created the jealousy that led to the Trojan War. We have adopted that name to describe a group of free thinkers who meet once a year to discuss the arts and sciences, philosophy and theology and any other subject which may lead us to the world of ideas beyond our workaday lives.

The surviving natives exacted retribution from the foreign witch doctors. A combination of persistent evangelism and epidemics paid off, however, and about 90% of the Vanuatu people now practice Presbyterianism, Catholicism, or some newer variation of Christianity, albeit often comingled with more traditional beliefs.

But it’s the traditional, home-grown beliefs and practices—like the John Frum religion centered on the island of Tanna—that make this place truly different from Kansas. As with many popular religions the world over, the centerpiece is a savior figure who materialized from the sky, did wonderful things, and then disappeared, albeit with a promise to come back to reward the faithful with a surfeit of delights. This basic plot probably sounds reasonable, or at least familiar, to most Americans and Europeans. The story of its Vanuatu variation is worth telling.

Even though the religion has only been around 60 years or so, its founding is already lost in the mists of history. Speculation is that John Frum, although an actual person, is called that because he was “John, from America”; legend has it he was a supply sergeant. The natives would see airplanes come, land, and offload huge quantities of goodies, and depart into the sky. Then they stopped coming. To induce their return, the locals still construct wooden airplane models that you can find out in the boonies on Tanna. The religion has been dubbed the “Cargo Cult” by outsiders, and still has a good following. You might think it would have died out in recent years, but that’s not the way things work. Local theologians have been able to rationalize its apparent contradictions to reality; over the years its belief system has become fairly sophisticated. 

Westerners generally view the Cargo Cults with haughty and amused disdain. But if a St. Paul look-a-like were to arise and take the show on the road, you might find a new church in your neighborhood someday. Stranger things have happened. Indeed, since the John Frum movement is based on events that unquestionably happened, they have no need to require belief in bizarre miracles, and events that run counter to the laws of nature. The only things I can find that give me pause are their beliefs that some magic will necessarily happen in the future. But how's that any less rational than the beliefs of most people in the stock market today, who still think it's going to magically make them millionaires? 

I spent part of an afternoon in a kava nakamal (a kind of local church, cum hotel, cum bar) chatting with a couple of elders of the movement just as enjoyably as I might have passed the time with a Catholic bishop or a Holy Roller preacher. More so, actually, since the John Frum elders neither tried to convert me, nor were they inclined to believe I was going to suffer the eternal flames because I don't accept John (or anyone else, for that matter) as my personal savior.

An Archteypical Third World Government

As with most backward countries (as well as most advanced countries) people get into government to do well while claiming to do good. In other words everyone who gets into office plans on leaving it with from several million to several hundred million dollars. The main difference between the way things are done in backwaters, and Washington, is the directness and disarmingly forthright candor of people who’ve just fallen off a turnip truck (or out of a palm tree, depending on where you are). In the boonies, the question is simply “What’s in it for me?” In Washington, it’s a sign of sophistication to discreetly address additional topics like “Who else will know?” and "What do we have on them to keep their mouths shut?"

There’s always some scandal going on in these countries. A recent Prime Minister hatched a scheme to bring in 50,000 South Koreans in return for an undisclosed amount of money accruing to his benefit. A couple of years ago someone working through the Vice PM had the government guarantee letters of credit for some scam that, if the deal hadn’t fallen through, would have bankrupted the place.

Corruption here is of a much more benign variety than you'll find in most of the Third World. My impression is that politicians are much more interested in gifts and favors than power. Indeed, political power is almost an alien concept in a country where things are done by informal assent, custom, and a meeting of minds over a bowl of kava in the evening. And everything that does happen, happens on a very personal level.

Vanuatu is more sophisticated than New Guinea or the Solomons, which are sociologically similar. But it's still at least a standard deviation less sophisticated than any place in Africa—which is saying something. You have to remember that half the people don't even speak Bislama, that there are still the Big Nambas and the Small Nambas on Malekula, the original bungee jumpers on Pentecost and when you get on Air Vanuatu to fly around to different islands, that people will pack on chickens or crabs to retail in the capital. And the plane may make an unscheduled stop on a grass strip somewhere. It's the kind of place that draws Uhuru jumpers, Central American Americans,  romantics, and exotic types generally. 

One nice thing about places like this is that it's so easy to meet the powers that be, if you have an interest in that kind of thing. The last time I was here I had dinner with the President on short notice. We dressed in suits, somewhat approriate to an upmarket French beanery in Port Vila. But I would have far more enjoyed, and the President would have been far more comfortable, sitting around a campfire in his village on Tanna, wearing a pair of shorts and flip-flops, eating a roast pig. (Not long after that, he was kidnapped by the Defense Force, who wanted their back wages. All ended well, however, and the President was released unharmed after the police arrested the army, the army swore allegiance anew, and everybody went back to hanging around.) 

Unfortunately, although we covered a lot of interesting ground, we arrived at nothing conclusive. Part of the reason was the language problem. Although the President spoke four languages (his native tongue, Bislama, French, and English) his command of the last two was limited. 

Yufala Laekem Toktok Bislama Plenti Tumas!

I’ve long been interested in both words and languages. It’s quite important to define words precisely, because if you don't know exactly what a word means, then you can't possibly know what you're talking about. It can be quite a problem when trying to do business with someone from a different culture.

The official national language of Vanuatu is Bislama, versions of which also arose in the Solomons (Pidgin) and New Guinea (Tok Pisin). The word Bislama is apparently a corruption of beche-la-mer, the aforementioned sea slug that provided a topic of mutual interest for locals and outsiders.

A “pidgin” is a mongrel language with greatly reduced vocabulary and grammar. A pidgin becomes a “creole” when a group adopts it as a true mother tongue. Pidgins arose the world over, based on Spanish, French, Dutch, Portuguese—but mainly English—starting in the 16th century when Europeans encountered natives. They have a quaint baby-talk aspect, and tended to persist because the Europeans regarded the natives as incapable of learning their own language, and were certainly unwilling to learn that of the natives.

Pidgins and creoles lack linguistic subtleties like number, case, gender, person, tense and voice. And they tend to have vocabularies, generally derived about 90% from the European tongue, of from 500 to at most 2,000 words, always dealing with very practical matters. Eventually they are written, and evolve their own spelling and grammar. For instance, “Why did you hit this policeman?” evolved into “Belong what name you fight ‘im dis police fellow boy?” which became “Bilong wonem yu faitem dispela plisboi?”—which is pronounced just about the same, although the spelling has evolved.

Interestingly, Chinese Pidgin was spoken for about three centuries, and was used by all classes of that society when dealing with Westerners. Neither the Chinese nor the Westerners wanted to learn each others language because of a mutual feeling of contempt, but that emotion didn't obviate a need to communicate. The Chinese eventually gave it up because they (correctly) came to feel the language was seen as ridiculous and demeaning by Westerners.

The pidgin (although it’s now actually a creole) spoken in the Melanesia was especially useful because in Vanuatu alone there are 105 mutually unintelligible languages, and thousands in New Guinea; pidgin is now the official, legal national language in both places.

The flavor of the language is one of the more endearing things about Vanuatu. Here are a few examples:

I spent most of a December a few years ago in Curacao, where I had the opportunity to investigate Papiamento, a type of pidgin Spanish; I promise, however, to spare you those details unless I’m overwhelmed with cards and letters.

As an endnote, as long as we’re off on a tangent. A “dialect” or “patois” is a variation of a language which is either regional (like Cockney), or shared by people of the same social or educational level (also like Cockney, but especially—perish the thought—Ebonics). It’s interesting how Ebonics was able to become such as cause celebre in the United States a few years ago, whereas Cockney is viewed as just interesting local color in England. The reason, of course, is that at least one politically correct school district in California, the People’s Republic of Berkeley if memory serves me, was going to actually offer courses in it. It impressed me as an insult to black people, implying they couldn’t deal in standard English when they choose, the way the Cockneys in England can. The Cockneys would certainly be insulted if outsiders tried to use their dialect in the schools. Perhaps a new pidgin will eventually evolve to solve the language gap the politically correct claim exists between some white and black Americans. 

Slang is a different bird again, best defined as informal, nonstandard usage with lots of colorful metaphors, exaggerations, and neologisms. The systematic use of slang can develop into a dialect over time.

Kava

One significant, and nearly unique, export of Vanuatu is kava. Kava is a root that's pounded into a paste and made into a drink. In the capital of Port Vila (pop. 30,000) alone there are hundreds of kava bars, or nakamals. Elsewhere in the islands the bars, basically just open spaces in the bush with some logs to sit on and a tin shed or two for shelter, are the centers of local civilization. Following in what I think would have been the footsteps of Sir Richard Burton if he'd been here, I always try to log a few evenings in one. About US$.50 will get you a big cup of the mud-like drink, which you'll imbibe slowly while conversing slowly, in a whisper, with whoever you sit next to. 

Kava is now sold in U.S. health food stores as a nerve tonic, and a number of studies have shown it to be efficacious. But the effect of the stuff you get in a nakamal seems more recreational than therapeutic. After only one cup you'll notice your tongue and mouth going numb, a sensation identical to the novocaine shots the dentist would give in the 50's. After three or four, the mind becomes clouded, and all the world, even the nakamal itself, seems as mellow as can be. 

It occurred to me that if one was running a club in the United States, selling kava could be a very high-profit adjunct to alcohol. Amazingly, the stuff is legal in the United States as yet. Not that it shouldn't be, because kava is perfectly benign, and is acknowleged as a major reason that violence is extremely rare in Vanuatu. But in the worlds of the DEA and FDA, where everything that's not compulsory should be prohibited, I'm sure its availability is just a temporary oversite. In addition, it occurred to me that someone, somewhere, would find grounds to sue anyone providing the drink to the public. So it's probably a bad idea, at least in the United States.

If you want to explore the opportunity, however, get in touch with Roxanne Naylor, the proprietress of the Kava Kompani, for complete information on how to buy the product, either retail or wholesale. Tel 011-678-26330, fx 011-678-26-331, e-mail: kava@vanuatu.com.vu.  Let me know if you do anything.
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