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
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 whichin the best tradition of
government thriftwas 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.
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.
