As I mentioned in my previous journal entry I am currently in an Anchorage called waterfall Bay on the island of Vanua Lava where there is a five-day cruiser Festival starting today with custom singing and dancing as well as local food feasts. At the moment it’s raining and I will go into the village where the festival is when it stops. There is two beautiful waterfalls next to the village which spreads a thin film of fresh water on top of the Crystal clear ocean water. I wish I could adequately describe the beauty of the rich green colored rugged cliffs that surround this Bay. The waterfall Bay cruiser yacht club is a beautiful spacious long structure built for our comfort and convenience. The chief Kiraly is always so considerate and welcoming.
The opening ceremonies for the festival were most impressive. Speeches were made in the local language of Bislama and culminated with the pig killing ceremony which sanctifies all of the traditional/cultural ceremonies. In the afternoon we were shown many other cultural ceremonies they have here in the banks island’s. The marriage ceremony, the adoption ceremony, and the death ceremony all included the exchange of pigs, taro, and traditional shell money. The death ceremony also included the transfer of land to the children of the deceased. In the marriage ceremony, the dowry for a woman is paid in traditional shell money or equivalent to about $700 US as well as the giving of taro and pigs. It is set up so that the family has food and money. To promote genetic diversity marriages usually take place between people of different islands and tribes. When adopting a young child the true parents are never spoken about to the child but if he or she finds out on their own then that is allowed. The adoption is usually done through brothers or sisters of the adopting parents. The exception to that is when the adoption is done as an adult to define or change your family clan/tribe or eliminate having to pay the dowry for the bride. The demonstrations of Taro and sweet potato planting, and traditional fishing with a poll was also interested.
The next day we had the cultural dancing and singing by a group of bare breasted women in grass skirts from one village. Two villages took part in the next dance with one village providing the music while the other village of men and women danced around the music group. There was a demonstration of traditional fire starting, the making of a hot rock oven for the cooking of greens, taro, and sweet potato, taro mashing into a thick gelatine with coconut on top called lop lop, and began showing us the construction of a traditional sleeping hut using only lashings and no nails or fasteners. The construction techniques, knots, and lashings I found particularly interesting. They will be finishing the hut hopefully tomorrow.
The following day they did something even more interesting with their demonstrations. Which is they build a Outrigger canoes from scratch today. That’s right start to finish in one day shaping and hollowing out a breadfruit tree log to make the canoe and another small log as the Outrigger. It was fascinating and I got lots of pictures of each stage of the process. They use of all hand tools an axe, an aze, a machete and some chisels for making holes in the sides for lashings. They were paddling it around waterfall Bay as we were returning to INTENTION. They began the day with a number of different games the people often play. It was wonderful seeing them have such a fun time while showing us how the games were played. They also showed us some local healing of eyesight. I continue to be fascinated by the lashings used in the construction of the traditional sleeping hut. They began putting the roof and the sides on and showed us how there was space left for the pigs to be able to get in and out of the rain as well. So it is a people and a pig shelter. I took lots of photos to document the process and possibly be able to build one for myself at some time in the future. another very fascinating demonstration today was the water music. It is only done by women who by splashing in the water make sounds sounding like music. There is a distinct rhythm and melody. One woman was able to do much of it by herself. We were planning to cross the waterfall and walk to a nearby village but it has been raining in the mountains so hard that crossing the waterfall might be dangerous. It was no longer a twin waterfall but one large raging waterfall. We will probably have that activity tomorrow. We are being told to come in from our yachts around eight o’clock in the morning. Of course there continues to be lots of wonderful local food treats for lunch and snacks.
This was the last day of the festival. we started with the walk to the nearby village this morning and continued building the traditional sleeping hut. after that we took a boat tour to skull cave where there were a dozen old skulls or parts of skulls in a cave only accessible by boat. they had closing ceremonies for the festival and a beautiful feast of a fresh killed bullock, greens in coconut milk, sweet potato, yams, beef and onion and bell pepper shish kebabs, and lap lap with thick coconut cream on top for dessert.
What has been the most wonderful part of this five-day cruiser Festival was how we were made to feel so honored and taken care of. We had boys who would greet us in our dinghy and help us safely get landed and it was the same for departure. We had individual tour guides that were assigned to us to make sure that we did not get lost or miss a cultural event. All of our interactions with all of the people was always so warm and friendly I could see that it was a part of their natural way of being. Of all of the places that I have ever been the interactions with these people has been the most phenomenal.
Today there were two other boats and myself who went to a birthday party for chief Jimmy’s grandchildren in his village. MARCHRIS, one and the other boats at the festival invited all of the tour guides and a few of the chiefs aboard this evening for a thank you party. It was wonderful being able to acknowledge them for their good job of care of us.
I was just getting ready to depart from waterfall Bay when chief Jimmy paddled out with four other members of his family in his dugout canoe with an Outrigger to bring me in for a meeting with a local villager who wanted my support with a project. Rose wants to set up a turtle sanctuary on her land where the turtles are laying their eggs. She wants to gather the newborn turtles as they make their way to the sea and raised and nurture them for six months so they have a much greater probability of survival. It seems that she could make a huge difference in increasing the turtle population there in Vanuatu. We set up ways to communicate and I told her I would do what I could to support her project.
Love,
Jim