Blogs from Malekula, Vanuatu, Oceania

Ljudet från Tam-Tam trummorna ekar ut över gläntan i djungeln, marken vibrerar av dansande fötter, gåvor byter ägare och luften färgas röd av damm. Stämningen närmar sig klimax och publiken står upp och dansar. Jag förstår inte mycket av det som utspelas framför mig men är helt uppslukad av skådespelet. Jag befinner mig på ön Malekula i Vanuatu och har just bevittnat Ceremony of Death. Här präglas fortfarande mycket i det vardagliga livet av kastom - de ursprungliga värderingarna och sedvänjorna. På Vanuatu har man lyckats med det många andra kulturer misslyckats med: att blanda nya influenser med gamla traditioner utan att för den skull ödelägga den ursprungliga kulturen. Det är ett litet Shangri-La för socialantropologer. Vanuatu är en liten nation i Stilla Havet. Med sitt läger rakt väster om Fiji och rakt söder om Salomonölarna ... read more

* Please note: The opinions and observations of Project MARC volunteers do not reflect the thoughts or opinions of the overall organization. Thursday 1 October: Motored over, off-loaded all the gear. Clinic finally opened and our purpose kicked in. My involvement over, I took my camera and went walkabout. God what a place!!! What People!!! Where there’s work many hands knock it over very quickly, and without apparent supervision. When there’s no work, the natives do nothing. But they do it segregated. Women and kids in one place, and the blokes somewhere else. This is also true of their kastom ceremonies. The blokes do their thing, and the women - quite separately - do theirs (a bit like our pubs back home). Ace photo opportunities and the D90 copped it’s first true field test. Passed with ... read more

After leaving Banam Bay for the Maskelyne Island Group we got word that the two volunteers meant to join us for our October Expedition would be delayed due to lost luggage courtesy of a wonderful airline. Delays are common for us, however, so it was no big deal. The goal of our October Expedition was to gather information from the Southern and Western Coasts of Malekula for the Vanuatu Ministry of Health. The tall ship Alvei was to deliver hiking teams to key points along the coast so that overland teams could hike from village-to-village gathering information. Since we were delayed a bit I decided to do some preliminary scouting to the islands off the South Coast of Malekula. Akhamb Island is the largest of these and is home to over 600 people. Several years ago ... read more

November third was a rather interesting day. It’s not that every day is like this for me, but days like this happen frequently enough. I haven’t gotten around to recording many of my days this year, but maybe that's because I’m a little too busy living them up. To fully grasp the entirety of this single day in the life, one needs to learn a bit about the night before. Simply put: there was a kava session. Un-simply put: I got to further the bond between a village chief’s family and myself, opened the eyes of an inexperienced companion traveler, engaged in a friendship ceremony with my oldest friend in the country, and all of this was because I failed to solve a supply chain issue which had erupted over inter-tribal cultural differences at one of ... read more

When Seamus asked me to write a few pages about my Nambagura volunteer experience I have to admit I was a little bit stumped (and a bit miffed, homework, really Seamus, homework, nobody told me there would be homework). What do I write for two pages about this village that hasn’t been written about or experienced in every other village; we came, we helped, we connected, we were thanked. And then it dawned on me that it was this last part that set apart my Nambagura experience for me. From our first day of work for MARC, which was the offloading of the supplies into the copra shed at Banam Bay, there was something unique that tweaked my interest about Nambagura. It was the chief’s son Taso, a rather large almost burly man but with a ... read more