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Boy Meets Ground
Entry 67 of 84 | show all | print this entry |
22 days until the wedding...
I couldn't find a boat out of Santo so I caught a flight back to Vila - one of those small twin propellor planes where they weigh you before you get on. I could see the cockpit and everything the pilot was doing, which was cool until he started tapping one of the instruments like they do in disaster movies before saying "That can't be right". Funnily enough, the Bislama word for a plane landing is 'faol down'.
I stayed in a different place...great and cheap and with a TV allowing me to watch some rubbish local programming and catch up on the World Cup (most people here support Brazil). They have a habit of using crappy pan pipe music on their crappy local ads: 'Kiss From A Rose' and 'Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm'. I watched a short documentary on Vila's blood testing facilities and tried to work out why the music was familiar. I realised it was a pan pipe version of 'Dirty Old Town' which was fantastic for its randomness and for the fact that they were appropriately discussing an increase in Malaria and HIV.
I wandered some more and got talking to bus drivers and gardeners and others who were all very nice. People kept telling me they'd seen me before, which I took as amiable bullshit until they would describe correctly where they'd seen me and what I was doing. It made me self conscious so I hid in my room until a guy checked in and told me he'd seen me in Luganville watching a show in the park. So I escaped to Erakor Island for the day and lay on the beach in the rain.
I hadn't seen any decent souvenirs in Vanuatu but decided a Bislama Bible would be a cool thing to take away. This is a book, representing a religion which has been thrust on these content islanders by self-righteous missionaries looking to take advantage of their vulnerability, which has been translated in to a language invented by white traders to make it easier for them to take advantage of their vulnerability. The hypocrisy as much as the language interested me, so I went to a Seventh Day Adventist book shop reasoning that that would be the cheapest place to buy one since this particular brand of God-fearers genuinely believe the end of the world is imminient (Everything Must Go!). They didn't have any, so I bought one at an office supply store named Snoopys.
The last big thing I wanted to do in the South Pacific was go out to Pentecost Island to witness the Nagol: Land Diving - the original bungee jump.
Every year in April and May the villagers of Pentecost climb 30m high wooden towers, tie vines around their ankles and jump. A lot of them purposely hit the ground...the point being that this ritual is supposed to refertilise the soil in aniticpation of the next season of Yams.
The people of Vanuatu have realised that blood-thirsty muppets like me are willing to pay to see this traditional ceremony and it is now performed mainly to bring in an extra bit of cash. There are now reasonably priced day packages out of Vila, much in the same way you might find tour packages back home to go and see a circumcision or a good ol' crucifixion.
Money talks and extra shows have been added in June to cater for us late comers. But this has caused a problem - the climate is no longer ideal and the vines are of an unsuitable elasticity. The only recorded death from land diving was when they put on an out-of-season show for The Queen. And last week one of the participants was seriosly injured and had to be air lifted out, so there was talk of stopping the June land-diving. Fortunately, my tour would go ahead as the last of the year. I'd seen videos of it and it looked absolutely awesome. I was excited.
Alas, it was not meant to be. The fucking rain made it impossible for flights to land on the grass runway at Pentecost, so it was cancelled and I was gutted. The Persian guy I booked through said there was a 99.9% chance it would go ahead, but his 0.1% chance of rain prediction was questionable as its rained every day I've been here and was in fact pissing down with rain when he said that to me.
There wasn't really anything else I wanted to see - more beaches, more villages. Apathy prevailed and I spent the last couple of days in Vanuatu looking for presents and doing fuck all. Eventually I caught a bus to the airport. I was disappointed I couldn't walk there because of the rain, disappointed I never got to Pentecost, and I was disappointed in myself for having used the word 'alas'.
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