Doroline’s Dream
A young girl was travelling with her mom, who in accordance with tradition had moved from her birthplace at Craig Cove on Ambrym to marry her husband from Malakula, and father from their home on the mid-western island of Malakula, to Port Vila the capital of the Archipelago on the island of Efate about fifteen years ago. She was on her way to the college there to study foreign languages and business. Her name is Doroline.
During the course of her studies she met a young man, Tony who was training to be a teacher and they fell in love. Doroline is a bright and loving person who thrives in the company of other people and animals and Tony was an equal so they made their lives together, but this did involve sacrifice for her. When their sons came along they decided that she should ‘stay back’ in the home to be a home mom and so the fruits of her studies were put on hold.
After Tony fulfilled teaching roles at two other schools including one on the watchful island of Nguna, they settled in the little village of Emua, on the northern shore of Efate where Tony’s parents lived in a house overlooking the beach, Undine Bay and Nguna.
Soon Doroline’s mind was turning to what she could do to occupy her healthy mind and help the family and village at the same time. She had a dream and was formulating an idea when, in the market in Port Vila one day she overheard a young man talking. She approached him and asked if she was right in thinking he was a builder.
“Yes, I am Brian the builder from the Banks Islands (to the north).”
“I would like you to come and build me a house.” That same evening Brian, Doroline and Tony sat down at her home table to draw up some plans and list the items needed in the construction. Brian would return with the building materials which included sheets of flattened and woven bamboo for the walls, roof ‘shingles’ made of woven palm leaves, planks of wood for the floors and various other lengths of wood for the uprights and wall supports. The house would be one room about 12 feet square with a full length veranda at the front. It would be built on a family owned strip of land next door to Doroline’s parents in law, Raymond after whom the bay was named and his wife, now his widow who lives with Doroline and Tony now.
The build took just a few months because the roof and walls were prefabricated and during the process Brian taught Doroline how to do a lot of the work so that she can manage her own repairs.
Doroline was overwhelmed with pride at the little house which was built in the Melanesian style. She set too decorating the walls with pretty fabric and making sheets and coverings for the beds and covers for the cushions. In one corner of the bedroom there is an airing cupboard where the wall is just one thickness of the woven bamboo. The corner cupboard she ‘walled’ with fabric and it is used for sheets and blankets.
Soon Doroline was in business. Tony looked after the advertising on the internet and her first guests arrived. Doroline is very flexible in that she is happy to cook an evening meal as well as breakfast and if the visitors wish for a ferry to Nguna and a truck to the top of the volcano she is happy to organise that and any other trip, walk or flight the residents might chose. Then disaster struck.
Cyclone Pam hit the island in March 2015 and the house next door, also used for paying guests, was flattened. But Doroline’s house stood virtually undamaged and she was letting it out very soon after the devastation. In the photos you can see there is a gap between the walls and the roof of about six inches and the walls breathe through the woven bamboo. There is also a gap underneath the building which itself stands on stilts over a foot off the ground. So the entire building breathes and gives in a strong wind and is refreshingly cool and well ventilated with its louvered windows on opposite walls at all times.
Bamboo Melanesian homes are designed to withstand strong natural events just as the bamboo homes in Bahia in Ecuador withstood the earthquakes that occurred when Zoonie was moored in the river there, because they could give and flex.
You can see from the visitor’s book just what a top class host Doroline is. While we were there she came and sat with us on the veranda three times for long chats and she said that she enjoyed our stories, just as much as we enjoyed hers. For the room and evening meal and breakfast she was going to charge us exactly the same as the Iririki Resort wanted to charge us for just putting a foot on their beach.
When we arrived we parked the car in the pretty lane outside and asked the two lads busy rigging up a new electric light in the outside loo and shower block and they pointed up the road as Doroline was making her way towards us. Her previous guests had only just left so she used the word ‘sorry’ a lot when explaining we could see the room but she hadn’t got around to cleaning it yet. We said we understood and she needn’t apologise until we realised that some folk here start almost all their sentences with ‘sorry’.
“We’ll walk down to the bar/restaurant and have a beer and be back in an hour or so if that’s ok?”
We sat on a high bench overlooking the water to Nguna with two ice cold Tuskers, which after the snorkel tasted sublime. Two young lads arrived in a rush and one fell into my lap, “Hello I’m Nicky” and “I’m Alex.” We loved their youthful gusto.
“So are you home from school?” Nicky was not quite old enough but Alex told us his teacher’s name was Monique before a lady called them from around a corner and they dashed off.
A few years ago the deadly crown of thorns starfish munched its way through the coral reefs around Nguna and we wondered how they are faring now as we looked across to the island.
Back at our tropical beach front retreat a trail of roses and hibiscus blossoms paved our way in to our room for the night. Some of Doroline’s guests stay for as long as a month, now there’s an idea.
Not only flowers on the ground but we had our own frangipani tree and a pretty, carefully laid out garden with coral paths bordered with variegated leaved hedges and beautiful shells decorating the veranda balustrade and acting as soap dishes in the shower and outside washing area.
I found a fascinating book showing photos of the different types of sailing rig typical in the islands, some of the photos I had seen in the museum and I thank the unknown photographers for them and acknowledge their right to a mention here for my using a few of them.
The wing tip rig is highly sophisticated in its use of aerodynamics begging the question ‘Whose was the brilliant mind that designed the original?’ When the wind creates a vortex within the sail a ‘lift’ results and the craft easily reaches phenomenal speeds. Wow, that would be fun. See how deep are the hulls that allowed for essential inter-island trading, where shortfalls of essential items on one island could be addressed with trade with another.
I imagine the lateen sail with a single triangle point upward was the type used by Roymata and his followers because he came from the south where they originate. And I was delighted to find the actual photo of the villager returning to Lamen Island in his canoe with the single use banana frond sail to catch the filtered trades to show you. The jetty he is sailing past which is shown as intact in the photo is the one we snorkelled around when Zoonie was moored on the other side. So the breaking up of the concrete jetty has taken place in the last 20 years.
A little procession comprising Doroline, young son Morris and Tony came with our supper of salad fish with wild yam, boiled rice and stewed fresh vegetables and beans. How easy for her to cook a little more of what she was doing for her family to provide us with supper, that’s what I would do. We lit the citronella mosquito candles and relaxed over cups of coffee with hot water taken from the big thermos flask listening to the evening sounds; a tiny crying baby, adult laughter from next door, yellow eye-rimmed myna birds and the ubiquitous crowing cockerels, cicadas and discontented dogs. You wouldn’t believe how many folk referred to their stay as ‘peaceful’. Well it was of course a lot of the time.
Trouble was I didn’t want to miss anything in this one off magical experience so my sub-conscious would not let me sleep for long. The night began with a hilarious attempt to get completely underneath the purple mosquito net so we wouldn’t be eaten alive. “We’ll start with the flaps at the bottom” Rob said. But then by the time we had spread it out around the bed the gap at the bottom had opened. Rob scrambled around trying to pull the gap shut, getting more and more frustrated all the while.
“Ok we’re going to move it round so the flaps are at the top,” we pulled and pushed and huffed and puffed and laid back only to find the top corners didn’t reach the bed. So we pulled them down and tucked them under the pillows which meant we had the net over our faces. It all worked pretty well in the end and a very disgruntled Rob rolled over into the land of nod.
A deliciously cool breeze wafted over us between the facing louvered windows and silence reigned except for the lapping waves and the distant roar of surf on the reef, but they were soothing sounds. Sleep enfolded us until all at once something upset all the village dogs who set off a cacophony until, with a single long drawn out howl, the matriarch or alpha male silenced the lot of them and we went back to our dreams.
Next in the early hours just before dawn were the cockerels who even get on Doroline’s nerves, but it was all part of our one night in a Vanuatuan village. A gong was sounded at 6.45 and again at 7.30 to get families up, workers off to the bus to Port Vila and school children off for the short walk to Manua School, where Tony taught and by coincidence where Steph with her Sharm Foundation volunteers were just finishing a new toilet block, and she has invited us to the opening in a few days’ time.
Over our breakfast of a fried egg with white bread and doughnut followed by banana and papaya Doroline told us about her plans to recall Brian and build with him another guest bungalow on the site of her late father-in-law’s house. That would be ideal especially if two groups of the same family or friends were to visit, each requiring accommodation. It is customary to demolish the home of a deceased male villager, his widow going to live with family, so it would make good use of the space which has been respectfully empty for a while.
Doroline pointed to the small area of coral infront of the house before the beach. “We were married there last year,” how lovely that their lack of convention is part of modern village life, here anyway.
“That little fire was started by my son and his friend who is a Chinese boy living in Australia. They stayed here for a holiday recently.” When they were about to leave the Chinese lad was crying so Tony had to search the village to find Morris who didn’t want to say ‘goodbye’. Dad brought son back and the lads hugged saying they would meet again one day. After a holiday on the beach exploring with his new friend, climbing trees, catching crabs swimming etc the Chinese boy was on his way back to an apartment with no garden let alone a beach and lots of company. Doroline said the same thing my grandmother used to say to Robin and me, “You have to go to come back.”
Just before we left I took a walk onto the beach and chatted with a young mother and her two children who were sitting on the beach with a saucepan of sticky white rice that the children were devouring for their breakfast. Their beautiful black and white dog was with them wagging his long haired tail.
The tide was falling revealing a vast area of flat reef, so I wandered out from the shore for a look back at the village in particular our little patch with the hills in the background to which the villagers run if there is a tsunami. The live cone shells were to be carefully avoided, I didn’t even want to get close enough to photograph one incase it shot its deadly venom at me.
We drove towards the road and I kept my eyes open searching for Doroline as I hoped we would be able to say a proper goodbye. Whitey there dog appeared so I knew she wasn’t far away. We hugged and thanked her for the rare and wonderful experience her fulfilled dream had given us.
Just in case you are interested their address is; Raymond’s Bay Beach Bungalow at Emua email: traymona199@gmail.com
A Chinese Ring Road, She Oaks, Giant Fig trees and a Blue Hole
The fact the Chinese have tarmacked the entire island ring road and as you can see from the photos are in the process of building sturdy new bridges over the many rivers that run down from the hills has changed the working lives of many islanders. Instead of migrating to the capital for work at the beginning of the week, staying somewhere in the city and returning home at the weekends because the pitted earth road meant the journey could take many hours if it was achievable at all, they can now catch a work bus and return home every night.
There are of course many other advantages from the tourism point of view, with numerous car hire firms offering ordinary cars right up to pickup trucks; the former would barely survive a circuit because of the rugged nature of the terrain before the road was metalled.
At the point where Rob’s little car on his map reaches the north east corner of the island is Quoin Hill and Bauvatu. US fighter aircraft used the strip during the Second World War and two can be seen in the shallows off Bauvatu because they ran out of fuel before reaching the runway.
The east coast is of course the Pacific Ocean coast and it announces its arrival with swell and constant breakers bursting into white foaming masses on the reefs. We stopped briefly to take it all in and it reminded me of the Tasman Coast of the South Island of New Zealand.
The Giant (Indian) fig trees I mentioned are the Banyans whose array of aerial roots around the main trunk eventually grow to be strong enough to become part of the trunk themselves. They stood on either side of the road watching over the travellers passing underneath. Further back in the fields stood smooth, pale trunked She-Oaks. On their bare branches hang clusters of tiny, scale like leaves that look like sycamore seeds. They are thought to resemble the feathers of the cassowary bird (a big flightless bird that looks like an emu) with the Latin name ‘casuarius’ so the alternative name of the tree is Casuarina. Pretty and feminine don’t you think?
Our Lonely Planet guide told us there was an old manganese mine at Forari that operated from 1961 to 1978. After it ceased operations pozzolana, a useful form of volcanic ash that when used with hydraulic cement will set underwater, was also extracted. A bit of industry to explore we thought.
We left the car on the roadside and followed a winding grassy track towards the shore which opened up to reveal a massive building of which only the supporting structures and roof remained, all heavily rusted. Inside we noted overhead rails that may have supported the conveyor belt that took the crushed ore through the bush to the gantry on the shore and loaded the black powder directly into the ship holds.
In another more intact building we saw an old man sitting on a chair outside what appeared to be his home. He approached and we discovered he spoke only French, as do many of the people on this side of the island. He led us through the rusty building down to the shore where you can see the curved track along which the gantry once ran its daily grind. Our guide book suggested this gantry was still there despite having been tied in a giant knot by the once in a millennium Cyclone Prima back in 1992 but as you can see it is now entirely missing. The only bit I found was half buried on the beach. The anchor is massive, presumably from one of the manganese ships and was deposited where it still lies by the sheer force of Mother Nature. She’s a powerful beastie.
The mine itself, our guide told us with a wave of his hand, was up over the hill yonder and as with the village that was home to 1000 workers and their families, is now returned to MN’s loving arms. I don’t think she approved of this operation at all.
We sped on past vast plantations neatly cleared of undergrowth and the ‘mile a minute’ creeper by healthy fat cattle of the Limousin, Brahman, Santa Gertrudis type lying shiny and contented in the sun; we were thinking it would be nice to find Eton Blue Hole for a cool dip.
Lonely Planet suggests that the hole which is owned by the villagers is easy to miss because of trees but now it is very easy to see, has signs and a car park and the side we went into had changing rooms and a shower and lots of picnic tables in the attractive gardens. There are definitely two sides, opposite where we stood ready for our dip the fences etc are painted with blue paint so obviously two different ‘owners’ operate separate businesses here.
The bottom was pure white sand, hence the delicious blue colour and the hole is fed by the sea so there were nice fish to see. We did a leisurely face down exploratory circuit of the pool and then ventured into the channel that led out to the sea. Off the distant entrance is a reef which kept the water nice and flat where we were swimming but we could see the Pacific rising up and breaking on the far side and it looked as if it was much higher than the water we were swimming in. We ventured to the far end of the channel where large fish, including sharks are known to gather, but perhaps not today I hoped.
All was well and we turned back, cruising down the other side of the channel just to be thorough. We had been swimming for around an hour and after cleaning up returned to our little car and decided it was time for a beer, to get rid of the salty taste in our mouths you understand! What was going to be one became three when we were joined, not just by Jill and Mark, but also by American George who was leaving early the next morning with his son for Thursday Island on route to Darwin, hoping he would not get any more of the 56 knot winds he had experienced on his way across from Fiji. We hoped he wouldn’t too.
The Past, Present and Future on Erakor Island
In the very same year as the infamous Carl ‘Blackbirding’ incident I mentioned in a previous blog where 60 of the 90 or so prisoners aboard Dr Murray’s death ship were brutally shot for trying to escape home in 1872, a Scottish Presbyterian couple, Reverend James and Mrs Amanda Bruce McKenzie arrived at Erakor Island just south of Port Vila to establish their mission. They will soon have discovered that they were not alone and two Samoan Evangelical teachers were already in residence. I wonder how well they interacted.
The McKenzie’s taught on the island for 21 years until in 1893 Mrs McKenzie died and as only she and her three infant sons are buried on the island, presumably her husband then left for pastures new since he is not buried alongside her. The two Samoan missionaries are also buried in graves well-tended by the present residents on the island, the employees of the Erakor Resort.
Although a small sign warns visitors against proceeding further into the visitor accommodation area it is correctly ignored by day visitors who want to walk the island for a taste of the historical flora and fauna and to visit the graves and mission site. In fact the literature on the island encourages one to do just that. So that is a potted history of it’s Past.
Coconuts palms swayed in the gentle trade wind as we walked down the carefully swept fine coral path towards the seaward end of the island, which as you can see from the voucher picture is shaped a little like a hammerhead shark. A wide reef fringes the island making the water in the two lagoons either side of the island (first and second lagoon as they are called) calm and safe for the youngest child to enjoy their first supervised watersports. The island’s Present in both senses of the word.
Swimming and snorkelling reveals a delight of starfish, eels, sea cucumbers and fish but you can see all these from the terrace in the restaurant area where I enjoyed lunch washed down with a free cocktail first with Jill and then a few days later after his back recovered from its latest spasm, with Rob. The day pass to the island is 1500vu, 1000vu of which is redeemable for any food, drink or leisure activity means that a nice refreshing iced coffee on arrival, followed by a stroll around the island and lunch with a free cocktail costs less than a tenner each.
The surroundings are intensely pretty and who knows the presence of the welcoming resort may be the island’s saviour since the native owners can see the money to be made from its unchanging paradise island character.
The fringing reef links the island with the mainland just as the resort links the Past with the Present as I have described and with the Future in the form of the many open air and sunset weddings that take place here. They used to be held on the old mission site which, judging by the piles of rubble that lie on its concrete base now was more a romantic ruined chapel for the ceremonies than it is now, the victim of a cyclone no doubt.
Another ‘chapel’ has been created nearby with mini wooden apexes and wooden benches but the most delightful is the smoothed sand aisle bordered by low sand ridges topped with white and variegated flowers and foliage that leads to a heart shape on the beach created with greenery where the uniting couple stand as the ball of fire sets beyond the horizon leading them toward a life together. As you can see one had taken place the day before Jill and I were there and some of the delicate flowers were still white.
Again the lagoon links the past with the present and future with the fishermen from Erakor village (moved to its present site opposite the island after the original island village was swept away by a cyclone) still fish the lagoon by diving or using their dugouts and collect fish from the bamboo fish traps you see in the picture, which is a historical tradition reminding me of the Roman stone walled corrals off the south coast of Spain still in use today.
The Leaving of Vanuatu
The leaving took the form of two lovely evenings in company, the first three photos show the view from the Banyan Beach Bar as the sun set. We hadn’t been there before and this visit was to help young Meg celebrate her 50th Birthday. She and her husband had motored through the entire visiting yacht fleet and asked everybody to join them at 4.00pm for Happy Hour sundowners. What they thought would take an hour to do, keep them busy for nearly three hours of clinging onto boat hulls chatting to the fellow yachties.
We sat on comfy settees watching the tenders that were tied to the banyan tree branches bob up and down while we sipped our cocktails and passed the evening with chat and tales of our similar lives.
Rob’s back went into spasm later that evening as he winched the dinghy up, so we had a quiet day on board the next day with him taking the max dose of Ibufrin to reduce and limit the swelling and Paracetamol and Codeine to deal with the pain.
He managed to limp ashore the next day, ‘carefully’, as we had a pre-planned meeting for a coffee with Steph of the Sharm Foundation, remember we handed over the school clothes a while ago and Rod her husband to say ‘Goodbye’ and present another bag of school stationary that I had found in the top of my wardrobe. Wonderful, even more space for me to fill! The re-opening of the Manua School, where the latest Foundation project was nearing completion, had sadly for us been put back again to the first week of September, so we would miss it.
They are both concerned about the future of Vanuatu’s youngsters. There is a high birth rate of which a big proportion are babies born to single mothers, and 45% of the population is under 15 years of age. What to do with all the young lads that are leaving school with no job prospects? Rod understandably foresees social issues such as gangs and a continual erosion of social stability.
Steph set up a project to provide young men with chain saws and the necessary training on how to use them so they could saw fallen trees into marketable lengths of wood, but then the chief of the village put a stop to the idea for a variety of ‘reasons’. Many of the supplies sent to schools ‘disappear’ and rather than share any excess of commodities schools will stockpile them.
Many chiefs are now very wealthy from selling, for example, land rights, business licences etc and there are many instances of financial aid not getting to its intended destination. When we were travelling around we rarely met any chiefs, they were always “Away” of “Not here at the moment”. Sometimes if they are old or ill they move in to town to be near, for example, health facilities. Others are so wealthy they live in apartments on the Gold Coast of Australia leaving their village way of life open to abuse from lack of authority.
A worrying prospect for the future of this beautiful country, especially when the government is more interested in accepting massive infusions of money from foreign countries like China; thus creating a destructive dependency from which they cannot possibly recover without giving away the very essence of the country and what its natives stand for.
The next day we victualled up at the Bon Marche and spent the evening with Mark and Jill at the Village Café, a favourite spot of cruisers not least because it is such a pretty place with beautiful foliage covered with flowers. They have a delightful and unique gift for their customers which takes place on Wednesdays. Buy a Mojito cocktail at 3.00pm it will cost 300vu, at 4.00pm it will cost 400vu and so on until happy ‘hour’ is over at 6.00pm. So we booked a table for 5.00pm.
I remember the food was good but what sticks in my memory was the dessert; how to make a delicious dessert with virtually no preparation. On an oblong white dish a tiny cup of expresso at one end, a goblet of home-made vanilla ice-cream in the middle and a little glass of hazelnut liqueur at the other end. A few sprigs of mint and you have instant sophistication. Nice and easy to make ‘seconds’ too and limitless potential for alternatives!
I became tour guide the next day, showing Rob around Erakor Island by way of a farewell and to make up for his missing out because of his back, which was responding to the drugs slowly.
Then it was time to clear out and in the process we met a New Zealand couple, Rob and Carolyn who are bringing their brand new French built catamaran, Gallivanta, home from Perth to where she was delivered by ship. They have not yet decided whether they will go directly home to NZ or spend some time in Australia first.
Carolyn recommended we spend a night in Mele Bay, just around the corner from Port Vila to give us a nice direct run out to the open sea instead of being concerned about the depth of water over the reef near our mooring.
Once safely anchored in the little bay, in a brisk wind, we had coffee with them and then went back aboard the brand new and sparkling Gallivanta for sundowners. Along with another couple we all decided on a ‘Ken’ start at around 6.00am the next morning, but it would be after a roly and disturbed night as the swell made its presence felt among the moored yachts.
Rob and I like a mid-way break between the buzz of islands life to getting our mindset ready for the solitude of the open sea and we were grateful to Carolyn for her suggestion.
To add to our friendly human departure we had one of a cetacean kind the next morning as we lost the sight of Port Vila behind its protective headland. Coincidentally Rob and I were looking at exactly the same spot in the water when a young humpback did a full body breach just a few metres away from Zoonie. Wonderful, although I did wonder if there were more with the same intentions nearer to us or even directly underneath!