Pentecost

“Would you rather crash in the jungle or the sea?” asked the intense foreigner as she leaned across the aisle trying to take photos out of the window on my side of the plane.”Neither” I replied.“So could you climb back into your own seat!!!” I asked.  She did. A few minutes later she pulled a soft toy rat out of her bag and started trying to cello tape it to the plane window. The rat wouldn’t co-operate and kept falling off. Eventually, the rat stayed attached long enough for a quick photo and I snapped one as well. While I was wondering what was going on she  started rummaging through  the seat pocket.

 

 “Do you have a sick bag?” she asked. “For you or the rat?” I replied. While all the time thinking “If you don’t sit still and stop leaping all over this tiny plane we are all going to need one!.”

I’m not a nervous flyer...but it doesn’t take much to unnerve me on a small plane. And as we made our way to Pentecost Island to watch  the famous land diving from which bungee is said to originate, I was feeling just as nervous as any jumper.

The runway soon appeared among a sea of jungle green, bordered by the clearest water I have ever seen. A string band plucked up a welcome song to the delight of the group. (When you’ve lived in Vanuatu a while, string bands are no longer exciting, in fact, you usually try to avoid them.)

We were welcomed with a grass necklace and wait quietly for a number of other planes to arrive. It was a beautiful day but the thick mud we glug our way through on our way to the tower made me think that we were lucky.

It was only a short walk to the tower and one is probably right in thinking that this, only one of five towers on the island, has been built close to the airport for convenience. Never-the-less, the first sight is intriguing.  A number of Ni-Vanuatu were climbing over the tower doing last minute adjustments to the rudimentary structure  fashioned from wood and vine.

At first the men were barely noticeable as their sinewy brown bodies blended into the wood and twine.

A massed group of grass-skirted women and children gathered on one-side while men clad only in penis sheaths began jumping and stamping to a hypnotic chant. The anticipation was palpable. The heat and stickiness of the day left me wondering if the gleaming sweat coating their bodies was from heat or fear.

The tower has four layers of planks. The youngest boys began at the lower level and so forth until the final, most experienced jumper leaps from the top.

As we waited the chanting grew louder. There was not a sound from the onlookers. The first jumper looked no more than about 11 years old. He joined in chanting with a voice that occasionally cracked.  Finally when the feverish chanting reached a crescendo, the boy leapt. There was a loud crack as the plank snapped and within seconds the boy hit the ground.  Two older men, whose job  was to dig the mud at the base of the tower to keep the earth soft, rushed over and lift edhim to his feet, helping him limp back to the main group. I wondered if we are supposed to clap but no-one moved.

 

And so it went on in the sweltering heat.  I find it hard to describe how I felt, part voyeur of an ancient ritual, uneasy at the eeriness of the atmosphere, disbelief that I was actually watching it.

 It was, without doubt, one of the most disturbing cultural rituals I have witnessed but strangely enough no-one else felt the same as me.

I looked across at the woman I had met on the plane. While the islanders are jumping she was trying to get the rat to stand up on a log. The log was too damp and the rat still wouldn't co-operate. The ritual continued in front of her while she battled with the rat. What funny creatures we are.!!!

 The flight back to Port Vila was also very memorable. When the weather is good the flight path takes you directly passed Ambryn, one of Vanuatu’s most active volcanoes. As luck would have it the clouds had parted leaving us a clear view of the volcano. The terrain was like nothing I had ever seen before, acres and acres of puckered, pleated and scoured ridges, grey rivers of ash and then two most gigantic vents with rims of yellow and of course the deep red glow of the lava at the bottom of the pit. I’ve never been so scared as I was as we flew directly over the crater. And all the time the rat-woman tried to clamber over me to get ‘the shot’.  I expected her next question to be “Would you rather crash in the jungle, the sea or the crater of a volcano” cos I sure as heck thought that was what was going to happen if she didn’t sit in her seat!!!

 

This would have to be the most exciting one-day trip I’ve ever had. I arrived home exhausted but also knowing that these special adventures are the very reason I chose to live in this country. (For a short time anyway!!)

Lukim Yu