Kava bar at the end of the universe: expedition to East Coast Pentecost

Well, as a bit of an adventure while my cousin was here, I arranged for us to go and stay in Pentecost with Noel and Hanzel, the family I stayed with in Efate/Vila. There was a pretty good plan put in place initially to get to Pentecost: a one night, one day trip on MV Brisk to Melsisi, Pentecost and then onwards to the village of Lacocoa on the east coast. Unfortunately the Brisk had engine problems for about a month (including breaking down on route in Pentecost while we were there). So we were up to Plan F by the time we actually left Luganville on the MV Sarafenua, with only a very vague idea of how long it would take to get to Pentecost (ranging between one and three days) and having been unable to get a message to Noel to tell them we were on Sarafenua, due to the lack of phones on the east coast and broken public phones at Melsisi. I’ld contacted some VSA volunteers based at Ranwadi School (south of Melsisi) and arranged to stay there while we waited/hoped a message would get through.

It ended up taking two days to reach Pentecost. Unfortunately, with the Brisk out of action, there weren’t many ships running the shipping route, which goes from Santo to Ambae and then Pentecost. In Vanuatu, if you want the boats to pick up cargo or people, you light a fire on the beach. Every beach had a fire on Ambae (and sometimes two) so it was an incredibly long, slow trip. Still, the weather was good, plenty of flying fish, beautiful sunsets and black rock/rainforest/coconut plantation vistas as we made our way around Ambae. It’s a good thing that things like the ship food and heat in the passenger area seem to have been forgotten!

On the second day we reached Pentecost in the evening, and I finally worked out that the woman I had been storianing with for most of the trip was actually of cousin of Noel, so I gave her a note in English and Bislama to give to him, basically saying that we would wait at Ranwadi School for them to pick us up. I was definitely relieved to know that we had a way of getting a message to them seeing that the phones here are so dodgy.

At around 10pm on Thursday we boarded the lighter with various cargo for Ranwadi School, and with phosphorescence in our boats wake, headed to our beach fire and home for the next few days. Ranwadi School is located above a small cove and beach, and has two VSA Vols, four gap students from Aussie and the UK and various other missionary types. The school is close to a picturesque waterfall and swimming hole, and a coral sand beach with a resident dugong (cow fish). So while we waited to see if the message got through there was plenty of swimming including swim swim witem cow fis and relaxing, as well as eating plenty of fruit and a bit of island kakae at a school end of year function we attended, complete with obligatory string band.

Sunday arrived with no truck or news, so the plan was made to stay till Wed and have a look around Melsisi and a kustom village, then get a flight back to Santo on Wed morning. So, just as I was booking the flights on Monday morning, a truck pulls up at the school with a man looking like a relative of Noel. He had a written message from Noel and Hanzel (east coast people speak their own language, then French, then bislama). They had received my note at church on Sunday. So we did a quick pack-up and jumped onto the truck, heading north to Melsisi and then into the interior of central Pentecost where Noel was waiting at a Nakamal. A bit further on and we were dropped off to begin a two hour hike through rainforest to our home for the next week or so. The tracks were pretty muddy, like back-country tracks in NZ, but we eventually made it to Noel’s house. He’d basically just constructed the house in the last few months, after he knew Brandon and I were coming: a beautiful island style house, woven walls, on stilts with wooden floors (most houses have dirt floors), with a small waterfall nearby for washing, a water taro patch (and channel and bamboo irrigation system), kitchen and freshly dug out-house set on the flank of a mountain surrounded by bush and a view to the solwata.

After kakae of yam and fowl, we rested our weary feet, and spel smol. Pentecost is known as the island of the rainmakers, and unfortunately a teachers water tank was apparently empty, so it rained a lot while we were there… so some pretty treacherous walk-abouts at times, especially for Brandon, who had to walk to and from the Nakamal in the dark for kava in the evenings. Luckily they would bring a plastique of kava back for me and Hanzel, there are some bonuses to being a women in Vanuatu!

Over the next week we visited some of the villages and gardens in the area and had the opportunity to see red mats being made. These mats are used as kustom money and for grade ceremonies and are first woven and then dyed with the root of a particular tree, with banana shoot stencils used to make designs.

Life in the villages is very segregated: the men go to the nakamal, the women to the kitchens, so there was plenty of storianing with the women in the village for me, while Noel and Brandon hung out at the nakamal, like an island men’s club : ) Especially in Pentecost, if you are a guy, you can go to a nakamal any time and get kava, food and a bed… every village has a nakamal and its tabu for women to enter them. Life is pretty basic, no electricity, walkabout nomo, island kakae, but the people, once they got over the fright of white people (and the first American to visit ever!), were really beautiful and incredibly generous. Brandon received two Pentecost baskets and I received two red mats (Pentecost is famous for both).

We also went for walks around the area, along the coastline which is fairly rugged, through the coconut plantations that Noel’s father planted, to waterfalls and swimming holes. Whenever you go walkabout there is always kakae around, as long as you have a bushknife… Brandon got to shoot (and kakae) a flying fox (aka a bat). Not exactly my favourite food in Vanuatu but its not every day you stoom/shoot a bat to eat eh! Planted water taro, caught Namala (fresh water shrimps), watched Rambo for the first time ever, plenty of storianing and spel. I brought a volleyball, so Hanzel (who played volleyball for Vanuatu) and I ran a small training session for some of the village girls which was a lot of fun, playing volleyball in a coconut plantation with pigs and dogs running around!

We started to make our way back to civilisation on Sunday, and made it to the central island Nakamal only for the designated truck to arrive two hours late (island time of course). The sister of one of the girls in the village lived close to Ranwadi so the plan was to stay with her while we either got another ship or a flight to Santo. After the usual trip on the back of a ute, we arrived at dusk to a small village quite near Ranwadi School, grabbed our bags and proceeded to head up a hill. What was thought to be only a 5-10 minute work (its just around the corner) turned into probably the most excruciating hour or two of the trip (esp as the village was always “closeup”). The village was halfway up the mountain range and it had been raining so the track was very slippery…. Even Noel found the going hard (if he had known it was so far we wouldn’t have gone). When we finally got to the top, he asked if I had any panadol and quickly headed for the shower. Later, I found out that it was probably due to the fact that he’d unwittingly sat on a tin of kerosene on the back of the ute which had slowly soaked through his shorts, which explained the smell of kerosene when he gave his clothes to Hanzel after the shower. The night will be forever known as the night of the kerosene g-string/hotpants (the g-string joke is a standing joke regarding nambas, the kustom leaf worn by men. Noel has made a lot of chief grades but hasn’t done the land-diving, which most of his brothers has done, his excusing being that he needs a g-string not a nambas).

The next morning we headed down to the school to use the phone and book flights… the earliest available flight being Wednesday. Brandon and I crashed with the gap volunteers (I don’t think I could make it up that hill again) and I spent the day swimming in the solwata and waterfall, picnicking and recovering, and the following day waited with Hanzel, Noel and their family for their ship to eventually arrive to take Hanzel and her kids back to Vila.

The next morning, we got a truck ride to the airfield at Lonorore and flew back to Santo via the shortest transit stops ever, in North Pentecost and Ambae. Van Air was very un-Ni-Van! There was definitely a bit of culture shock coming back to Santo: very strange coming back to straight, tarsealed roads, taxis and powerlines, let alone Chinese shops! I hate to think what it will be like coming back to NZ!

Pic's to follow soon (island time of course!)


The following is a brief rundown of the multitude of Plan A, Plan B etc that the trip involved:

• Plan A MV Brisk on 13 November
• Plan B MV Brisk on 17 November
• Plan C MV Brisk ia brok. Wan otthafula sip: MV Sarafenua or MV Alice. Try kasam wan message long friends blong mi long east coast long Pentecost. Hem ia no got wan phone mo radio mo othafula something. Phone blong Melsisi (closest phone blong West Coast Pentecost) ia brok.
• Plan D MV Alice ia brok. MV Sarafenua long Monday
• Plan E MV Sarafenua ia go long Tuesday, 8pm
• Plan F MV Sarafenua ia go long Tuesday, 11pm, mifula go.
• Plan G Arrive Pentecost Thursday nite. Send wan message long friends blong me witem wan woman me metum long MV Sarafenua ia stap long east coast. Stap long Ranwadi School (west Pentecost) witem volunteers blong New Zealand. Wait smal for friends blong mi kasam wan message.
• Plan H Sunday. No kasam wan someting. Air Vanuatu got flights long Lonare (South Pentecost airfield) long Santo. Plan to book flights for Wednesday. Must book long Monday nomo.
• Plan I Phone Air Vanuatu. Taem me phone, wan truck ia stap long Ranwadi School witem wan message blong me from friends blong me.
• Plan J Cancel Air Vanuatu booking. Go long wan truck long central Pentecost, walk long east Pentecost.
  Arrive on East Coast
• Plan K Send a boy over to Melsisi, find out what ships are going to Santo.
• Plan L No ships going to Santo. Either, get MV Brisk to Vila then fly or a Plane to Santo
• Plan M Flights fully booked for Monday. MV Brisk mo othafula ships ia run, flights booked for Wednesday
• Plan N Ring travel agent, somehow manage to get a flight to Santo for Wednesday… lucky, as Brisk broke in Pentecost and the other ship MV Lady Sabrina broke on the trip to Vila!