“BAMBOO BAND”, 21 July 2016

Yachties go cruising for many different reasons.  For us, it’s mostly about meeting people, seeing how they live, maybe learning to speak their language a little bit.  What we enjoy most of all is to make a connection with some individual, or stumble into some local event.  Today, we did both.

We are anchored off the largest village on the island called Gaua, in the Banks Island group of northern Vanuatu.  If you look it up in an atlas, it may well be labeled Santa Maria.  There are around a thousand people between this village and several in close proximity, which makes for high population density in this part of the world.  It’s a pretty, tidy village of mostly traditional thatched houses, plus a few cement buildings — the church, for example, and a bank branch (more a bank outpost).

As luck would have it, there has been a conference here these past few days.  The locals have taken the initiative to create a conservation area around the large lake in the middle of the island (actually a quite sizeable lake, the largest in Vanuatu), and the conference was to draft a management plan for it.  The conference ended today, and the closing ceremonies and festivities just happened to coincide with our going ashore this afternoon.

As we approached the village church, the site of the conference, we were approached by two men, one of whom spoke English fairly well.  He turned out to be the secretary for the local committee drafting this plan.  We were enjoying a lengthy chat with him, but were interrupted by the sounds of a local “bamboo band” in the church yard.  We walked over to see, and were quickly swept up in the event.

One thing you learn early here is that with a white skin, you can’t remain an anonymous bystander.  You will be ushered to good seats, likely thanked for joining them, and generally included in whatever is going on.  We didn’t get a public thanking this time, but we were shown to seats front and center, seats that were obviously for conference participants, and were presented with leis along with the others.  When Robyn protested to a government representative seated next to her that we weren’t participants in the conference, the reply was, “It doesn’t matter.”  So, along with all the others, we wore the leis, listened to a few short speeches, drank ceremonial kava, and shook hands with what seemed to be the entire village.  Then the band really got going, and people started dancing.

The sun goes down abruptly in the tropics, and we like to be back on board the boat before then.  That time was close at hand, so we tore ourselves away, invited our new friend to visit us tomorrow, and rowed home.