Vila (Nanauto) - Friday, 14 March 2014

After having fled tropical cyclone Lusi with two days and three nights of rough sea we arrived shortly before 8 a.m. in Vila.

First at 8h45 I did a lovely and interesting leisurely cruise around blue, green and turquoise waters of a gorgeous lagoon past holiday resorts with lovely white beaches and private homes with the rain forest in the background. On board we were offered a local beer.

Than we went back to the ship, had lunch and off I went to see the highlights of Vila. On our way we were received by a local chief in his villages with naturally a local market.

In the local language called Bislama the country is know as Ripablik Blong Vanuatu, in English it is the Republic of Vanuatu. The people, referred to as the ni-Vanuatu (meaning "of Vanuatu"), gained their independence from combined British and French rule in 1980. before independence the islands were called The New Hebrides. 

There are over 100 languages to be found throughout the islands of Vanuatu however there are three official languages: English, French and Bislama. Bislama is "pidgin" English.

The Vanuatu archipelago is a volcanic chain that consists of approximately 80 major islands of which about two-thirds are inhabited. The Lapita People from southeast Ychina are believed to be the first people to reach and settle in the islands. Their eastward migration took place over 3,500 years ago.

The 1st European to reach Vanuatu was the Portuguese captain, navigator and explorer Pedro Fernandes de Quirós in May 1606. De Quirós was in search of the great southern continent of myth and legend when he discovered, came ashore and named the island "Terra Australis de Espiritu Santo" (The Holy Spirit of the Great Southland). He was sailing under the flag of the Spanish king, Philip III. Though De Queirós was a higly skilled, brave and daring man. His crew began to question his mental health (Too long in the South Pacific sun?) when he declared himself monarch of Espiritu Santo and the surroundig islands and then proceeded to bestow a knighthood upon each and every member of his crew ... including the lowly galley cook! The crew eventually mutinied and sailed away taking their 'monarch' with them.

Over 150 years passed before the next European, Captain Louis Antoine de Bougainville, finally reached Vanuatu during his circumnavigation of the globe in 1767. in 1774 the British Captain James Cook arrived and named the islands The New Hebrides.

During World War II the US built a large military complex in Vanuatu. As dawn broke on May 4, 1942 the locals in Vila woke to see a vast unexpected armada of US troop transports and US /Australia and and New Zealand war ships filling Port Vila's Mele Bay. The ni-Vanuatu (indigenous people) understandable ran for the jungle hills believing the Japanese had arrived.

With the arrivals of the Allies came an amazing social and psychological change among the ni-Vanuatu. For well over a century the British and French had treated the indigenous people like third class citizens in their own country. The ni-Vanuatu had been decimated by European diseases, their lands seized without compensation and their men from throughout the islands rounded up nd shipped off as forced labor in the sugarcane fields of Australia and the mines of French New Caledonia. Few would ever return. Over the decades the British and French did nothing to improve infrastructure in the New Hebrides. They simply took from the islands but gave nothing in return.

Many of the ni-Vanuatu men immediately began to work for the military in many different capacities . They accompanied the soldiers as scouts and coastal observers. They were inter-island guides an dock workers but more importantly ... the local men were astounded that the soldiers paid them a fair wage, shared their tin-canned food, clothing and basic necessities, built roads where there had been only jungle trails and hospitals where there had never been medical care ... but most importantly ... the soldiers treated the ni-Vanuatu with respect! The soldiers, black and white, gave them a new and never before imagined outlook on life.

At the end of the war, for pennies on the dollar, the US offered to sell their massive amounts of equipment to the local government. The British and French laughed and basically said: "Why should we buy all this when you are leaving and it will become ours for free?" The soldiers just smiled as the dumfounded government leaders watched them bulldoze ton after ton of US equipment into the sea and wave goodbye as the sailed back to the States as suddenly as they had come.

But the Yanks did leave one very important thing behind for the local ni-Vanuatu, a seed, that sense of confidence and self-respect. Not without difficulty the seed grew and eventually blossomed into the founding of the free and independent nation of Ripablik Blong Vanuatu.