Island Paradise

Steam leaked from the glis tening tarmac. Rain clung to my clothes and beat upon the runway - Vanuatu! A twanging song reverberated from both(prenominal)where. The singers strikemed to laugh, rather than sing the words. I found myself grinning, and soaked, headed towards the terminal.

Inside, my bags matte suddenly leaden. Clothed a wish well in gaudy patterned shirts, a group of men stood to the side, playing to the tourists. I had envisaged the voices adrift(p) from a distant, teeming village. Families whispered among themselves, giggling, pointing at the quartet. Perhaps I simply wished to hear it, but the voices now seemed flat, struggling for buoyancy.

My halluci republic was interrupted by a squat, bulky Vanuatan.

?Please,? he said, smiling, and wrested my luggage from me.

Outside, I climbed into a bus. It had seat- blame holders, but no seat belts. Bumping along the road, puddles gleamed red and green, reflecting the neon lights of shops and clubs.

The hotel! What had I expected if I schedule resort accommodation?Muggy forests?Green villages?Blocky statues of octopi gl bed at me as the bus entered ?Le Lagon?. It seemed the band from the airport had been whisked to the resort. quick-frozen smiles plastered their discolour faces as they served us drinks. A heavyset guilt swept over me. I had non insofar seen a Vanuatan who was not serving a tourist.

Was this an independent nation or an Australian colony?The porter showed me into an air-conditioned room. in that location was a bed, a shower, a fridge. Remove the lagoon mickle and here was my flat in Australia. Not bothering to shower, I dead set(p) onto the bed, the bleating of next door?s television lulling me to sleep.

Vanuatans seem to rescue a morbid aversion to seatbelts. The taxi that carted me into the capital was peculiarly special. Its upholstery had been patched with sticky tape!Villa did little to allay my suspicions that Vanuatu would concisely be subsumed into an Australian empire. At the markets, the price tags were in Australian dollars, everyone spoke English and the advertising looked Western - only ten years outdated.

Some culture, however, was revea guide. Stoic, angular masks jutted from stalls and local culinary art waged olfactory warfargon against all within a fifteen-metre radius. throng constantly waved and said hello. It was a refreshing change from the urban center; most think it?s cosmopolitan to wear black and look depressed. Yet, the West is persistent. Junk littered the stalls - shells whose outsides had been forge to spell ?Vanuatu?. What was wrong with the shells? The women wore billowing, shapeless dresses, introduced by missionaries to quell males? baser instincts. Ominously, the markets were flanked by a supermarket to the south, an ice cream vendor to the west.

A opus walked towards me. He had a leaning, stumbling gait and wore a singlet and trench-coat.

? desire a nikliss?? he asked.

?Sorry???A nikliss?. He exposed his trench-coat revealing a bag of large, plastic necklaces.

?Oh no, no give thanks you? I said, surprised.

I probably should have given him some money. It was the most ridiculous type of shock. I?d never seen a black adult male with a mental deficiency.

It?s dusk. Vanuatan kids are jumping and laughing in the lagoon. Their laugh is more than like a whoop, piercing amidst the splashes. On the shore, some blank away, a woman movies them, like apes in a zoo. I was going to get my camera, walk up abutting and photograph her, but she?s in her swimming costume now. I?ll pass.

Vanuatu is best late at night. By wherefore, most of the televisions are shut off. Smoke settles over the lagoon, blown from village fires. And then the sky comes out. The sky! A speckled, gleaming curtain. When the crude invasions are blocked, Vanuatu truly looks like its brochure. I?ve stayed far too close to the resort. The real Vanuatu lies beyond, in the villages.

The forests looked as though they were on enthusiasm; an orgy of blinding greens. Every few metres someone would wave, smiling. I was placid not used to the friendliness; nor the thirstiness. I fall apart?t think I?d ever been powerful hungry or thirsty. It was brilliant. I gulped down a nursing bottle of soft drink. It made me thirstier, but I was sick of water.



A jerky hour later, the bus parked in the tone of a chipped, blocky shelter. It was a church. A group of young, restrained girls ambled out, wearing the same formless dresses I?d seen at the markets. My high spirits promptly fell.

My system has never been racked with so virulent a guilt. The villages infected me like a unlawful cancer, souring my body. A man with yellow teeth led my group into a knobbly, mossy cave. It echoed dimly, dulled by a black lake at its rear. Two shirtless boys began to beat the cave grade with palms fronds.

?To bring the light in?, explained the guide.

A pasty, sweating man suppressed a laugh.

Jumbles of thin, alien coat lay sprawled like a corpse over the village. The houses were bare, concrete skeletons. The Australian governing is supposedly providing aid to the island nations. I saw only ontogeny. in the beginning I left the village, a dance was performed. It was a fair dance, but made horrible by the scattered, foreign metal and the tour group?s embarrassed staring.

At the airport, my device driver said he didn?t have change for five-hundred vatu. Bullocks he didn?t. I give him the note anyway.

I had to take my belt off for the metal detector. As I looped it back on, a dark, frizzy-haired girl asked if I?d care to fill in a survey.

?Sure,? I replied flatly.

There was a single heading - ?How would you describe your Vanuatan experience???Deflating?.

My initial reaction. But if I had not come to Vanuatu, a vision of an idyllic paradise would still be ignorantly floating about my cranium. I did see that aspect of Vanuatu. Overwhelmingly, however, I saw the brutal destruction of tradition, the exploitation of culture. So my travels have not been in vain. An experience does not have to be enjoyable to be rewarding. Therefore, this journey was specious rich.

I scrawled out my first answer, and wrote.

?A veil has been upraised from blind eyes.?

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