children's day

It was Monday morning.
It was a mild and sunny day, picture postcard perfect.
The stage was set.
All the colours of the rainbow in strings of helium balloons and a handwritten banner "Happy Children's Day!"
We had stumbled into a natural ampitheatre below the Vanuatu National Museum in Port Vila and there were thousands of children and families in for the entertainment.
Arrayed around the field in front of the stage was a range of marquees, NGO's mainly, but water and food tents too, and up on the stage there were the dignitaries, including the Prime Minister, in suits and ties, while the funny ground announcer talked constantly over the music on the Tannoy in Bislama*.
I had no idea what he was saying, but the word pikinini stood out.
There is no Father's Day or Mother's Day in Vanuatu, but Children's Day has been a public holiday for yonks; decades.
That one day of the year that the young folk rule.
And they take the younger generation seriously.
On Children's Day, the front page scoop on the Vanuatu Daily Post was the huge news of free secondary education for all, from years 7 to 9.
Primary education is already free, paid for by Australian and New Zealand aid money, but now the Vanuatu Govt. had decided it could afford to pay for that, with the aid money to now fund junior high schools.
Senior high school and "college" still costs, as does attending the University of the South Pacific [the Vila campus offers arts and law]; if you want to do medicine you go to Fiji, while engineering and agriculture are offered out of New Caledonia, etc etc.
A good education for your children is highly prized.
There seems to be an inordinate number of lawyer's offices in Vila, but I digress.
A three-legged dog, and her mate, appeared at the top of the hill.
They sauntered into the bubbling crowd, but the four-legged one took off - couldn't hack it - too many people.
The hound with the missing left front leg went in and out of little groups sitting on the grass without being molested, and then sat patiently at the back of a tent in the forlorn hope of some food scraps.
The dog eventually fell asleep.
Then a bus rolls up.
It's the main entertainment - The Vanuatu Police Brass Band!
I was thinking they would march up and down playing martial music, but no, these dudes in police uniforms were a wild and wacky bunch.
The ground announcer asked for the area in front of the stage to be cleared, and they were on.
This band was a marching swing band - swing for the kiddies - an outfit that's got all the tunes and all the moves, dancing in and out of each other in choreographed style with those horns swaying up and down and all around, while out the back the policeman on the tuba was acting the goat, as the percussion guys went wild with the kit.
When the VPBB started the Macarena, the crowd went off its collective tits.
Hundreds of kids rushed forward to join in the swing, "Hey! Macarena!", all the time laughing and screaming.
Wild scenes at 10:30 am; we'd missed the parade the children did down Vila's main drag earlier in the morning.
After lunch, we joined the mass of folk enjoying themselves on the brand new waterfront, which is now about two-thirds built into a promenade and park.
Everyone seemed to marvel at the curved railing made of high grade marine stainless steel that tilts inwards at a 45 degree angle, which makes it comfortable to glide along with one hand and use your walking stick with the other.
Pause, rest your elbows on the rail and realise, for the first time, that the whole harbour sea wall in Vila was more or less destroyed in Cyclone Pam, and two years later, the rebuilding of it is still going on.
The old corrugated iron buildings that once used to stand there were blown clean away.
When it is finished, it may been a mile or so long, and all along the way are timber covered concrete blocks firmly bolted into the promenade, designed for several people to sit on at the same time, and as you do, looking out on the harbour with the "exclusive" Iririki island nearby, and parked million dollar yachts and motor launches that might have dropped anchor for a few days, you see behind them the local fishing trawlers and tugboats tied up at moorings and a rusty old hulk of a thing that Fran probably correctly identified as a harbour dredger.
But nothing seemed incongruous in this colourful crowd of families with parents proudly showing off their tribes of children of all ages, a constant stream of people; just strolling along nonchalantly and people watching.
I was drawn to the languid Melanesian eyes; some look distant, remote, others look deep with a kaleidoscope of colours, but their use of the eyebrows and eyelashes generally displays the importance of a look of dignity, which I first mistook as a sign of shyness.
Nobody was in any great hurry to do anything.
Rushing might as well be banned in this country - they know all about doing things slowly, with some method and plan.
The playground was wild with action as the children went crazy on the equipment, which included one of those rings of steel with thick spokes that was at a slight slope on a pivot, so even the smallest child could push loads of other kids perched on the ring around in circles - around and around and around we go - until they all became dizzy and fell off.
Then a new lot of kids jumped on and did the same thing.
It was a reminder of my childhood, which is more than half a century ago now, and none of it and I mean none of it would have had any hope of passing any Australian OH&S test of any sort, oh no siree, but the littlies just flew into the sandy dust, picked themselves up, and dusted themselves off, all the time shrieking with hysterical laughter.
There were no adults involved, or anywhere near it for that matter, but there was a crowd of spectators who were absolutely cacking themselves.
The laughter was infectious right to the end of the day.
ni-Vanuatu** do not mind a public holiday, and there are plenty of them.
Children's Day [always 24 July) fell on the Monday after we arrived, and the on day after we left Vanuatu, we missed what would have been the grand celebrations which were being advertised all over town to mark the 37th Independence Day - the biggest day of the year by far - which fell on a Sunday this year, with the day after off - a Monday public holiday, presumably just for recovery.
Two long weekends in a row.
Sweet as a nut.