One thing you learn very quickly from talking to and watching ni-Vanuatu is that they are intensely proud of their Independence from 70 odd years of the Condominium of the New Hebrides and the shit-fighting between the British and French back in 1980, after the brief "Coconut War", which was sorted out by the PNG Army of all people [Vanuatu does not maintain a standing army, or navy, for that matter] as well as the diversity of kastom throughout the 67 inhabited islands in this stupendous archipelago.
They also take their politics very seriously.
The President of Vanuatu, the Rev. Baldwin Jacobsen Lonsdale suddenly died, on June 17, just on a month before we were due to arrive in Port Vila.
On the day of his State Funeral, someone walked into Fran's inner-suburban Sydney office and said to her "the flags on the Harbour Bridge are at half mast, so somebody important must have died".
Fran, being in the know, surprised that person by saying "yes, it was the President of Vanuatu".
Dropped off the twig, he did, at age 68; massive heart attack, while he was minding his own business at the modest President's Residence [there aint no executive mansions or palaces for President's, they're through with that shit] and was rushed to Port Vila Central Hospital where he was pronounced dead on arrival.
It was a serious shock to the nation, even though the President has few powers in a mainly ceremonial position.
The Rev. Baldwin was widely admired as a stabilizing figure amid the political turmoil of the "corruption crisis" of 2015, when the deputy Prime Minister and 13 other MP's were charged with bribery after being found with their snouts in the trough to the tune of 35 million vatu.
They were duly tried and convicted; the Deputy PM got four years in the Port Vila jailhouse, while the others got between two and three years behind bars, which they are all mainly currently still serving.
There aint no parole for good behavior for these dudes.
[One day we were on a bus that drove past the jailhouse and the driver said "that's the jail there, what's known here as the Government Guest House. Free accommodation, free meals, free wifi. It's fully booked!" Boom-boom!]
The whole nation shut down for President Baldwin's funeral procession [on a specially gazetted public holiday] and it was was, by all reports, a grand affair, starting off at dawn at 6:30 with his coffin placed on an intricately decorated out-rigger barge which went all around Port Vila harbour, then he went to the Parliament Building to lie-in-state in a closed coffin, so folk could walk by and pay their respects, before he was taken to the Anglican cathedral for the State Funeral, which didn't finish until well after 6pm.
A ten day mourning period was declared, and it took several days for the arrangements to be made for his body to be transported for burial back to his home island of Moto Lavu in the Torba province, which is way way way north of Éfaté, up there in the Banks Islands, which are just about as isolated as you can get on the face of this earth.
From time to time, at appropriate moments, I mentioned "I heard that your President recently died?".
That was always met with a solemn bow of the head and down cast eyes and words to the effect of "yes, he was a very good man, but he's dead now" or in Bislama "Presiden i gud mista, i naoia blong Jesus blong long taem"
The death created a minor constitutional crisis as there was no provision in the Vanuatu constitution for a President - who is elected for a five year term - dying in office.
But, the Parliament met and quickly passed a law which allowed for the Electoral College to meet.
The choice of President is left up to the Electoral College which is made up of all 54 MP's in the unicameral parliament, plus the Council of Chiefs - an influential advisory body made of the major "big men" from the provinces.
21 candidates for President were nominated, and by some mysterious process of "validation" in smoke-filled back rooms, the final list was whittled down to 12.
The Electoral College met on the Monday after the President's funeral [ceremonial gifts to Moto Lavu, the drinking of kava, and other kastom arrangements had to be made to allow for it to happen during the official mourning period].
It requires an absolute majority of the College to elect the new President.
It was expected to be quickly decided that day, but no, nothing ever happens in a hurry in Vanuatu; the College met day after day from 9 to 5, and it wasn't until after the "seventh or eighth ballot", that on the fourth day, the Thursday afternoon of 6th July, Pastor Moses Obed Tallis, 63, of the island of Ambrym, was announced as the new President.
Phew.
According to the online versions of the newspapers, it was like waiting at the Vatican looking for the tell-tale puff of smoke, but in this case it was running the flag up the flagpole.
There was no grand inauguration.
There was a kava ceremony, Pastor Tallis signed the papers and took the oath of office, and he was in.
Down to business, son.
Vanuatu is currently ruled by an eleven-party coalition, led by Prime Minister Charlot Salwai, a French speaking accountant ni-Vanuatu from Pentecost.
You read right there -- eleven parties!.
For that reason alone the country must be unique among the world's democracies.
They certainly have negotiation and compromise down to a very fine art, as it all seems to work well - to a point.
Apart from the vote, the Miracle of Democracy in Vanuatu must also accommodate the extraordinary variety of kastom, difficult regional differences, and the absolute identification of people with their home island.
And it's also handy to have an accountant running the shop when you are openly advertising yourself as a tax haven.
That's not going to change in a hurry, but no one is now happy with blatant corruption we were told, even though it undoubtedly still goes on.
The day after we arrived in Vila we had a hankering for a lunch of the world-class Santo steak, so we jumped on a bus and asked the driver to take us to the best steakhouse in town - The Stonegrill.
He was wearing a Unity Party of Vanuatu t-shirt.
Bus drivers are a font of wisdom and information, they don't mind expressing their views and - there reportedly are ten thousand of them in Port Vila [approx pop. 65,000] - all driving six or eight seat mini-vans with sliding doors in various states of disrepair.
There are so many mini-buses, that there are no bus stops or set routes or sections.
It's very much laissez-faire.
Step onto the kerb anywhere in town [watch out! they drive on the right hand side of the road), and at least one bus will pass by every 30 seconds, pick you up as well as other passengers and take you to anywhere else in town you want to go, dropping off and picking up others on the way - it may be a circuitous route - but no one is in a rush - for a flat fare of 150vt.
In the main drag in the morning and afternoon there is a traffic jam, made up almost entirely of mini-buses.
Everybody goes by bus.
There are a few taxis and some private cars - mostly battered old utes with heaps of people and produce in the back and lots and lots of trucks - but no motorcycles at all [apart from the one Harley-Davidson we saw, roaring along the back streets!], although dune buggy style vehicles are seemingly the preferred conveyance of the young and free.
There are a some bicycles in the countryside, mainly kids bikes, but none in town.
[The sight of a man wheeling his bicycle up the main road out of the bush in the countryside with a machete in one hand and a guitar slung over his other shoulder and his young dog trotting behind him surprised me, but then the smile on his face said it all].
Seat belts are yet to catch on.
Vila is a small genuine third world city, and it's interesting to learn that hardly anyone comes from there - everybody in Vila is there for the work or to buy or sell, and are from someplace else, their home island, and the "ex-pats" of course, who all either work for the Govt. or NGO's, or are running away from some thing or someone.
The French colonial influence is still seen, the second or third generation of mixed race ni-Vanuatu/Vietnamese operate the Au Bon Marche, the biggest supermarket and one stop shop in town, and apparently own all the petrol stations.
The Vietnamese were brought in by the French colonials from Indo-China as cheap or indentured labour, and never left.
Many of the street names in Vila are still French, such as "Rue Captain Cook", "Blvd Charles de Gaulle" and "Ave Winston Churchill".
There are a surprising number of French tourists, who of course think they still own the place.
It was very tempting to tell the rude bastards "you only ever 'owned' half the joint anyway, and now you don't!"
But would they listen?
I didn't even try.
I've been to Nouvelle-Calédonie, where oppressive French colonialism still survives.
I souvenired a "Kanaky" baseball cap, in solidarity with the original inhabitants and anti-imperialists.
That said, I did enjoy a first class bouillabaisse one night, chock full of local fruits of the sea, fresh tomatoes and buttery saffron juices.
A crayfish claw poking out of it was quite surreal on kava.
The Poms are nowhere to be seen, and the few Australian tourists are generally just loud and/or pissed, but largely harmless.
On our second night in town we had just sat down to dinner when an elderly white couple slurring in an Australian accent as they talked to thin air staggered by about 7:30 pm, with the woman struggling to stand up, let alone walk, and leaning on her man's shoulder did neither of them no good.
What a scene; old folk, absolutely legless they were, pissed as parrots, but it begged the question "what have they been doing all day?"
Everyone in Vila is well dressed; no one is in rags, and there are no beggars or touts, but there is poverty and a lot of hard scrabble going on for a vatu.
The cost of living with consumer goods is surprisingly high, there is a 12.5% GST, but no income tax.
But, I guess everything in bottles and cans and all the nuts and bolts are imported in an island nation.
The Unity Party Man was not backward in coming forward with his politics as we went past the brand new Chinese Embassy on the Pango Point Rd in the No.2 District [so new, it was officially opened by the new Vanuatu President while we were there].
Looking at this large, heavily fortified, brutalist piece of Maoist architecture with the unmistakable Chinese red flag fluttering from a big flagpole towering from the point of the roof, I innocently asked "is that the Chinese Embassy?"
"Oh yes", replied the Unity Party man "new embassy. Chinese very bad."
Surprised, I asked why.
"Chinese come here and try to take over. They try to line politicians pockets and build things for Chinese people. No good. You come from Australia [he picked the accent]. Australian and New Zealand foreign aid very good. Even you might not know this, Australian taxpayers don't know this, but it is your money, Australian and New Zealand money that pays for schools and hospitals and free education for the young people. The Chinese money? No, no, no. Only for them. I am worried."
Another day, we drove past the new Parliament House in Vila [built with Chinese "aid" money after the original was irreparably damaged during Cyclone Pam].
I asked the bus driver in my Australian accent what the building was, as it had no sign on it, and he took great pride in telling me "there is the Parliament Building. There are 54 Members of the Parliament in there, all elected from across all the islands, and we have, how do you say? the west-minister style of system here, so we have a Prime Minister just like you, and we are still a member of the Commonwealth, but unlike you - who have a Governor-General - we have a President!!" [smug laugh].
I thought - thanks for rubbing in our ridiculous Constitutional arrangements, mate.
Very clever.
On the hill above the Parliament is the most striking new building in Vila, a whopping great Conference and Convention Centre [built with Chinese 'aid' money, ostensibly to host the next CHOGM, which now won't happen there anyway], which for all the world looks like a gigantic funnel from a cruise ship.
Passenger cruise ships -- aka floating gin palaces -- holding more than two thousand tourists berth in the harbour, three or four of them every month for a single day, making "town" unbearable as the place is over-run with half-pissed foreigners ridiculously dressed in shorts and Hawaiian shirts; automatically increasing the price of everything by at least 200% - and why not? - these cruising people are the lifeblood of foreign exchange.
When a ship comes in, the calculators come out, and shops are more than happy to accept Australian dollars, NZ money, greenbacks -- anything you like - and your change will come in vatu.
We could have seen a cruise ship come into the harbour around the Pango point on the Wednesday from our vantage point but we didn't wake up early enough, and of course we just laid low and barely moved all day - we were told it was simply not worth going into "town" or to go anywhere that was vaguely like a tourist attraction on "dae blong bote".
Almost next door to the Chinese funnel, on the block down the hill, is the dowdy, crumbling Australian Embassy.
Another bus driver we met again picked our accent and said that he worked for three months a year as a seasonal worker on fruit and vegetable farms or the cane fields of Queensland to make enough money to send back to his home village on the island of Epi, and he could have stayed.
"My boss he say to me 'oh, why don't you stay, everyone else does'", but he went on to explain that he didn't want to be "blacklisted" and deported as an illegal immigrant so he could never go back again, could not cope with staying in Australia full-time anyway, and "I want to do right thing, for my people, for me".
I asked him if the pay was any good.
"It's OK. Enough"
He then surprised me by saying "Did you know there are about five thousand ni-Vanuatu who are living illegally in Melbourne alone?"
Seems like "black birding" never finished.
Air Vanuatu now has a snappy new advertising slogan "Wake Up in Paradise", and you certainly do when you arrive on the only direct flight from Sydney to Port Vila at 11:30 on a Saturday night.
The next morning we were awoken by the sound of church bells ringing; something we've not experienced on a Sunday morning since spending a month touring the north-west of France three years ago.
Vanuatu is deeply deeply Christian and morally conservative, after the missionaries did an outstanding job battling "hostile natives" against all the odds, again and again, decade after decade, on a Mission from God to instill The Word of The Lord.
They got ahead of themselves at times, but eventually won the day.
[Stories say that down on the extremely remote southern most island of Aneiyteum [Antom], there are the ruins of a stone Church of England cathedral, now overgrown with jungle, big enough to hold a thousand people].
Most people are Presbyterian, but there is every kind of Christian denomination known to man in the country - you see churches everywhere you go - the Church of England, Roman Catholic, Assemblies of God, The Church of Latter Day Saints, Seventh Day Adventists, the Neil Thomas Ministry (?!), Church of Christ, Uniting Church, Apostolic Church, Baptists, Pentecostals and the list goes on and on...the only people who seem to be missing are the Quakers.
Only 1% of the population declare that they have no religion.
Among just some of the animistic customary beliefs, the strange John Frum Cargo Cult still has plenty of adherents on the island of Tanna it seems, as does the really crazy secret society, The Prince Phillip Movement.
But it is Protestant Christianity that rings loud and clear.
Nothing ever happens on a Sunday, except church, no doubt about it.
Still a genuine "day of rest".
[Sales of take-away alcohol stop at midday on Saturday and do not resume until 11am on Monday, the regulations being strictly enforced].
I suppose that's why virtually every President or Prime Minister of Vanuatu has the prefix of "Rev" or "Pastor" before their names, and the national hero of Independence, the first Prime Minister who had the job for the first ten years, was of course, Father Sir Walter Lini.
I realised I'm old enough to actually remember the bloke well, even though he's been dead 18 years now.
According to the little history book - not books, there is only one† - underneath all this lies a deep and complex kastom system where people earn their place in society through honorable and charitable works...the chiefs distributing their wealth...with more than a few hog feasts thrown in for good measure, as "big men" attain further "bigness" through a series of well defined "grades" of greatness.
Whatever you think of Christianity, the mantra of Peace and Goodwill to all man has been well and truly embraced, and is clearly in operation every day of the year, wherever you go.
Everyone is unfailingly polite, with unique smiles, and are always concerned that you are OK and having a good day, ahead of themselves.
Perhaps that's why the ni-Vanuatu are so attracted to religion?
I don't know.
The question never arose.
But keeping the gods and spirits on-side, as well, has apparently been going on for centuries, way way before "civilisation" arrived.
Makes sense.
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