We were on Pentecost Island for less than 24 hours, but it was easily one of the most memorable parts of our entire stay in Vanuatu — and not just because we were lucky enough to witness the amazing land-diving ceremony there. But before we get to land-diving, a few other highlights from our whirlwind trip to Pentecost (as well as some pictures in our Pentecost album)…
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The “runway” at Maewo “airport”First, the flight there. We checked into our flight at the Santo airport and, after being asked to stand on the luggage scale so that WE could be weighed, we had a hunch we wouldn’t be flying on a 747 to Pentecost. Our hunch was correct — the plane was tiny — but its humble size still didn’t prepare us for the landing and take-off we did on a grass runway on the island of Maewo on our way to Pentecost. The grass wasn’t such a big deal, but its knee-high length was — so much so, in fact, that the captain got off the plane after our very bumpy landing and started yelling at the sole Maewo airport employee that he would stop flying any more planes to Maewo until someone bothered to mow the runway.
Thankfully, the runway on Pentecost was paved, and after pulling up to the one-room “airport,” we hopped into a pick-up truck with our host for the evening, a really nice guy named Silas who had actually been on our flight from Santo after attending some meetings there. We had arranged to stay in Silas’s guest house about 30 minutes down one of the two dirt roads leading out of the airport. The road to Silas’s skirted the coastline and involved numerous river crossings (no bridges on Pentecost), some careful cow and dog dodging, a few unscheduled pick-ups along the way (basically anyone walking down the road in Pentecost is offered a ride), and then we were there.
I’m not sure if it was the setting sun’s glowing twilight or the glimpses we had through the trees of a perfectly calm, tranquil ocean, but Pentecost quickly cast a spell on us. Even by Vanuatu’s already very chill standards, there was something so peaceful and relaxing about the island. We felt this even more when we arrived at Silas’s homestead, where his father and wife warmly greeted us and showed us to our modest, twin-bed room and then invited us down to their gorgeous beach for a swim. At the beach we met the other two guests staying at Silas’s that evening, a young Kiwi couple named Steven and Annabelle, who later invited us to join them in a homemade cocktail of Absolut vodka and warm lemonade (not exactly the tastiest drink we’ve ever had, but a memorable one nonetheless!). Silas’s wife made the four of us a delicious dinner, which we ate under Christmas lights at a little table on the beach. While we were eating, we talked with Silas about his career (he was the principal at the nearby secondary school for 24 years before retiring last year), his family (all four of his children completed or are attending secondary school — something fairly uncommon in Vanuatu), and his plans for his guest house in the coming years (his next big purchase will be some lounge chairs for the beach and hopefully someday a more powerful generator.) After finishing dinner, the four of us headed back to our rooms, brushed our teeth with rainwater, lowered our mosquito nets, and said good-night just as the generator was shutting down for the evening…
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With Silas and his family, our wonderful hosts
Morning arrived early on Pentecost. I’m not sure what timezone Silas’s rooster has his watch set to, but someone needs to inform him that 3:00am is not the appropriate time for cockadoodledoo-ing. Nor is4:30am, when he started up all over again. Or maybe that’s when the dogs started barking ferociously outside our room. Or was that when the mouse woke us up as he tried to get into our bags? Needless to say, it wasn’t our best night of sleep so far. But we woke up excited and eager for the day’s events — we’d been hoping to see the land-diving ceremony ever since we decided to visit Vanuatu, and today was finally the big day.
The pictures in our Land Diving album and the video (below) of this incredible, ridiculous tradition are probably the best way to get a sense of what it’s all about (we took an insane number of pictures that day), but here’s a little background on why they do this ceremony at all. Land-diving, or nagol, is a harvest ceremony that’s performed on only one island in the entire world. The story goes that a woman once ran away from her husband and hid in a tree. The husband, Tamale, begged her to return home, but his wife refused, so Tamale climbed the tree to chase after her. As he neared the top, she jumped, and in his anguish, he jumped after her — only to realize too late that she had tied vines around her ankles. His wife survived while Tamale fell to his death. End of story. Personally, I love the inherent irony of the fact that a ceremony that has come to represent masculine fertility and strength is based on a story in which a woman outsmarts a man, but maybe that’s just me. :)
Following the tradition today, young men and boys spend more than five weeks building the 90-foot tower out of materials they find in the forest. During that time, they also look for and select the vines they’ll use for their jumps, making sure not to pick a vine that is too young and not stretchy enough. Once the tower is completed in early April, the men will then spend every Saturday until June jumping from the tower. As they plunge to the earth below, they tuck their heads under at just the right time and gently brush the loosened soil beneath them. This contact between the jumper’s head and the earth is thought to increase the fertility of the land for the following year’s yam crop, as well as demonstrate the man’s strength to women in the village.
It’s also just about the most insane, adrenaline-thumping spectator sport I’ve ever witnessed. Dustin and I both had the same experience as we watched these guys — your heart is racing, your palms are sweaty — it’s almost as though you’re up there on that tiny platform with them. The singing and dancing of the villagers on the ground only adds to the intensity — they get louder and louder as the jumper gets closer and closer to finally stepping off the ledge. And then just like that, he leaps off and plunges through the air. Before you’ve had a chance to blink, he’s scrambling to his feet on the ground, smiling the wide grin of relief that comes with surviving this crazy feat and knowing that he is, officially, the most bad-ass guy in Vanuatu at that moment. It is truly a sight to behold.