March 8th, 2020 – Walarano

A plan had been made earlier in the week for Kevin, President and I to travel to Wala Island today. Wala Island is a small, postcard-perfect island off the north-eastern coast of Malekula, where the cruise ships used to stop many years ago. The cruise ships paid generous fees to the tribal owners of the island, and the thousands of tourists who would flood it for a few hours would typically spend some money too, so everyone agreed it was a good thing. Only problem is no-one could agree who the tribal owners of the island were. One tribe put their hand up, and took the cruise line’d money, and when the next cruise ship docked and wasn’t greeted with the welcome they had requested and asked why not, they were told that no-one had told them a greeting was expected and no-one had heard of whichever tribe had been paid the money, and please could they have some more money. Needless to say, the cruise line didn’t come back to Wala Island again.

However, due to the cancellation of yesterday’s election rally, the plan changed. President was now going to a new election rally in the afternoon, and needed the truck, so instead, we were all going to go to church in Walarano, a village on mainland Malekula directly across from Wala and Rano islands. I was only informed of this change of plan at 6:45am this morning when President pulled up in the truck on my front lawn and started honking the horn, the second day in a row he has woken me up thus.

It turns out that Walarano is a francophone Catholic settlement. The church there is the largest building I’ve seen in Malekula, and it was pretty impressive how we just turned a corner on a jungle dirt road, entered the village of Walarano and blam! There was this enormous church, and a huge French school, too.

Compared to the Presbyterian service I had been to a few weeks back, this one was remarkable in that, although entirely in Bislama (Bible readings in French, though), the order of service was absolutely identical to that in any other Catholic church worldwide. I was intrigued to note that in the Presbyterian church, men sit on the left, women on the right, whereas here it was the other way round. No idea why. I’m pretty amazed that the missionaries managed to get any traction at all when they first arrived, it all just seems so incongruous with the way of life here. Even the clergymen’s white satin robes seemed way too hot for the temperature in the room which was well into the 30s by 9 o’clock in the morning. Having a good school I suppose was how they did it.

After church, President was chatting with some fellow party members, and they invited us to join them for some Laplap Sosor at their beachfront nakamal. Laplap is the traditional dish of Vanuatu, made by grinding manioc into a sort of cake, wrapping it in banana leaves, and burying it for several hours under hot rocks from the fire. I’ve mentioned it before on this blog, it’s not terrific tasting, similar to dry polenta cake, and needs something to moisten it. Laplap Sosor is definitely an improvement, as when the Laplap is unwrapped from the banana leaves, fresh coconut milk is squeezed over it. I was quite looking forward to trying out Laplap fresh from the fire rather than the stuff I’d eaten at the market.

Now I’m all up for novel cultural experiences, but eating a bat just really isn’t my thing. Having suddenly quite lost my appetite when they revealed the bats, I daintily picked at the Laplap from around the edge, dipped it in the coconut milk, and tried to pretend that I hadn’t even noticed the bats. Only when one of the ladies sitting next to me pulled off a drumstick and offered it to me did I politely decline, on the grounds that I was full up of Laplap. The others, however, got stuck in with gusto, eating the meat, skin (wings and all) and chewing the heads even. I was by this point trying desperately not to bring up the Laplap I had eaten, particularly as the smell of baked bat was reminding me distinctly of the rotten rat I had found yesterday. I realise it’s merely a cultural thing, and wouldn’t hold a grudge if someone has a different view to me, but this particular culinary experience I would rate a solid 1/10.

I was pretty relieved when the President drove us back to Lakatoro so that I could retire for a siesta and rest my churning guts.