September 2018 – SV Bob The Cat

Getting wet on Espiritu Santo

“Mummy, what are we going to do today?” Lukas is looking at me expectantly. Behind him, the cockpit clears show a blur of grey behind a curtain of droplets.

“I don’t know,” I answer brightly. “Maybe we could have a shower in the rain?”

His eyes light up.

“Matias!” he yells. “Come, let’s go and have a shower on the trampoline! Get your togs!”

It has been raining on and off for ten days week now, heavy dark skies and oppressive heat interrupted by all types of rain imaginable: light, dusty showers moistening the skin and frizzing the hair; fierce rain waterfalls creating walls of rain beyond the cockpit; stormy rains with droplets like bullets tearing into you should you venture outside. The ocean is freckled with raindrops, the rivers bursting their banks, and the nearshore waters brown with mud.

Wet weather makes for a soggy boat, and everything is damp on Bob the Cat. I wipe the walls daily using vinegar, hoping that its antifungal properties will ward off black mould. Our towels are moist, our clothes feel damp to the touch, and our canvas cover is saturated to the point where water is dripping through into the cockpit.

It’s not ideal weather for sightseeing, but we’ve done our best.

We’re in Espiritu Santo, the biggest island in Vanuatu. The island was extensively used by US forces in the second World War, and the wartime history is present all over. The US established bases here, active from 1942 to 1945 when Japan was defeated. As the US troops withdrew, they left behind a lasting legacy and vast amounts of equipment.

Sunken treasures on Million Dollar Point

While here we snorkel the famous Million Dollar Point where the Americans dumped millions of dollars’ worth of military equipment just to ensure that the British and French didn’t get their hands on it. The legend goes that as they withdrew, the US offered the equipment to the British and French (the nations ruling Vanuatu at that point) at ridiculously low prices. The two nations, however, thought that the US would have to leave the equipment anyway, and declined the offer to buy thinking that they would get the equipment for free when the US forces abandoned the island. This irked the US, who decided to spite the British and French by dumping the equipment in the sea rather than let them have it. And thus bulldozers, military ships, aeroplane engines, jeeps, tanks and crates of coca cola were dumped in the shallow waters just offshore Luganville, the main town in Espiritu Santo.

It is a peculiar site. A nice, white beach is strewn with metal debris and as we swim out we survey the underwater military rubbish dump. We find shipwrecks, vehicles, wheels scattered all over, tanks, and lots of unrecognisable structures.

Also a wartime casualty is the wreck of the SS President Coolidge – one of the largest shipwrecks in the world. A luxury liner appropriated by the army, the huge ship (187 m long) was struck by a mine and sank just off Luganville. The wreck is still rather intact and full of equipment, including supplies, guns, tanks and other vehicles, making for an interesting dive.

It is not all war, though. In between rain showers, we travel up long, still rivers where the green jungle is perfectly mirrored in the shallow water to visit gorgeous freshwater blue holes. Ropes hang from overhead branches and the kids spend hours flying through the air and cannon-balling into the deep blue waters.

David – attempted back flip turns into back flop.

Island blong blak majik

“Haiahoieh, haiaho!” chant the men, stomping their feet on the ground, small clouds of black dust rising. “Haiahoieh, haiaho!”

They sway and shuffle in front of the giant, brightly-painted carved wooden statues backed by green jungle, expanding and contracting in a tightly-woven circle, their backs to the assembled crowd. One man beats the rhythm of the song on a traditional drum, and the beat quickens with each footstep, sweat beginning to appear on their near-naked bodies. “Haiahoieh, haiaho!”

Suddenly, from the right-hand side, a fearsome creature whirls into the clearing, brushing past the audience and spinning its way towards the dancers. It is a man clad in an extraordinary costume – a conical carved hardwood mask featuring heavy white eyelids and intricate designs in green, red and white shapes, creating a fearsome grimacing whole. The mask chin culminates in a long whitish beard and the top of the head is adorned with a series of light tufts which extend down the back of the head to form long, white hair. A feathery cloak of dried banana leaves covers the dancer’s entire body. Shrouded in the mask and cloak, brandishing an elongated hollow club, the wearer looks like a rare demon bird, twirling and whirling, stomping and singing, the feathery cloak swishing with the movements of the dance, fragile dried banana leaves extending like an elaborate golden tutu. A moment later another masked dancer joins from the right, and after that another and another, until the dancing group is complete: six men in the middle wearing the traditional costume of a small woven penis sheath attached to a belt flanked by five menacing mask-wearers.

We are witnessing the famous Rom dance on the black volcanic island of Ambrym.

The Rom dance is a coming-of-age and advancing-in-status ritual dance done by men in villages in northern Ambrym. When a man wants to move up in the village pecking order, he must buy access to a sacred mask design, for which he pays in pigs, roosters and cash. The masks represent spiritual aspects of the power of yam, the most important food crop on the island. Once he has secured a mask design he is initiated and learns the ancient art of mask making in a series of top-secret rituals which culminate in a performance for the village where the man and select invitees dance wearing the extraordinary and powerful masks.

The dance lasts for about 40 minutes, the men in the middle shuffling and stomping, the mask-wearing demons whirling and rushing, grandstanding one moment, huddling the next. The beat of the drum carries the rhythm, supporting the feverish chanting until suddenly the pace quickens until a crescendo is reached and the dancers utter a last ‘Ho!’ and stop, sweat pouring off them.

We are in awe of the performance and feel lucky to have witnessed a ritual which, although this one was performed for tourists, is still very much alive on the island. The Rom dance is held once or twice each year and the dancers are proud to display their traditions to the world.

The island of Ambrym is home to two volcanoes and a bunch of magic. According to Ni-Vanuatu, magic is strongest on islands featuring active volcanoes, and as Ambrym is home to two active volcanoes the island is Vanuatu’s sorcery capital. Sorcerers (man blong majik or man blong posen) abound on the island, casting spells and generally disrupting normal village life. The twin volcanoes are sacred and pleasing the mountain gods is essential for securing good and plentiful yam harvests.

When we approached Ambrym from the south the island was shrouded in clouds – heavy grey fog hung darkly over the volcanic peaks, wispy strands of mist encroaching on the dark green hillsides like odourless white smoke from a thousand jungle fires. We anchored in a bay on the north-western coastline in front of Ranon village which is scenically set back behind the long, soft, black sand beach.

The villages here are small and tidy. The small, rectangular houses have walls woven from bamboo, the weaving forming varying geometric patterns sometimes accentuated by dye. Pigs and chickens root around between the small houses. Adults sit talking on benches near houses and gangs of scantily clad children run about squealing with laughter. Heavy mango trees have just started to drop their fruity burden, providing ample food for foragers, and all children we see carry armfuls of the small green fruits, black eyes peering out at us over mouths full of yellow fruit, chins dripping with sticky juice.

The art of sand drawing is strong on Ambrym. Done on a clean-wiped piece of dirt, the art illustrates ancient oral traditions. The drawings are large, symmetrical, intricately patterned shapes drawn without the artist lifting the finger from the sand, representing birds, turtles or parts of the human body.

Finalised sand drawing, representing the human heart and lungs.

The village of Fanla still remembers when Captain Cook came to the island. In 1774, the Resolution was anchored where we are now. The first man to spot the large ship stood terrified on the beach, watching Cook come ashore with a small party in a rowing boat. As is the custom in Vanuatu, the local Big Man (chief) offered the visitors some yam, the traditional staple. As he proffered the yam, he said ‘Ham rim’, which means ‘here are some yam’ in the local Ranon language. Cook misunderstood, thinking that the man was telling him the name of the Island, and wrote down the name as Ambrym. (Cook seems to have made a habit of misunderstanding the natives of Vanuatu when he charted the area. He named Tanna Island in the south after meeting some locals and pointing to the ground. When they said ‘tanna’, the local name for ‘dirt’ he promptly wrote that down and went on his merry way to do more charting. Presumably, those sorts of misunderstandings were common job hazards for early cartographers. I guess the upside for Vanuatu of having talkative natives is that Cook named fewer places ‘Disappointment Bay’, ‘Cape Hopeless’, ‘Starvation Point’ and suchlike, names that abound in New Zealand and Australia. Although there are a few ‘Cannibal Coves’ found here…)

Cook gave the Big Man some iron nails and a smoking pipe, historical treasures that the villagers still hold in their possession. The gravesite of the man who first met Cook is still standing in a little clearing just outside Fanla Village.

Cultural tensions between the modern, western world and the old, traditional Vanuatu ways started that day on Ambrym, with Captain Cook gifting iron to islanders who were living a stone-age existence. Today, these tensions are as strong as ever, with traditional culture like the Rom dance, majik, and the sacred rituals involved with the yam planting and harvest threatened by a world of cell phones and the intrusion of the all-pervasive western culture. Nowadays, most young men leave the island after Year 10 of school, heading to Malekula, Port Vila or Luganville for further education. Many go on to work overseas; all people we speak to mention relatives that work seasonally as fruit pickers in New Zealand or Australia. In Fanla, the chief’s son worked for a season as a fruit picker in Australia; now he is building a concrete house right in the middle of the village, the incomplete foundations surrounded by traditional small, woven bamboo houses. It must be strange for a young man to move from a culture of magic masks and ritual dances to fruit picking in Australia and back again.

“It must be difficult to keep the traditions when the young people leave?” I comment to Freddy, a local man who is showing us around.

“Yes,” he admits. “We try to teach the young people our culture, tell them that they can make an income from our traditions – like wood carving, and the Rom dance. We hope we can keep our culture alive, it is important for us.”

One afternoon several young men paddle up in small outriggers to say hi. We invite them on board and chat for a while. They are 15-16 years old, and with their neatly groomed dreadlocks, their second-hand surf t-shirts, fashionable earrings and winter beanies they look like they could have come straight from the streets of Auckland.

“Will you live here when you are older?” I ask Christophe, one of the first guys to come on board.

“Yes, I will live here,” he says. “It is a good place. I will leave to do more school in Malekula. But I will come back here.”

From all over the island, they are boarders at the secondary school in Ranon. We discuss the Rom dance, and they explain that they have similar rituals in their villages – masks that are used in initiation rites, which they will earn the right to wear when they become grown men, at the age of 18-20. They say the dances are tricky and that there is much to learn about the masks and the kastom behind them. But they are looking forward to the day when they join the ranks of men in their village.

David helping to transport the visiting teenagers and their outriggers back to shore.

Rope is a precious commodity that is hard to come by, and several men approach us in the villages, asking if we want to trade rope for carvings. The rope is for tying up their cows, a job for which the natural fibres are not well suited. We find several decent second-hand ropes to swap for the beautiful carvings for which the island is famous.

We were hoping to climb the volcanoes, but as befits an island blong blak majik the dense, dark cloud cover that envelops the twin peaks never lifts during our time here, and our impression of the volcanoes remain a faint orange glow spreading above the hillside at night.

Dugong hunting

I’ve been wanting to see a dugong forever. I remember reading about them as a child in a Jaques Cousteau book we had lying around at home. Fascinated with their immense blubber, their hoover-like mouths, their docile grazing habits, I vowed when I was 10 years old that one day I would see one.

Now that we’re in Vanuatu I feel sure that the time has finally come. We’ve been in dugong territory before, in New Caledonia, but despite keeping vigorous lookout I never spotted one. The mistake we made was to assume they were like dolphins – that when they were about we would spot them, and that once we spotted them they would be interactive, frolicking around the boat, swimming up to us as we snorkelled.

Looking a bit more into dugong behaviour it seems I was naive. They are known to be incredibly shy of humans and have no desire whatsoever to play. Although they breathe fairly often (every 4-8 minutes) they don’t spend long on the surface at all, often just sticking their nostrils out of the water for a split second. Nor do they make any noise – no squeaking or clicking like dolphins or heavy breathing accompanied by clearly visible water spouts like whales. They spend almost all their time vacuuming the ocean floor, ingesting huge quantities of seagrass to keep up their well-padded appearance.

Dugongs are found in several areas of Vanuatu, and the mission when we leave Port Vila is to find one.

Our first stop is the northern end of Efate Island, where we spend a couple of days kitesurfing in high winds under moody skies. A private island offers a brilliant sandspit on which to launch; unfortunately, the absentee owner is not keen on us using it, so we launch in the water but the kids are still able to enjoy the flat water shallows.

There are meant to be dugongs in the area, but the windy conditions mean that it is almost impossible to see them – the water surface is broken by waves and they could be having a big meet-up right next to the boat without us noticing.

Matias kiting in the shallows no doubt passing over several dugongs.

After Efate, we head to Lamen Bay in Epi Island where dugongs are sometimes seen. The elusive beasts are absent, but lots of very chilled green and hawksbill turtles inhabit the bay, providing for some great snorkelling.

From Epi Island, we head to Malekula Island. Malekula is famously the last place in Vanuatu where a human being was eaten, in 1969. It is also famous for the two inland tribes, the Big Nambas and the Little Nambas, named for the size of the men’s penis gourds. In addition to this interesting phallically-focused cultural division, they have dugongs.

We anchor in Gaspard Bay at the southern end of Malekula. The bay is a grey expanse of shallow water lined by lush islands bursting with green. The bottom is covered with seagrass, the preferred food of dugongs, and there is a resident population which is the target for many tours.

We kayak the perimeter of the bay, keeping an eye out for dugongs and surveying the seemingly impenetrable hillside jungle beyond the mangrove fringe. As we get closer to the shore, the noise rises to a deafening buzz of cicadas and birdsong.

The dugongs are about but hard to sneak up on and to begin with we only snatch brief glimpses: a square, grey snout sticking vertically up the water, quickly vanishing when I approach in the kayak, the gentle arc of a finless back curving through the water just ahead of David on the paddleboard.

David and the kids dugong hunting in Gaspard Bay.

On our second morning, the show is finally on when a dugong mother and calf surface right next to the boat, treating us to a nice view of tailfins and blubbery brown shapes logging just under the surface and generally frolicking around. David jumps in the water and manages to snorkel with them briefly, watching the pair slowly dive down and vanish in the murky depths.

I would have liked crystal-clear waters and a throng of dugongs so thick I couldn’t swim through it but realise that Gaspard Bay is probably as good as it gets with dugongs here. So I pronounce myself satisfied and we are finally able to move on. Next stop: the black magic volcanic island of Ambrym.

More approachable wildlife on Efate Island.

Vanuatu – Port Vila

Our passage to Vanuatu was easy, taking four days and three nights, with calm seas sighing like ghostly whales pursuing our slow progress across the ocean. Vanuatu’s capital Port Vila, on the island of Efate, is due west of Fiji, so during the four days of passage we moved further and further away from the sun, the distance covered marked by ever later sunrises and sunsets. In this age of air travel, it is gratifying to be moving so slow (about 160 nautical miles, or ~290 km a day) that the incremental distances covered are felt as minutes of delayed sunsets per day, a visceral illustration of how the Earth is just a rotating ocean-covered ball spinning around the sun.

On our second ocean day a booby hitched a ride for a night, landing on our rear solar panel after circling the boat for half an hour and remaining fast asleep with its head tucked under a wing on the bouncing boat as we transported it 100 NM west overnight. Come early morning it left after staring at us with stiff, tired eyes, indignantly lifting its head and ruffling its feathers whenever we got too close.

Port Vila is small and full of Australian and New Zealand cruise ship passengers and the associated duty-free shops, selling French fashion, surfwear, perfume, handbags and alcohol. There are numerous restaurants and cafes, a small park and a bit of concrete for the kids to skate on. Beautiful tropical flowers border the parks, and palm trees are scattered across the lawned waterfront.

Bislama, the official language of Vanuatu is a pidgin language based on English with a few French words thrown in. Written Bislama is best understood by reading it out loud, exaggerating every syllable until the underlying English or French word becomes obvious. We buy SIM cards and I get a message advertising ‘tripol data tedei’ (triple data today), a ‘limited taem offa’.

David and I childishly find the language hilarious, particularly the liberal use of the word ‘blong’ (literally belong).

“Here, you have to see this,” I say, pulling him over to the ATM in town. “I can read Bislama. ‘Plis pusum kad blong yu i go insaed’ – Please put card belong to you it goes inside!”

“And here, the next screen – ‘Sipod kad blong yu i lus o wan man i stilim, plis kontaktem branj blong bank blong yu’ – if card belong to you is lost or a man steal him, please contact the branch that belongs to the bank that belongs to you!”

“And look at the library,” he responds, grinning broadly whilst gesturing towards a tall, dark building nearby. “Pablik Laebri Blong Port Vila”.

Hello is ‘alo’, thank you is ‘tankyu tumas’, sorry is ‘sore’, yes is ‘olraet’. Helicopter is ‘mixmaster blong Jesus Christ’.

The provisioning here is great – if nothing else, the French left one positive legacy and the Bonne Marché is stocked with patés, cheeses, cured meats, feta cubes preserved in herbed oil, Nutella and other typical French delights. The fruit and vegetable market is sensational, a covered plaza stuffed full of fresh produce, sold by island women clad in colourful dresses sitting behind low counters. There is broccoli, red cabbage, pamplemousse grapefruits. Fragrant fresh coriander and lettuce heads strung on the bones of palm leaves. Shiny capsicums, rough custard apples, and buckets of glistening bush raspberries. Woven baskets of sweet potatoes and tripods of enormous yam, their tops tied together with palm leaves.

The entire country of Vanuatu is plastic bag free, and customers are expected to bring their own bags or baskets. At the supermarket, reusable plastic nets are provided for customers to weigh their fruit and vegetables; these must be surrendered at the check-out where you are expected to pour the produce into your own bag.

Perhaps partly as a result, Port Vila is remarkably clean. I remember the plastic mess of Tonga where we saw hordes of local kids throw plastic bags from their popsicles into the ocean. Here, there are bins everywhere, and no litter in sight.

We visit the Mele Cascades not far from Port Vila, a beautiful walk up a hill through cascading clear water. We all swim in the cool water and enjoy the beautiful scenery.

Tomorrow we’ll leave to head up north, hoping to spot dugons on the way.

We are not drowning, we are fighting

“PACIFIC PAWA!” shouts the man with the megaphone.

“PACIFIC PAWA!” responds the crowd, fists pumping, bodies bouncing, sweat pouring in the hot midday sun.

“WE’RE NOT DROWNING! WE ARE FIGHTING!” yells the man.

“WE’RE NOT DROWNING! WE ARE FIGHTING!” echoes the audience, erupting in cheers.

The small hair at the back of my neck rise as I feel the surge of emotions of the protesters and supporters alike. The guy with the megaphone is wearing a tie-dyed sarong and a black t-shirt with a white logo on the front. Around his neck is a long necklace of oversized wooden pearls, and on his head, a spiky crown woven from palm leaves holds in his short, tight dreadlocks. Behind him, men, women, and children jump up and down in tune to the chanting, waving homemade paper banners and flags. Many hold up dainty palm leaf windmills which spin in the light breeze, small hazy clouds of green held up on long palm leaf sticks. The air is heavy with the pungent smell of sweat mixed with frangipani flowers and the fishy smell from the adjacent market. Behind the crowd of people, the neatly lawned park fringed by palm trees is a blur, an indistinct green background to the multicoloured protest.

“YA YA YA YA! PACIFIC PAWA!” he chants, raising his arm. The crowd erupts, roaring, clapping and yelling along.

It is Saturday morning in Port Vila, Vanuatu, on 8 September which is Climate Action Open Day, an event where youth representatives from southern Pacific states unite to urge action on Climate Change. The event is organised by the NGO CARE in partnership with the University of the South Pacific, who have set up a stage in the park at the waterfront. Loud music and agitating orations are projected to a large audience. Most of the speaking is done in Bislama, the local language, but it is similar enough to English that we can understand that the protesters are imploring action from Pacific neighbours as well as increased resilience-building efforts in the Southern Pacific states. Youth representatives from every South Pacific country are part of the protest, dressed in their national costume and waving their national flags, singing, dancing and chanting. A large crowd is gathered to watch and cheer on the protest.

A proud Solomon Islander wearing traditional costume.

Towards the end of the demonstration, the group moves to the boat dock and boards the beautiful, traditional Polynesian Okeanos Vaka Motu, a 14-metre elaborately adorned catamaran part of an eco-tourism operation which transports visitors between local islands powered by only the wind and coconut oil. The national representatives stand proudly along the bow of the catamaran, holding up flags and banners, their traditional costumes waving in the wind. Onlookers, locals and tourists alike, cheer and clap, stomping in time with the chanting. The man with the megaphone brings a large triton shell to his lips and blow hard, emitting a curiously deep, wailing sound. He blows it three times and then the protest is over and everyone stops to chat, admire the beautiful boat, approach the multinational assembly and ask questions about the cause.

Bow details of the beautiful Okeanos Vanuatu catamaran.

Climate change is only the latest threat in the long, brutal history of Vanuatu. The area was originally settled by the Lapita people (ancestors of Polynesians originating from Taiwan) about 3000 years ago. Around 700 AD, Melanesians arrived from the Solomon Islands displacing the Lapita entirely. For centuries thereafter, the islands were populated by autonomous clans who spoke different languages and raided each other’s villages, eating abducted victims to bodily incorporate their spiritual power.

Europeans entered the picture in 1606 when the Spanish Pedro Fernandez de Quiros sighted (and named) the island now known as Espirito Santo, thinking he had reached the elusive southern continent Terra Australis. He was attacked by locals and had to retreat, and subsequently, Vanuatu was visited by the French (Bougainville) in 1768 and James Cook (who named the area the New Hebrides) in 1774. Sandalwood traders began operating in the area from 1825 onwards; these paid for the wood with guns, tobacco or men from neighbouring villages to be cooked for important ceremonies. The traders treated the indigenous people abhorrently, occasionally taking to distributing smallpox blankets to clear areas of locals to ease access to the prized wood.

When Christian missionaries were sent from the London Missionary Society in 1839 the Ni-Vanuatu (people of Vanuatu) were tired of foreigners, and the new arrivals were promptly clubbed and eaten. After this, Polynesian missionaries were sent from Samoa, but these too sustained heavy losses and the mission was aborted until 1848 when Vanuatu’s Presbyterian mission was established on the island of Aneityum. Blackbirding, the coercion or kidnapping of villagers for use as poorly paid labour on sugar cane plantations in Australia and Fiji or nickel mining in New Caledonia, was rife, resulting in the departure of 50,000 Ni-Vanuatu men between 1863 and 1904, leaving many villages missing half their men. Few returned, although any surviving labourers in Australia were abruptly deported in 1906 when the White Australia Policy came into force.

When the Germans started to show interest in the area, the French and the English set up the Anglo-French Condominium of the New Hebrides and formally settled the islands. Close contact with missionaries, settlers, and smallpox purposefully introduced by the sandalwood traders, resulted in rampant disease which reduced the Vanuatu population from an estimated one million prior to European contact to 41,000 in 1920.

The French and the English continued to administer the islands jointly until rising discontent about land ownership (30% of the land was owned by French or English planters) led to a protracted and bloody struggle which culminated with independence in 1980.

Nowadays, the population of Vanuatu is about 280,000. The economy is mainly based on copra (coconut), beef, coffee, cocoa, and tourism is becoming more important.

Presently, climate change is the most significant threat to sustainable development in Vanuatu, mainly because of the predicted increase in extreme weather event associated with global warming. The main risk is increased frequency and severity of cyclones. In 2015, Cyclone Pam affected 64% of the economy, 60% of the population, and destroyed 96% of the country’s food crops. Apart from cyclones, other climate-related adverse effects to this tiny island state include its fisheries being impacted by rising ocean temperatures and ocean acidification, and the islands being inundated by sea level rise and associated coastal erosion.

Poster urging action from Australia’s new prime minister, Scott Morrison, an ardent climate change denier. Morrison got to power in late August 2018 as the result of a revolt within the country’s right-leaning liberal party, which arose when the previous liberal prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, proposed to address climate change.

Currently, it seems a hopeless struggle. The South Pacific states contribute almost no greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, but as low-lying island states in the cyclone belt, they are disproportionally affected by a changing world. It is great to protest, and I hope with all my being that the world is listening to the South Pacific, heeding the warnings and fulfilling the heart-breaking messages of the paper placards:

We are people of the canoe, we are resilient to climate change

We’re not drowning, we are fighting

Honour Earth all life depends on it

Map showing the contribution towards climate change of different nations (top) versus risk of adverse effects. The countries most at risk are not the ones causing the problem – a matter keenly felt by the South Pacific nations. Source: Samson et al. (2011) Geographic disparities and moral hazards in the predicted impacts of climate change on human populations. Global Ecology and Biogeography 20 (4). https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1466-8238.2010.00632.x.

I admire the action day for its clear action focus – rather than just protesting, the slant is that everyone should join the battle to combat climate change. It is a strong and empowering message, urging Ni-Vanuatu to do something about the largest issue looming over their world today. But unfortunately, their influence over the core problem is minimal. They can work with NGOs and government organisations to increase resilience, to plan for more erratic climate, more frequent cyclones, reduced fishing crops. They can retreat from low-lying areas and plant different crops in new areas in an attempt to outsmart the weather. They can convert local vehicles to biodiesel from sugar cane and use the solar panels distributed by foreign aid organisations to minimise their own greenhouse gas output.

But the truth is that even people of the canoe can drown in a world of a couple of metres of sea-level rise. And going down fighting does not right this last in a long string of wrongs that the western world has imposed on Vanuatu since first contact.

I hope this demonstration, one of many taking place across the South Pacific to increase awareness and urge action on the issue, doesn’t fall on deaf ears.