Hi folks
We had such a event-packed day yesterday that I'm going to divide the day into two and do it in two consecutive days.
There is a village of around 200 people, 8 extended families, by the bay in Port Resolution. The villagers live very simply by growing their own produce, fishing and hunting pigs. They rely very heavily on visiting yachts for other basic essentials such as clothes, fishing hooks, cooking pans, paper, pens etc. For this reason they built Port Resolution Yacht Club to encourage visitors. The Yacht Club is basically a large open building with some basic cooking facilities, three guest huts, and a separate toilet and shower hut. The Yacht Club building also serves as a centre for the community, a meeting, cooking and feeding place for all the villagers. The village share all tasks and have communal meals.
We were very lucky to be formally, ceremonially welcomed to the village at 1pm yesterday. We gathered on the beach below and were led to a ceremonial meeting place where we were treated to dances by first the men and boys, and then the women and girls. All the villagers were involved. Our picture shows mainly the women dancers. We were then led by a John Frumm (info on this later) band in a procession up to the Yacht Club, passing under an arch of flowers to all have a garland placed around our necks. There was then some more ceremonial dancing performed by the women which was followed by the exchange of gifts. For the exchange of gifts the skippers were all given hats made from palm leaves and decorated with flowers and we then brought forward our gifts to them and placed them in the centre. The villagers then laid their gifts in a pile in the centre. Their generosity was humbling. There were large baskets made of palm leaves filled to the brim with fruit - one for each boat, hand-woven baskets and mats, decorated sticks and a live small pig. Everything was beautifully presented - unlike our plastic bags of goods, and had been made or grown by the villagers whereas we had just bought our gifts from a shop. In our basket we had a whole hand of bananas, aubergines, spring onion, christophenes, papaya, limes and two different unidentified roots .
Rest of this day will be reported tomorrow. Too much text for email otherwise.
For info the villagers believe in John Frumm. This is one of several cargo cults in the Pacific and are thought to originate from the Americans dropping supplies by plane. They are waiting for John Frumm to arrive in the air and shower gifts from the sky. John Frumm is thought by some to be a corruption of 'John Come'.
Read tomorrow's exciting episode to hear about the amazing volcano and the village feast.
Best wishes
Jackie & Michael
village welcome