Reaching the village of Tenmaru in the Melanesian South Pacific was quite the task. First, it took Kiki and me nearly 20 hours of trans-Pacific flights to reach Vanuatu by way of Fiji. Then, because Air Vanuatu had just gone out of business, it took us 16 hours on an industrial ferry to reach the island of Malekula one week later. Then, a few days after that, it took half a day of navigating rutted dirt roads in a crowded cage-pickup to reach Tenmaru.
Imagine my surprise, then, when I went out with my hosts to drink kava that evening, and one of the men at the nakamal was wearing a t-shirt featuring the “PowerCat” logo of Kansas State University my own father’s grad-school alma mater. The guy in the shirt, didn’t seem to know much about K-State; it appeared to have been left by a missionary, and he said he’d worn it that night because it matched his shorts.
As for my own apparel, I mentioned in a prior post that my Unbound Merino short-sleeve button-up played a recurring role in my Malekula adventure. This was in part because Kiki thinks it looks good on me, but also because (unlike my cotton t-shirts) I could wear it all day in the South Pacific humidity without it going sour. Plus, at the nakamal, my fellow kava drinkers mentioned multiple times that the shirt gave me a regal bearing. “It makes you look like a member of parliament,” my guide Numa told me.
Since the Big Nambas culture of northwest Vanuatu has long practiced separation of the sexes in certain social situations, Kiki was not allowed to come to the nakamal that night, so she spent the evening in our host’s kitchen with a group of women and children (as well as Max, the brother of the Tenmaru village chief, who doesn’t drink kava because he’s a devout Seventh Day Adventist).
It was fascinating to compare notes with her the next day, since we both learned a ton about village life — from completely different perspectives. The photo berlo depicts one of Kiki’s companions in the kitchen that evening.
Note: “Dispatches” are short vignettes, profiles, and mini-essays written and posted from the road, often in tandem with my Instagram account. I don’t host a “comments” section, but I’m happy to hear your thoughts via my Contact page.
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