Baylis - Man Belong Mrs Queen, Adventures With the Philip Worshippers

P EOPLE on those islands dreaded the west wind, saying it was the wind that blew Pedro Fernndez de Quirs, the first white man to reach their shores, four hundred summers before. At bedtime children still were chilled by their grandparents tales of the floating houses, filled with pale ghosts, who killed men with their exploding sticks. When the wind blew, they sang special songs to chase it away.

A wind blew me into town, too a gritty kind that came with blue skies and fast-moving clouds, more like the Mersey than Melanesia. Reminds me of home, I murmured as I took my first steps on the island of Tanna. Yes, you will be broken in this place, Nako said, pulling me from the path of a slow-moving luggage cart. It would turn out to be an apt pronouncement .

Id picked up Nako, son of the chief of Yaohnanen village, in the capital, Port Vila, and wed flown here with a crate of tools to build a school. That was part of the reason for my visit, anyway. Id paid for Nakos flights, and the deal was that hed be my guide and interpreter . It was a challenge to which hed risen with grave enthusiasm, placing a blazer from Brisbane Girls Grammar School over his trademark floral shirt. Nako, like many an enterprising Man Tanna, had been working as a taxi driver in Port Vila until some indistinct episode had relieved him of both vehicle and licence. He was now driving me instead.

In Lenakel, Tannas main town, he had us wait several hours under a banyan tree, until a man with one tooth and a T-shirt bearing the legend Maximum Strength gave us a ride in a truck. We drove down a sandy seaside road with nothing but churches on either side. Some were sturdy and log-built, seeming to frown upon the ramshackle tin tabernacles of their neighbours, whose wonky signs promised the imminent End of Time. One sign turned out to be a calendar of forthcoming attractions , and I was able to read it as our driver paused to let some goats cross the road. Monday: a talk by Pastor Peter Crean of the Church of the Alive and Descended Christ, Auckland. Tuesday: Ladies Circle. Wednesday: ping-pong. If the end was nigh, then it wasnt as nigh as Wednesday. But it, and all the neighbouring signs and posters, told me something about the Tannese attitude to religion. It was their religions that interested me. And one in particular.

Just before the coastal road began to veer inland, we passed a group of Australian girls, coming screaming from the ocean in their bathing costumes. Nako said they were staying at the Lovely Bungalows. Two thousand five hundred vatu for every night. For dark, tribal reasons beyond my ken, Nako possessed a number of crumpled brochures for the Lovely Bungalows in his kitbag, and one was now handed to our driver. I asked him why, but the only thing hed say was that everything in his village, for a man like myself, would be free. Once I had acknowledged this with a gracious nod it wasnt the first gracious nod Id been required to give on the subject he asked for several thousand vatu to pay for the truck.

Half an hour of chiefly vertical travel followed, up through folds of rain-fed palms to a village in the air. We dismounted in its nakamal, a huge circular meeting space outside the settlement. Nako cried Lhua! in a high-pitched yodel and the surrounding bush turned, dream-like, into a crowd of approaching people: men and women, glistening from their work in the terraced yam gardens. Above us curled banyan trees like gnarled, paternal hands. Behind was Tukosmwera, tooth-like mountain home of gods. It was a dramatic setting. A circle formed around me. Everyone settled down for a good stare. Nako nipped off for a slash.

So this was the Man Ples: the people of the area. They were very black and covered in a film of dust that gave them the appearance of statues. The adults looked strong, and the children looked happy, but they all had great Ws of grey snot on their upper lips, and rattling coughs. The men carried large machetes. What I mainly noticed, though, were the T-shirts.