Melanesia, Lost and Found
By Pepper Trail

There is nothing quite like days at sea in the South Pacific. The sea is calm and blue, the clouds are white, and the islands, coming over the horizon one after another, are green and wild. And what wonderful names they have! Viti Levu, Espiritu Santo, Kolombangara, Tulagi, Gizo, Bougainville, Buka. Each mysterious, evocative name promises adventure – or, if you happen to be sailing on a ridiculously well-equipped and comfortable cruise ship, at least something new and exciting. On island after island, that is what you find.

This past March, I spent three weeks as a naturalist aboard the Clipper Odyssey, wandering through the remote archipelagos in the lower left corner of the South Pacific. Stretching west of the more famous islands of Polynesia, this vast region is named not for any feature of the islands themselves, but rather for the people who live upon them. The people are black-skinned, and so this is Melanesia: the Black Islands.

Within living memory, the islands of Melanesia were on everybody’s lips, and one of them resonates still: Guadalcanal. There, in the Solomon Islands, the United States and Japan fought a series of great naval battles in 1942 and 1943. Before that cataclysm, the Solomons, and the nearby islands of Vanuatu and the Bismarck Archipelago, had been only lightly touched by Western colonial development. On many of the islands, the people still lived as they had for thousands of years – except that the former practices of headhunting and occasional cannibalism had been discouraged by missionaries.

Today, these islands, found for such a brief and violent interlude, have been lost again. For the visitor, they offer a window into a former world, a world where distinctive cultures and unique island wildlife still flourish, and where travelers are welcomed warmly, proudly, and not (entirely) based upon commercial calculations.

The only part of Melanesia that is regularly visited by tourists is Fiji, and that is where we began our voyage. Fiji is an archipelago of over 300 islands, located about 1500 miles northeast of Australia, in the imaginary transition zone between “Melanesia” and “Polynesia.” As our shipboard anthropologist, Shirley Campbell, frequently reminded us, these regional designations are highly artificial, reflecting more than anything the strange human preoccupation with skin color. The Fijians are black, and their Polynesian neighbors, the Tongans and Samoans, are brown, but there are countless cultural similarities among these islands.

As a former resident of American Samoa, I felt very much at home in Fiji. The open, thatched-roofed homes (“bure” in Fijian; “fale” in Samoan), the growing of taro as a staple starch (and not yams, as farther west in Melanesia), and the fondness for the mildly narcotic drink kava are just a few of the commonalities between Fiji and Samoa.
After a day of relaxation to overcome our jet lag, we boarded the Odyssey in the port city of Nadi, and embarked for the Yasawas, a string of islands west of the main Fijian islands of Viti Levu and Vanua Levu. So spectacular is the scenery here that these islands have been repeatedly used as the location for South Pacific films, including Blue Lagoon and Castaway. It was indeed beautiful, but I have to say that the memory I treasure most from the Yasawas was a song performance by schoolchildren on the island of Waya. The exuberance and pride of the children in singing for the visitors was unforgettable. As we sailed away in the evening, a rainbow appeared in the clouds towering over the island. Perfection.

For the next two days we made our way at a bicyclist’s pace southwest toward the Vanuatu archipelago. Sailing through deep tropical waters can test even the most dedicated naturalist’s mettle. Around islands there are always birds in the sky, but far out to sea in these windless latitudes, hours can pass between one seabird sighting and the next. Fortunately, there were abundant flying fish, bursting from the waves in front of our bow, sailing far over the glassy surface in glittering splendor, before disappearing as abruptly and completely as they had appeared. And, when worse came to worst, I could always...relax.
After our leisurely passage, we arrived off the island of Ambrym. Beneath its two smoking volcanoes, girdled with black sand beaches, Ambrym looks as if its reputation as the home of powerful magic is well-deserved. We were here to witness the famous Rom dance, an initiation ritual performed only on Ambrym. But first our captain had to pass an initiation of his own: killing a pig. With a club. This was unquestionably an ordeal for our urbane British captain, immaculate in his dress whites, but he accomplished the task quickly and humanely, with a single blow. The division of the pig’s meat throughout the village is an essential component of the Rom ceremony, which functions in complex ways to adjust the status of the male dancers.

The Rom dancers emerged from the lush forest of breadfruit, coconut, and mango trees onto an arena of perfectly smooth pounded earth. Each was hidden within a suit of dried banana leaves, surmounted by a tall, elaborately carved and painted mask. The ceremony proceeds to the beating of a slit drum, the chanting and the stamping of the dancers. After a time, the rhythm becomes hypnotic...and time does pass. In my experience, one essential difference between authentic cultural activities and “touristic” ones is duration. The real thing takes time, a lot of time. During Ambrym’s Rom dance, there was no concession to the audience, and the concentration of the dancers was complete.

Afterwards, of course, there were plenty of opportunities for posed photographs and for the purchase of the island’s spectacular carvings. The people of Ambrym so far seem able to maintain the integrity of their culture while taking advantage of the opportunities that it brings them. May that gift – magical indeed – never desert them.

After two pleasant days in Vanuatu, snorkeling and exploring, it was time to set sail for the Solomon Islands. To my mind, this is the perfect archipelago. Almost 1000 islands are grouped around a long gulf that runs northwest-southeast, so at all times you travel among islands, feeling both at sea and protected. Some of the islands are huge and mountainous, others are shell-strewn sandbars large enough only for a couple of coconut palms. And every now and then, in the midst of this tropical idyll, you encounter the incongruous and appalling artifacts of war.

Our first stop was little Santa Ana, a forested island just big enough for two villages and a lovely freshwater lake. Here we were entertained with music and dances that were certainly a performance of traditional rituals, rather than the rituals themselves. But, the enthusiasm of the dancers and the skill of the musicians were irresistible, and it seemed that the whole population of the island had turned out to watch. The highlight for the crowd was clearly a simulated raid by a band of ash-smeared warriors upon a hapless group of mud-smeared villagers, with the struggling victims carried off into the forest. We could only imagine what social scores were being settled!

On Santa Ana, we encountered Melanesia’s unique “pan pipes” for the first time. These bear as much resemblance to a set of simple blown pan pipes as a penny whistle does to a pipe organ. Melanesian pan pipes are massive affairs, racks of bamboo tubes up to six feet long lashed together and angled so as to be played as a percussion instrument. Formerly, we were told, the ends of the pipes were struck with tightly-woven paddles of pandanus leaves, but players have discovered that the flexible soles of well-worn flip-flops work even better, and these are now universal. When stuck, each tube produces a hollow, echoing musical note, and the array of different tubes allows a great range of tones.

The visual effect is of a hybrid between pan pipes and a xylophone, and that is rather what the music sounds like. Several players are always involved, and the complexity of the rhythms they produce is extraordinary. Wherever we stopped in the Solomons, we were greeted with this music, which somehow manages to be both powerfully percussive and haunting at the same time.

Leaving Santa Ana, we sailed northwest up the “Slot”, as the Solomon’s gulf is called, toward Guadalcanal, and into the war zone. As is usual in expedition cruises, the Odyssey carries a small fleet of Zodiacs for explorations off the ship. We dropped anchor off Guadalcanal, and, guided by our on-board WW II historian, launched ourselves into a maze of islets and narrow, mangrove-lined channels. The sun beat down and most of the passengers occupied themselves looking for lurking saltwater crocodiles (none were spotted), while I followed the flights of parrots overhead: bright green Eclectus parrots, scarlet Cardinal Lories, and large white cockatoos, splitting the humid air with their cries. There was no sign of human presence anywhere.

Then, we rounded yet another anonymous bend, and looming before us was a monument to human industry and violence: the huge rusting hulk of a sunken navy transport. This is LST-342, one of a class of vessels designated “Landing Ship, Tank” by navy bureaucrats, and re-designated “Large Slow Target” by the sailors who had the misfortune to be carried aboard them. This 1600-ton ship, loaded with ammunition and supplies, was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine on July 18, 1943. The explosion blew the vessel apart, and the stern, where most of the crew had been sleeping, sank. A few survived by scrambling onto the bow portion of the vessel, which somehow remained afloat and was later towed for salvage into the mangrove channel where it rests today.

As we cruised slowly around the wreck, I pondered what the Solomon Island natives’ experience of World War II must have been. The unbelievably destructive firepower, the overwhelming technology, and the incomprehensible objectives of the conflict could not have been more alien if the combatants had been invaders from outer space. It must have been a hallucinatory nightmare. In other words, the Solomon Islanders probably saw the war far more clearly than did the American and Japanese sailors caught up in it.

We made a few other World War II stops on our voyage, including the tiny islet where the young John F. Kennedy swam to safety after his PT-109 collided with a Japanese destroyer. Today, the islet and the reefs surrounding the nearby island of Gizo offer some of the best snorkeling in the world. Floating on my belly above the fabulous multi-colored reef, I could not have felt more removed from Kennedy’s experience of terror and courage in these same waters. Instead of torpedoes, torpedofish. Clownfish nestled in the purple tendrils of sea anemones; clouds of turquoise damselfish hung suspended over great branching thickets of staghorn coral; yellow and black butterflyfish picked morsels from the reef with their long slender mouths. I’m a biologist and am well aware that the natural world is full of violence. But in nature, violence exists in dynamic balance with vitality. Through the long drama of evolution, life achieves a richness that we experience as harmony and beauty. After the wreckage of war, it was healing to put my head under the water, and lose myself in the vibrant life of the reef.

Our next stop, at Viru on the island of New Georgia, was the most memorable Solomon Islands day of all for me. Here, culture and nature combined to produce indelible images. We cruised up the narrow channel at dawn, as the rising sun bathed the graceful shoreline palms and the welcoming canoes in rosy light. Huge Papuan Hornbills flapped heavily over the surrounding forest. After the usual ceremonies of greeting ashore, we climbed a steep hill toward the village school. Crossing the grassy square, we were suddenly surrounded by a band of nearly naked and wildly bellowing warriors.

Now, to be honest, this was not entirely a surprise. In Melanesia, visitors are traditionally met with theatrical displays of threat by bands of village warriors. In the old days of inter-island raiding, this demonstrated the vigor of the village’s defenses, and after a short and aggressive performance, the visitors, presumably suitably intimidated, could be welcomed. We had experienced such displays before, but none were carried off with anything like the style of Viru’s. Viru’s chief warrior was – there is no other word for it – a star. His face theatrically painted half black and half white, his body adorned with disks of shell money, brandishing a bow and arrow and wooden axe with utterly convincing ferocity, he strode back and forth, commanding the eyes of all. And to perfect the effect, his first blood-curdling whoop sent into flight the large roost of flying foxes concealed in the tree above us. These huge bats, each as large as a cat, suddenly filled the sky, their black membranous wings pounding against the air, and their harsh screeching cries filling our ears. We were all extremely well-behaved for the duration of our visit to this most well-defended village!

After almost ten days in the Solomon Islands, we sailed northwest out of the Slot, and charted a course for the Bismarck Archipelago, a group of islands lying north of New Guinea. Our destination was the city of Rabaul, on the large island of New Britain. Set in a spectacular, nearly circular harbor, this gracious city was once known as “The Pearl of the Pacific.”

That was then; this is now. That circular harbor is the drowned crater of a vast volcano, and in 1994, two vents on either side of it exploded, burying Rabaul in ash. Fifteen years later, its people are still digging out.

Approaching Rabaul from the sea is not for the faint of heart. We sailed directly into the cloud of ash pouring off the Tururvur volcano, which spreads many miles out to sea. For a time, the gritty and sulfurous air drove everyone off the decks, and we crowded into the bridge to watch in silence as the volcano drew closer and closer. Finally, the Odyssey ducked beneath the windborne plume, and we could see the mountain properly for the first time. Every few minutes, another great belch of ash eructed from the mouth, flinging out massive lava bombs that solidified in the air and fell back to roll ponderously down the gray slopes, adding to the ever-rising cone My previous experience of volcanic eruption had been Hawaii’s Kilauea. Tururvur was nothing like that fiery mountain’s glowing flows and fountains of lava. Here, all was grim and gray. It was awe-inspiring, yes; but exhilarating – not at all.

Rabaul itself was the same. It truly was awe-inspiring to see the persistence of the people in the face of this daily rain of ash. Their struggle is classically Sisyphean: unending, unwinnable, and utterly beyond their control. And yet, struggle on they do, spreading their produce in the ash-covered market, the vegetables shockingly green against the gray; bravely leading tours to vanished spots (“This used to be the golf course... This used to be the yacht club”); and digging, always digging.

The end of our tour was at the shores of a small bay directly across from Tururvur. A boiling-hot stream seeped up out of the ash, and flowed steaming into the sea. All was gray: the land, the sky, the sea; even the ash-coated trunks of a coconut plantation killed by the volcano’s poisonous fumes. Here the mountain was frighteningly close, and we could hear it breathing. The great rhythmic gasps and roars sounded strangely familiar, but how? A fellow passenger answered my silent question. “It sounds,” she said, never taking her eyes off the smoking summit, “like a dragon.”

From Rabaul, we sailed south for New Guinea, where we would begin the long series of flights leading homeward. But first, in the finest tradition of expedition cruising, the Odyssey’s captain and expedition leader decided on one last, unscheduled adventure. We would take the ship into the treacherous, muddy mouth of New Guinea’s greatest river, the Sepik.

Almost 25 years ago, as a young researcher at the California Academy of Sciences, I was offered the opportunity to join a natural history tour of Papua New Guinea. A major feature of the trip was a cruise up the Sepik River, into the heart of New Guinea’s wild northern lowlands. To my unspeakable disappointment, the itinerary proved a little too adventurous, and the trip was cancelled due to lack of passengers. Ever since then, the Sepik has had a powerful hold on my imagination. This unexpected chance to travel up its waters, if only for a few hours, was intoxicating.

The Odyssey inched forward into the mouth of the river, the captain at the helm and the first mate calling out depth soundings. It quickly became clear that the mouth was a maze of uncharted mud banks, impassible for a ship of the Odyssey’s size. So, we dropped anchor and deployed our Zodiacs. The tide and the great river’s current were both running out, and our little craft had to use all their power to push their way upstream to the village of Kopar, about 2 miles from the mouth.

Here, for the first time on our voyage, we arrived at a village completely unannounced. No greeting had been prepared for us; no carvings were spread out awaiting buyers. Despite our unexpected arrival, we were welcomed warmly, and allowed the privilege of seeing the residents of Kopar go about their everyday activities.

In this region, the staple starch is a sort of flour produced from the woody pith of sago palms. These palms grow in areas too wet for root crops like yams or taro, and each tree can yield hundreds of pounds of starch. But extracting the flour seems like an endless labor, and we saw children as young as three years old engaged in the chopping, grinding, washing, straining, and drying that are required. Elsewhere, women did their washing, children chased each other up and down the muddy riverbanks, pigs rooted and dogs napped in the shade beneath the houses, which are raised on stilts to avoid the floods that are frequent in these swampy lowlands.

Before we left, a local boy offered to guide our Zodiac up a side channel into the sago palm swamp. The channel grew narrower and narrower, until we had to keep a constant watch to avoid the long spines on the sago fronds overhanging the waterway. Finally, we could go no further in the broad Zodiac, and coasted to a stop where a woman and her son were at work hacking open the trunk of a newly felled palm. The woman looked up, nodded, and returned to her work, unimpressed with this bizarre rubber boatload of brightly colored tourists. Her son, taking a rest in their dugout canoe, continued to stare into space. The woman wore a cotton dress and used a metal machete, but her ancestors had been performing this same activity in these same swamps for untold thousands of years. Gazing at the boy, lost in his daydream, I felt myself lost in the depths of time that flow here as slowly and as powerfully as the waters of the Sepik itself.

We turned downstream, and soon felt the tug of current that would push us, ever faster, toward home. As the Odyssey came into view, I knew the mingled exhilaration and regret that for me mark the end of every journey. On the banks of the Sepik River, I had glimpsed a lost world, and there something of myself will always remain.

A gallery of Pepper Trail’s Melanesia photographs is available at:  http://picasaweb.google.com/pepper.trail/Melanesia?authkey=Gv1sRgCPSaq-LyrtbNjAE#

Pepper Trail is an Ashland naturalist and writer. To read more of his work, visit his
websites www.peppertrail.net and www.earthprecepts.net.