The wind plays through her blonde hair. It dances up and down. Sometimes, when the truck drives through a pothole, it jumps up high and falls back onto her shoulders. After a few hours of walking a truck has finally stopped and given us a lift. As 5 of us sit on the back of the truck we pass villages, road markets and schools. Many of them teach in white tents, proudly presenting the UNICEF logo over the open entrance.

The traces of aid are everywhere around Tanna island. Tents, tarps and trucks carry big logos of aid organisations. Ones like “Australian Aid”, UNICEF and The Red Cross I recognise. Others like the Chinese CCECC I have never heard of. In Lenakel all the children were carrying school bags and writing blocks presenting an overly big kangaroo. Proudly sponsored by the Australian government, as if to remind the people who helped them. Or maybe just because they could not think of anything nicer. But roads are built and people receive rice they urgently need until the crops grow again.

It makes me notice my mixed feelings and thoughts about post-catastrophe aid, with all it’s different views and angles, complications and the diversity of it’s realisation. How much technology and help do the people here need? While it is crucial, how much benefit does short-term aid really leave behind?

It is a complicated topic and I decide that I cannot make up my mind over it yet.

After crossing the highlands our road starts to wind downhill, exposing a view over the east coast of Tanna with the big, grey giant soundly sleeping in the north.

As we continue the ground under our tyres starts to change. The stoney road turns into black sand making the movements of our Jeep softer. At a junction we jump off the back and continue walking down the road.

In front of us there he is. He is the reason we came here, he has been calling us. Yasur, the volcano. A dark grey, faceless giant sitting majestically in an otherwise very green and hilly landscape. To the left of it a big hill, covered in dense forrest reaches to the ocean in the east and builds the right wall of the valley in which we will later wander into to find our place for the night. At one point the forrest just stops and the grey, heavy sands and ashes of the volcano suddenly start.

The village we enter, Lamakara, is built around a big plaza with a little, wall-less building. It functions as the church and the greeting house for guests, as the community house and a shading spot during hot, sunny days. Most of the houses are small traditional huts, made from bamboo and coconut leaves. Two for each family, one for sleeping, one for cooking. There are around 40 houses in the whole village, all built in random formations around smaller plazas.

On some of these, pigs are fenced in and piles of wood and stones lie around. The houses come in all kinds of variations, the common features seem to be the material and the triangle roof. In the front the door usually allows entry, sometimes left open, sometimes covered with a leaf or a metal plate. Here and there a house stands on sticks, probably against flood and heavy rains. 

Inside the interior is pretty rudimentary. The ground is covered with leaves, woven into mats. Rooms are separated by colourful sheets hanging from the ceiling. Many of the families use Lumiaids, inflatable solar charging LED’s, and hang them outside of their house during the day. They are supplied by one of the many Aid agencies that flooded into Vanuatu after the Cyclone and have since left. Everywhere around the country they have left their traces.

You can build a traditional house like this in two days if you have the materials ready and know what you are doing. The only stone building stands a little elevated, facing the plaza, overlooking it. It is a bulky, grey stone house with four bamboo flag poles in front of its entrance. On one of these the american flag is raised every morning at 8. Everybody who is present on the main plaza claps for a short moment, looks up and then continues their daily routine. It shall symbolise the strong friendship between Lamakara and the United States of America. Wait, what? When I ask Moses about it he explains: It is the country of John Frum, the soldier, the chosen one. “Who is he?” I ask. “You will see soon” he says.

As we sit in the community house Chief Isaac, Moses’ uncle, welcomes us. He invites us to stay for the night and we are shown the hut we will sleep in. We bring our belongings inside. Tomorrow night we will go up the volcano.

After resting for a little while we go down to the beach. Apart from a woman fishing in the waves and a few guys playing football we are alone. A little river flows next to a high cliff towering into the sky. The water is hot. Natural hot pools. As I sit down all my muscles relax. The heat, as so many other things here, comes from the volcano. It warms your body if you don’t go too close to the spring. It can be a blessing and a curse. With these thoughts in my mind I slowly fall asleep.

Later that evening, as the sun is setting, we walk back from the beach. On the way I see a big red cross standing in the centre of the village we pass through. It has a slightly forgotten little garden in front of it. It reads:

The first piece of a big puzzle starts to unfold in front of us. John was a US soldier that landed on the island in the 40’s during WWII, Moses explains. He stayed in this village for a few weeks and convinced the people to hold onto their Kustoms, their traditions. Then he went back home, leaving behind the promise to return. He never came back but the people kept on hoping. Around this hope a cargo cult, a mystical religion and even a political party with one seat in parliament developed. John Frum, the soldier, became a mystical messiah and part of a bigger prophecy. The prophecy of Yasur. Whether he was even a real person is unclear. Here, the lines between real figures and spirits that appear to people blurs.

The cargo cult started as a movement against the Presbyterian missionaries. Between the early 20th century and WWII they imposed the so called Tanna Law on the people here. Many of them had already moved from their villages to the new missionary settlements near the coast just to be subjected to highly repressive christian practices, designed to change their kastom way of living. But the people on Tanna Island held onto their traditions more than communities on other islands. They went back to their villages and reinforced their old traditions as something they identify with and fight for. Now, the villages are well know all around Vanuatu as Kastom villages. They still wear nambas, penis sheaths and grass skirts, they chew the Kava before drinking it and still talk in their local tongues.