Naked in Dangerous Places - Cash Peters [11]
Farther along, in a clearing, I spot some gangly teenagers in yellow soccer shirts kicking a ball about while their parents—mostly the fathers—sit close by, propping themselves up against a tree in the shade. At the same time, not too far away, weary-looking women in floral Mother Hubbards are hard at work, staggering along the road in the sun, spines stiff as mop-handles lest their bodies buckle under the weight of the heavy bundles balanced on their heads.
“What language do they speak here?” Tasha asks our driver. She's itching to talk to someone.
“Bislama,” comes the reply.
“Oh! So how do I say hello?”
Actually, I know the answer to that. There are phrases in the back of my guidebook. According to this, if you want to say “Hello” to a Tanna person, you say, “Alo.”
“You say, ‘Alo,’” the driver agrees, then goes on to provide us with a string of other words and phrases we might find useful during our stay.
“If you want to say, ‘Good morning,’” he shouts, driving forward and staring back at us at the same time, an alarming technique, “then in Bislama you say, ‘Gud morning!’”
Oh, really?
“‘Telephone’ is telefon. ‘Market’ is maket. ‘Excuse me’ is skusmi. And ‘thank you,’” he adds, “translates as ‘tank yu.’”
Okay. Got that. Anything else?
One more: “A simple ‘yes’ and ‘no’ can be communicated easily and efficiently by using the Bislamic words ‘yes’ and ‘no.’”
Hm.
I've always had a gift for tongues and dialects, but this one came particularly easily. Honestly, the nerve of these people, claiming to speak a foreign language when they don't.
Suitably encouraged, Tasha decides to give it a go.
“Alo!” She puts her face to the van window and calls to a small boy hovering bashfully by a hibiscus bush. He laughs and runs away.
Hm. Maybe she didn't pronounce it correctly.
For the remainder of the drive the crew zones out. Five heads bob lazily against torn leather seats, showing only vague interest in a vista of untamed jungle scenery that people not here to shoot a travel show would most likely consider captivating and be taking photos of like mad. This lot, however, they're diehards. Though still relatively young, most of them have seen and done it all many times over.
Eventually, Eric and the two Marks close their eyes and nod off, the tinny scratching of their respective iPods competing with the erratic growl of the van's worn-out gears as we continue on toward the hotel.
Personally, since I wish to retain my hearing into old age, I don't own an iPod. So instead, too anxious to doze, I lose myself in a thick folder of research materials.
According to this, the people in Vanuatu speak around 110 different languages in total. That's roughly one each.
In the early days, because there were many villages spread across the island, the inhabitants had only limited contact with one another. So, rather than remain mute for centuries, which I guess was an option, each community went ahead and developed its own language. As a result, a total of nine hundred separate tongues developed in Melanesia.1 Then, as Vanuatu metamorphosed from a grab bag of isolated tribes into a unified nation, the tongues were consolidated, merging with English and French to become Bislama, a term that derives from the French word “bechede-mer”—literally, sea cucumber. But of course! I mean, what else would you call your national language? “Sea cucumber” was a natural choice.
Before very long, the van turns in through an anonymous gate and rumbles down a narrow track leading to the hotel.
“Alo,” I call to one of the porters as I disembark.
“Alo,” he calls back, shooting me a relieved smile, as if to say, “Thank God someone took the time!”
“Alo,” I call to the man at the reception desk.
“Alo,” he beams, sounding Australian. After a brief flurry of the usual paperwork, he hands me the key to my bungalow.
“A bungalow? Oooh, how great. Tank yu.”
My linguistic dexterity earns an enthusiastic grin, generating