lostinstrangeworld
22-09-2007, 08:26 PM
By RICHARD SHEARS
At some time today, perhaps when a big sun is sinking behind the jungle-clad mountains, Chief Yata will sit cross-legged under a banyan tree on a Pacific island and tell his people about his journey to a sad and cheerless land far beyond the horizon.
He will describe how the people there lie in the streets with no place to shelter and how those who do have houses hurry to work each morning, unsmiling, in the chase for money.
It is a place, he says, where the culture is upside down, where animals in many cases receive more love than humans, and personal greed, rather than sharing, is the general rule.
http://img.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2007/09_03/SavagesDM2109_468x412.jpg
Going native: Left to right, Posen, Joel, Albi and Chief Yata in London
Sitting with Chief Yata under the banyan tree will be children, taking in every word with wide-eyed fascination, and old men in loin cloths tutting sorrowfully at the plight of the people who live in that country he visited - a country called Britain.
For Chief Yata has recently returned from taking four tribespeople from their native villages to what we believe is our developed world.
The British adventure was arranged for a forthcoming three-part series, Meet The Natives, to be shown on Channel 4, starting next Thursday.
The producers were inspired by a Daily Mail story I wrote about the islanders' fervent belief that they have a special link with Britain and, in particular, Buckingham Palace.
Their legend tells how, fed up with prosletysing Victorian missionaries, a spiritual ancestor went to Britain to stop them coming and ended up married to a queen.
So when the Royal Yacht Britannia visited their island in the Seventies and Prince Philip visited a village, they immediately took him to be a deity, as they do to this day.
None of them had ever visited Britain before their journey here for this series. For many, their only link to "civilisation" was that one village's contact with the Duke of Edinburgh, who has sent them signed photographs of himself on hearing they had recognised him as a god.
But since returning from his travels through the length and breadth of Britain, the Chief has told the same stories of despair over and over again, yet his people continue to gather each day at their traditional meeting place, the banyan tree, and implore him to repeat his astonishing tales.
No one can believe that people lie dirty in rags in the streets with no roof over their heads, yet there are pooch parlours where dogs are shampooed, powdered and have their hair cut.
To the village people on Tanna, one of the southern islands in the Vanuatu group - a country voted the happiest place on the planet with barely any environmental footprint in a global survey last year - Britain is a very strange and pitiful land.
Their sadness over the discovery is made more poignant by their conviction that Vanuatu and Britain were once joined together geographically.
It had to be so, they insist, for Vanuatu was formerly known as the New Hebrides, named by explorer Captain Cook after the Hebrides off the Scottish mainland. He must have given the islands that name for a reason, they agree.
In a mirror image of European mariners setting out in sailing ships to make contact with natives in faraway lands, what they saw in Britain was a country where the daily scenes were opposites of their own society.
But after five weeks of travelling, the fun-loving islanders could not leave that crowded, polluted, land fast enough and return to their own simple traditions, where there is calm, laughter, no envy, no greed and the word "mean" does not exist.
To understand why they were so shocked by much of what they found on their arrival in the Duke of Edinburgh's "big, big country", we should first look at the lifestyles of a people whose traditions have changed little since the Europeans arrived in the Vanuatu group centuries ago.
The tribespeople readily admit that the explorers and the missionaries could be thanked for gradually - and often at personal cost - stamping out the practice of warring groups eating one another.
But, that aside, Western influence has had little impact on the day-to-day routine in remote villages.
Islanders wake each day under pollution-free skies to a cacophony of crowing roosters and birdsong before setting about daily tasks, tending organic fruits and vegetables.
Food is shared with those who are less fortunate and anyone who finds himself without a home has a hut built for him by the entire village.
Everything is simple. There is no money among the Tanna tribes - instead there is an exchange system in which a pig, for example, might be exchanged for a clutch of hens.
The women have no wish to apply make-up, although they will daub their faces for a village ceremony when they will all dance together.
A childless couple might be offered a baby from another family, with no gifts or favours expected in return. Food and clothing are shared and there is a sense of joy in the air.
Children do not have first cousins or second cousins, uncles or aunties - the youngsters are all brothers and sisters to one another while an aunt is simply known as "little mother".
Everything revolves around the family, the underlying theme being love and respect. If a problem arises the dispute is resolved through mediation, when both sides sit with the elders and the respective families under the banyan tree and peacefully settle their differences.
There is no TV; no radio. Children are not influenced by real or make-believe violence beamed out from a studio far away. Instead they listen to folk stories. They are in their family's care until they are ready to marry and the cycle starts again.
If they fall ill, traditional medicine is used as much as possible, for to send for a Western doctor or get a patient to him can be a daunting journey to or from the jungle and, anyway, they place more trust in the local "clever" as he is known.
In most cases, the village medicine man - who takes no umbrage at being called a witch doctor - is successful with his treatment.
Such is the idyllic life Chief Yata left behind as he boarded the jet with his companions, Joel, a medicine man; Posen, a farmer; Albi, a dancer; Jimmy Joseph, the translator and Keo producer Will Anderson.
"I didn't know what to expect, what lay ahead for us, as we took off," says 33-year-old Mr Anderson. "It was very much a journey of discovery for them and for me.
"But any reservations I might have had about how they were going to cope were quickly dispelled for they turned out to be quick-witted, sharp and observant."
At some time today, perhaps when a big sun is sinking behind the jungle-clad mountains, Chief Yata will sit cross-legged under a banyan tree on a Pacific island and tell his people about his journey to a sad and cheerless land far beyond the horizon.
He will describe how the people there lie in the streets with no place to shelter and how those who do have houses hurry to work each morning, unsmiling, in the chase for money.
It is a place, he says, where the culture is upside down, where animals in many cases receive more love than humans, and personal greed, rather than sharing, is the general rule.
http://img.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2007/09_03/SavagesDM2109_468x412.jpg
Going native: Left to right, Posen, Joel, Albi and Chief Yata in London
Sitting with Chief Yata under the banyan tree will be children, taking in every word with wide-eyed fascination, and old men in loin cloths tutting sorrowfully at the plight of the people who live in that country he visited - a country called Britain.
For Chief Yata has recently returned from taking four tribespeople from their native villages to what we believe is our developed world.
The British adventure was arranged for a forthcoming three-part series, Meet The Natives, to be shown on Channel 4, starting next Thursday.
The producers were inspired by a Daily Mail story I wrote about the islanders' fervent belief that they have a special link with Britain and, in particular, Buckingham Palace.
Their legend tells how, fed up with prosletysing Victorian missionaries, a spiritual ancestor went to Britain to stop them coming and ended up married to a queen.
So when the Royal Yacht Britannia visited their island in the Seventies and Prince Philip visited a village, they immediately took him to be a deity, as they do to this day.
None of them had ever visited Britain before their journey here for this series. For many, their only link to "civilisation" was that one village's contact with the Duke of Edinburgh, who has sent them signed photographs of himself on hearing they had recognised him as a god.
But since returning from his travels through the length and breadth of Britain, the Chief has told the same stories of despair over and over again, yet his people continue to gather each day at their traditional meeting place, the banyan tree, and implore him to repeat his astonishing tales.
No one can believe that people lie dirty in rags in the streets with no roof over their heads, yet there are pooch parlours where dogs are shampooed, powdered and have their hair cut.
To the village people on Tanna, one of the southern islands in the Vanuatu group - a country voted the happiest place on the planet with barely any environmental footprint in a global survey last year - Britain is a very strange and pitiful land.
Their sadness over the discovery is made more poignant by their conviction that Vanuatu and Britain were once joined together geographically.
It had to be so, they insist, for Vanuatu was formerly known as the New Hebrides, named by explorer Captain Cook after the Hebrides off the Scottish mainland. He must have given the islands that name for a reason, they agree.
In a mirror image of European mariners setting out in sailing ships to make contact with natives in faraway lands, what they saw in Britain was a country where the daily scenes were opposites of their own society.
But after five weeks of travelling, the fun-loving islanders could not leave that crowded, polluted, land fast enough and return to their own simple traditions, where there is calm, laughter, no envy, no greed and the word "mean" does not exist.
To understand why they were so shocked by much of what they found on their arrival in the Duke of Edinburgh's "big, big country", we should first look at the lifestyles of a people whose traditions have changed little since the Europeans arrived in the Vanuatu group centuries ago.
The tribespeople readily admit that the explorers and the missionaries could be thanked for gradually - and often at personal cost - stamping out the practice of warring groups eating one another.
But, that aside, Western influence has had little impact on the day-to-day routine in remote villages.
Islanders wake each day under pollution-free skies to a cacophony of crowing roosters and birdsong before setting about daily tasks, tending organic fruits and vegetables.
Food is shared with those who are less fortunate and anyone who finds himself without a home has a hut built for him by the entire village.
Everything is simple. There is no money among the Tanna tribes - instead there is an exchange system in which a pig, for example, might be exchanged for a clutch of hens.
The women have no wish to apply make-up, although they will daub their faces for a village ceremony when they will all dance together.
A childless couple might be offered a baby from another family, with no gifts or favours expected in return. Food and clothing are shared and there is a sense of joy in the air.
Children do not have first cousins or second cousins, uncles or aunties - the youngsters are all brothers and sisters to one another while an aunt is simply known as "little mother".
Everything revolves around the family, the underlying theme being love and respect. If a problem arises the dispute is resolved through mediation, when both sides sit with the elders and the respective families under the banyan tree and peacefully settle their differences.
There is no TV; no radio. Children are not influenced by real or make-believe violence beamed out from a studio far away. Instead they listen to folk stories. They are in their family's care until they are ready to marry and the cycle starts again.
If they fall ill, traditional medicine is used as much as possible, for to send for a Western doctor or get a patient to him can be a daunting journey to or from the jungle and, anyway, they place more trust in the local "clever" as he is known.
In most cases, the village medicine man - who takes no umbrage at being called a witch doctor - is successful with his treatment.
Such is the idyllic life Chief Yata left behind as he boarded the jet with his companions, Joel, a medicine man; Posen, a farmer; Albi, a dancer; Jimmy Joseph, the translator and Keo producer Will Anderson.
"I didn't know what to expect, what lay ahead for us, as we took off," says 33-year-old Mr Anderson. "It was very much a journey of discovery for them and for me.
"But any reservations I might have had about how they were going to cope were quickly dispelled for they turned out to be quick-witted, sharp and observant."