Category: journamalism

Strange Bedfellows

Dan McGarry

[Originally published in the Vanuatu Daily Post‘s Weekender Edition.]

Modern Vanuatu society expresses its values three ways: through kastom, the law and the church. If we reflect honestly on each of them, we have to admit that not one is ideally implemented. Nonetheless, each is inextricably woven into our identity, and thus bound to the other two.

It’s sometimes tempting to think about the tension between each of these influences in exclusive terms, to assume that certain things belong in one domain and therefore not in another. When the chief, the policeman and the pastor don their respective robes of office, we think we see a clear distinction.

But as with all things, the differences are far clearer in the abstract than in real life.

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Whose Success?

Dan McGarry1 Comment

[This week’s Communications column for the Vanuatu Independent.]

I don’t often talk about my motives. Newspapers, in my opinion, make lousy confessionals. I’ll make an exception today, because it helps make a point.

I recently experienced a curious moment. I’d spent a sunny Port Vila Saturday at the office catching up on email, news and whatnot. There were a couple of stories in the local newspaper about communications companies setting up shop here, there was a link to a story about ‘eternal’ airplanes – unmanned spy planes that never have to land. There was a story about spy agencies listening to our Skype calls. One about radio tag implants for everyone, so we can be tracked more easily.

I locked my screen, turned off the lights, and headed out of the office. The sun was westering, drifting almost level with the bay. An acquaintance happened by and invited me for coffee.

I found myself curiously disoriented. It’s happened before, and will no doubt happen again. In the course of a few steps, I’d traveled from an echoing data chamber to a sleepy village where strangers don’t exist.

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Adventures in Paradise

Dan McGarry1 Comment

The rain drives the tourists off the sidewalks, diminishes the Pacific to a neighbourly size, and melts all my plans like ice cream.

I open the paper and read a wandering, questing letter about the ‘beautiful, innocent people of Vanuatu‘, and ache a little because it’s so nearly true.

In the wall-high mirror, a woman spins her Mickey Mouse umbrella, angles it into the wind, and passes the doorway humming. Her vibrant purple and white island dress is garlanded with ribbons and bows.

An obese Hyundai motor coach lumbers to a halt beside the cafe. Emblazoned in heavy capitals along its side: ADVENTURES IN PARADISE. There is no one on board.

I wrote those paragraphs back in 2003. I’d just arrived in Vanuatu, and was trying to express my first inklings of the nature of the people and the place.

The beauty of Vanuatu and its people has worked itself into the very fibre of my being. The ability to remain gracious and smiling through the most arduous circumstances, to snap out a bawdy joke without missing a beat, to remain impassive in the face of gross affront – these aspects of the national character have impressed, confounded and ultimately seduced me.

But this is no one’s Paradise. Nor will it ever be.

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Universal Access

Dan McGarry1 Comment

On Wednesday of this week, Minister Edward Nipake Natapei and Australian High Commissioner John Pilbeam jointly announced the creation of a telecommunications Universal Access Fund. Designed to ensure that communications services reach all parts of Vanuatu, the fund was rolled out with an initial contribution from AusAID of 215 million vatu.

The idea is to allow market forces to work in the vast majority of the country, providing mobile telephone services on a for-profit basis. Digicel’s license terms state that it must make its service available to 85% of the population.

Mobile telephone service costs are tiny compared to traditional land lines. Infrastructure is minimal, and it’s not as susceptible to damage by the elements. Digicel is confident that it can profitably provide services over such a wide area. They’re so confident that they’ve ponied up a significant chunk of cash as a performance bond.

In time we’ll see TVL and smaller, ‘boutique’ operators entering these once marginal markets as well. But there will always be areas in Vanuatu that simply can’t be serviced profitably. This is where government enters the scene. They’ve designated a basket of money that will ensure that everyone from Aneityum to the Torres islands has access to mobile phone services.

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Kastom & The Law: Worlds Apart

Dan McGarry3 Comments

It’s hard to decide whether our comprehensive understanding of the causes of crime should be cause for joy or despair. If we see so clearly what needs doing, why don’t we do it?

(Originally published in the Vanuatu Daily Post‘s Weekender Section.)

Last week’s summit on crime at the University of the South Pacific produced many useful recommendations. Perhaps too many.

The recommendations emerging from the 3 day workshop covered an immense scope: Law enforcement, the judicial and penal systems, the role of chiefs, social justice, ethics and civics education as well as employment were all identified as areas where conditions must improve in order to alleviate crime.

It’s hard to decide whether our comprehensive understanding of the problem should be cause for joy or despair. If we see so clearly what needs doing, why don’t we do it?

Allow me to offer an unwelcome answer: We don’t do anything because we as a society don’t want to.
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You Get What You Pay For

Dan McGarry1 Comment

(Originally published in the Vanuatu Daily Post‘s Weekender Section.)

Since the Australian Federal Police brought Project Wickenby to Vanuatu with the arrest of local resident Robert Agius and raids at PKF House and elsewhere, people here have been outraged over what they characterise as Australian arrogance. Australia, they charge, feels it’s bought the right to act as it pleases here. By making the government of Vanuatu dependant on their money and advisors, many argue, Australia has subverted Vanuatu sovereignty and now operates as it pleases here.

Mr. Agius stands accused of funneling about $100 million into Vanuatu as phony consulting fees. Prosecutors claim these fees – minus a commission for Mr. Agius – were then sent back to Australia as loans. The loans’ tax-free status allowed participants in the alleged scheme to avoid paying as much as $13 million in taxes.

News reports indicate that Mr. Agius is accused of having earned about $1.4 million from his involvement in this scheme.

The Agius affair is treated as a business story by Australian news sources. The contrast with how it’s reported in Vanuatu could not be starker. Mr. Agius’ guilt or innocence is secondary in the local narrative. This is, above all, a story about Vanuatu’s sovereignty, or lack thereof.

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Kastom in the Virtual Nasara

Dan McGarry

In Vanuatu, Kastom takes a lifetime to learn. More complex than any set of laws, it’s a tightly woven fabric of behaviour that is in a constant state of redefinition. Defined by respect and mutual support, it is measured and arbitrated by our chiefs and enforced by the community as a whole. It is at once amorphous and innately understood.

Although it manifests itself differently from one island to another, the importance of one’s name is integral to finding one’s place in local kastom. Indeed, the highest honour an expat can earn in Vanuatu is to be given a name. A naming ceremony implies the attainment of (usually honourary) chiefly rank. One’s name, in short, is the ultimate expression of one’s place, standing and role in the community. It conveys the very essence of its bearer.

Practices vary from island to island, but choosing – and using – a person’s name is rife with overtones about one’s relation to others. Expats are often confused, and sometimes amused, by most ni-Vanuatu’s unwillingness to address others by name. People are instead referred to in terms of their familial relationship to the speaker. Where relationships are unknown or ambiguous – between strangers, for example – a local default usually exists. It’s common to be addressed as ‘tawi’ in Tanna, though strictly speaking that would make you the person’s brother or sister in law. In a delightful example of linguistic drift, young women in North Malekula are almost universally addressed as ‘uncle’.

So why, when names possess such a strong tabu here in Vanuatu, do we put no stock at all in how Vanuatu’s name is used on the Internet?
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Only the Angels Cry

Dan McGarry7 Comments

Shortly after the news of his son’s death reached me, I encountered Nathan in the space outside his office. In the Vanuatu fashion, I offered my condolences quietly, with few words. Nathan just stood there in front of me, rudderless, smiling as people do when there’s nothing to be said, nothing more to be done. His own life, his future, was gone.

Dead of a boiler. Dead of nothing at all.

Nathan’s little boy died of nothing. The seven year-old got a boiler in his nose. It was painful, but nothing a course of antibiotics couldn’t fix. Nathan dutifully brought his boy to the island hospital, and requested treatment. As usual, there was no doctor present, but a nurse gave him some medicine. The pills were past their expiry date, but they were better than nothing.

The inflammation subsided, and the boy was able the sleep again for a while. The infection, however, didn’t disappear. Once the under-strength antibiotics had run their course, it came back with a vengeance.

To look at the boy, there wasn’t much wrong. A little swelling around one eye and nostril, but otherwise nothing. What you couldn’t see was the constant, excruciating pain as the infection moved into his sinuses and began to press against his brain.
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Clearing the Ground

Dan McGarry

The Vanuatu National Training Council (VNTC) recently presented their vision of an industry-driven training regime here in Vanuatu. The approach is based on what they call Competency Based Training. In simple terms, this approach is aimed to help people learn relevant and useful skills, and importantly, to be able to earn formal recognition for skills they already have. By measuring these skills using well-understood benchmarks, people would be assured that their skills are recognised by employers throughout the Pacific and even beyond.

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