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"Talk-talk" Delays a Determined Diver
Just then Bong, the village chief who was standing in the tower behind me, cut in. "Kal, you sent em one talk he go. Allgetta want to her em talk-talk belong you." He wanted me to make a speech, but all I wanted at that moment was to get the jump over with!
I kept the speech as short as tradition permitted. My mastery of the local language was not sufficient for an off-the-cuff discourse, so I used the local variety of pidgin English.
"Me fella, me glad too much belong me stop wit em you all getta. Me learn em plenty something long custom belong you fella. Me like em you fella too much. Now here me fella glad too much you all getta you let em me jump long land dive."
I clapped my hands three times over my head. The singing, shouting, and whistling resumed and welled into a crescendo. I glanced at the thick lianas securely wrapped around my ankles, fervently hoping they would hold. The excitement was enveloping me; I felt almost exalted.
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| Stretching my arms over my head, I arched my back and leaned forward. At the last second, I pushed slightly forward, and my body floated high over the ground. Then, I was hurtling headfirst toward the softened earth.
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| Bunlap stands on a series of escarpments by the sea (map, opposite). With a population of 130, it is one of the largest non-Christian concentrations in the New Hebrides Some thirty thatched huts line both sides of the main trail, and an open ceremonial ground stands at the village's highest point.
When I first arrived there, I immediately noticed the differences between these people and those in other parts of Pentecost, where land dives attract a growing number of tourists. Inhabitants of these areas, Christianized for two or three generations, wear Western-type clothing. But Bunlap men usually don only a fiber belt and sheath, while the women dress in traditional fiber skirts.
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Fringing reefs along the eastern coast of the island make landings virtually impossible. Thus, Bunlap was overlooked by 19th-century labor recruiters who, sometimes at gunpoint, obtained "volunteers" for plantations of other Pacific islands and Australia. By the latter part of that century, they began to have some contact with outsiders, but even now Bunlap lies off the beaten track.
Bong, who feels strongly that Bunlap's traditions should be maintained, organized a meeting soon after my arrival. I explained to my audience, most of Bunlap's 30 adult males, that I was making a visual record of New Hebrides people. The pictures, I said, would
enable their children to remember how their parents lived.
The men approved, and so two months later I returned with my crew. Beatrice Bomo handled sound recording and occasional photography, Jacques Gourguechon served as a cameraman, and Louis Nedjar did some filming, cooked, and substituted for Beatrice where local taboos barred women.
Our months in Bunlap proved educational, both for the villagers and for us.
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