Trouble in Paradise

After completing my holiday tour in the south of Vanuatu, I returned to my village where the locals were in the midst of our latest community scandal. Apparently a young man had been "stealing" another man's wife many times over the past year. To make matters worse, the young philanderer has impregnated the woman he was having an affair with.

The young philanderer has a girlfriend of his own that he has lived with for years- and the couple have a 3 year old child. So it was a shock to the community that this young man was caught cheating on his long-term girlfriend. A boy actually discovered the young man with the other woman in the act somewhere in the dark outskirts of the village.

The young man is from the island of Malekula but lived in my village after he began seeing his local girlfriend years ago. We played on the same football team. The woman he was "stealing" is from our village as well, but her husband is from the island of Tanna, an island that is perhaps unjustly reknowned for fighting as a means of settling disputes.

The man from Tanna was devastated after hearing the news. Especially since his family had adopted the young man from Malekula and provided him with food and shelter, he felt as if his trust had been violated. He along with his brothers marched straight for the boy from Malekula, who had been hiding in another family's kitchen ever since his affair had been exposed the previous night. They dragged him onto the main village road and began beating him.

The man from Tanna and his brothers took turns beating the young man from Malekula. They gave him black eyes and split his lips, blood flowed freely from the young man's nose, ears and around his eyes. Some village boys stopped the fight quickly after it started but found it hard to restrain the man from Tanna who vowed that he wanted to kill the young man.

Later in the afternoon, the head chief of the village held an emergency meeting about the scandal. The young philanderer was fined a cow, kava and mats and around $500 to be paid to the chief's, his girlfriend's family and the man from Tanna whose wife he "stole". The man from Tanna and his brothers were charged $300 each for fighting inside of the community. The "stolen" woman was fined also for being involved in an affair. Finally the chiefs ruled that the young man from Malekula must leave the village with his girlfriend, he would no longer be allowed to live in our community.

I returned to the village the night before the young philanderer's departure. The community threw a large goodbye party for the young man and his girlfriend. It felt strange eating cake and drinking kava in honor of such unusual and uncommendale actions. But then again I am always looking for an excuse to eat cake and drink kava.