Be Happy

The people who live in Vanuatu are the happiest people in the world – and that’s official.

Words: Polly Greeks  Photographs: Rob Tucker

In the global village scheme of things, Vanuatu is just a house or two down the road from New Zealand. With its 83 islands nestled into a quiet cul-de-sac of Pacific Ocean, it’s a private neighbour, seemingly content in its Edenesque garden, keeping itself to itself. But despite pigs being a symbol of wealth in this laid-back nation, Vanuatu is no country yokel. Clad in a complex social fabric threaded with chiefdoms, initiation rituals, magicians and avenging ghosts, it has a taste for fine French cuisine and is a world leader in biofuel and happiness.

Happiness? During the drive into town from the airport, my taxi driver points at the constantly flashing grins from waving locals and announces that this is the happiest population on the planet. A scientific 2006 Happy Planet Index measuring wellbeing, longevity and the environment of 178 nations has officially confirmed it.

Bountiful is another word that springs to mind as I set off through the market in Vanuatu’s capital, Port Vila. Cheerful shoppers weave between trestle tables that sag under mountains of organic vegetables and tropical fruit. Village women arrive with their produce every Monday morning and live on site for five days, selling flowers, melons, taros, pineapples, papayas and slender green fingers of bananas around the clock, returning home to their villages on Saturday afternoons. Clad in bright, voluminous tents known as Mother Hubbards, they’re as colourful as their wares.

Some of the older women give gap-toothed smiles as I pass their stalls. Decades ago, when some villages still practised cannibalism, newly wed men used to bash out their young wives’ front teeth to reduce their appeal to other men. Nowadays it’s up to the shapeless Mother Hubbards (made en masse at the market just up the road) to quell girding loins, while humans have been off the menu since 1969.

Print

123next ›last »