backtrack blog - Lenaru Village

This is a backtrack blog....filling in details of our visit to a village a
couple of days back.

20 July 2009
Island - EPI
Bay location - NE of Lamen Bay, between Nduana Pt
Village Name - Lenaru Village
Chief - Mark Mel

Anchor Location
Area not charted to any detail other that showing approximately location of
reef in either side of bay. Bay has one area of consistent depth of
approximately 11m in the north east corner. In the South east corner area
there are a number of bombies.

Shown on Navionics Chart as a break in the reef, though reef is not
accurately shown at least in anchor location as anchor location is on area
shown as reef 0.0m deep.

Anchorage is protected from the SW around to the East and provided a
pleasant anchorage when Lamen Bay became untenable due to a south west
swell rolling in.

Approach from 16º33´965S 168 º10´391E
Anchor Position 16º34´161S 168 º10´530E

Landing on the sand beach was easy and protected from swell though at low
tide there could be some bombies to dodge on the way in. Apparently a
direct route to the yellow marker on a coconut tree located just to the west

of centre of the beach is recommended by the locals.

Village History ..
French company (Natura ?) apparently displaced local village some years
before independence (? 12 or 15 years) in 1978? With the village relocating
to the nearby island of Paama just to the north. The company set up a
coconut plantation for the production of Copra. At independence some of the

displaced villages returned and have a growing but small community of
approximately 20 people, some of the children are away at boarding school.
Some of their relatives have stayed on Paama and as with many villages some
of them have gone to Santo or Port Vila for work.

Most of the women we met told us they were sisters, most were married with
at least one child. The chief had 5 children. One of the women had lost her
only child at age 2 months to a tumour. The chief's youngest child (3 months

old) was sick with some kind of infection giving boil like sores on the
skin. The chiefs wife had taken the child to see a doctor (I think in Lamen
Bay) and was giving the child penicillin she had been prescribed.

From our discussions with the villagers it appears they lead a comfortable
life but lack the income to live much more than a subsistence life with just

enough money to send a few of the children to school, but not enough to have

for high school or to fix the broken outboard engine.

The villagers were welcoming but shy apparently as they were unused to
seeing many visitors. They were very courteous to us and very grateful for
our visit. They gave us what they called "mini lap lap", manioc which had
been cooked in coconut milk. They told us they make lap lap every Sunday.

Huts were a mixture of traditional thatching and corrugated iron. There are

a number of decaying buildings apparently from the plantation days of Natura

that were mostly now unused.

The village is a half hour walk from Lamen Bay, but seemed very uninfluenced

by the town ways.

Language
The Villagers appear to be all or mostly educated in French, though the
grasp of English is good enough for a good conversation. As well as Bislama

they also speak the local language traditional for the village as well as
the local language on Paama.

Religion
A simple Presbyterian church is located on the western side of the village,
though the villagers appeared to have kept many of their traditional ways.
The priest comes once a week.

Gardens
The villagers were very helpful when asked for fruits and returned in their
canoes with Paw Paw & a huge bunch of Bananas (eating) as well as cooking
Bananas & Coconuts. We traded with them for coloured pencils, a cap, jeans,
a wind up torch, and a snorkel and mask. They were delighted.

We were given a tour of one of the village gardens which we thoroughly
enjoyed. Apparently they have 5 other gardens for that village, which are
all fairly close by. They had copious quantities of taro (including water
taro), yam, bananas, coconuts, paw paw, corn, manioc and island cabbage.
They also grew small quantities of spring onions, small capsicums,
pineapples, breadfruit, mandarins, pamplemousse, sugarcane. They have
extensive coconut plantations left from the copra company, so there are
sprouting coconuts all over the place. They are well worth trying with a
very interesting texture and a very pleasant taste. The chief mentioned they

never go hungry because they can always go and get a sprouting coconut.

The village had a few cows/bullocks which we saw. They did not have pigs
themselves, but the chief mentioned his brother in another village has
several pigs. They had many chickens and gave us a few eggs.

They said they usually eat fish about twice a week, sometimes chicken,
bullock when there is a marriage or other reason for a big celebration. They

occasionally have wild pig if they have killed one. They rotate their
starchy vegetables, say having manioc one day, taro the next, kumera the
next etc. They seemed to eat Island cabbage two or three times a week.

There was drying reef on both sides of the reef and from the boat we could
see women at low tide collecting food from there with a knife and bowl.

NEEDS OF VILLAGE:
They have a dinghy with an outboard motor but the outboard motor has been
broken for a few months. This causes problems as they use the dinghy to take

things out the larger cargo boats for transport to market. Also they would
usually use the dinghy to visit family still living on Paama. The coil is
broken, see photo. It is a Yamaha engine - enduro 15. So if you are passing
through and have a spare coil, these guys could really use it and would be
eternally grateful.