15 Things You Didn’t Know About Vanuatu

As sometimes happens, we find ourselves in a place that is unfamiliar to most of our readers (and to us). Indeed, the South Pacific island nation of Vanuatu receives remarkably few visitors, usually ranking about #5 in least-visited countries. We’re here to change all that, starting with the following things we bet you didn’t know about Vanuatu!

• Vanuatu comprises 83 islands, about twenty of them uninhabited, spanning about 1000km (620 miles). The region of Oceania consists of two continents (one of them submerged) and four parts: Australasia, Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. Melanesia contains four countries: Fiji, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, and Vanuatu. (Micronesia is the islands to the north; Polynesia the islands to the east.) The people from these four groups look rather different from one another.

• The Ni-Vanuatu (people of Vanuatu) speak 138 languages, making this the most language-dense place in the world. Bislama, a pijin/Creole language, is the official language of the country. If you learn it, you’ll also be able to understand Tok Pisin in Papua New Guinea and Pijin in the Solomon Islands. Google Translate won’t help you, though; it doesn’t include Bislama. This site helps with individual words. But don’t worry: just about everyone in Vanuatu also speaks both English and French, usually very well. (If that weren’t humiliating enough, most speak at least one other local language.)
• Both Great Britain and France claimed these islands in the nineteenth century, and administered them jointly from 1906 until 1980, when Vanuatu declared independence.

• The flag of Vanuatu is mostly red, green, and black: red is an important colour in local religion, not least because it is the colour of pigs’ blood (important in traditional religions). Black signifies the richness of the soil, and also colour of the people, and green is for the vegetation. The triangle represents the y-shaped chain of islands that make up the nation. It features two namele leaves surrounded by a curved boar’s tusk. (Namele is a local name for a cycad, a plant that looks a bit like a palm tree.)
• The word ‘taboo’ comes from this part of the world; James Cook introduced it into English in 1777, after his ship visited Tonga. Incidentally, he named the whole area the New Hebrides, which is awfully confusing.
• Another thing that comes from around here is cannibalism. The island of Malekulu has one of the last recorded incidences (in 1969).
• Vanuatu was of strategic importance to the Allies in World War II, not least during the Battle of Guadalcanal (on the Solomon Islands). Technically the French and the British were on opposing sides in this war, but they worked together here to help defend the Pacific. American troops hastily built a naval base on Espiritu Santo. And the SS President Coolidge, one of the world’s great dive wrecks, is off the coast.

• Melanesia is full of volcanoes; Vanuatu’s Tanna is home to Mt. Yasur, billed as ‘the most accessible volcano in the world’.
• The population of Vanuatu is about 326,000 people, of whom 53,000 live in Port Vila, the capital city.
• There have been people in Vanuatu since (probably) 2000 BCE; they probably came from Taiwan and the Philippines, rather than from Australia or Papua New Guinea. (Those areas have seen human habitation for much longer.)

• The majority of Ni-Vanuatu are Christian, and quite religious. But many also observe traditional customs (kastom in Bislama). Among their most important customs is pig-hunting. Local religion remains fairly mysterious to outsiders.
• Only about 9% of the land in Vanuatu is arable, but agriculture provides jobs for a majority of the people (with fishing and tourism second and third).

• The people of Vanuatu (specifically those on Pentecost island) are the first recorded bungee jumpers. Nanggol is a rite of passage for young men involving a leap off a 30m (90 ft.) high tower, with vines tied to their feet.
• While the people are extraordinarily friendly and crime is very rare (with a homicide rate of 0.00% in 2022), Vanuatu is the most dangerous place in the world for natural disasters, including earthquakes, floods, droughts, and sea-level rise.
• Vanuatu received a lot of attention during the ninth season of the reality TV show Survivor (‘Islands of Fire’). They filmed it on Efate, the largest island.

There you have it, fifteen things we bet you didn’t know about Vanuatu!

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