Living what some outsiders would consider a feral existence is normal to the children of Yakel, a ‘Kastom’ village on the island of Tanna in the Vanuatu archipelago. The settlement is referred to locally as a Nambas village – the Nambas being the sole item of apparel worn by men, hiding their private parts. This means that the village rejects everything introduced by the Western world. The children will never go to school. Their clothing, food and entertainment will be provided solely by the forest in which they live.

Looking at the world from a reflected perspective can produce far superior images than one’s attempt at orchestrating it. Reflections can completely alter the image from something fairly straightforward to a more artistic, whimsical abstract. I especially like using water, as the liquid medium not only reflects but absorbs light in space, often with subject matter suspended in that potential energy.

Silvana Nicholls and her husband, John Nicholls, were some of the earliest local partners to join the whl.travel family. They launched their Vanuatu destination portal in November of 2005 and have been strong collaborators ever since. She arrived on the island of Vanuatu in the South Pacific in 2001 and spent the first three years on the volcanic island of Tanna before moving to the capital city of Port Vila on Efate Island, where she and John still live.

Private enterprises usually operate on the principle of the smallest amount of energy and funding required to produce the greatest outcome. In striking (and disturbing) counterpoint to this, it seems to me that too many donor organisations – both international or domestic – operate in a parallel but opposite world guided by the principle of the greatest amount of energy and funding required to produce the least outcome.

I recently had friends around for a dinner party. They’re all in the 50-60 age bracket and well travelled, so we talked about an issue raised by the Local Travel Movement. The question I asked them was whether they travelled primarily to meet and interact with local people in the destinations they go to or to see and experience things as distinct from the personal interaction?

Much has been written about the island of Pentecost (part of the Vanuatu archipelago) and its yearly ritual of death-defying land jumps performed in the south of the island in celebration of the yam harvest. The Nagol (or N’gol) ritual of land diving has been performed for hundreds of years, and also doubles as a male coming of age ceremony.