The Journey to Edenhope

You alight from the airplane which has hauled you away from all the assumptions, codes, formalities and practices which you had hitherto considered normal and Real. You arrive in Vanuatu, on the island of Espiritu Santo, and the fragrance of the air around you is clean and good; you have arrived someplace special, and your experience here is to be unique.

The first impression you get of the town of Luganville is of a flimsy cardboard filmset, with its few stores and conveniences appearing almost two-dimensional. And then you notice the exquisite sunset of shimmering pink and gold on prominent display over the sleepy canal, the pendant cumulus diffusing streams of shifting colour over the pellucid sheer seawater, and the dreamy hills gleaming green across the island. With the radiant heartfelt greetings and curious questions from the kind, abashed locals, something that has been asleep in you a long time begins to smile.

Maybe you dreamed of us for a long time, or felt the longing for this place in a way you could not describe. A remembrance of nature and yearning for kinship and understanding; the yearning to serve life, and whatever stands out as good in life, and to heal the earth. Above all, you have been stirred by love to come here, and there is hardly a better reason to be spoken of that that; you heard of us, and you communicated with us, and felt that love of place and people come to life in your heart and decided to join us, for who knows how long.

But there is a long way to travel from the sleepy small town, and you are not yet aware how far you will have to venture away from everything you have always known and even who you think you are. The physical journey will be a long one, this you know - you will be in a boat for at least four hours - but the journey you are preparing to undergo inside yourself is invariably a longer one.

Let us skip to the boat ride, after the formalities and greetings we have arranged for your brief stay in town, before embarking on the journey to our distant, secret sanctuary. A long fibreglass boat, captained by a smiling man of indistinct years, and fitted with a smelly, loud outboard motor, is crammed with various oddments deemed necessary for portage to the remote, distant location of Edenhope.

Besides your luggage, there are likely to be a few cartons of hardware items, basic foodstuffs, and a few opulent baskets woven from coconut palm fronds containing fresh and enticing vegetables from the local market. Besides this there might be a newly-repaired chainsaw or other handy equipment, plus the bulbous containers of fuel the captain keeps by his knees at the stern of the boat.

Perhaps the sea today is especially calm, and you recline on the prow when the fresh wind whips your nostrils and the sun blazes down, already fervid in its coruscations though the hour is early. The lilt of the hull across the lapping waves is hypnotic and gentle, making you feel sleepy and serene, notwithstanding the noise of the motor. The view is sublime; the crystalline waters, the few islands bursting out of the horizon, green and pure. Beyond the purlieus of the tiny town, which receded behind you so rapidly it was like a dream snuffed out upon waking, all that you now see is the blue of the sea and the blue of the sky and a few pearly pillows of cumulus drifting overhead, besides the remote and verdant mystery of the island’s shore.

You rest, or rather idle in neutral, daydreaming, recounting the journey so far in your thoughts: the places and people you left to come here, to embark on this very mission; and all that you have planned, all that you desire and hope for, in coming to Edenhope.

Of course you have asked all the right questions, and have received enough answers to satisfy you in the dialogues preceding your journey, and merely settle into thoughts about what might follow — will I like the place and will they like me? What shall we eat? Where will I sleep and how will I spend my mornings? You recall the snapshots of Edenhope and try to bind them in imagination as a whole, living place, but the picture never holds.

The boat ride goes on and on, and you begin to apprehend the tiny villages and settlements scudded along the dreamy coastline and the small satellite islands you pass. Now well away from town, you notice with amazement the unblemished naturalness of these habitations, woven of bamboo and thatched with local palm leaves; to your view, coming from a place paved with concrete and construction of brick and cement, the dwellings appear quaint.

But this is the normal style of building in Vanuatu, you realise — where people have crafted their villages out of bamboo and thatch for many thousands of years — structures so flimsy, it seems, as to be carried away in strong winds, or washed away by high tides, which you have learned is a common occurrence.

Here in Vanuatu, people lose everything in a cyclone, then smile on as they rebuild their lives from scratch; at least once in a lifetime, and most likely more than once, a person’s house could be destroyed by wind, fire, or flood, and then they simply get to work in the forest and build another one again. You muse on this, and other reflections, as the boat dwindles on across the bubbling, sparkling sea; cutting past the strident, sleepy mountains deeply verdured and sometimes springing with a waterfall, and vast rocky estuaries, and swathes of drooping coconut plantations that invariably signal the proximity to the next little coastal village.

On and on the boat goes, the journey seemingly endless, the inexorable hours marked by the sun’s procession through the clear sky above resolving to the furious heat of forenoon, the burning and shadowless midday flare, and slowing westward progress of that torturous blisterer of pale skin, that flaming bright orb.

Supposing you are sensitive to such things, you take care and cover yourself well, gazing all the while with a certain reverance and wonder at the captain, who in spite of sweating profusely is outwardly unfazed by the tyrannical onslaught of UV rays throughout this long passage by water.

In the midafternoon, one of your companions begins to recite the familiar place-names as villages roll past every thirty minutes or so: Wusi, Kerepua, Elia — and finally, rounding a jutting point into a little cove, with a lone palm tree drooping at its extremity, is Tasmate. ‘Almost here,’ you are told, by one of your grinning new acquaintances.

You round the point, squinting at the shoreline for glimpses of the people you have corresponded with these last months — and there they are, joyously waving you welcome, as small children play frenziedly underfoot on the black sandy beach. Finally the outboard motor is put out of its purring misery and you ready yourself to clamber ashore, as every helping hand available (children included) shares in the work of unloading the luggage onboard and bearing it to a compact UTV, perched waiting on the shore.