posted September 22, 2007 02:22 PM         

At some time today, perhaps when a big sun is sinking behind the jungle-clad mountains, Chief Yata will sit cross-legged under a banyan tree on a Pacific island and tell his people about his journey to a sad and cheerless land far beyond the horizon.

He will describe how the people there lie in the streets with no place to shelter and how those who do have houses hurry to work each morning, unsmiling, in the chase for money.

It is a place, he says, where the culture is upside down, where animals in many cases receive more love than humans, and personal greed, rather than sharing, is the general rule.

Going native: Left to right, Posen, Joel, Albi and Chief Yata in London

Sitting with Chief Yata under the banyan tree will be children, taking in every word with wide-eyed fascination, and old men in loin cloths tutting sorrowfully at the plight of the people who live in that country he visited - a country called Britain.

For Chief Yata has recently returned from taking four tribespeople from their native villages to what we believe is our developed world.

The British adventure was arranged for a forthcoming three-part series, Meet The Natives, to be shown on Channel 4, starting next Thursday.

The producers were inspired by a Daily Mail story I wrote about the islanders' fervent belief that they have a special link with Britain and, in particular, Buckingham Palace.

Their legend tells how, fed up with prosletysing Victorian missionaries, a spiritual ancestor went to Britain to stop them coming and ended up married to a queen.

So when the Royal Yacht Britannia visited their island in the Seventies and Prince Philip visited a village, they immediately took him to be a deity, as they do to this day.

None of them had ever visited Britain before their journey here for this series. For many, their only link to "civilisation" was that one village's contact with the Duke of Edinburgh, who has sent them signed photographs of himself on hearing they had recognised him as a god.

But since returning from his travels through the length and breadth of Britain, the Chief has told the same stories of despair over and over again, yet his people continue to gather each day at their traditional meeting place, the banyan tree, and implore him to repeat his astonishing tales.

No one can believe that people lie dirty in rags in the streets with no roof over their heads, yet there are pooch parlours where dogs are shampooed, powdered and have their hair cut.

To the village people on Tanna, one of the southern islands in the Vanuatu group - a country voted the happiest place on the planet with barely any environmental footprint in a global survey last year - Britain is a very strange and pitiful land.

Their sadness over the discovery is made more poignant by their conviction that Vanuatu and Britain were once joined together geographically.

It had to be so, they insist, for Vanuatu was formerly known as the New Hebrides, named by explorer Captain Cook after the Hebrides off the Scottish mainland. He must have given the islands that name for a reason, they agree.

In a mirror image of European mariners setting out in sailing ships to make contact with natives in faraway lands, what they saw in Britain was a country where the daily scenes were opposites of their own society.

But after five weeks of travelling, the fun-loving islanders could not leave that crowded, polluted, land fast enough and return to their own simple traditions, where there is calm, laughter, no envy, no greed and the word "mean" does not exist.

To understand why they were so shocked by much of what they found on their arrival in the Duke of Edinburgh's "big, big country", we should first look at the lifestyles of a people whose traditions have changed little since the Europeans arrived in the Vanuatu group centuries ago.

The tribespeople readily admit that the explorers and the missionaries could be thanked for gradually - and often at personal cost - stamping out the practice of warring groups eating one another.

But, that aside, Western influence has had little impact on the day-to-day routine in remote villages.

Islanders wake each day under pollution-free skies to a cacophony of crowing roosters and birdsong before setting about daily tasks, tending organic fruits and vegetables.

Food is shared with those who are less fortunate and anyone who finds himself without a home has a hut built for him by the entire village.

Everything is simple. There is no money among the Tanna tribes - instead there is an exchange system in which a pig, for example, might be exchanged for a clutch of hens.

The women have no wish to apply make-up, although they will daub their faces for a village ceremony when they will all dance together.

A childless couple might be offered a baby from another family, with no gifts or favours expected in return. Food and clothing are shared and there is a sense of joy in the air.

Children do not have first cousins or second cousins, uncles or aunties - the youngsters are all brothers and sisters to one another while an aunt is simply known as "little mother".

Everything revolves around the family, the underlying theme being love and respect. If a problem arises the dispute is resolved through mediation, when both sides sit with the elders and the respective families under the banyan tree and peacefully settle their differences.

There is no TV; no radio. Children are not influenced by real or make-believe violence beamed out from a studio far away. Instead they listen to folk stories. They are in their family's care until they are ready to marry and the cycle starts again.

If they fall ill, traditional medicine is used as much as possible, for to send for a Western doctor or get a patient to him can be a daunting journey to or from the jungle and, anyway, they place more trust in the local "clever" as he is known.

In most cases, the village medicine man - who takes no umbrage at being called a witch doctor - is successful with his treatment.

Such is the idyllic life Chief Yata left behind as he boarded the jet with his companions, Joel, a medicine man; Posen, a farmer; Albi, a dancer; Jimmy Joseph, the translator and Keo producer Will Anderson.

"I didn't know what to expect, what lay ahead for us, as we took off," says 33-year-old Mr Anderson. "It was very much a journey of discovery for them and for me.

"But any reservations I might have had about how they were going to cope were quickly dispelled for they turned out to be quick-witted, sharp and observant."

posted September 22, 2007 02:23 PM         

The islanders were shocked at the size of British pigs, compared to their smaller, black cousins in the Pacific, and astonished that piglets were created by artificial insemination.

"I don't like this so much," said Posen, the 42-year-old farmer. "We have a good connection with our pigs and this is disrespectful to the pig.

"We don't make our pigs pregnant with plastic tubes.

Culture: The visitors were filmed watching a football game (above) and visiting a medieval castle (below) - including its torture chamber

"I think it's wrong that everybody should be watching when the female pig is made pregnant. And what about the male pig? He doesn't get any satisfaction out of this."

On the farm they met a rabbit shooter, an everyday man with whom they had great rapport and they presented him with a woven basket that they said contained "love and respect" which would sustain him for ever.

While it was empty to the eye, the islanders told him that "love and respect" would always be there whenever he looked inside, a gesture that brought tears to his eyes.

Then it was on to Manchester, where the group stayed in the council house home of Ray and Julie da Silva, a mixed-race couple.

In all their native innocence, they asked Ray, a mini-cab driver, if he had married his white wife because she was a good cook.

Learning that Mr da Silva's son was serving in the Army in Iraq, the islanders were upset that his life was being placed in danger when in the islands the relationship between father and son is so precious that they try to remain physically close under all circumstances.

A Vanuatu father could die of a broken heart if the son is killed.

The natives learned about the mundane chores of a working-class family and were surprised that there was so much washing and ironing to be done.

When they heard the vacuum cleaner they were frightened of it and when they switched it off they thought they'd "killed it".

It was on the streets of Manchester that they witnessed scenes that left them shaking their heads in dismay - people sleeping under cardboard on the streets, others begging for money from passers-by.

And yet, said the baffled natives, there were empty houses everywhere. "Where are their families?" they wanted to know. "Everybody has relatives, why aren't these people's relatives looking after them, taking them into their own houses?"

The shock of the street people - "invisible people" they called them because unconcerned Britons seemed not to notice them - remained a talking point among them as they continued their journey north to a building that left them awestruck: the imposing medieval Chillingham Castle, home of Sir Humphrey and the Honorable Lady Wakefield.

Now came another jolt, for the castle has a torture chamber in which implements to inflict extreme pain are on display.

Once again, the islanders found it inconceivable that humans could be forced onto a bed of nails or laid out on a stretching rack.

At least in Vanuatu in olden days the enemy was brought down with a spear and eaten and it was all over and done with. Cruelty has never been a part of their culture.

Dejected at the scenes in the dungeon, their faces soon lit up - there on the wall was a photo of the Duke of Edinburgh!

"Finally, they felt very close to the man they believe is a god," says Mr Anderson. "It cheered them up immensely."

Throughout their travels, the islanders observed sights that continued to astonish them, including the use of a power hose to wash a car and a dog having a make-over in a parlour.

In Madame Tussaud's, apparently, the statues of Tom Cruise and other Hollywood stars went unremarked.

But there was terrific excitement over Prince Philip's waxwork. They hugged him, held his hand and looked deep into his eyes.

At meals, the group found sitting at the table strange, and they were flummoxed by plates, knives and forks - they are used to eating with their hands cross-legged on the floor.

At one sitting, one of them tucks into the butter dish and finishes it. They are perturbed by the noise of a rural pub and remark how the white man's fire water (Adnam's bitter) makes people boisterous.

Yet their insights were penetrating and their questions about the British way of life intelligent; they wanted to learn about the crime rate, divorces, the health system and profits made by big businesses.

Television, they found, was too confronting and exhausting to watch. They preferred to ask questions and receive answers from real people, just like in their villages, rather than have events thrust at them from a screen.

Because they are convinced there was an ancient geographic link between Britain and their former New Hebrides island chain, the group was taken to the Isle of Skye, the largest and the most northerly island in the Inner Hebrides.

There, they really felt close to home, and that the Scots were very much their blood-brothers and sisters.

London failed to lift their mood of helplessness over what they were now convinced was a lamentable way of life. They watched heavy-hearted as crowds scurried across London Bridge on their way to work, their faces grim, not a smile to be seen anywhere.

Chief Yata remarked: "There is great sadness among these people. Is this what money does to you? Does it make you lose your sense of humour?

"We would not want this in Vanuatu."

While their hosts had treated them with kindness, the natives felt that in Britain generally a great deal was missing in people's lives.

When the brave "explorers" finally arrived back on their island of Tanna they were greeted by colourful crowds who sang and danced and threw on a special feast for them.

The tribal ambassadors were home at last and happy to be there.

"They left me in no doubt that while visiting Britain had been a fascinating trip, they were convinced that the way they lived in the villages was the right way to live," says Mr Anderson.

"They saw their culture now as being even stronger and they couldn't see any way or any time that it was going to change."

They loved our shepherd's pie, enjoyed riding in a Land Rover and found it fun to tuck into a bucket of fried chicken.

They were happy when they could all sleep together in the same room, just as they do in their grass huts, where they could "story" with each other for they felt they were continuing a community spirit that might even rub off on their hosts.

Sitting under the banyan tree, Chief Yata tells his listeners to continue just as they are.

He has brought nothing back from Britain that will improve their lives, but he hopes that in their small way he and his companions might have left a message that will bring about change for us in Britain.

posted September 22, 2007 02:36 PM         

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It would be nice to evolve some sort of telethapy of the heart; empathy. A feeling, knowing inside how we are all interconnected. Empathy/ love would be a a law unto itself.

posted September 22, 2007 02:36 PM         

quote:

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It would be nice to evolve some sort of telethapy of the heart; empathy. A feeling, knowing inside how we are all interconnected. Empathy/ love would be a a law unto itself.

I have been wondering- perhaps we are only 'Free' or have 'Free Will' in as much as we are spiritually awakened. We are like Gods in amnesia. This amnesia is the source of our soul-sickness.

---

Or/ and.....

Maybe we just long to "Return To Our Innocence"

posted October 06, 2007 02:46 PM         

I personally wasn't able to watch them, as I had a reflexology class, but the article was enough to deeply move and inspire me.

posted April 29, 2008 12:55 PM         

And it's not how much better certain of us are because we "know" about love and light etc.

Just a thought.

posted April 29, 2008 11:05 PM         

The main thing is, ever since I was a child I have felt great respect and an affinity for various native cultures and tribes. If people can appreciate the beauty in them, what they have to offer and teach, rather than patronize, murder, exploit, steal and destroy their homelands....if people can only do this, then the world can begin to heal...just a little by little.....