Vanuatu is definitely one of the South Pacific's best kept
secrets! Its 74 inhabited islands form a Y-shaped archipelago
almost directly West of Fiji and North-East of New Caledonia.
For many years there was joint British and French colonial rule
here, an arrangement officially known as The Condominum, but
more commonly referred to as The Pandemonium. Joint rule meant
joint languages, so that some villages were given education in
English while neighboring villages were taught in French! The
ni-Vanuatu people are Melanesian, like the people of Papua New
Guinea and Fiji. Melanesians have frizzy afro-style hair and are
usually of stocky build, unlike the Polynesians of places like
Tonga, Samoa and Hawaii, who are tall and have straight hair.
While Polynesians have a single basic language which can be
understood by widely separated groups like the Hawaiians,
Tahitians and New Zealand Maoris, Melanesians have
extraordinarily splintered linguistic groups - the island of
Tanna, only 40 kilometers long, has seven com