Category Archives: soft-core

You Get What You Pay For

(Originally published in the Vanuatu Daily Post‘s Weekender Section.)

Since the Australian Federal Police brought Project Wickenby to Vanuatu with the arrest of local resident Robert Agius and raids at PKF House and elsewhere, people here have been outraged over what they characterise as Australian arrogance. Australia, they charge, feels it’s bought the right to act as it pleases here. By making the government of Vanuatu dependant on their money and advisors, many argue, Australia has subverted Vanuatu sovereignty and now operates as it pleases here.

Mr. Agius stands accused of funneling about $100 million into Vanuatu as phony consulting fees. Prosecutors claim these fees – minus a commission for Mr. Agius – were then sent back to Australia as loans. The loans’ tax-free status allowed participants in the alleged scheme to avoid paying as much as $13 million in taxes.

News reports indicate that Mr. Agius is accused of having earned about $1.4 million from his involvement in this scheme.

The Agius affair is treated as a business story by Australian news sources. The contrast with how it’s reported in Vanuatu could not be starker. Mr. Agius’ guilt or innocence is secondary in the local narrative. This is, above all, a story about Vanuatu’s sovereignty, or lack thereof.

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Kastom in the Virtual Nasara

In Vanuatu, Kastom takes a lifetime to learn. More complex than any set of laws, it’s a tightly woven fabric of behaviour that is in a constant state of redefinition. Defined by respect and mutual support, it is measured and arbitrated by our chiefs and enforced by the community as a whole. It is at once amorphous and innately understood.

Although it manifests itself differently from one island to another, the importance of one’s name is integral to finding one’s place in local kastom. Indeed, the highest honour an expat can earn in Vanuatu is to be given a name. A naming ceremony implies the attainment of (usually honourary) chiefly rank. One’s name, in short, is the ultimate expression of one’s place, standing and role in the community. It conveys the very essence of its bearer.

Practices vary from island to island, but choosing – and using – a person’s name is rife with overtones about one’s relation to others. Expats are often confused, and sometimes amused, by most ni-Vanuatu’s unwillingness to address others by name. People are instead referred to in terms of their familial relationship to the speaker. Where relationships are unknown or ambiguous – between strangers, for example – a local default usually exists. It’s common to be addressed as ‘tawi’ in Tanna, though strictly speaking that would make you the person’s brother or sister in law. In a delightful example of linguistic drift, young women in North Malekula are almost universally addressed as ‘uncle’.

So why, when names possess such a strong tabu here in Vanuatu, do we put no stock at all in how Vanuatu’s name is used on the Internet?
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Only the Angels Cry

Nathan’s little boy died of nothing. The seven year-old got a boiler in his nose. It was painful, but nothing a course of antibiotics couldn’t fix. Nathan dutifully brought his boy to the island hospital, and requested treatment. As usual, there was no doctor present, but a nurse gave him some medicine. The pills were past their expiry date, but they were better than nothing.

The inflammation subsided, and the boy was able the sleep again for a while. The infection, however, didn’t disappear. Once the under-strength antibiotics had run their course, it came back with a vengeance.

To look at the boy, there wasn’t much wrong. A little swelling around one eye and nostril, but otherwise nothing. What you couldn’t see was the constant, excruciating pain as the infection moved into his sinuses and began to press against his brain.
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Clearing the Ground

The Vanuatu National Training Council (VNTC) recently presented their vision of an industry-driven training regime here in Vanuatu. The approach is based on what they call Competency Based Training. In simple terms, this approach is aimed to help people learn relevant and useful skills, and importantly, to be able to earn formal recognition for skills they already have. By measuring these skills using well-understood benchmarks, people would be assured that their skills are recognised by employers throughout the Pacific and even beyond.

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Housework

Re-worked from an older post for this week’s Daily Post Weekender edition. ed.

Ever since I arrived in Vanuatu almost five years ago, I’ve woken every morning to the rhythmic shushing of the scrub brush as the women in the neighbourhood do the morning wash. It’s often the last thing I hear before sundown as well.

Anyone who’s ever washed their clothes by hand knows just how arduous the process is. Most women in Vanuatu have extremely well-defined arm muscles, and many of the older women on the islands are built like wrestlers. Laundry is one of the reasons why.

When my tawian Marie-Anne approached me some time ago with the news that she’d begun participating in a micro-finance scheme, I encouraged her to do so, and immediately began wracking my brains for an activity that would allow her to earn money and still take care of her little girl full-time. I tossed out an idea or two, but nothing I suggested seemed very compelling. Marie-Anne was patient with me, and waited for me to wind down before telling me that she already knew what she wanted to do. She wanted to buy a washing machine, and charge the local women to use it.

How very stupid of me not to have thought of it before.

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Cargo Culture

The phrase ‘cargo cult’ is well known here in Vanuatu, and probably better understood than anywhere else in the world. Pop anthropologists, TV crews and trivia hounds love to belittle the ‘silly’ idea that performing the proper rituals will result in good things happening. They snicker at the uniformed, marching figures in Tanna, wondering what kind of person could believe such a simple tale.

The fact is, we are all, to some degree or other, members of a cargo culture.

Magical Thinking is the term applied to the kind of behaviour that assigns more importance to a sequence of events than to actual causation. We indulge in this kind of behaviour when we put on a ‘lucky’ shirt on important days, or avoid stepping on spiders for fear of bringing the rain. It’s in our daily horoscope and a significant number of expressions that we use everyday.

We use Magical Thinking when we touch wood, say ‘God bless’ to someone who sneezes, keep a rabbit’s foot on our key chain, or sing a certain song to ward off bad luck. We also use a certain degree of Magical Thinking when we smoke a cigarette, drink too much or practice unsafe sex. We assume that certain rituals can make good things happen or keep bad things at bay.

We also use a fair amount of magical thinking when we start our computers in the morning, when we make a phone call or send an email.

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A National Plan

I have a confession to make. I’m a snob. At least, I am where technology is concerned. Okay, maybe I’m not the type to cross the street when I see someone with last year’s doohickey du jour. But I do notice when your smart phone looks (or acts) like a brick. I can tell at a glance whether your machine is a cutting edge screamer or the technological equivalent of East Germany’s Brabant automobile, legendary for its poor quality.

I like good engineering, good design and efficient performance. In short, I like things that do their job well, whatever that job may be. I like it so much that I hate to settle for less than the best. Not the biggest, necessarily, nor the most expensive. Just the best.

This focus on tools made me lose sight of a couple of important things: First, while doing things perfectly is a commendable ideal, it happens exactly 0% of the time in the real world. Second, Vanuatu is more, er, ‘real world’ than many other places on Earth.

In case you haven’t noticed, I’m a bit of a leftie when it comes to computing. I like to see as much power in the hands of the people as possible. While it’s nice – and often necessary – to rely on services provided by others, I’ve always believed that DIY is the most empowering way to go. So, when the news began to percolate out that Vanuatu would have truly national mobile phone services, I was interested mostly in how that might help the spread of computers into the islands.

What I didn’t consider is that the mobile might actually become the computer.
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The Soft Computer

Let’s forget about technology for a moment. Let’s quit thinking about contraptions that rattle more than they hum, often alarmingly. Let’s not talk about technology at all.

Let’s talk about people instead.

‘What a piece of work is a man!’ says Hamlet. ‘How noble in reason! How infinite in faculty! In form and moving how express and admirable! In action how like an angel! In apprehension how like a god!’

This speech has always puzzled me, because many of the human beings I know may qualify as a ‘piece of work’, but lack somewhat in the expressive, admirable, angelic and god-like categories. It only follows, therefore, that if humans are less than angelic in their actions, the things they do with technology might likewise be flawed.
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Uncommon Sense

Throughout history, the distance between technology and society has been a defining characteristic of nations, empires and peoples. While it’s tempting to say that the most technologically sophisticated societies represent the pinnacle of human achievement, that’s not necessarily true. Some would argue that keeping social values paramount and learning how to adapt technology to human needs is a more effective means to ensure the health of a society.

Unfortunately, health, happiness and social justice can’t always be judged using objective economic measures. How does one measure crimes that don’t happen, meals that don’t get missed, sick days not taken?

Economic indicators do serve a number of useful purposes, of course. The Pacific Economic Survey – I wrote about it here – includes some extremely useful and instructive data concerning the effects of market liberalisation on communications. It also pointed out some inherent weaknesses in Vanuatu and elsewhere in the region, particularly with regards to technical know-how.

People in Vanuatu could teach many an economist a thing or two about what makes for a meaningful and contented life. But isolation is part of what has made life in Vanuatu simpler and more relaxed, and as that isolation erodes, we find ourselves facing significant technical challenges, some of which have a steep learning curve.

The small group of individuals who have taken leadership in opening the telecommunications market in Vanuatu have been remarkably successful thus far. People close to the process agree that the settlement agreement and the new licenses are extremely well framed. They have learned by the example of those countries who went before, and have created a comprehensive and detailed framework with very little ambiguity. This allows Digicel, Telecom Vanuatu and future entrants to focus on doing business rather than bogging themselves down in legalese, negotiation and other distractions.

But there remains much to be decided, and much to be done:

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The Pacific Economic Survey

Earlier this week, Australia unveiled the Pacific Economic Survey here in Port Vila. Present for the event was a delegation from all around the Pacific Region, including Melanesia and Polynesia as well as senior politicians from Australia. AUSAid’s chief economist was also there to present the findings.

The report is the first of a series of annual surveys that will provide an overview and update of economic developments in the Pacific island region and Timor-Leste. It collates and summarises public data on various aspects of the region’s national economies, performs some comparative and collective analysis with the results, then provides a few basic recommendations.

The theme for this year’s report was Connectivity. The survey focuses on aviation, shipping and telecommunications. It argues that liberalisation, more input from the private sector, and a cooperative regional approach to the problems inherent in improving connectivity are keys to improving Pacific economies.

The findings in the area of telecommunications do much to validate the Government of Vanuatu’s market liberalisation strategy and provide every encouragement to expand upon them. It addresses some potential pitfalls that might be encountered, primarily where access to technical expertise is concerned. And that is where it risks missing the boat.

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