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God, Not Man

Jungle Trader:

A few thousand villagers in the South Pacific worship Britain’s Prince Philip as a god. The Christian Science Monitor has a story about the cargo cult.

Very quaint.  But who are we with our strange belief systems to sneer?

CSM: A South Pacific cargo cult petitions its deity for bags of rice and a Land Rover.

“He is a god, not a man,” says village chief Jack Naiva, a wiry, elderly man with graying hair and broken teeth. “Sometimes we hear his voice, but we can’t see him.”

Prince Philip brings that out in people.  I’m just surprised they aren’t worshipping Jeff Probst, like some of our tribes do. He brought almost as much cargo to Vanuatu as John Frum.*  Or Paris Hilton, who’s all about the cargo.

Their veneration for the queen’s consort is tinged with irony, given Philip’s history of politically incorrect gaffes about foreigners and minorities. He once asked a group of Australian Aborigines if they still threw spears at one another; he inquired of a black British member of parliament what country he came from, and he advised some British students in China not to stay too long for fear of developing “slitty eyes.”

But such faux pas are unknown to the villagers of Tanna, who have very little concept of the outside world.

Thus probably would consider the former to be logical questions and the latter to be sound advice.  

Their lives could hardly be further removed from the opulence enjoyed by the prince and “Misis Kwin,” the pidgin name for the queen. The village – situated on an 80-island archipelago – lies at the end of a muddy track barely navigable by four-wheel-drive vehicles. Few Tannese have ever left the island, and villages have no electricity, no running water, and no school. There are no newspapers, radios, or TVs, and life has changed little since Tanna was first encountered by Capt. James Cook in 1774. Children – picaninis in pidgin English – run around naked or in ragged clothes, and men wear either dirty shorts or nambas, grass penis sheaths. They hunt wild pigs and fruit bats with bows and arrows.

I hope CSM isn’t suggesting there’s anything wrong with that.  The electronics-free penis-sheathed fruit-bat hunting Phil adoration. Surely people who reject medical science wouldn’t have the bad manners to throw stones at people who just want some rice and wheels out of a British royal.

“Movements like these were a way for traditional people to come to terms with colonialism and Christianity,” says Kirk Huffman, a British anthropologist who lived in Vanuatu for 17 years. “Vanuatu’s culture would have been entirely squashed if it wasn’t for cults like [these].”

Often they put their faith in a Christ-like messiah who would chase away colonial overlords and bring wealth, or “cargo.” Such beliefs were reinforced by the arrival of US forces in the South Pacific during World War II. The avalanche of materiel – battleships, bulldozers, medicines, and ration packs – astonished islanders. They were also impressed by black American soldiers who descended with apparently unlimited candy and Coca-Cola.

… To this day villagers in one part of Tanna believe in the eventual arrival of a messiah they call Jon Frum – thought to be a contraction of “John from America,” perhaps a GI who showed them particular regard, anthropologists speculate. Every year on February 15, followers show their devotion to this shadowy American spirit by daubing the letters U-S-A in red paint on their chests, dressing in GI-style uniforms, and marching barefoot around a parade ground beneath a fluttering Stars and Stripes. Shouldering bamboo “rifles,” they execute perfect drills in the shadow of Mount Yasur, an active volcano.

… Dozens of similar cults arose across the region. In 1964, when the first elections were held for Papua’s House of Assembly, the inhabitants of New Hanover Island decided they wanted as their candidate US President Lyndon Johnson. They refused to pay taxes and instead put their money into a fund to entice LBJ to stand for them. They were disappointed when he failed to turn up.

Well, I doubt Prince Philip cares to do the honors, and LBJ’s no longer available. But  maybe they’d like John Frum Massachusetts.  He had his own cargo cult for a while there, a strangely constructed belief system centered around a distant war, anti-imperialist grievances and a yearning for pie in the sky and salvation, which has already earned him devotees among a quaint population of simple folk on the other side of the world.  Hey, where is John Frum Massachusetts these days, why him tall fella gone long time?

Here he is.** Talk about strange belief systems. Him tall fella wanna stop him weather bye’em’bye.

And  what about Al Frum Tennessee?  Major cult figure.  Not that Al Frum needs to go to Micronesia to find devotees.

* No relation to my cousin-in-law David Frum, though I’m sure if they knew about him in Vanuatu, they’d want a Land Rover and a sack of rice out of him, too.

** Where’d Businesswire get the idea that Kerry completed two tours in Vietnam? At last check, he made it four months into one tour prior to activating the three scratches and a sayonara program.

Manolo the Shoeblogger groks the Royals Cargo Cult. Roll mouse over pic for added value.

Topics: other

  Posted by Jules Crittenden at 11:42 pm on Thursday, June 7, 2007

8 Responses to “God, Not Man”

1. The_Real_JeffS Says:
   June 8th, 2007 at 12:01 am

   Maybe they should worship Pelosi……they might get a case of tuna for their efforts.

2. RebeccaH Says:
   June 8th, 2007 at 9:18 am

   Oh, I definitely think we should send Big Al to Tanna. They could eat for a month.

3. gvanderleun Says:
   June 8th, 2007 at 10:55 am

   Oh, that piece is both inspired and brilliant. My coffee spurteth over.

4. corndog Says:
   June 8th, 2007 at 11:54 am

   “Where’d Businesswire get the idea that Kerry completed two tours in Vietnam? At last check, he made it four months into one tour prior to activating the three scratches and a sayonara program.”

   No. He served one full tour in the Gulf of Tonkin. Then he was assigned to a tour on a river swift boat.

5. The_Real_JeffS Says:
   June 8th, 2007 at 1:06 pm

   Yes, Kerry served a full tour “in” Vietnam…..without ever having stepped on the ground, the Gulf of Tonkin being made largely of water. But then he did step on the ground in Vietnam……and ran back home as fast as he could.

6. The_Real_JeffS Says:
   June 8th, 2007 at 1:09 pm

   PS: If you do the math, Kerry didn’t complete two tours…..he did 1-4/12 tours, one tour in ‘Nam being 12 months.

7. corndog Says:
   June 8th, 2007 at 1:30 pm

   Jeffy,

   Well, all right. I guess you could also say that the time spent dodging bullets on the rivers wasn’t on the dry land of Vietnam either, so he ended up spending about four weeks in Vietnam.

8. The_Real_JeffS Says:
   June 8th, 2007 at 1:41 pm

   Naw, that was the “brown water” part of the Navy, thanks to the heavily silted waters. And he worked out of a port, where he came ashore off patrols. So it’s closer to 4 months “on the ground”.

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