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PHILLIPWAITING FOR

Rodwell Mabuwa

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Contents

Introduction............................................Page 6

The Prince Phillip Movement..................Page 8

Phillip The Man.......................................Page 20

The John Frum Cult..................................Page 26

Tanna Island.............................................Page 38

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CARG

O CU

LTS

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When pre-industrial tribal societies come into contact with modern day society, they could very well see its technology as magic. During World War II, people

in the Pacific watched lots of manufactured, technologically-superior goods enter the region, courtesy of Japanese and Allied forces. Soldiers would give gratitude to their native hosts by sharing their medicine, clothing, weapons, and other manufactured items with them. But when the war ended, the goods stopped coming. Enter the cargo cults – native peoples who perform rituals and religious practices with the intention of bringing back the material wealth (cargo) so the people can once again prosper. To the cargo cults, manufactured goods do not come from man, but from the gods. Remember the movie The Gods Must Be Crazy? In that film, a simple bushman discovers a Coca-Cola bottle and thinks it a sign from the gods. It exposes his tribe to the concept of “property” which brings the problems associated with a rare good – in this case envy, violence, etc. The bushman determines that the Coke bottle is evil and begins a trek to throw it off the edge of the world. Cargo cults developed in many places since Western peoples starting arriving a few centuries ago, but most of the ones remaining today are on Papua New Guinea and Tanna. The cargo cults of Tanna Island are particularly interesting.

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The prince phillip

movement

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Home” is Tanna, one of the 83 islands that make up Vanuatu, formerly the Anglo-French territory of the New Hebrides. For reasons difficult to decipher, the islanders believe the Duke of Edinburgh is a descendant of one of their spirit ancestors. For the past half-century they have

In a jungle clearing, at the top of a steep, rutted track, a group of South Pacific tribesmen convey

an unusual request. “Can you tell Prince Philip we are waiting for him?” asks Siko Nathuan, the village chief. “We are his family and we really want him to come home.”

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worshipped him as an unlikely god. Now they are convinced he is about to return. The key date is 10 June, when the Duke will turn 89. “He made a promise that in 2010, on his birthday, he will arrive in Tanna,” says Mr Nathuan, seated beneath a giant banyan tree, in the remote village

” If he can t come perhaps he could

send us something to help us: a Landrover,

bags of rice or a little money.”

of Yaohnanen. “We know he is a very old man, but when he comes here he is going to be young again, and so will everyone else on the island.” In 1974 Mr Nathuan’s grandfather, Jack Naiva, then the village chief, travelled 150 miles by sea to the New Hebridean capital, Port Vila, to

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watch the Duke, resplendent in a white naval uniform, arrive with the Queen on the Royal yacht Britannia. Some say that Mr Naiva – or “Chief Jack”, as he was generally known – met Prince Philip, who gave him a pig. Others claim that the Prince, when he came ashore, only shook hands with men from Tanna.

white print now damaged by mildew, was delivered by the British Resident Commissioner, J S Champion, in 1978, two years before Vanuatu was granted independence. A decade later, Buckingham Palace sent out a photograph showing the Prince clutching a ceremonial pig-killing stick, a gift from the villagers. The most recent framed

”you have been waiting for your

messiah to return for over two thousand

years while we have been waiting for ours

for only seventy”

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picture arrived in 2000. For now, the hut, standing next to a carefully tended garden, is a shrine. As well as the photos – the tribesmen’s most treasured possessions – it contains newspaper clippings about His Royal Highness. One, from the London Evening Standard in 2007, is headlined: “Prince Philip health fears”. The villagers used to keep

What is certain is that in Yaohnanen – and in a cluster of neighbouring villages, where men wearing penis gourds hunt wild pigs with bamboo bows and arrows – Prince Philip is revered. Mr Nathuan, 35, escorts visitors to a modest hut, from which he emerges with three signed portraits of the Duke. The earliest, a black and

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letters from Buckingham Palace, too, but they did not survive the heat and damp. When the Duke returns to Tanna, as the locals are sure he will, this bamboo hut, with its thatched roof and dirt floor, will be his home. Like other dwellings in Yaohnanen, it has no running water or electricity. “I’ve been preparing this place for when

he comes to live among us,” says Mr Nathuan. “I know that in England he has a palace and servants. But here he will just live simply, like us.” The curious adulation of the Queen’s husband is believed to date back to the 1960s, and to have been created by several factors: the villagers’ traditional belief in ancestral spirits said to inhabit an

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active volcano on Tanna, the notion of a returning messiah-like figure, inculcated in them by Christian missionaries, and their assimilation of colonial-era respect for the royal family. Although anthropologists say it is not strictly a “cargo cult”, it does bear a resemblance to the dozens of cults that sprang up around the Pacific following the arrival of Westerners. Elsewhere on Tanna, some people worship a shadowy American figure they call John Frum – probably a legacy of the GIs stationed in the New Hebrides during the Second World War, who brought large quantities of cargo (equipment and material goods). Hundreds of men from Tanna were recruited by the Americans to build roads, airstrips and bases. Decades on, John Frum’s followers daub “USA” on their chests, don GI-style uniforms and march barefoot around a parade ground, beneath a Stars and Stripes. (Some believe “John Frum” is a contraction of “John from America”.) The people of Yaohnanen,

whose village is situated on the upper slopes of Tanna, surrounded by thick bushland, are certain that Prince Philip is from their island. They heard that he was neither English nor French nor American; that being the case, it was clear to them – as Kirk Huffman, an anthropologist familiar with the country, once explained – that “he’s got to be New Hebridean”. The conviction ties in with an ancient Tanna legend about a man from the island who travelled to distant lands and found a powerful woman to marry. The locals have heard that the Queen – or “Missis Kiwin”, as they call her in pidgin – is the most powerful woman in the world. With their traditional beliefs about gender, they extrapolate that her husband must be a god. Mr Nathuan leads the way to his grandfather’s grave, on the outskirts of the village, where children in ragged clothes chase squealing piglets. Chief Jack died in 2008. A photograph of him holding a picture of the Queen and Prince Philip, encased in glass, is embedded in his headstone.

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The Duke was born in the same year as Chief Jack, and the villagers believe he will bring great changes, as well as the gift of eternal youth, when he returns. According to Mr Huffman, who wrote an explanation of the cult for British authorities: “At the very moment that he sets foot

ashore, mature kava plants [from which an intoxicating spirit is brewed] will sprout all over the island; all the old people will shed their skins like snakes and become young again; there will no more sickness and no more death ... a man will be able to take any woman he wants.” In Yaohnanen, locals plan to

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welcome Prince Philip with a feast, traditional dancing and kava drinking. “Every year, on 10 June, we celebrate his birthday,” says Mr Nathuan. “We get together and talk about him. We feel happy. We can feel his presence. Now we’re waiting for him to honour his promise to come back in 2010. Everybody is getting ready and preparing for him coming.” At the village school, children are taught about the god who lives in England, and who, Mr Nathuan believes, is one of his ancestors. “One of the grandfathers has died, so we want the other grandfather to come home,” he says. If Prince Philip is tiring of the role of royal consort after 58 years, he might consider Tanna’s invitation. Mr Nathuan says: “When we plant something in the garden, we have to respect it. It’s the same with Prince Philip, and when he comes from England, we will respect him like a King of Tanna.”

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Phillipthe man

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He was born in his parents’ house on the island of Corfu, the son of Prince Andrew

of Greece, and named Philippos. Following the first abolition of the Greek monarchy, Philip was forced into exile with his poverty-stricken parents; he was famously carried in a makeshift cot made from an orange box. Most of Philip’s early life was spent moving from home to home. In adulthood, he became an officer in the Royal Navy, when he married the then-Princess Elizabeth, in 1947. Although he was born a prince of Greece and Denmark, he renounced those titles when he became a British citizen in 1947, and adopted the surname Mountbatten, an Anglicized version of Battenberg which came from his mother’s side of the family. On that occasion he was also created Duke of Edinburgh by his new father-in-law, King

George VI. In 1957, he was given the title Prince Philip. His full title is now HRH Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, Earl of Merioneth and Baron Greenwich. Unlike Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria, Philip was not given the title of Prince Consort. His children, Prince Charles, Princess Anne, Prince Andrew and Prince Edward, all share a surname of Mountbatten-Windsor, given to the children in honour of their father, by Queen Elizabeth, by an Order-in-Council in 1960. However, the Royal House name remains Windsor. As consort to the Queen, Philip’s responsibilities include supporting his queen in her duties as sovereign, and he is normally seen accompanying her to ceremonies including the State Opening of Parliament and overseas state visits. Philip is not only the longest-serving consort, but also the oldest serving spouse of a reigning

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monarch. He holds a number of royal titles, including Prince of the United Kingdom, which was bestowed upon him by the Queen in 1957. Like other members of the royal family, Philip is linked to a number of charitable ventures through his patronage. He is either patron or president of 800 organisations covering a wide range of areas, including science, technological research

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and development, sport, welfare of young people and conservation and the environment. Over the course of his public life, Prince Philip has visited research stations and laboratories across the UK, as well as coalmines, factories, engineering works and industrial plants. He was the first president of World Wildlife Fund - UK from its formation in 1961 to 1982, and international president of the organisation, which later changed to the World Wide Fund for Nature, from 1981 to 1996. His links with the body continue to date in his capacity as president emeritus. The Duke of Edinburgh is also associated with the UK higher education sector, having served as chancellor of the universities of Cambridge, Edinburgh, Salford and Wales in the past. He is a life

governor of King’s College, London and patron of London Guildhall University. Being an airman, Prince Philip boasts nearly 6,000 flying hours as a pilot through experience accumulated from 1952 to 1997. He is also patron of the Guild of Air Pilots and Air Navigators of the British Empire and has been Master of Trinity House since 1969. His successful career, role beside the Queen and commendable public engagements notwithstanding, Prince Philip is also famous for his knack for providing unsavoury gaffes. He is particularly known in Britain for regularly causing offence with bigoted comments whilst on public visits. For example, when visiting China in 1986, he told a group of British students that they had better not stay there too long or they would get “slitty-eyed”.

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The John FrumCult

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Every year on February 15th, natives of Tanna Island hold a celebration in honor of an imaginary man named John Frum. Villagers clothe themselves in homemade US Army britches, paint “USA on their bare chests and backs, and run a replica of Old Glory up the flagpole alongside

the Marine Corps Emblem and the state flag of Georgia. Barefoot soldiers then march in perfect step in the shadow of Yasur, the island’s active volcano, with red-tipped bamboo “rifles” slung over their shoulders. February 15th is known as John Frum day on Tanna Island, and these activities are the islanders’ holiest religious service. The Vanuatu island group lies northeast of Australia and southeast of Malaysia and the Philippines. Prior to contact

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with Europeans, the people who lived there were primitive tribal societies. Many of history’s stereotypes and legends regarding island cannibals originated from these societies; slain enemies and the occasional missionary were eaten, sometimes in the hopes of gaining magical powers, and other times due to food shortages.Eventually the New Hebrides islands (as they were then called) were colonized and placed under joint British and French rule. Christian missionaries formed a makeshift government and court system which punished islanders for following many of their long-held customs, such as dancing, swearing, adultery, and polygamy. The colonizers also forbade working and amusement on Sundays. The islanders lived under this oppression for thirty years before a fellow native rallied the people and promised an age of abundance to any who would reject the

European ways. He went by the alias “John Frum,” a name possibly derived from the phrase “John from Jesus Christ”– namely John the Baptist. Many islanders joined him, and the cult moved inland to escape the missionaries and return to their old traditions. One day in the early 1940s, the relatively isolated group of islands was descended upon by hundreds of thousands of American soldiers who arrived by sea and by air. The world was at war, and America had plans to build bases on the Pacific islands. The newcomers recruited the locals’ assistance in constructing hospitals, airstrips, jetties, roads, bridges, and corrugated-steel Quonset huts, all of which were strange and wondrous to the natives. But it was the prodigious amounts of war materiel that were airdropped for the US bases that drastically changed the lifestyle of the islanders. They observed as aircraft descended from the sky and delivered crates full of clothing, tents,

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weapons, tools, canned foods, and other goods to the island’s new residents, a diversity of riches the likes of which the islanders had never seen. The natives learned that this bounty from the sky was known to the American servicemen as “cargo.” These new occupiers proved to be far better guests than the British missionaries had been. The islanders were further astonished at the sight of black GIs among the ranks, enjoying all the benefits of cargo that the white soldiers enjoyed– something that the black islanders had been denied with rare exception. The islanders believed that their own dead ancestors continued to influence the communities of the living, and that their ancestors would one day come back to life and distribute

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to them unimaginable wealth. Therefore they reasoned that the white people must have had connections to their own ancestors, who would logically be the only ones powerful enough to rain down such wondrous riches.It was during the war that the John Frum legend changed, recasting the religious icon as a black American infantryman. The black GIs were believed to have been John Frum’s own detachment of the US Army, or perhaps the grown children of islanders believed to have been kidnapped by plantation owners long ago. It was said that John Frum lived inside the island’s volcano, called “Yasur”– the native word for “God.” When the war ended several years later, the Americans departed as suddenly as they had arrived. Military bases were abandoned, and the steady flow of cargo which had altered the islanders’ lives completely dried up. The men and women of Tanna Island had grown to

enjoy the radios, trucks, boats, watches, iceboxes, medicine, Coca-Cola, canned meat, and candy, so they set into motion a plan to bring back the cargo. They had surreptitiously learned the secrets of summoning the cargo by observing the practices of the American airmen, sailors and soldiers. The islanders set to work clearing their own kind of landing strips, and they erected their own control towers strung with rope and bamboo aerials. They carved wooden radio headsets with bamboo antennae, and even the occasional wooden air-traffic controller. Day after day, men from the village sat in their towers wearing their replica headsets as others stood on the runways and waved the landing signals to attract cargo-bringing airplanes from the empty sky. More towers were constructed, these with tin cans strung on wires

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to imitate radio stations so John Frum could communicate with his people. Piers were also erected in an effort to attract ships laden with cargo, and the Red Cross emblem seen on wartime ambulances was taken as the symbol of the resurging religion. Today villages surrounding Yasur Volcano are dotted with little red crosses surrounded by picket fences, silently testifying to the islander’s faith. The priests and prophets of the John Frum cult, called “messengers,” foretold the return of planes and ships bearing cargo for the people of Tanna escorted by John Frum himself. The movement declared that in addition to returning to their “kastom” [custom] ways, money was to be thrown away, gardens be left untended, and pigs killed since all material wealth will be provided in the end by John Frum. Their god has yet to emerge from his home inside the volcano to bring the promised riches, and at least one visitor’s guide offers this advice: “If you question a local about their

beliefs, they will most likely reply that you have been waiting for your messiah to return for over 2000 years – while they have been waiting for only 70.” Yasur the volcanoDespite gaining their independence and becoming familiar with the workings of the world around them, new beliefs arise on the island regularly. A visit to the village of Yaohnanen in 1974 by Prince Phillip resulted in the formation of a Prince Phillip cult. Its followers believe that Phillip originally came from Tanna, albeit in a different form, and that he will eventually return to rule over them. A recent development is the appearance of the Prophet Fred, an actual person who claims to have raised his wife from the dead in early 2006. He preaches a turn to more mainstream Christianity, and his followers have had violent clashes with those of John Frum. Vanuatu is not the earliest and far from the

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only place in Melanesia where cargo cults have existed. The origin of the earliest cargo cults in general can be traced back to 1871, when the Russian explorer Nikolai Miklouho-Maclay landed in Papua New Guinea bearing gifts of goods such as steel axe heads and bolts of cloth. Inevitably, missionaries soon arrived and began distributing goods. Initially all efforts to convert the natives proved useless, but one day the natives suddenly started converting in droves. The men and women of the island had theorized that learning the rituals of the Europeans would allow them to gain the secrets of cargo. The religions introduced by missionaries were completely inconsistent with islanders’ long-held beliefs, yet the natives could not deny the call of the cargo. The people therefore attempted to reconcile their existing beliefs with the missionaries’ teachings, a practice which led to some strange interpretations. In New Guinea, one resulting version

of Christianity described a god named Anus who delivered cargo of canned meat, steel tools, rice, and matches to Adam and Eve. When they discovered sex, Anus ejected them from Eden and struck them with a flood. On the Island of New Hanover in the Bismarck Archipelago, another cargo cult arose in 1968 claiming that the true secret of cargo was known to only one man: President Lyndon Johnson. The natives of this island revolted against their Australian rulers, saved up $75,000, and sent a letter to Johnson offering to buy him and make him King of New Hanover. Strangely enough, he didn’t accept. Renowned physicist Richard Feynman coined the phrase “cargo cult science” based on such cults. The term draws a metaphor for research which is polluted by the mind’s tendency to cherry-pick evidence that supports the desired outcome. Though it is tempting to look down on these islanders for their misguided assumptions, they are simply an extreme example

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of this very human bias. For them it was easier to believe that the control towers, headsets, and runways were the cause of the cargo-carrying airplanes rather than an effect, so they closed their minds to alternative explanations. Some of these cargo cults continue to operate today, such as the parade-marching pseudo-marines of Vanuatu. So far no black US infantryman have crawled from the volcano to deliver the islanders’ salvation, but every year they confidently hoist their flags and don their uniforms, so they’ll be ready when that glorious day finally arrives. Perhaps one day it will.

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Tanna is an island of Vanuatu in the South Pacific. It is 25 miles long and 12 miles wide, with a total area of 212 sq miles Its highest point is the 3,556 summit of

Mount Tukosmera in the south of the island. In the east, northeast of the peak, close to the coast, is where Siwi Lake was located until mid April 2000 when, following unusually heavy rain, the lake burst down the valley into Sulphur Bay, destroying the village with no loss of life. It is the most populous island in Tafea Province, with a population of about 20,000, and one of the more populous islands in the country. Isangel, the provincial administrative capital, is on the west coast near the island’s largest town of Lénakel. Mount Yasur is an accessible active volcano which is located on the southeast coast. Tanna is populated almost entirely by Melanesians and they follow a more traditional lifestyle than many other islands. Some of the villages are known as kastom villages, where modern inventions are restricted, the inhabitants wear penis sheaths (Bislama: nambas) and grass skirts, and the children do not go to public schools. According to anthropologist Joël Bonnemaison, who has studied the Tannese extensively, their resistance to change is due to their traditional worldview and how they “perceive, internalise, and account for the dual concepts of space and time.” [1] The island is the centre of the John Frum cargo cult, which worships an American World War II soldier as their god. Yaohnanen is the centre of the Prince Philip movement, which

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reveres Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh and prince consort of the United Kingdom.[2] John Gibson Paton, the famous Protestant missionary served here from 1858.There are five languages spoken on Tanna: North Tanna in the northwest, Lénakel in the west-central area near Lénakel, Southwest Tanna in the southwest, Whitesands in the northeast near Whitesands, and Kwamera in the southeast. These are generally grouped into the Tanna languages family, which is a subgroup of the South Vanuatu languages, an Austronesian language branch. According to Ethnologue, each is spoken by a few thousand, and Lénakel, with 6,500 speakers, is one of the languages of Vanuatu with the most speakers. Most people on Tanna also speak Bislama, which is one of Vanuatu’s three official languages (together with English and French).The island is one of the most fertile in Vanuatu and produces kava, coffee, coconut, copra, and other fruits and vegetables. Recently, tourism has become more important, as tourists are attracted to the volcano and traditional culture. To help preserve the integrity of culture as a tourism asset, only local people are permitted to act as guides. There are many accommodations available on the island. There is an airport at White Grass on the western coast.

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