I think a special entry needs to be made for our friendly quarantine officer Tamba.

Before we left Efate we wanted to meet Tamba again as Myra had bought his children a few gifts as a thank you for him treating us so well during our stay. Tamba was the first person we met as he boarded the boat to check us out on our arrival in Vanuatu. He was a quietly spoken man who carried out his job professionally and politely. Poraic offered him a beer and we sat and chatted. This was a trick Poraic used as its very difficult for somebody to take things from you once you had given them something !! We chatted to Tamba and he talked about Vanuatu with pride and told us some places to go and visit. He left us as he had to check in some other boats but it was a good start to our stay, a very friendly and welcoming guy proud of his country.

During our stay we bumped into him a few times around town and we always had a good chat with him. He helped us out with our visas for Papua New Guinea as detailed in another entry below and was even going to arrange a meal for us at his house with some traditional home made food. As he had to work all over that particular weekend it never happened and he was very apologetic, he really wanted to do it for us. Anyway we met Tamba down at the waterfront bar the night before we were due to leave, we had a couple of beers and Poraic asked him if he would like to come for lunch on the boat the next day with his family. He accepted and said he would make some traditional food and bring it with him.

The next day he turned up with his wife and three children, also there were two other ladies who were cousins of his wife. We had joked the night before with Tamba about how weddings were arranged on the islands. Its still done the old fashioned way by offering a couple of pigs to get a new wife, the bigger the tusks the more valuable the pig !! We thought maybe something had got lost in translation and Tamba was bringing his wifes cousins as a proposition for me and Brian !! Turns out that the two cousins had come across from a neighbouring island and had come to stay with his family, the two girls would look after his children whilst he and his wife went to work. He would in turn house and feed the cousins and look after them until they had got married. Apparantly this was quite common, you look after your family come what may no matter whether they are brothers/sisters/cousins, etc. Only way Tamba could see them go was to find them a husband or for them to find their own husband.

We had a great day on the boat, we ate their local food which was baked banana wrapped in cabbage leaves with a chicken leg on top. The banana didn’t taste anything like banana and to be honest was a bit tasteless, surprising as i thought it might be quite spicey. I had two portions though as they had made a lot of it and it took a long time to prepare, an hour to get the fire hot and two hours to bake, didn’t want to seem ungrateful. We chatted for the whole of the afternoon and learnt a lot more about the island, traditions and his family. Although Tambo had lost his parents his grandparents had outlived them, one reaching 115 and the other 112 !! Must be something to do with eating home grown vegtables and not stuff packed with e-numbers, maybe theres something in all this organic stuff afterall !!

Tamba had 12 brothers and came from the island of Ambrym, he was lucky and got a good education, came to Efate to work and got a job with the quarantine office. He has seen the country change with the increase in tourism and is positive about the future, they seem to be managing it well, educating the children and managing the environment instead of just trying to take all the cash they can. Tambas father had left him and his brothers some land back on his home island, part of the land had been given away so a local primary school could be built. Poraic wanted to twin this school with a local school back in Ireland so they could find out about each other and maybe send some gifts to help support them. I hope this comes about and both Poraic and Tamba were enthusiastic about wanting to progress it. Watch this space.

Tambas youngest son was becoming restless so it was time to say goodbye to the whole family and take them back ashore. We had made a good friend and we all agreed that it was sad to be saying goodbye, we had only been here two weeks but it seemed like longer.  Some of the guide books say that Vanuatu is possibly the happiest country in the world,  it could well be true. The people are happy and friendly, there doesn’t seem to be any racial tension or underlying problems, they are genuinely nice people with a happy outlook, although a lot of the country is very, very poor they are proud of Vanuatu.

To make sure that we could change our plans we had to make sure that we could get visas if needed and get the boat in and out of countries without a problem. After searching and checking on line we found we do not need visas for the Solomon Islands and we can obtain one on arrival in Papua New Guinea if we land in a main port, if we land in a smaller port we could be delayed by some considerable time if there was not a customs office there. Better safe than sorry we wanted to try and get our visas for PNG before leaving. There was an Australian and New Zealand visa office in town which we had already visited as we enquired about getting our Australian visas when we thought we were heading for Darwin, they told us that they get processed somewhere else by post and may take a month to get back, or we could do it on-line for free, err OK!! We paid them a visit to enquire about visas to PNG but they knew nothing and sent us to the Immagration office. This was a completely unmarked office above some shops, you would have no idea in a million years what it was unless you knew, fortunatley Porac had already been there when we checked into the place but only found it by knocking on the locked doors of the nearby guarded French Embassey. We went upstairs to enquire about whether there was a Papua New Guinea embassey/consulant in the country. The main behind the desk with at least 3 stripes on his lapels was trying to be very helpful and thouroughly searched through the local telephone directory. He shuffled about, sometimes coming out of his office and walking up and down the corridor before returning to his desk. He asked another colleague who then he also picked up the telephone directory. He told us that we should go to the visa place but we told him we had just come from there. Another colleague suddenly remembered the name of the PNG honuary consulate but did not know her address. We later found out that this was not uncommon as nobody had an actual address on the island !! He said that we should go to the Police station as they know her and where she lives. We went to the Police station but they did not know where she lived so they sent us to the Post Office as they knew where everybody lived. Upon arrival at the Post Office we saw our friendly quarantine guy Tambo, he was pleased to see us and we told him about what we were trying to do. He not only knew of the lady but had her phone number and knew what hill she lived up !! He gave her a ring and she was only around the corner doing some shopping, she said she would be back at her house later and we should get some passport photos made. Tambo offered to give us a lift up ‘that hill’ later during his lunch break after we got the photos done. Photos made Tambo true to his would turned up in his works mini bus and gave us a lift to the ladys house. On the way he stopped off for some diesel and put 500 Vatus in, this was 2.87 litres, half a galloon, not sure why so little, maybe the quarantine department were broke or he had to add some extra diesel as the hill we were going to climb was extra steep !! Paperwork completed we were to return 2 days later to pick up our visas. Tambo gave us a lift back to town and we bought him lunch as he saved the day for us. He was also going to give us a lift in a couple of days time to pick up the visas, this he was doing purely off his own back and in his own time during lunch. He was a really nice guy who always stopped to say hello, he always seemed to be either on his way to the airport, on his way to see some yachties, or on his way to see a cruise ship come in. He seemed to work long hours and weekends too.