Sally Andrew
2026
OFF-THE-BEATEN-TRACK LANDFALLS were always a thrill. People in remote villages often got so excited by the site of our sails approaching that by the time we set the hook, their canoes were already launched and paddling towards us. Greetings exchanged and barters made, we would be invited ashore by the villagers and proudly initiated into their way of life and taken to visit their gardens and homes. An immediate welcome! I suppose I could say that visiting Vanuatu rocked my world. It is so amazing. Ni-Vanuatans are warm and welcoming and share everything they’ve got – love, laughs, music, food from their gardens – even though they don’t have much in the way of material goods. To reciprocate their kindness, we gifted t-shirts, batteries, toothpaste and toothbrushes, sugar, flour, tinned meat, rope, etc. Even a solar panel. One day we proposed a sailing trip to a nearby island. The music jam on deck was amazing. When we landed a big fish, smiles doubled in size. There would be a feast in the village that night. The Happy Isles of Paul Theroux? No. Contented islanders? Yes, I think so. Certainly in our time there, the nineties, people were proud of their culture and way of life and had little lust (or the means) for western ways of conspicuous consumption. Perhaps the digital age has changed this. We were the happy ones. Often, when we anchored in front of villages we’d visited in years past, locals would paddle out and welcome us back to their village. “Welcome home!” they’d cry out. Home . . .
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