The island’s John Frum movement is a classic example of what anthropologists have called a “cargo cult”-many of which sprang up in villages in the South Pacific during World War II, when hundreds of thousands of American troops poured into the islands from the skies and seas. “Radios, TVs, trucks, boats, watches, iceboxes, medicine, Coca-Cola and many other wonderful things.” “John promised he’ll bring planeloads and shiploads of cargo to us from America if we pray to him,” a village elder tells me as he salutes the Stars and Stripes.
On this holiest of days, devotees have descended on the village of Lamakara from all over the island to honor a ghostly American messiah, John Frum. This is February 15, John Frum Day, on the remote island of Tanna in the South Pacific nation of Vanuatu. They tote bamboo “rifles” on their shoulders, the scarlet tips sharpened to represent bloody bayonets, and sport the letters “USA,” painted in red on their bare chests and backs. Some 40 barefoot "G.I.’s" suddenly emerge from behind the huts to more cheering, marching in perfect step and ranks of two past Chief Isaac. As the huge banner billows in the wind, hundreds of watching villagers clap and cheer.Ĭhief Isaac Wan, a slight, bearded man in a blue suit and ceremonial sash, leads the uniformed men down to open ground in the middle of the village. On the command of a bearded “drill sergeant,” the flag is raised on a pole hacked from a tall tree trunk. One reverently carries Old Glory, precisely folded to reveal only the stars. Army uniforms-appear on a mound overlooking a bamboo-hut village. In the morning heat on a tropical island halfway across the world from the United States, several dark-skinned men-clad in what look to be U.S.
0 kommentar(er)
