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Vanuatu is a volcanic island chain in the south
west Pacific Ocean, between Fiji and New Caledonia. There are about
80 islands with a total land area of 12,189 square kilometers reaching
900 km in a north-south direction.
The capital of Vanuatu is Port Vila, on the island of Efate. As you can see from the space photograph
of Efate, most of the islands are lush green tropical forest. Except
for two urban areas, Port Vila and Luganville on Santo, the small
population of people lives in rural villages.
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What's
special about Vanuatu?
Vanuatu is
one of the few places on Earth where you can enter into a very ancient
culture and contact your deepest roots and connections with the natural
world and feel safe and comfortable at the same time. Security, peace, a sense of
wonder at the scenic splendor of nature, garnished with a culture that
goes back thousands of years. These are some of the reasons people come
from Europe, Asia, the United States, Australia and New Zealand to visit
or live in Vanuatu.
 The
people of Vanuatu are Melanesians and have a
very strong and enduring attachment to their
islands and their environment. In the more remote
islands the people still follow their ancestrial
traditions and their artwork, dances, music,
and dress will transport you to an era before
the concept of time began.
Their sense of community and
culture give the ni-Vanuatu people a kind of peace and friendliness that
extends to visitors and residents from other lands. They are, in a word,
nice.
Most of the small and widely
distributed population (there are about 170,000 people living in the Republic
of Vanuatu) are natives living in villages with their extended families.
The expatriate community is only a few thousand individuals, many of whom
have been here for generations.
The ni-Vanuatu people are multilingual.
Everyone speaks their own village language plus the universal Bislama,
an English/French pidgin that you will quickly pick up. Most of the people
also speak English and French.
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