Day 50 and 51 - farewell to Vanuatu and back to Suva for Diwali

The remainder of our week in Vanuatu flew by, not doing a huge amount to tell the truth, though that's the kind of vibe you catch just from being there.  

When actually awake, we explored a bit more :

walked the sunset promenade with the locals, 

tracked down the post office, 

and parliament building,

ate yet more fried fish, rice and salad, 

and of course continued my research into the South Pacific's finest papaya. 

The National Museum (or "Nasonal Muisium blong Vanuatu" as they call it in Bismala) was well worth a half-morning visit, for the slit drums alone (get those psychedelic eyes - apparently representing the morning star...)

and see also the New Hebrides flag, dating back (though not too far) to 1906 until independence in 1980, when Fiji was jointly ruled as a "Condominium" by GB and France, unsurprisingly leading to all manner of complications - from which side of the road to drive on to what legal system to use to recognise marriage and tax collection...

They're also very proud that UNESCO has recognised Vanuati's unique "sand droing" (drawing) as a  "masterpiece of the oral and intangible heritage of humanity"; broadly, symbols and geometric writing in sand or ash, passed down through the generations.

Reluctantly, we dragged ourselves from Port Vila's beaches, back to Suva just in time for the monumental Diwali celebrations.  On the way home from the airport, we saw lots of homes lit up like Xmas trees and we knew from the coverage before we left that Diwali was going to be a big hoopla but, gosh, didn't the firework sellers do well? I've never seen such a display - from right in front of the apartment block to as far as the eye could see (despite the rain).  And it went on well into the wee hours; just as it looked to be over, another house would kick off again, which seemed then to spur on the neighbours - a serious level of one-upmanship!  40% or so of the Fijian population is of Indian descent, the result of Indians being indentured to work on sugar cane plantations between 1859 and 1916 (thousands were hoodwinked to "travel just beyond Calcutta" and then charged in labour retrospectively for their fare from home to Fiji). After working out their time, and faced with more labour to pay for return passage, many decided to stay on and made their homes here (with such enthusiasm that, not long after independence from Britain in 1970, Fijians of Indian derivation outnumbered indigenous Fijians and succeeded in voting in an "Indo-Fijian" Prime Minister, though that finally led to the 1987 coups...)