Revisiting Vanuatu
A night watch between New Caledonia and the Marshall Islands brings back memories of a young man, a place he hadn't chosen, and a debt he has never fully settled.
S 20°37.895 E 166°51.104 — 11 pm to 3 am watch
On the way from Noumea, New Caledonia to Majuro, Marshall Islands, the winds are pushing us through the Loyalty Islands. Tomorrow, we will be entering Vanuatu's territorial waters.
We will sail within miles of the Saraoutou Research Station, where I spent eighteen months in the early 1990s fulfilling the obligations of French national service. I was assigned this position by the administration because they had a coconut breeding program to run and I had a graduate degree in genetics.
I arrived weeks after defending my PhD dissertation, expecting an extended vacation in a tropical paradise. Walking the plantation by day, cocktails by the pool at six, breathtaking dives on weekends — that was what I had mentally prepared for. I should have read the fine print, not that it would have made any difference.
Things took an unexpected turn early. The trip was long, a little too long. A twelve-hour flight to Bangkok, then ten more hours to Sydney. The goal of the second day was to reach Port Vila, the capital of Vanuatu. The Airbus made a quick stop in Noumea before the final leg to Vila. Noticing that only six passengers remained on the plane when we took off, I started getting worried. A second night in Vila, where my first earthquake woke me at 3 am — I lay in the dark feeling certain it had all ended prematurely. But the hotel stayed standing, and the next day I boarded a six-passenger prop plane to Luganville, the only town on Espiritu Santo Island.
After a thirty-minute drive, I reached Saraoutou.