Bunlap is a village in the south-east of

Pentecost Island Pentecost Island is one of the 83 islands that make up the South Pacific nation of Vanuatu. It lies due north of capital Port Vila. Pentecost Island is known as in French and in Bislama. The island was known in its native languages by ...

in the

Pacific The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the contine ...

archipelago An archipelago ( ), sometimes called an island group or island chain, is a chain, cluster, or collection of islands, or sometimes a sea containing a small number of scattered islands. Examples of archipelagos include: the Indonesian Arch ...

Vanuatu Vanuatu ( or ; ), officially the Republic of Vanuatu (french: link=no, République de Vanuatu; bi, Ripablik blong Vanuatu), is an island country located in the South Pacific Ocean. The archipelago, which is of volcanic origin, is east of ...

. It is the most well-known of a number of local ''kastom'' (custom) villages whose people aspire to retain a traditional lifestyle with minimal Western influences. Unlike some other kastom villages, which remain strictly closed off to foreigners, Bunlap has profited extensively from tourism in recent years.

Culture

Clothing

Traditional clothing is still worn by many (though not all) villagers. For females this consists of knee-length skirts made out of fiber strips. For ceremonial occasions, ankle-length skirts are worn. Men wear only a wide belt around the waist, to which a cloth or leaf tube is attached. The tube is worn around the penis (reminiscent of a penile gourd), while the remainder of the genitals and buttocks are exposed. These garments are distinct from the similar, but still differing nambas, which are worn by other indigenous peoples of Vanuatu. Villagers from Bunlap generally put on Western clothing when travelling outside the area.

"Gol"

The Bunlap people perform an ancient ritual called the ''Gol'' (Bislama ''nanggol'') or "

land diving Land diving (known in the local Sa language as and in Bislama as ) is a ritual performed by the men of the southern part of Pentecost Island, Vanuatu. Men jump off wooden towers around high, with two tree vines wrapped around the ankles. Lan ...

", in which men tie vines to their ankles and jump headfirst from platforms jutting out from a tower. The jumper's fall is broken by the vines, the other end of which is tied to the tower. A sloping surface of softened earth at the base of the tower provides some protection from injury in case of a broken vine, a vine of incorrect length, or a poor jump. The Gol inspired the modern sport of

bungee jumping Bungee jumping (), also spelled bungy jumping, is an activity that involves a person jumping from a great height while connected to a large elastic cord. The launching pad is usually erected on a tall structure such as a building or crane, a ...

, though the vines used are far less elastic than bungee cords, and the Gol jumper does not bounce up at the end of the fall. The Gol legend says that in the village Bunlap a man called Tamalie had a quarrel with his wife and she ran away and climbed a

banyan A banyan, also spelled "banian", is a fig that develops accessory trunks from adventitious prop roots, allowing the tree to spread outwards indefinitely. This distinguishes banyans from other trees with a strangler habit that begin life as a ...

tree, where she wrapped her ankles with

liana A liana is a long- stemmed, woody vine that is rooted in the soil at ground level and uses trees, as well as other means of vertical support, to climb up to the canopy in search of direct sunlight. The word ''liana'' does not refer to a t ...

vines. When Tamalie came up to her, the woman jumped from the tree and so did her husband not knowing what his wife had done. He died but the woman survived. The men of Bunlap were very impressed by this performance and they began to practise such jumps in case they got in a similar situation. This practice transformed into a ritual for rich yam harvest and also for proving

manhood A man is an adult male human. Prior to adulthood, a male human is referred to as a boy (a male child or adolescent). Like most other male mammals, a man's genome usually inherits an X chromosome from the mother and a Y chromo ...

Agriculture and cultivation

On the interior slopes of the island, villagers grow

taro Taro () (''Colocasia esculenta)'' is a root vegetable. It is the most widely cultivated species of several plants in the family Araceae that are used as vegetables for their corms, leaves, and petioles. Taro corms are a food staple in Afri ...

, a widely cultivated tropical Asian plant (''Colocasia esculenta'') having broad

peltate The following is a list of terms which are used to describe leaf morphology in the description and taxonomy of plants. Leaves may be simple (a single leaf blade or lamina) or compound (with several leaflets). The edge of the leaf may be regular ...

leaves and a large starchy edible

tuber Tubers are a type of enlarged structure used as storage organs for nutrients in some plants. They are used for the plant's perennation (survival of the winter or dry months), to provide energy and nutrients for regrowth during the next growing ...

. Bunlap men often consume

kava Kava or kava kava ('' Piper methysticum'': Latin 'pepper' and Latinized Greek 'intoxicating') is a crop of the Pacific Islands. The name ''kava'' is from Tongan and Marquesan, meaning 'bitter'; other names for kava include ''ʻawa'' ( Hawai� ...

extract at the end of the day for its intoxicating effects, similar to alcohol. The drink is extracted from root of the kava plant. Women are forbidden to consume kava.

Rites of passage

The young boys of this tribe are circumcised at the age of 5 with a knife made of bamboo. The wound is then wrapped with a special leaf to make it heal faster. The men celebrate after the circumcising ceremony by eating a special pie made of yam and coconut and baking it on hot stones. After 7 weeks of solitude, the boys are let out and another big ceremony is organised. The boys who are circumcised take a further step to the manhood by killing each pig in the ceremony.

Language

The people of Bunlap speak a slightly-distinctive form of Sa language. Bunlap's dialect appears to be largely a mixture of the dialects spoken in

Panngi {{Infobox settlement , name = Panngi , other_name = , native_name = , settlement_type = Village , image_skyline = , imagesize = , image_caption = , pushpin_map ...

to the west, Baie Barrier to the north and Ranwas to the south. Anthropologists Margaret Jolly and Murray Garde have both spent time in Bunlap and acquired knowledge of its language.

Bislama Bislama (; ; also known by its earlier French name, ) is an English-based creole language and one of the official languages of Vanuatu. It is the first language of many of the "Urban ni-Vanuatu" (citizens who live in Port Vila and Luganvil ...

, Vanuatu's national language, is known to some degree by most adult men in Bunlap, although knowledge and use of Bislama among inhabitants of Bunlap is far less than in nearby Christianised villages. There is no Western schooling in Bunlap, and many (though not all) of its inhabitants are illiterate.

In popular culture

The

Travel Channel Travel Channel (stylized as Trvl Channel since 2018) is an American pay television channel owned by Warner Bros. Discovery, which had previously owned the channel from 1997 to 2007. The channel is headquartered in New York, New York, United S ...

documentary series ''Tribal Life'' follows the Bunlap community members.Travel Channel :: TV Listings :: Weekly Schedule
{{webarchive , url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080119073941/http://travel.discovery.com/tv-schedules/series.html?paid=26.5726.115515.32536.5 , date=January 19, 2008

References

Populated places in Vanuatu Penama Province