www.Vanuatu.cc

LAST SITE UPDATE: 08/03/2007 Another article added + Vanuatu Font for sale in the shop.

NEWS: 08/03/2007 If you are looking for lost friends of Vanuatu do not forget to post a request on the forum, please forward the address of the website to all people who have something to do with Vanuatu.

INTRODUCTION:

Welcome to Vanuatu.cc

Thank you for passing by, and please before you browse the content, let me introduce you to my life in Vanuatu, the motivation behind this website, and how you can participate.

My name is Pascal de Gaillande, I was born in Port Vila, island of Efate in Vanuatu back on the 28^th November 1972. I am from French Origin, and naturalized Ni Vanuatu in the mid 90s.

From one side of my family, they have been in Port Vila since 3 generations, on the other side of my family the origin are found in France and Polynesia.

I mostly grew up in Vila with the occasional trip overseas; I started my life in Mele, then shortly after I moved to Tassiriki, where my parents still live after over 30 years.

I spent about 17 years in Vila before I traveled to New Caledonia to study in Noumea in the early months of 1990 until 1993, I was always coming back to Vila during school holidays, so I was still spending like 4 ½ months per year back home. Then I met my future wife in 1994 and moved to Sydney Australia in mid 1995, again going back to Vila as much as 4 times per year sometimes, in 2002 we had an opportunity to go live in Vila for about nearly 1 1/2 years with our 2 children, by the time we left Vila in 2004 we had a 3^rd child…Nowadays I am back in Australia, but of course they were a few trips back to Vila this last years and always will be in the future…

Growing up in Vila was so awesome, that I really feel blessed, I could not imagine growing up elsewhere, how can I? Every single weekends of the whole year spent at the beach (Yes when you say your are sick of the beach to an European, they look at you as if you were some sort of sick freak), and most of the time fishing, snorkeling, hunting and exploring the forest, riding horses, running wild in the plantations with the dogs, swimming in rivers catching prawns, building little huts with coconut trees and branches, making huge fire and jumping them with lianas, jumping from trees in the lagoon, and yes sometimes we add little accidents such as getting stink by hornets (Fair enough we had thrown stones at their nest), getting cut by bush knifes, and falling down, yes lots of falling, from trees, from slippery reefs, from path in the jungle…but I am still here…I say we, because most of the time I was doing all these with my cousins and good friends, this people I have been so close too, I just consider them like my brothers…oh yes I forgot there was school too, in my time if you were French, you either went at the public school or at “l’ecole Colardeau” (Colardeau’s school), Colardeau which is a family I an related to as well…I did start at an Erakor school but it lasted only a year I think before I was moved to “l’ecole Colardeau”…Then to the “Lycee Louis Antoine de Bougainville” (High school), by now we were riding bikes, and we had grown up (Well in a sense, still true today…), we found new stuff to do, new activities and hobbies and of course there it was a strong interest for girls…Nevertheless certainly there was no playstation nor TV at the time (At best we could rent some movies and had tapes recorded from New Caledonia’s TV but that only happened in the 80s), so as far as nature goes we did it all in Vila and its surrounding from Tukutuk, to Forari, we had a ball, the freedom was intense, and unequalled, that is an important aspect of Vanuatu that still hold today, freedom…If I had to choose a place were to grow up definitely I would say Vila again, and again…and again…I really feel sorry for kids that grow up in cities between 4 walls and I feel even more sorry for those who grew up in a war zone in between a firing gun and dead bodies, yes may be we were not a cultural match for all those little city slickers from France that spent their afternoon in libraries reading about adventures…but whatever they read we were living it and yes I did not care much about reading Robinson Crusoe…there is many tales in each activity we were enjoying but since this is just an introduction, I better not go in the details, if not it would be the longest introduction ever, though I have to say whomever is up there, I will never be thankful enough to have placed my soul in Vila…and having grown in Vila, and being an adult now (Well I hope), these wonderful times of my childhood and teenager’s years in Vanuatu can never be taken back from me, there are mind until the end.

Finally this leads me to the motivation behind this website. Being a bit of an internet surfer (Yes what a dramatic change from Robinson to a total nerd), I always wanted a Vanuatu domain name, I was a bit late to get the good ones such as .com or .net, but when I saw the .cc available I registered it straight away, for a long time I wanted to do a website about Vanuatu, because Vanuatu is in my heart and mind day and night, but it is not the only reason…there are other reasons, firstly, although I dedicate this website to Vanuatu and its people, if you live in Vanuatu, I guess you really do not care about surfing the net and looking a site about Vanuatu, because precisely you mostly are having the time of your life there, but instead if you are a Ni Vanuatu that lives elsewhere, I guess like me, and pardon me if I am wrong, but you will always be looking for Vanuatu at some stage…I have no doubt that if you are a Ni Vanuatu living overseas you will always have a strong desire to go back and live in Vanuatu one day…I call this ideology or unproven theory: “ting ting island” which translate to “thinking about the island”, and that is being elsewhere but at the same time always be in Vanuatu (Or your island) in your heart and mind all the time, just like me, so this is a website dedicated to all my Ni Vanuatu brothers and sisters that live overseas, but without discrimination it is also equally dedicated to all expatriates and people whom in their life time have spent time (such as lived there…not in holidays) or were born in Vanuatu and might also have been touched by the magic of Vanuatu, thus who might also experience this ideology.

During my time in Vanuatu, I had lots of friends (Fortunately still do)…but unfortunately many left Vanuatu over the years…for diverse reasons, and that is another motive why this website come to be, I would not only like to hear about my Ni Vanuatu brothers and sisters, but also I want this website to be a place where you can reconnect with some lost friends you met in Vanuatu that may be looking for you somewhere in the world, the common point being Vanuatu.

Soon a forum will be created with diverse sections, such as a “looking for friend(s)” section, where you will be able to post request on a friend or friends your looking for…but it will not stop there, I would like for people to participate by sending articles about Vanuatu, and I may be looking for other to manage the site on a voluntary basis with me. Which brings me to another very important aspect of this website and another reason that motivates strongly, I would like this website to be a place where we can share ideas about the good development and future of Vanuatu and whatever thoughts can contribute to make Vanuatu the best place on earth to live in (I know it already is but still a few ameliorations on certain aspects would not hurt), and I strongly would like to receive ideas and comments from all of you…It might get a little political, God I hate this word, but lets keep it to a decent and respectful level…all I would like is some concrete ideas that can help, not heavy criticisms, or unconstructive discussions, I guess there is already too much of that in the world.

Although I have written in English because it is convenient, and I am a bit restricted in time to translate, feel free to communicate in Pidgin English (Bichelamar) and French which we all know are as well the official languages of Vanuatu which I understand and can write.

I nearly forgot, if you came across this website as a future tourist, I will try my best to have some tourist info on this website, and hoping many will contribute.

Thank you for having read this introduction and please participate as much as you can…Thank yu tumas…

Yours truly,

Pascal de Gaillande