However, in recent years, their diet has been supplemented by imported rice, which has now become the mainstay of their food supply.
Rice is supplied to these remote tropical islands by the inter-island ships that arrive at random times. Hence rice stocks can get very low, awaiting the arrival of a ship, that, may come only just once every six months. Providing the ship doesn’t run aground on one of the numerous coral reefs of the archipelago.
Recently the soaring price of rice is forcing these people to rethink their food supply.
In Port Vila, the capital of Vanuatu, the price of rice has gone from Vt 3150 (US$34) per 25 kg bag to Vt 4100 (US$44.3) in one week.
This soar in price has extreme impact for the remote islands, as the additional shipping cost is putting rice way beyond their meagre economic reach.
These isolated communities have a ‘no-cash economy’. Their only means of income is through providing produce in exchange for services, and selling a few items to the occasional tourist that comes through.
Recently a secondary school on Pentecost Island was forced to close and send the students home, due to the lack of food. Their staple food - has become prohibitive and the schools are no longer able to feed the students from the school fees. School gardens are not sufficient to meet the demand of the school.
Empty stomachs and closed schools do little to help the advancement of the youth of these remote islands. These disadvantaged children constantly struggle to gain the knowledge and skills required for the 21st century.
Their primary education in the villages is undertaken squatting on their haunches at solid wooden benches. They share pages from an exercise book to have something to write on. Pencils are broken into three.
Primary classroom items such as blackboards, chalk and writing paper are considered as pure gold to these isolated communities.
At the end of primary schooling the students sit an entrance exam that allows them to go on to high school, depending on the acquisition of funds by their parents to meet school fees.
So many of the students, in this no-cash economy, actually get to see the inside of a high school classroom.
Education is not seen as a priority in Vanuatu and is not free.
The dire consequences of this are:
• only 55.8% of Vanuatu kids will get to grade 6
• of those only 18.2% will go to high school
• 26% will never go to school at all.
Around late 2007 the Vanuatu government admitted that it did not have the resources or the finances to provide education beyond the main islands.
Rick and Wendy Tendys, the founders of YouMe Support Foundation, are raffling Seachange Lodge (a private holiday home, plus 6 luxury holiday apartments) on the Internet, to raise funds for non-repayable high school education grants for the children of the outer islands of Vanuatu. This is a World First, Blue Moon Opportunity that will change someone’s life, as well as the lives of these children.
The only salvation for these distant communities is for their children to become educated and gain jobs. Then the soaring price of rice, will not prove to be a life threatening problem to the isolated island communities. You can help make a real difference in the lives of these people.