In my last column titled “Our brush with royals,” I wrote about my chance sighting in London 20 years ago of Prince Philip and his wife, Queen Elizabeth the Second of Great Britain.
On a trip to Britain with my wife, Ludie, I described our up-close observations of the two royals arriving by Rolls-Royce limousine at Westminster Abbey, waving to hundreds of onlookers and entering the cathedral to attend the 100th anniversary commemoration of the Boy Scout movement by an Englishman.
I also mentioned in my column that the death of 99-year-old Philip last month reminded me of a visit I paid in 2008 to a tiny, poverty-stricken island-nation in the southwest Pacific where Philip had been worshipped as a god since his marriage to Elizabeth in 1947.
That nation, where most of its people live in squalid tin-roofed shacks with no electricity, running water and indoor plumbing, is Vanuatu, which was named the New Hebrides after Britain and France wrested the 83-island archipelago from Spain in 1906, and where virtually all of its inhabitants, which number about 290,000, are Black Melanesians. In 1980, the joint British-French rule ended when the nation won independence from its European colonial masters, adopted the name Republic of Vanuatu, which means “our home” or “we return home,” and joined the United Nations as the world’s newest country.
The “Prince Philip Cult,” I learned when I flew from Fiji to Port Vila, Vanuatu’s seaside capital, had its origins in an ancient prophecy that predicted a heroic warrior-chieftain who defeated a neighboring tribe in battle would return home with a rich and powerful goddess to be his principal wife. Hundreds of years passed until Elizabeth, who became queen in 1952 upon the death of her father, King George the Sixth, was selected as the “rich and powerful woman.”
But because the warrior in the legend was a man, Queen Elizabeth’s husband, Philip, who had served honorably as a Royal Navy officer during World War II, took her place as the islands’ god-like figure who ultimately became the object of the Prince Philip cult.
As soon as I got my bearings in Port Vila, I asked around town if there was a reliable cult leader I should interview about the cult. “Go see Nulau Nanua,” I was told, who was a 35-year old local member and assistant captain of the 130-foot SS Moaika, one of a dozen seagoing scrapheaps in the harbor that plied the islands delivering and picking up passengers, mail, cars, trucks, tires, furniture and every imaginable cargo. Fortunately, Nulau and his ship were in port, and after giving me a tour of the Moaika, we settled down in his cabin where he told me about the Philip cult.
“Yes, we worship Philip as a god. A few years before we got independence, he and Queen Elizabeth visited Port Vila aboard the Britannia, their royal yacht. At Yaohnanen Village on the neighboring island of Tanna, we keep photographs of the prince and letters he has written to our chiefs in a lovely shrine and altar dedicated to him.”
The Tanna villagers sent him a traditional pig-killing club called in their “Bislama” pigin English language a “nal-nal.” A few years later, Philip helped arrange a visit to England by a half-dozen islanders, who were greeted at Buckingham Palace by the prince. Prince Anne, the daughter of Philip and Queen Elizabeth, has also come to Vanuatu to meet us. And we hope Charles, the prince of Wales, will come someday. (Charles did visit Vanuatu, in 2018. That same year, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle were married, and the cult members held parties in several cities and villages, danced and ate pigs, and hoisted the Union Jack.)
Following Prince Philip’s death, the Vanuatu cult members, who numbered about 400 when I was there 13 years ago, mourned him in ceremonies held under banyan trees in village centers called “nakamals” or meeting places. Toasts in kava, a traditional Pacific drink made of water and ground pepper roots that can get one quite drunk, were offered to the departed Philip as were prayers for Prince Charles, his eldest son who is in line to become the next king when his mother, Queen Elizabeth, 95, dies. Cult leaders, who hope Philip’s spirit will return to Vanuatu, have been holding discussions about his successor.
Kirk Huffman, a Pacific historian, said in a newspaper interview following Philip’s passing that in accord with Vanuatu culture, where “kastoms” or customs dictate that chiefly titles are passed on to male descendants, the cultists might transfer their allegiance to Charles.
In this column, I have briefly mentioned the role pigs play in Vanuatu culture. Pigs are the national symbol. They appear on the country’s money and on the national flag. The country’s beer is named “Tuskers.” Pigs also are given human names, I was informed by William, who raised pigs when I visited him and his family in the remote village of Ekasup.
There are also hermaphrodite or intersex pigs in Vanuatu, which are pigs with both male and female sex organs, added William. He led me on a merry chase through his piggery in search of a “lady-man” pig, but I’ll save this story for a future column about the bizarre nation of Vanuatu.
David C. Henley is publisher emeritus of the Lahontan Valley News and Fallon Eagle-Standard.
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