Eat your heart out, Tyra

Christmas came early to the Province this year. On November 7th all provincial councellors and all Province staff were invited to the Malampa Provincial Government Christmas party. Everybody had been working hard the week before it making the new corporate strategy plan for the Province, with the aid of a French 'facilitator' who was payed for by the Commonwealth Local Government Forum, of which Malampa is a member (I use the term facilitator in the broadest possible sense here, as most of the time he seemed to make the task harder rather than easier for most people...)
Time then, for some well deserved R&R, and why not call this the 'annual Christmas party'?
Time therefore, to dress up a little, and why not break in the 'island dress' that I was given by a ni-Vanuatu family where I stayed for a couple of days during my country introduction? Time too, for a quickly improvised 'Vanuatu's Next Top Model' photo-shoot to capture this historic moment.

First, let's try to get the dogs out of the way:

Pointless.

Then, let's try one with both the dogs in it, looking well behaved Hallmark-style into the lens:

Pointless.

Try again, dogs Hallmark, Caroline curtsy:

Ah well, two out of three isn't bad - but I guess I won't be quitting my day-job just yet...

You get the picture, though. The island dress, sometimes called the Mother Hubbard is the dress worn by most ni-Vanuatu women.

It was introduced by the Christian missionaries who upon arrival in Vanuatu weren't too happy seeing all women walking around with nothing but a little grass wrapped around their waists.

So they introduced a dress that not just covered the female curves, it makes them nigh unrecognisable. An average island dress contains 4 to 5 metres (= approx. 4 to 5 yards) of fabric. In fact, they are so wide that one could easily be well into the third trimester of carrying quadruplets and nobody would be any the wiser.

An added benefit of this is that they are wonderfully airy and cool to wear. Only a grass skirt could be cooler... However, the style has been around for such a long time that it is now called 'traditional Vanuatu dress'. This much to the dismay of local feminists, who rather associate it with the new gender roles that were also introduced by the missionaries, that are now also called traditional and persist until today.

Most of the time the fabric is printed in big bright floral designs and they are decorated with ribbons, bows, lace and what not. As you can tell the one I am wearing is fantastically modest by comparison. In fact, on the way to the Christmas party I was actually ambushed by a camera crew of the new MTV series 'Pimp my island dress'.

At the Christmas party every member of staff received a present. Mine was ... a new island dress! Hooray! I would have liked to show you a picture of this dress but I cannot, as it is currently making its way to the Netherlands, cleverly disguised as a Christmas present. If the happy receiver is so brave as to send me a picture of her in it, I will gladly post it on this blog ...