Mangaliliu and Roi Mata

Today we visited the home of the legendary Roi Mata. (Photos will be added later as we forgot our camera and we are relying on Jacqui and Paul Birch to allow us to use theirs!)

Roi Mata was a great chief who lived about 400 years ago on the island of Efate. He was a peacemaker. The villagers of the island were all fighting for the resources offered by the land. Roi Mata gathered the people together for a great feast and invited everyone to come along from many villages around the area.

There were those that brought coconuts and those that brought yam. Many people brought many different items. Roi Mata said at this feast if you and your family brought taro, then taro would be your totem. Similarly for fish, yam, coconut and so on. Each family was assigned a different totem by Roi Mata at the great feast. Each village ended up with families of many different totems.

The people were instructed that if they belonged to a particular totem and wanted to visit another village, then the people of the same totem from that village would welcome them and treat them as family during their stay. They would receive the protection of the host family and this would be reciprocated when the host family came to their village to trade and discuss issues of concern.

The people respected Roi Mata and followed this idea. Roi Mata became a popular and honoured chief. He designated sacred places that could be used for particular ceremonies and instituted many rituals to support the development of a peaceful tribal system.

Included in this was the notion of ‘magic stones’. The stones had been thrown out from the volcano and he designated them as places of wisdom and sacrifice of pigs. From the stories told by our guide Jenny, and her apprentice Hilton, the system brought order and peace to the region.

On the island of Lelepa, just off the coast from Mangaliliu, the chief was not pleased by the system introduced by Roi Mata. He invited Roi Mata to a feast on Lelepa and told him he had to come without his wise men and advisors. Roi Mata was poisoned at the feast and taken to a large cave on the edge of the island to “take his last breath”. The cave had been a special place for the people of Lelepa for many years. There are drawings and etchings in the cave that are dated back many years. We visited the cave which is a short but steep hike up from the beach – 10 metres above sea level. It is quite huge and imprssive – even for a claustrophobic like me!

After the death of Roi Mata he was taken in procession to all the villages so they could bid him farewell. He was eventually buried on the island of Eretoka (named Hat Island by Europeans because of its’ shape). Buried along with him were his wives, the chiefs of all the villages that were loyal to him and a couple from each village to pay homage to his greatness. Some of these people were buried alive after being drugged with kava. I reckon this was a really successful strategy by the disgruntled chiefs to rid themselves of Roi Mata’s influence………however the legend lives on ….and so do the totem systems and Poor old Roi Mata is still revered as the most significant chief in Vanuatu history.

And the Mama’s at Mangaliliu cooked us up a big feast for lunch and we then got the bus back to rainy Port Vila. It had not rained a drop at Mangaliliu which is only 30 minutes away by bus – a bit like the catchment area for the water supply on the Central Coast - It never rains where you want it to!