After hours of trudging the dusty road, stepping off into the dustier vegetation at the side every time a truck/van/car roared by, I was thinking I must be almost there. Then an old Ni-Van man standing in the middle of the road waves to me. “You look Jon Frum?” At my nod, he motions me to follow him up an even dustier side road for about a half a kilometer to a little village huddled around a huge banyan tree. He leads me to a seating area comprised of a rectangle of boards on stumps under the tree. “Yu stop here.” How he knew a lone stranger was looking for his village I’ll never know, but I was glad to be roped in; there is no sign on the road indicating the way.

The “ceremony” is not what the guide book had led me to believe. It’s just seven guys with guitars sitting on mats singing something that sounds like “Aba daba daba daba daba,” over and over and over endlessly. I keep thinking this is the warm up band and pretty soon something will happen. Not. Periodically different bands - from outlying villages Sara says - come to perform on the mats in the center of the seating rectangle but the music sound very much the same. So it isn’t an exotic event. I do see some costumed women dancing in the dark beyond the lantern light, but they don’t seem to be coming any closer.

Maybe, since I’ve made this effort at cultural enlightenment, I can learn more about the guy who is credited/debited with starting the movement. My Lonely Planet says John Frum came from the sea in 1936 and told some kava drinkers (it figures) that wealth and health would abound as soon as they rid themselves of Europeans. Later when U.S. WW2 air transports unloaded tons of stuff on Efate and Santo, Tanna men helping with the cargo were sure the big black American GIs working with them were Tannese in disguise. John Frum must be from America. That’s one version of the inception of this cargo cult. But the idea of ridding themselves of white culture in order to obtain plane loads of stuff from America seems contrapuntal. I have to ask.

“Sara, Jon Frum told you what?”

“Drink kava, play guitar, dance and have fun every Friday night.” Hmmm. Now there’s a creed I could adopt. These are very activities that missionaries had been trying to stamp out.

“Ask the chiefs. They tell you more,” Sara waves toward two old guys sitting on board seats of honor against the huge many-legged banyan tree.

She has arranged for a “taxi” battered dusty old pickup to take me the five miles or so back to my own village. He delivered me to my guesthouse gate. Fifteen dollars well spent.

Back in Port Vila, I search for answers at the Cultural Center library. How can the cult be anti-outsider while waiting for them to fly in with more stuff?

A morning of research clears it up a little but reveals even more remarkable facts about this non-religion non-organization whose icon is the Red Cross red cross. According to Joel Bonnemaison’s “The Tree and the Canoe” history of Tanna Island, the whole thing started in 1938 when a fair skinned (half-caste?) guy wearing a jacket with shiny buttons and a European hat (whatever that is) gave shots to heal illnesses but somehow stayed in the dark. His message was to reject everything white including religions and money and return to Custom lifestyle. Tannese kava drinkers thought their black god had returned. This account says “frum” is “broom” signifying cleansing of the island by ridding it of European (white man) influences and dropping out of the churches. This alarmed the British District Agent James Nicol who was the “government” on the island and he proceeded to persecute and lock up the adherents, sending them off to jail in Vila. Probably thanks in part to the persecution, the movement grew, branching like a hydra, and then in 1941 when the American military came, the hero metamorphosed into John From America. So U.S. currency was okay and the Americans were going to come govern the island, free all the prisoners and pay them to work.

Some believers keep tin can radios tuned to the sky for his return. “Of course we wait 70 years so far,” an adherent says. “How long you wait for Jesus?”