Sunday, December 5, 2010

Daily news in Vanuatu

The local and national news in Vanuatu comes via several sources,. There are two newspapers printed during the week the Vanuatu Daily Post http://www.dailypost.vu/ and The Vanuatu Times . Both newspapers print news items in Bislama, English and French (the three official languages of the Republic of Vanuatu) and there is a smattering of items from the Pacific Region, Australia, Europe, Asia and the USA.  The Vanuatu Times promotes itself as Vanuatu's indigenous owned newspaper but the contents of the two publications don't seem that different given is owned locally and the other isn't.

There is a somewhat amusing section in the Daily Post on a Saturday called Mi harem se, sort of like a gossip column with brief items about local affairs in Port Vila and Luganville. This morningwe read the following...

Mi harem se Morkin Steven was the first of the new ministers to pick up his car. Given Morkin's history with alcohol and car accidents last time he was a minister, everyone will be watching to see what happens this time around. Silip!

And another, this is a real cracker...

Mi harem se a woman Paama was inside a bus late at night when she saw her husband with a married Bali Hai girl whose husband is currently picking fruit in NZ. They were drunk and going for it so she hid at the back of the bus so they couldn't see her. Trouble is she heard everything including the need for them to 'do it' and him wanting her to play her Ambae mouth organ on the bus. That was it. She rushed at them. He ran off and she grabbed the girl and it was a full on Paama, Ambae bitch slapping contest. Paama won and the Ambae girl was stripped clear naked with her panties, bra and clothes all taken and left to walk home naked along the main road at No3. The cuckolded wife said she was keeping the clothes she had ripped off to show the woman's husband when he returned from NZ. Hemi nao woman. Silip!

People tell me it is quite common to be spoken about in Mi harem se so I wonder if it is a sign that one has arrvied in Port Vila if one scores a mention in this section of the paper. I must look out over the next couple of weeks and see if anything I have done around town excited sufficient interest for someone to write to the Daily Post. For the tourism awards, dinner this evening at Le Lagon, I volunteered my time as a judge so perhaps some disgruntled Vanuatu tourism operator who saw me out and about judging (not that I told anyone) might take umbrage at not winning and complain in Mi harem se - one can only hope, anything said in print is better than nothing said at all.

I don't listen to a lot of radio, only when driving in the car, but the BBC World Service broadcasts in Port Vila on 99.0 FM and there are two other local radio stations, Capital FM107 and another the name of which escapes me on 99.0FM, these two stations have hourly news bulletins in Bislama, which is great for me to listen to now that I am attending a weekly Bislama class (more about that another post).

As there isn't a television in the apartment I haven't seen television news, actually any television for that matter, since I left Australia. Don't miss it in the slightest to be honest. I did hear about the election in Victoria but couldn't rouse enough interest to inform myself about what happened.

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