A GREEK GOD
Prince Philip’s retirement from public life, heralded by a cyclone, is big news on Tanna
The Duke of Edinburgh’s imminent retirement from public life will have a special significance for residents of Tanna, one of 83 islands in the tropical Pacific archipelago of Vanuatu. On 5 May 2017, the day of the announcement, Cyclone Donna was heading towards Tanna. About a fifth of the population of 30,000 islanders pray to the cantankerous ex-navy officer, whom they regard as divine. “Here in Tanna, we believe that Prince Philip is the son of our God, our ancestral God who lives up in the mountain,” said villager Nako Nikien, who prefers to go by the name Jimmy Joseph. Joseph said it’s become a tradition to talk, or pray, to Philip each evening, when villagers from Yaohnanen and Yakel gather in their meeting places and share an intoxicating brew made from the kava plant. “We ask him to increase the production of our crops in the garden, or to give us the sun, or rain,” Joseph says, pausing. “And it happens”.
Those prayers became more pressing after Cyclone Pam ripped through Tanna in March 2015, killing at least five on the island and destroying homes and crops. The cyclone was thought to portend a visit to the island by Philip the following year, fulfilling a prophecy by the late Fred Nasse. “Prophet Fred, as he was known, died a few years ago,” said aid worker Andrew Finlay in April 2015. “He was highly respected and several of his predictions came true. He predicted a large lake around the volcano would drain, and it did. He predicted there would be no cyclones for seven years, and that came true. So when he predicted that the world would converge on Tanna for a great event in 2016, they have no reason to doubt it. It’s a short leap to connecting that to Prince Philip.” The Duke failed to turn up in 2016, but faith wasn’t dented. Now the weather gods appear to have spoken again.
Matthew Baylis, author of Man Belong Mrs Queen (2013) who has lived on Tanna, says the latest cyclone may be seen as an indication the Duke has reached a higher sacred status, similar to local ‘taboo men’ who are separated from others and subject to various restrictions. “They told me that they see Philip’s living in a Palace, surrounded by guards, and travelling in a car with darkened windows, as evidence of his taboo status,” he said. “So they may well see his withdrawal from public duties as connected to that – having attained some higher rung of taboo, sacred status. Equally, they might think he is preparing to come ‘back’ to Tanna, in some form, spiritually or bodily.”
The Prince Philip Movement seems to date from 1974, when he and the Queen
visited Vanuatu on the Royal yacht Britannia. According to Yaohnanen folklore, the son of a mountain spirit travelled over the seas to a distant land, where he married a powerful woman and in time would return to them. He was sometimes said to be a brother to John Frum, (“John from America”) of the celebrated cargo cult, named after a GI who came with ‘cargo’ (weapons, food and medicine) in World War II.
Tannese legend has it that during a reception at the consulate in the capital Port Vila in 1974, the Duke shook only the hands of men from Tanna. That news reached the residents of Yaohnanen, who were waiting for a gift in return for a pig they had given to a British officer some years before. The tribe sent a letter to Port Vila, asking where their gift was and enquiring about the Duke. In response the British delivered a framed portrait of the Duke, and the worship began. Villagers sent the Duke a nal nal hunting club, which he duly posed with in London, sending a photograph back. Another framed photograph arrived in 2000. A warrior named Jack Naiva, village chief of Yaohnanen, was one of the paddlers of a war canoe that greeted the royal yacht in 1974 and became convinced that the Duke (who was born in the same year as him) was a descendant of a Tanna spiritual ancestor. Philip sent the tribe a letter of condolence when Chief Jack died in 2009. All the correspondence, news clippings and flag-draped photographs are kept in a special bamboo shrine.
The Tannese still choose to live as they have for centuries, in simple thatch huts and wearing nothing but grass skirts or penis shields called nambas. Known as kastom, it’s a traditional way of life that’s under threat from the spread of Western civilization. Down a winding, rutted dirt track far from anywhere, people feel free to live this way, but when they make the trek to the island’s main town to sell the coffee beans they grow or buy rice, they usually put on clothes.
Joseph said he believes that the spirit of Philip comes from Tanna and that one day he will return. On that day the fish will leap from the sea and life will become eternal. “At the very moment that [Philip] sets foot ashore,” said anthropologist Kirk Huffman, “mature kava plants will sprout all over the island; all the old people will shed their skins like snakes and became young again; there will be no more sickness and no more death… a man will be able to take any woman he wants.” Joseph wasn’t worried that Philip may soon die. “The movement will always continue,” he says. “And, from my opinion, or from what we believe, the spirit in Prince Philip won’t die.” Independent, 13 Feb 2010; D.Telegraph, 1 May 2010, 5 May 2017; Sunday Telegraph, 26 April 2015; [AP] 9 June 2015. See also “The last cargo cult” by Mike Jay ( Strange Attractor, Journal One, 2004) and ‘The Philip Worshippers of Tanna’ by Matthew Baylis, FT309:74-76.
“The old people will shed their skins like snakes and become young again”