If there’s one thing that says, “Hold my beer and watch this!” it’s jumping off a wooden tower with vines tied around your feet. But that’s just what young men in Vanuatu love to do to show their manliness creds.
The nation of Vanuatu is made up of around eighty islands in the South Pacific and is inhabited by the Melanesian people. In the southern part of one of the major islands called Pentecost, they have a coming-of-age ritual that bears a strong resemblance to an extreme hobby that many people in the West are already familiar with. You probably thought it was started by reckless college students: bungee jumping. The truth is that while British members of the Oxford University Dangerous Sports Club may have kicked off the craze in 1979, the natives of the Vanuatu archipelago were the ones who inspired them. The major difference is that there’s no bungee involved, only vines. And there’s no net waiting in case there’s some mishap. Just the cold, hard ground.
The people of Vanuatu don’t have tall buildings or freeway overpasses to fling themselves off of, so they build towers a hundred feet in the air to jump off. It’s called “land diving.” Which sounds more accurate than “bungee jumping.” It’s a tradition that goes back hundreds of years. Generation after generation of young boys have placed themselves at the mercy of gravity and plant matter tied to their ankles to prove they’re brave enough to be called a man. Or dead, if it doesn’t work out.
It’s definitely dangerous, much more so than the versions you might try at some resort vacation destination. A village elder named Luke Fargo explained in an interview with ABC News: “If you come and the two vines break, it means you break your neck, or your backbones, or maybe your legs.” And that’s not the worst-case scenario by any means. When Queen Elizabeth visited the area in 1974, a broken vine resulted in a man dying right in front of her. However, incidents like that are just a risk that must be taken. As Fargo puts it, “It’s our traditional thing, so we must do it from year to year.”
The origin of land diving goes back to the legend of a woman who fled into the jungle because of the unreasonable demands of her overly amorous husband. With her husband (whose name was Tamalie) hot on her heels, she ran up a tree and jumped off, surviving the fall because she had tied vines around her ankles. Her spouse followed in pursuit and jumped off after her, but because he neglected that last step with the vines there was a loud splat, and the woman became a happy widow. To commemorate this tale of female empowerment, the women of Vanuatu decided to imitate the woman’s glorious fall and began jumping from trees in a show of respect. However, the men soon decided that they didn’t like what this act symbolized, and so (as men so often do) they took over the tradition. They substituted a wooden tower for the trees and began jumping for practice so they wouldn’t fall for that trick ever again. Seems to kill the point of the whole legend, really.
A Storm Shelter Ain’t Gonna Cut It
Vanuatu is considered one of the most dangerous countries in the world due to the fact it’s located in the Pacific Ocean’s Ring of Fire and has no less than nine active volcanoes. When the Manaro volcano blew its top in March 2018, all eleven thousand residents had to be evacuated before they wound up like the unfortunate statues in Pompeii. Violent weather is also a frequent issue on the archipelago, and in 2015, the island called Ambrym was battered by a cyclone, an erupting volcano, and an earthquake within the space of just a few weeks. Imagine the devastation to the trailer parks in the region. If there were any, that is.
Don’t Preach to the Big Nambas
Malekula is the second-largest island in Vanuatu and is famous for being the last place in the country where there was a recorded case of another long-standing tradition: cannibalism. But don’t worry, it was a long time ago. If you consider the moon landing and Woodstock a long time ago, that is. Reportedly, a Seventh-day Adventist visited the island in 1969, presumably to proselytize, and wound up in the oven of the Big Nambas tribe (named for the large leaves they wrap around their genitalia; the Small Nambas tribe uses more modest-sized leaves). Nowadays the locale’s history of man-eating is something of a ghoulish attraction, with guided tours of cooking sites that are still strewn with gnawed human bones. Since these bones may only be fifty years old or so, this is a tour during which you’d be wise to be polite.
There’s a season for land diving. Specifically, the dry one during the yam harvest when the vines (called lianas) have the most pliability and are least likely to snap (a really important thing when your life depends on it). The object is to get as close to the ground as possible during the jump without receiving major contusions. If you can lightly brush the earth, you’re golden. The more impressive the leap, the more good health you’ll enjoy for the rest of the year. The belief is that a superlative performance can remove sickness (whereas an unsuccessful jump can effectively remove your life). You might think it’s a good idea to avoid the whole thing altogether, but that would result in being called a coward and subjected to endless mockery. Presumably Vanuatu is a place where the old cliché of “If all your friends jumped off a bridge, would you do it too?” doesn’t work as well as elsewhere.
There’s a lot of meaning behind the wooden tower that serves as the launching point as well. In addition to being a place where you might encounter the disgruntled spirit of the previously mentioned Tamalie (jumpers must refrain from having sex, and women must keep their distance at the risk of incurring his wrath), the structure itself is full of symbolism. The supports represent legs, the midportion a torso, and the upper platform a head. The diving boards are representative of male private parts, and the lower struts are the female equivalent. So basically, you’re diving off a giant penis.
As we mentioned, women are no longer allowed anywhere near the land dives. But many would probably agree that if they should happen to sneak onto the towers at night and saw off one or two of those diving boards, it would serve old Tamalie right.
