Waiting for a Man-God in a Volcano

Wafts of a conversation I had had with a love in the wee hours of an unremarkable morning swept into my mind as I stared, hypnotised, at the glowing red centre of Mount Yasur. I listened as he had talked about how him and his father had the perfect solution to overpopulation: feeding humans to volcanos once they reached the ripe age of 70. I had laughed at the impossibility of it and thought nothing of it till now, as the visual of the glowing red chambers within the crater in front of me intermingled with pictures of stick figure humans tumbling, arms outstretched, into the belly of a ravenous volcano.

I’d wondered what magnificent lore Mount Yasur had inspired on Tanna, and turned to ask Ben if he knew, but he was nowhere to be seen. I made a mental note to scour the internet once back in our ocean bungalow and continued in a trance as we walked along the rim of the crater.

A sudden break from this reverie was delivered when a loud noise, not too unlike the violent crack of thunder, rippled through the darkening evening. Mount Yasur had finally burst. A small amount of lava shot its way to the top of the crater. There were spindles of red and orange that spread out like spiders’ legs, and little beadlets of lava solidified in the air before dropping to the ground as solid rock. We were finally getting to see the splendour of the volcano and I could not have been more excited.

Words escaped my mind; comprehension paused, and I was transported to a place where all I could do was stare and take in the astonishing nature of everything in front of me. I had seen this before, in the barrage of advertisements we’d perused prior to coming to Tanna, but pictures of an eruption in the dark of night and even videos were a completely different ball game to actually being there. Hypnotised by the eerie, red glow from the crater, I wondered if there was anything down there.

As it turns out, there was.

Later, as we settled in for the night in the comfort of our bungalow, I began to filter through search results on the internet for ‘Mt. Yasur’, ‘Tanna’, ‘cargo cults’, ‘man-God’ and ‘John Frum’. The more I delved into this history, the more curious I got.

Lore sprouted in remote island communities when servicepeople miraculously appeared in the South Pacific during World War II. Men would appear as if by magic from the skies, parachuting down in cameo with seemingly continuous supplies of material goods.

According to legend, one of these such men, John Frum, arose as a sort-of messiah in resistance to the colonisation of Vanuatu by Christian missionaries, who had made their way to Tanna and enforced their religion and lifestyle onto locals, punishing them for continuing to practice their culture.

There was really no consensus on who John was. Some described him as a spirit, others as a local, but the most popular incarnation seemed to be an army serviceman from the U.S. Some even considered him to reside within the hot chambers of Mount Yasur, making trips from Tanna to the U.S. via underground tunnels.

The stories all agreed on one thing though: John Frum was a hero who would help the people of Tanna reclaim their customs and traditions, and he would also reward them with riches in the form of cargo goods such as refrigerators, cars and material wares that would make life more convenient. Supporters of John Frum even went on to institutionalise the movement, and today it is registered as both a church and a political party.