Family relationships in town are brokbrok: Food sharing and “contribution” in Port Vila, Vanuatu

Abstract

In Freswota, a residential community of Port Vila, the capital of Vanuatu, young men often mentioned the "empty saucepan". As seen in Luke's words above, the empty saucepan is an idiom they use to reflect some of the social problems they experience in urban Vanuatu today; high cost of living, alienation from access to agricultural land, high rates of unemployment, and financial insecurity. Yet, in the context of Freswota, the empty saucepan also speaks to specific concerns surrounding shifts in family relationships, often produced and maintained through a system of sharing of food. In Freswota, as in much of Port Vila, families face difficulties balancing their incomes with obligations to give and receive. As such, some urban families are increasingly excluding people, those who are seen as consuming without contributing, from eating their food. 2 This article examines why many Freswota young men frequently mention the "empty saucepan". It is through an exploration of the empty saucepan, that some of the contemporary shifts emerging in Port Vila become more visible. After a description of Freswota community and the young men who are the subject of this research, the article considers some of the constraints of urban living, what influence the emic notion of "contribution", in a context of neo-liberal capitalism, is having on inter-generational relationships, and what other relationships are developing. Ultimately, this article suggests that urban unemployed young men are increasingly experiencing their parents and other family members as unsupportive, and as such, other relationships in their community are becoming stronger. Family relationships in town are brokbrok: Food sharing and "contribution" in...

Planting Roots, Making Place: Urban Autochthony in Port Vila Vanuatu

“…Bringing it back to Freswota urban young men, their experience of displacement from island places has evoked a sense of deficiency of their very being. They are now preoccupied with roots, particularly planting new roots, an illustration of how entrenched the notion of being rooted in an island place has become to their sense of identity and existence (Kraemer 2013). For them, when your passport is lost, the 'ingredients' that constitute the ni-Vanuatu human being do not exist.…”

“…In the beginning of its urban development, Freswota Community was seen as a 'not place'a place not yet shaped by shared social meaning (Kraemer 2013). Freswota young men talk about the landscape as having been 'bush territory', an area without roads and without people living there.…”

“…Alfred explained that he did not like walking in the other community as the roads are unfamiliar to him and he does not know the young men there. Locative identity and social relationships are not all that develops as the young men engage with the Freswota roads; personhood and 'the group' are produced and reproduced as well (Kraemer 2013). The Kingston-4 boys are 'boys of the road', not in the pejorative sense that they 'have no place' but in the sense that through their practices on and along the roads they are rooting themselves in the Freswota land and creating themselves as persons of the Freswota place.…”

“…Although they are often referred to as 'boys of the road', the young men I work with prefer to call themselves 'Roots Men'. This has a double connotationconjoining their interest in Roots Reggae, a style of reggae music whose lyrics emerge from, and speak to, lives lived in ghettos (Chevannes 1995), with their Vanuatu perception of themselves figuratively as roots which they are transplanting into the urban land (Kraemer 2013). As they often told me: the 'work of the Roots Man' (wok blong ol Roots Man) is to plant roots.…”

“…Yet the Kingston‐4 boys spend most of their time along and on the roads. Most are unable to financially contribute to their parents' households and so are encouraged by their families to spend their time outside the home (Kraemer ). But while a general assumption in town is that groups of young men on the roads are without productive social purpose, the Kingston‐4 boys spend their time planning community events, distributing work tasks, organizing themselves in community and political groups, discussing their business enterprises, reading the newspaper and pooling resources together to make meals or to offer support to members of their cohort (Kraemer ).…”