The land where Prince Philip is God
Beaming women in brightly- dyed grass skirts surrounded us with song and banjo chords. They threw flower garlands around our necks and led us into their village, which was called, rather improbably, Athens.
We passed the smoking remains of a burnt-out building and came upon a bamboo booth with a seat inside. A man in a Chelsea football shirt approached. He had two staring eyes and one lonely dreadlock coiling from the top of his head. ‘Our prophet told us to do two things,’ he said. ‘Burn down our church, and build a chair. And if we did that a white man would come and sit in it.’
I glanced nervously at the smoking embers of the church. ‘A white man like Prince Philip?’
The Chelsea fan’s face screwed up. ‘We have nothing to do with him,’ he said. ‘We are Unity!’
Just to clarify, he held a fist aloft and roared, ‘UNITY!’
The villagers roared ‘UNITY!’ back.
I’d come 12,000 miles to search for Prince Philip-worshippers on the Pacific island of Tanna, in Vanuatu. I was staying in a village whose chief, Jack Naiva, was reportedly the head of the movement, and whose people, allegedly, believed the Duke of Edinburgh to be a local mountain god.
I had yet to see anyone do anything that looked like worship, though. And just five minutes’ walk away in the next village, it seemed, they had another cult entirely.
Tanna, an island of 20,000 souls, covered in dense bush and swooping valleys, has more religions than coconut palms. There’s every denomination of Christianity, along with a chapter of Bahai’is, an America-cult that marches in US military uniform and smaller movements, following local charismatic figures.
Unity, the group I’d just stumbled on, followed Prophet Fred, a fisherman believed to have raised people from the dead.
‘Why have you come?’ asked the Chelsea fan, sidling next to me on the seat. There was a hopeful glint in his eyes, as if I might yet fulfil some prophecy. I sensed I was about to disappoint him.
The simple answer was that, like the people I was seeking on Tanna, I had loved Prince Philip for a long time. In my case, it began in 1982, with a Royal visit to Salford University, where the Duke of Edinburgh was Vice Chancellor. True to form, he ruffled feathers there, with a comment about epidemics and population control, and my 11-year-old self noticed the outrage. I noticed how people seemed less interested in what Prince Philip said, and more in being annoyed. My mum, something of a Royal expert, said he just wasn’t very popular with some people.
I felt that was unfair. And the more I learnt about his life – chucked out of Corfu, a lonely boyhood being shunted around richer relations – the more I felt he needed someone to fight his corner. So I defended Prince Philip. And I tacked a poster of him to my bedroom wall.
A local man and Matthew on Tanna
Years later, my boyhood crush long behind me, I discovered some other people had him as their poster boy. I was studying anthropology at Cambridge and one day, our lecturer mentioned this island full of cults, even one that ‘worshipped Prince Philip’. That intrigued me, of course, but try as I might, beyond a few, rather mocking newspaper articles, I could discover nothing beyond the bare facts.
They went like this: in the late 1970s the British, who’d ruled the area jointly with France since 1906, were preparing to leave. They discovered that some tribesmen on Tanna regarded the Duke of Edinburgh as a god, who had flown away overseas but would one day return. As a parting gesture, the British arranged for the tribespeople to be given a signed photograph of their god in 1978. Messages and gifts have flowed between Buckingham Palace and Tanna ever since.
I wanted more, though. I knew Prince Philip had visited twice in the 1970s, but why did people on Tanna see him as a god? What good did it do them to have this belief, when everyone else laughed at them for it?
So I went to Tanna, spending a month in Yaohnanen, the mountain village at the centre of the movement. I stayed with Chief Jack Naiva, in a simple reed hut, sheltered, like the villagers, from the chilly winds around choking bonfires. I shared the unrelenting diet of baked yams (understanding why an Australian anthropologist had told me to take a bottle of Worcestershire sauce).
It wasn’t like the Pacific of my imagination: no sandy beaches, swaying palms or hula girls; just mud, pigs and hefty blokes with machetes. Nor was the cult like anything I’d envisaged: I found no shrines, prayers or rituals, and the photograph of Prince Philip, though treasured, wasn’t an icon. They worshipped him, really, just by living their very traditional lives.
It would be easy to think of them as forlorn, shivering in cast-offs from missionaries (English football strips are highly favoured), waiting for something that will never happen. But waiting for Prince Philip is just one part of an existence that, compared to ours, seems very free and full.
Daily life is rather like that of the Crawley family in Downton Abbey: feeding the pigs, gardening, going to a dance, or trooping off to big gatherings where everyone swaps vegetables and marriageable daughters. For the men, though, the main activity is storian. It means chatting, chewing the fat, usually over a dose of kava.
This narcotic root is chewed by small boys, spat on to leaves and then has water – often from a rusty petrol can – filtered through it. The resulting brew tastes as horrid as you’d imagine, but the effects are very pleasant. It brings on a sociable, thoughtful frame of mind and in this state, the Tannese are at their most receptive to mystical ideas and links. Once, supping kava with me, Chief Jack had a thought. He repeated the phrase ‘Buckingham Palace’ over and over until, in his pidgin-accented pronounciation, it had become something else: ‘Back He Go Home Paradise!’ Prince Philip had given his home that name, the chief said, to tell everyone that one day he would ‘return’ to Tanna. Naiva’s idea was met with a chorus of appreciative shin-slaps. And that, really, was what their ‘worship’ amounted to. Thinking about Prince Philip, discussing him quietly over kava in the smoke-filled meeting grounds as the sun went down, forever looking for signs of his impending return.
Tribe members
I gather the new chief, Siko Nathuan, has taken things in a new direction, but when I visited Tanna, what made Philip-worship so special was its hidden quality. It was a rejection of the Christian worship slapped on the islanders by missionaries, cocking a snook at the marching Americacultists and the Fred-followers. ‘Where is America?’ the old chief was fond of chuckling. ‘Where is Jesus? Does he send photographs and letters?’
On the subject of Prince Philip’s return, they were more cautious, saying that he would come when the time was right. They were similarly vague about how HM the Queen would fit in. ‘She will be welcome. But her husband will be very busy, so she might find it boring.’
Ma’am, if you are reading this, I can assure you that life on Tanna may be cold, muddy, frustrating and downright weird. But never boring.
Man Belong Mrs Queen by Matthew Baylis (Old Street Publishing, £10.99).
We passed the smoking remains of a burnt-out building and came upon a bamboo booth with a seat inside. A man in a Chelsea football shirt approached. He had two staring eyes and one lonely dreadlock coiling from the top of his head. ‘Our prophet told us to do two things,’ he said. ‘Burn down our church, and build a chair. And if we did that a white man would come and sit in it.’
I glanced nervously at the smoking embers of the church. ‘A white man like Prince Philip?’
The Chelsea fan’s face screwed up. ‘We have nothing to do with him,’ he said. ‘We are Unity!’
Just to clarify, he held a fist aloft and roared, ‘UNITY!’
The villagers roared ‘UNITY!’ back.
I’d come 12,000 miles to search for Prince Philip-worshippers on the Pacific island of Tanna, in Vanuatu. I was staying in a village whose chief, Jack Naiva, was reportedly the head of the movement, and whose people, allegedly, believed the Duke of Edinburgh to be a local mountain god.
I had yet to see anyone do anything that looked like worship, though. And just five minutes’ walk away in the next village, it seemed, they had another cult entirely.
Tanna, an island of 20,000 souls, covered in dense bush and swooping valleys, has more religions than coconut palms. There’s every denomination of Christianity, along with a chapter of Bahai’is, an America-cult that marches in US military uniform and smaller movements, following local charismatic figures.
Unity, the group I’d just stumbled on, followed Prophet Fred, a fisherman believed to have raised people from the dead.
‘Why have you come?’ asked the Chelsea fan, sidling next to me on the seat. There was a hopeful glint in his eyes, as if I might yet fulfil some prophecy. I sensed I was about to disappoint him.
The simple answer was that, like the people I was seeking on Tanna, I had loved Prince Philip for a long time. In my case, it began in 1982, with a Royal visit to Salford University, where the Duke of Edinburgh was Vice Chancellor. True to form, he ruffled feathers there, with a comment about epidemics and population control, and my 11-year-old self noticed the outrage. I noticed how people seemed less interested in what Prince Philip said, and more in being annoyed. My mum, something of a Royal expert, said he just wasn’t very popular with some people.
I felt that was unfair. And the more I learnt about his life – chucked out of Corfu, a lonely boyhood being shunted around richer relations – the more I felt he needed someone to fight his corner. So I defended Prince Philip. And I tacked a poster of him to my bedroom wall.
A local man and Matthew on TannaYears later, my boyhood crush long behind me, I discovered some other people had him as their poster boy. I was studying anthropology at Cambridge and one day, our lecturer mentioned this island full of cults, even one that ‘worshipped Prince Philip’. That intrigued me, of course, but try as I might, beyond a few, rather mocking newspaper articles, I could discover nothing beyond the bare facts.
They went like this: in the late 1970s the British, who’d ruled the area jointly with France since 1906, were preparing to leave. They discovered that some tribesmen on Tanna regarded the Duke of Edinburgh as a god, who had flown away overseas but would one day return. As a parting gesture, the British arranged for the tribespeople to be given a signed photograph of their god in 1978. Messages and gifts have flowed between Buckingham Palace and Tanna ever since.
I wanted more, though. I knew Prince Philip had visited twice in the 1970s, but why did people on Tanna see him as a god? What good did it do them to have this belief, when everyone else laughed at them for it?
So I went to Tanna, spending a month in Yaohnanen, the mountain village at the centre of the movement. I stayed with Chief Jack Naiva, in a simple reed hut, sheltered, like the villagers, from the chilly winds around choking bonfires. I shared the unrelenting diet of baked yams (understanding why an Australian anthropologist had told me to take a bottle of Worcestershire sauce).
It wasn’t like the Pacific of my imagination: no sandy beaches, swaying palms or hula girls; just mud, pigs and hefty blokes with machetes. Nor was the cult like anything I’d envisaged: I found no shrines, prayers or rituals, and the photograph of Prince Philip, though treasured, wasn’t an icon. They worshipped him, really, just by living their very traditional lives.
It would be easy to think of them as forlorn, shivering in cast-offs from missionaries (English football strips are highly favoured), waiting for something that will never happen. But waiting for Prince Philip is just one part of an existence that, compared to ours, seems very free and full.
Daily life is rather like that of the Crawley family in Downton Abbey: feeding the pigs, gardening, going to a dance, or trooping off to big gatherings where everyone swaps vegetables and marriageable daughters. For the men, though, the main activity is storian. It means chatting, chewing the fat, usually over a dose of kava.
This narcotic root is chewed by small boys, spat on to leaves and then has water – often from a rusty petrol can – filtered through it. The resulting brew tastes as horrid as you’d imagine, but the effects are very pleasant. It brings on a sociable, thoughtful frame of mind and in this state, the Tannese are at their most receptive to mystical ideas and links. Once, supping kava with me, Chief Jack had a thought. He repeated the phrase ‘Buckingham Palace’ over and over until, in his pidgin-accented pronounciation, it had become something else: ‘Back He Go Home Paradise!’ Prince Philip had given his home that name, the chief said, to tell everyone that one day he would ‘return’ to Tanna. Naiva’s idea was met with a chorus of appreciative shin-slaps. And that, really, was what their ‘worship’ amounted to. Thinking about Prince Philip, discussing him quietly over kava in the smoke-filled meeting grounds as the sun went down, forever looking for signs of his impending return.
Tribe membersI gather the new chief, Siko Nathuan, has taken things in a new direction, but when I visited Tanna, what made Philip-worship so special was its hidden quality. It was a rejection of the Christian worship slapped on the islanders by missionaries, cocking a snook at the marching Americacultists and the Fred-followers. ‘Where is America?’ the old chief was fond of chuckling. ‘Where is Jesus? Does he send photographs and letters?’
On the subject of Prince Philip’s return, they were more cautious, saying that he would come when the time was right. They were similarly vague about how HM the Queen would fit in. ‘She will be welcome. But her husband will be very busy, so she might find it boring.’
Ma’am, if you are reading this, I can assure you that life on Tanna may be cold, muddy, frustrating and downright weird. But never boring.
Man Belong Mrs Queen by Matthew Baylis (Old Street Publishing, £10.99).