UNDER A WARM blue morning sky unevenly patched with ragged strips of grey and white, a crowd of about a hundred people stands on a concrete wharf in Port Vila. We are waiting for the arrival of Greenpeace’s flagship, the Rainbow Warrior, which is visiting Vanuatu for the first time in many years. I’ve been onboard for various legs of the iconic vessel’s current journey through Oceania, but on this occasion I’m among the land contingent.

Standing closest to the waterfront, a muscular middle-aged man to whom I’ve just been introduced, the Honourable Chief Timothy, blows a conch shell with enormous force, the low note resonating across the quay like the bellow of a large mammal. The honourable chief has close-cropped silver hair and beard, and although bare-chested and footed, he is heavily decked out with armbands, chunky anklets, an over-the-shoulder basket bag, a prominent necklace of massive polished tawny-brown spherical seeds and a bark-cloth belt that is holding up a bright-green skirt of leaves descending to his shins. As the Rainbow Warrior gets closer, Honourable Chief Timothy waves the ship in, swinging a sash of woven plant fibres in a round beckoning motion and calling out in his deep chant-like voice: ‘Welkam home, Greenpeace! Come home! Our people have lots to tell you! Our mothers, our fathers, our people, our government – we have things to tell you!’