Bunlap
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Bunlap is a village of indigenous Melanesian people on Pentecost Island, one of the islands of the Pacific archipelago of Vanuatu. Their ancestors came to the island on canoes roughly 2000 years ago. While other villages on the island have essentially become westernized, the people of Bunlap still live a traditional lifestyle.
The Bunlap people still wear traditional clothing, which for females consists of knee-length skirts made out of fiber strips. For ceremonial occasions, ankle-length skirts are worn. Men wear only a wide belt around the waist, to which a cloth or leaf tube is attached. The tube is worn around the penis, while the remainder of the genitals and buttocks are exposed.
The Bunlap people perform an ancient ritual called Gkol, in which men tie vines to their ankles and jump headfirst from platforms jutting out from a tower. The jumper's fall is broken by the vines, the other end of which is tied to the tower. A sloping surface of softened earth at the base of the tower provides some protection from injury in case of a broken vine, a vine of incorrect length, or a poor jump. Gkol inspired the modern sport of bungee jumping, though the vines used are far less elastic than bungee cords, and the Gkol jumper does not bounce up at the end of the fall. The Gkol legend says that in the village Bunlap a man called Tamalie had a quarrel with his wife and she ran away and climbed a banyan tree, where she wrapped her ankles with liana vines. When Tamalie came up to her, the woman jumped from the tree and so did her husband not knowing what his wife had done. He died but the woman survived. The men of Bunlap were very impressed by this performance and they began to practise such jumps in case they got in a similar situation. This practice transformed into a ritual for rich yam harvest and also for proving manhood.
On the interior slopes of the island, villagers grow taro, a widely cultivated tropical Asian plant (Colocasia esculenta) having broad peltate leaves and a large starchy edible tuber.
Bunlap men often consume kava extract at the end of the day for its intoxicating effects, similar to alcohol. The drink is extracted from root of the kava plant. Women are forbidden to consume kava.
The young boys of this tribe are circumcised at the age of 5 with a knife made of bamboo. The wound is then wrapped with a special leaf to make it heal faster. The men celebrate after the circumcising ceremony by eating a special pie made of yam and coconut and baking it on hot stones. After 7 weeks of solitude, the boys are let out and another big ceremony is organised. The boys who are circumcised take a further step to the manhood by killing each pig in the ceremony.
The Travel Channel documentary series Tribal Life follows the Bunlap community members.[1]
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