Ok, so this is nothing new. I'm sure that you've seen this all before. But, we had not. The other day we were watching a British television show called An Idiot Abroad. The name of this show has a bit of a personal meaning for us that we won't get into. What we saw was shocking. The show's hosts were in Vanuatu visiting a tribe that lived on Pentecost Island.
The local men would climb up this rickety wooden platform and then dive as if they were diving into the water with two vines tied to their ankles. First, the height from which they are diving from is any where from 60 to 100 feet. Second, when they near the ground the snap sound made by the vines forced to me to respond audibly in horror. We scared the children with our exclamations.
The ritual in the video is used to bless the yams. But, the diving is all about showing off one's manliness. Apparently their are some stories about how it started. A woman was very put off by her husband's rapacious sexual appetites and ran away from him into the woods. The husband gave chase. She then tied vines to her ankles and jumped off a cliff to escape him. Seeing that his wife had not died the man jumped to his death. The men jump now so they cannot be tricked by a woman. Interestingly though, the woman who escaped her husband moved to Los Angeles to become a marriage counselor. She had a pretty famous practice and garnered A-List celebrities like Kim Kardashian and Heidi Klum. She is also working to ensure that Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel make it happily ever after for at least two years.
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