Five days before, seven village boys had been circumcised. They had been closeted in a hut, where they were tended, fed and had their wounds nursed by the village medicine man. On the sixth day they are welcomed back into the heart of the village. Today is that day, the day for the circumcision celebrations. I was pleased to miss the afternoon ceremonies. Seven pigs had been ritually brought into the village, their feet tied to strong sticks and hanging upside down, and bludgeoned to death. It was a squealy, bloody scene. The dancing is much more fun.

Silly me, I wear trousers ­ men‘s clothing ­ and omit to put feathers in my hair. I am taken in hand by two lovely young women, who tie a brightly­dyed grass skirt around my waist and purloin some equally bright feathers. I don‘t have tight curls, as they do, so making the feathers stay put is a task.

They look magnificent. Their faces are painted in traditional style, but modern products reach as far as Tanna. In the old days they painted their faces with fire and ochre colours from volcanic ash. Now, dye power can be bought in the market at Lenakel, the main town, in tins labelled Tanna Singsing Powder. Really trendy young women add tiny stars of glitter to the traditional patterns.

They wear hibiscus­printed cotton tops, handkerchief style, pulled tightly over their breasts and knotted in the middle of their backs. This stops their breasts from joggling uncomfortably when they dance, jumping and skipping, until dawn. Their shoulders are swathed with garlands of flowers, frangipani and hibiscus, and some lucky women add Christmas tinsel to the feathers that decorate their hair. Their skirts are seriously layered.

Most wear five skirts, the bottom one touching their ankles, the rest reducing in length until the topmost is not much more than a frill of curly, sweetly perfumed leaves. The first four skirts are usually described as being made of grass, but actually it is fine, long shreds of bark. Turning branches of trees into dance skirts is a drawn­out process, but the end result, with all the layers, is stunning. As the women dance, their skirts undulate rhythmically like the wings of birds in flight ­ birds of paradise in their brightest and most glorious plumes.

The men dominate the dance action, leading the singing and forming the middle of many circles of dancers. Women dance and sing at the outside of the circle, adding soprano and alto voices.

My friends keep me on the edge. My timing is out and they don‘t want me to stumble and hurt myself during periodic crescendos when the dancers all run rapidly in an anticlockwise circle, hypnotically, as one body.

The next morning I wake with gritty eyes, sore ankles from too much jumping, my hair stiff with dust and a beautiful memory of a weird dance party that I gatecrashed but was then welcomed to.

It is low tide, so I stroll down to the reef. I meet a man fishing. Malakai explains that the branches soaking in the reef pools are being processed into skirts. He points out skirts hanging on rocky outcrops which are bleaching in the sun.

He invites me to his village and introduces me to his family. Two women sit in the shade of a mango tree, each weaving one end of a mat. Another is knotting a skirt together. Acouple of blokes sit around talking intently but doing nothing, as they do, and half a dozen little children tootle about. Afew dogs doze and the little boys give a black puppy a hard time, but it comes back for more. Two big hens, each trailing a dozen baby chicks, cluck about, peeping and pecking here and there.

Over the next hour I piece together the family relationships and whose children are whose, and what their names are. They live in an extended family, three brothers and their wives and children, in three sleeping houses and one cooking house. In the middle of it all is a well with a hand pump.

This family are coastal dwellers. Their children go to school and they speak Bislama (the national language of Vanuatu) as well as their native dialect. They are proudly Presbyterian, and have been since their great­great grandfather was converted by the Reverend Frank Peyton of The London Missionary Society in 1896. Peyton was the first missionary to visit Tanna since the Reverend John Williams had been eaten in 1836. Peyton and his colleagues had had the good sense to wait in their boat in Lenakel Harbour and ask the chiefs for permission to land.

Deep in the jungled mountain heartland of Tanna are villages that reject schools, churches and most of the material trappings of the western world. Villagers are able to decide for themselves whether they wish to remain customvillages. If they choose to do so, they can prevent the establishment of churches or schools and forbid their people to wear clothes. People in a kustom village live in the traditional ways of their ancestors. The following day I visit one such village. Happy drives brilliantly over terrain that would terrify most fourwheel­ drive drivers.

Initially, when we arrive, I feel rather odd, as if we have come to gawk at their nakedness. The women wear grass skirts slung low under their generous bellies. The men are naked except for a woven codpiece that cups their penises and is somehow held in place with ties behind their backs. I can‘t quite figure out how they keep it on, but am too modest to peer closely or ask for details.

Again the village courtyard is a large, bare area under a giant banyan tree. Women lay out mats, displaying things they wish to sell: woven baskets decorated with feathers, carvings, axes with hand­ground stone heads, wooden hair combs and pigstusks.

Pigs are everywhere, little pigs nosing in the cooking pots and big pigs in staked enclosures. Though the village people know that selling things to the few tourists who make it that far is one way to trade, the real currency is pigs. They are used as payment in disputes. For instance, if a man has sex with another man‘s wife, and is caught out, penance has to be paid in pigs.

Pigs, mats and kava roots are the usual contents of dowries, and a strong, chubby girl might cost as much as twelve pigs.

The paramount chief of Tanna, Tom Numake, explains that in kustom villages neither boys nor girls have a say in their marriages, which are arranged by their fathers for economic or strategic reasons. Marriages are often arranged when the children are quite young, but the parents never tell the children who their intended is.

At the marriage ceremony the girl sits beside the boy. Her head is covered with a banana leaf. The chief gives the couple instructions on their duties within the marriage and they are declared man and wife. At this point the husband removes the banana leaf, uncovers his wife‘s face, and each discovers their life partner. They then spend five days closeted together in the boy‘s hut with their food brought to them. Normal life begins on day six.

Except for big, aluminium cooking pots and a bright green plastic dragonfly hanging on a thread around the neck of one of the men, I see nothing manufactured outside the village. This blows me away. I have been to dinner parties where women express concern that their dishwashers may damage the fine gold line on their white dinner sets. These people use banana leaves as plates. I have observed discussions on the merits of one expensive school over another. Under the banyan tree, these ni­ Vanuatu have chosen to opt out.