I have seen many of their old houses, and few of them are anything but shacks. I have been told that one reason New Caledonian French are so opposed to those islands' independence is that many of them were pushed from Vietnam, Vanuatu, and Algeria when they became independent. Once, when I innocently asked the wife of a French ex-planter how long she had lived in Vanuatu, she replied bitterly that she had lived in the New Hebrides for twenty years and Vanuatu for three months. Many are no longer satisfied with village life after they have done well in elementary school and attended the Western-oriented secondary schools in town or even gone overseas to university. The reality is that wages in town are usually very low and instead of obtaining food and shelter from one's labour in the family garden or from the forest, urban ni-Vanuatu must contend with the money economy.
People live several to a room in corrugated-iron shacks.
One toilet serves a city block of crowded houses. That freedom from chiefly authority is also felt by a criminal element that preys on fellow ni-Vanuatu, who are easier targets than expatriates. In town, one has to constantly deal with unreasonable ni-Vanuatu from other villages and islands with their different customs and loyalty to only their own language group. All in all, town is an inexplicable, unfair place. To make things worse, after announcing to all and sundry back home how one was going to move up to the Big City, one is ashamed to return home and admit defeat.