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YAOHNANEN - Squatting at the base of an enormous banyan tree, an elderly village chief holds his most prized possession between bony fingers. "Philip sent this to us," he said. "Now we have three of them."
A signed portrait of HRH the Duke of Edinburgh is an incongruous
sight in the middle of a South Pacific jungle, but for this remote village in Vanuatu it is a revered part of their daily lives.
As unlikely as it sounds, the people of Yaohnanen and surrounding villages worship 85-year-old Prince Philip as a god.
They believe him to be the son of an ancient spirit who inhabits a nearby mountain on the island of Tanna.
Determining exactly how these people came to believe that the Prince is a god is complicated by almost impenetrable spiritual beliefs and language difficulties - villagers speak no English, let alone the Bislama pidgin which is Vanuatu's lingua franca.
But it appears that at some point in the 1950s they melded the Christian conviction of a messiah with the respect accorded Philip by the British colonial authorities of what was then the New Hebrides.
Their veneration of the Duke of Edinburgh fitted comfortably with an ancient prophecy that a Tanna man would venture far away in search of a powerful woman to marry.
The Prince's cult-like status received a big boost when he came to the New Hebrides on a state visit in March 1971, resplendent in a white naval uniform as he and the Queen steamed into the capital, Port Vila.
The Prince is well aware that he is the subject of such distant adoration and has allowed his framed portraits to be sent to Chief Jack Naiva and his little band of believers.
The first, a black and white print now badly damaged by damp, dates from the early 1960s. The second, which shows the Prince in a smart suit holding a traditional pig-killing club, is dated 1980, while the most recent was sent in 2000.
Correspondence from Buckingham Palace was also highly prized by the tribe, but humidity and nibbling mice have long since destroyed it.
Despite worshipping the Prince as a god for half a century, the villagers - none of whom can read or write - learned only recently that his birthday falls on June 10.
Great plans are now under way to celebrate the occasion this year with dancing and a feast. Chief Jack has even managed to acquire an immaculate new Union Jack, which will be run up a flagpole and saluted.
But the celebrations will only really be complete if Prince Philip himself turns up, the tribe says.
"You must tell King Philip that I'm getting old and I want him to come and visit me before I die," said the white-haired chief, who thinks he is about 80.
"If he can't come perhaps he could send us something to help us: a Landrover, bags of rice or a little money."
London may be 15,000km from this obscure corner of Melanesia, but villagers say the spirit of Prince Philip is close. "We can't see him, but sometimes we hear his voice," said Chief Jack.
The villagers' lives could hardly be further removed from the opulence enjoyed by Prince Philip and "Misis Kwin", the pidgin name for the Queen.
Children - "picanini" in pidgin - run around naked or in ragged clothes, none of them goes to school and the men wear either dirty shorts or "nambas", penis sheaths made from grass. They hunt wild pigs and flying fox bats with bows and arrows and live in flimsy thatched huts.
The village lies at the end of a track so deeply rutted that it is barely navigable by 4WD.
Like the Jon Frum cargo cult on the same island, which last week celebrated its 50th anniversary, the Prince Philip movement has enabled villagers to resist the influence of missionaries.
Chief Jack knows that Prince Philip is, like him, in the twilight of his life. But he is unfazed, believing the Duke may be immortal." Jimmy Nipil, a tribe member in his 30s, says: "We don't know where England is but we know he lives there and he has four children. We believe England is a very special place."
