What keeps misery at bay

The secret to being happy on Vanuatu is accepting your lot and not yearning for more, say expatriates based in the archipelago.

Aaron Baker, 29, an American church employee who is about halfway through a planned five-year stint on the islands, knows well enough that the standard of living on Vanuatu doesn't compare with that in many other nations — including his own.

His wife is expecting, and having done voluntary work in the maternity unit of the country's main hospital, she has decided to go back to her native United States for the delivery.

Baker says the people on the islands do not have much — which includes healthcare — but that does not mean they are miserable. "A lot of it has to do with being content with what you've got. They don't have much, and the quality of what they have is low, but they are still happy with what they have," he says.

Happier in villages

Baker recently visited a village which has no electricity and is a kilometre from the nearest source of water. He says the people there "didn't seem to mind" the "hardships" at all. "They are content to find what they need from the land, whereas other people aren't," he said. "They are looking to improve their lives with education, roads and some material conveniences but that's not the focus of their lives.

"[When Vanuatu came on top of the Happy Planet Index] they did a cartoon saying: 'We're the happiest country in the world but we have no running water, there are no jobs and the education level is low.' There are two sides to it."

Echoing the comments of others, Baker says happiness seemed least in the capital city of Port Vila."Closer to the capital, people are so wrapped up in their daily lives they have forgotten what makes them happy.

"If you are in a village without material conveniences, and that's all you have ever known, you don't miss it. Once you have tasted the other kind of life and then have to go back, it can be difficult," he adds.

Their enjoyment of simple pleasures, such as music, is a major reason why people on Vanuatu are happy, according to Pierre Zhang, 23, from Beijing, a translator working for a government aid project.

Zhang, who is based in Port Vila, says: "Vanuatu's not rich compared to Western countries but the people are very happy because they can play the guitar or their local music.

"After they finish dinner, they play music. Music for them is everywhere."

Another source of pleasure is the popular drink kava, which is made from a plant related to pepper. The liquid looks and tastes like mud and can give those who drink it vivid dreams.

"There is some relationship between happiness and kava. It makes the people more relaxed," Zhang says.

Music and kava might be a part of the reason why the Ni-Vanuatu are content. However, Zhang says, the main reason is that the islands lack the pressures of daily life which most of us experience. "They have local food so they can feed themselves. They don't have to get a job to get money. If they are hungry they can get coconuts or bananas.

"Vanuatu has the most beautiful scenery with its beautiful blue sky and fishing boats. It's a kind of paradise," he said with a smile before continuing his walk down to the seafront in Port Vila.

About the Happy Planet Index

The Happy Planet Index (HPI) aims to show the efficiency with which nations convert resources into happy lives.

Produced by the New Economics Foundation and first published in 2006, it combines measures of happiness and life expectancy, and weights them according to the resources a country uses.

Thus, if there are two nations with equal happiness and life expectancy values, but different levels of resource use, the one with lower resource use will have a higher HPI.

The HPI shows that around the world, high levels of resource consumption do not reliably produce high levels of well-being (life-satisfaction), and that it is possible to produce high levels of well-being without excessive consumption of the Earth's resources. It also reveals that there are different routes to achieving comparable levels of well-being.