There is no English equivalent for the word the women of Yakel use to describe the shame they feel when they are unable to carry out their customary duties. It is not exactly embarrassment. It is not simply sorrow. It is something deeper — a rupture between the self and the sacred. For generations, the women of Yakel, a kastom (custom) village on the island of Tanna in the Republic of Vanuatu in the South Pacific, have borne the responsibility for the ritual of Nahunu. Nahunu entails the preparation of food and drink for the Imalul, or the spiritual center of the village, where the people go to commune with their ancestors. This responsibility, though heavy, is not a burden. It is a birthright. A form of spiritual service. To perform it is to be in right relationship — with the land, with one another, and with the ancestral realm. To fail is to feel adrift, untethered from a deeper order, like a reed cut from a reed bed.

And yet, through no fault of their own, they are failing. The gardens that once grew nearby have been blighted by landslides and battered by storms — disasters now far more frequent and intense due to climate change. The women report having to climb down one side of a steep mountain, cross a frequently flooded ravine, and climb back up the other side to reach the arable lands where their relocated gardens are planted — a journey that can take an entire day. Often they do not make it back before sunset. Often they return empty-handed. On those days, the ritual is missed, the spiritual connection is broken, and the women grow increasingly distressed. Meanwhile, hunger has grown so severe that families have been forced to eat the animals once reserved for sacred ceremonies, deepening the destruction of customary life. With every missed or incomplete ceremony, the feeling of alienation grows. For the women in particular, this combination of extreme physical labor and emotional strain has led to strokes and premature death.

Yam is so much more than a crop in Yakel. It is ceremony, calendar, covenant. It is ancestor. It organizes everything from governance to the seasons themselves. Yam ceremonies mark when children come of age, when marriages occur, when the dead are honored. The loss of the yam is thus not merely a loss of a foodstuff but a collapse of Indigenous methods of timekeeping, storytelling, and social coherence. Its absence disrupts all manner of communal life. Its absence means certain ceremonies cannot be performed, including the Toka, the four-day dance by which the community chooses a high chief.

In Yakel, there has not been a single successful yam harvest in four years.

I’ll refrain from making a Popeye joke, given the seriousness of the situation.