Naghol — the land dive

Naghol is performed only in the yam-harvest season, between roughly April and June, and only by men and boys of the south Pentecost villages. The tower is a living structure: saplings and vines bound together over weeks, its platforms cantilevered out at increasing heights, the whole thing flexing as the divers climb. Each man cuts his own pair of liana vines and judges their length himself — too long and he strikes the ground hard, too short and the jolt can break a back. He leaps with arms spread and tucks at the last instant so his shoulders and head brush the earth that has been hoed soft beneath the tower; the vines snap taut and the tower bends to absorb the fall. The dive proves a man's courage and is a rite of passage, but its purpose is agricultural — the contact with the ground is an offering for the yams. The story the village tells traces it to a woman who fled a husband up a tree and tied vines to her ankles; the men took the dive on afterwards. Commercial bungee jumping descends from Naghol after a famous 1970s demonstration, but the village rite is not a sport: it is danced to song, watched by the whole community, and bound to the harvest calendar. Injuries and, rarely, deaths have happened; the risk is carried deliberately.