The Most Traveled Man on Earth

Lew first got interested in Vanuatu while living as a child in Thailand between 1959 and 1965, when there was no entertainment except for a record player, and his favorite record was “South Pacific.” This famous record, play and film was set in the New Hebrides, later Vanuatu. He first visited Vanuatu in 2001, on a voyage from Fiji to Vanuatu aboard a tall ship, the Soren Larsen, as described in his book The Most Traveled Man on Earth.

From 2012 to 2015 Lew served in-country as a senior advisor in e-government and ICTs (information and communications technologies) to the Chief Information Officer in the Office of the Prime Minister of the Republic of Vanuatu. He continues to advise the CIO remotely from the US. Vanuatu is a country of 255,000 scattered across an archipelago of 56 inhabited volcanic islands, stretching about 700 miles from north to south. The country is west of Fiji, east of Australia, north of New Zealand, and southeast of the Solomon Islands. It is a less developed country, Melanesian, mostly Christian, with a tradition of chiefs who almost all are involved in the pig-killing cult that dominates the nation.

While living in Vanuatu, Lew wrote a number of travel and adventure articles, published in The Montgomery Sentinel, International Travel News, Island Life (the national magazine of Vanuatu), and the Vanuatu Daily Post (the major daily paper in the country). These articles are presented below, and cover everything from the tribe that worships Prince Philip of England as a god, to Miss Vanuatu, to the Phocea superyacht scandal, to the amazing land diving done each spring on Pentecost island, where young men dive head first to earth from a bamboo tower 90 feet tall, (usually) saved by vines attached to their ankles. Lew also did additional research on the “real Bali Hai,” namely Ambae (or Aoba) island in northern Vanuatu, and wrote a major report comparing the fictional Bali Hai from “South Pacific” with the real island that inspired James Michener to write Tales of the South Pacific. Lew has recently finished leading an Explorers Club Flag Expedition on the “Female Chiefs of Vanuatu” to document the previously unknown female chiefs of that country. Below are various products of the Expedition, including a publication in Island Life, the national magazine of Vanuatu; an academic article on the expedition; videos about the Expedition; two songs about the islands; a gear list for the effort; and other related items.

As advisor for almost three years in the Prime Minister’s Office, Lew developed over 1000 documents – reports, memos, analyses, plans, annual reports, standards analyses, briefings, speeches for the CIO and Prime Minister, press releases, and other items. This section provides a small selection of the publicly-available documents from this output.

The first group of openable and downloadable documents below is the Vanuatu travel/adventure stories, followed by a three lecture, five hour course on Vanuatu taught by Lew at the Eastern Shore Institute of Lifelong Learning (ESILL, in Fairhope, Alabama). The third group of documents provides samples of the professional products.