#4 — Tefea

Hailing from the southernmost province of Vanuatu, Tefea is the “best true story ever made up” as Burt Pepper describes him.  He’s a folk legend in the world of calf building and while most of the competitors don’t believe he really exists, stories of Tefea’s calves serve as motivation and the benchmark by which all calve muscles are measured.  He has been characterized by Westerners as “the Atlas of Calves”

 

Tefea was born to cattle herders in the volcanic mountain province of Vanuatu which is his namesake.  With only 14% of Vanuatu’s land mass situated on “flat ground” (less than 8 degree elevation), Tefea spent much of his youth climbing ashen volcanic mountainside “15 hours a day, 7 days a week.”  The story continues he was born with severally underdeveloped tarsal bones, (“heel bone” for the laymen) – the largest bone in the foot.  To this end, he learned to put all his weight on his front foot from a young age.   This abnormality caused a drastic enlargement of his calve muscles that earned him deity status on the island as a young child.   Council Chiefs believed that there were powerful gods that existed in his legs.

 

Legend has it that as a 6 year old he was banned from soccer, the island past time for “swiping the leg of a defender” and cleanly breaking through it, severing the child’s limb.  He was so embarrassed by this incident that he exiled himself to the volcanic mountaintops of Vanuatu to live the rest of his life.  He sucks milk from the teat of Tanna, his childhood animal, and the only “calf” that was ever bigger than him.  Tefea gets his fruit by picking mangos from tree tops 18 feet high, jumping from a flat-footed stance.

 

For the sake of the International Calve Building League (ICBL) it is in their best interest that he remains a myth.  The truth is he DOES in fact exist.