Farewell the Foraus...

Last weekend, Luke Forau, his wife May, and three of their four young Pikininis, swapped the modest capital of the Solomon Islands for the equally modest (or so I’m told) capital of Australia. Luke was the assistant manager of the Economic Department before he left, and has been lucky enough to get funding from CBSI to study a Masters for two years at the University of Australia. For Solomon Islanders, getting hold of a scholarship is the single factor that makes or breaks your career (seemingly no-one here can afford to fund themselves through university). Get funding for a degree at the University of South Pacific in Suva (Fiji), or better still for one of the few places in Australian universities, and on your return you will have a good chance of getting a job as a civil servant, in one of the few foreign firms located here, or working in one of the lucrative foreign agencies associated with development in the country. Miss out on a scholarship and, regardless of your school grades, you will almost certainly be destined to end up with a pitifully low-pay job, or trying to graft a living in the informal sector.

So Luke, a big omni-smiling Polynesian, is fantastically lucky to get the chance for postgraduate studies. I, on the other hand, feel unlucky to have lost such a good friend. Of all the kind souls helping to make me feel welcome in CBSI and to settle in to my new house and neighbourhood, it was Luke and his family who I came to depend on most and with whom I ended up spending most time. I have spent many an evening spent sitting with him, his wife and his four sweet and hilarious little daughters (including little seven year-old Emily, who grinned and said “me save” – I know – when I told her my own sister had the same name?!), watching a film or two and joining the family for dinner. Fascinating too, to hear his tales of Tikopia, the tiny incredibly isolated island where he was born. Tikopia, it is said, is the most traditional of all Polynesian Pacific islands with a tiny population but a surprisingly overt presence in Honiara. The various tribal chiefs have made a decision on behalf of the community to ban any machines, hoping to maintain the traditional village fabric that has existed for thousands of years. I’d be tempted to go, but a boat goes there only once every six months, the journey takes several weeks, and the boat stops for just a couple of days before returning… oversleep on the morning of that return trip and you’ll have six months of deep life contemplation and fish chewing before any chance of heading back to civilisation.

Anyway, on Saturday night I gathered with various extended family members and wantak for the inevitable goodbye barbecue. Solomon Islanders take goodbyes very seriously. Perhaps the scattered nature of islands and population has given them the practice. For whatever reason, they have got it down to a fine and well-oiled art. Besides the big spread of food, there are always multiple and wordy speeches, and for the first time I had the chance to join in the fun. I say ‘the chance’, but in actual fact I had no choice in the matter. The matriarch M.C, after picking on various other feet-shuffling men, simply said, “and now William will say a few words”. So William did, though not in Pijin unfortunately.

That evening it really struck me that, despite the hardships of life in the Solomons, people here have an amazing attachment to their country. The incredible strength and depth of the family network here, I think, gives people a security and comfort that makes them essentially very happy. As we stood on his balcony, overlooking the Mbokona valley and my own little house almost directly below, Luke said to me with a sigh as a rainstorm broke over the tin roof, “I don’t want to go to Australia you know”. I found something very reassuring in this sentiment. It reminded me that a people and their land are not separate entities. Take a person from their homeland and, though many cultural habits will remain, something is fundamentally changed. For good or for bad, the issue of identity comes to the fore. A travelling Englishman is no longer just an Englishman. He is either definitively ‘an Englishman abroad’ or he can start to absorb the local culture and perhaps, as British colonialists would mutter over G&Ts, ‘go local’. Standing with Luke on his balcony, I think I felt almost as keenly as he did what he was leaving behind. The shops, and pavements, cinemas and first-class education in Canberra are little consolation for the loss of the deep-rooted contentment of ‘belonging’ in the Solomon Islands. It reminded me too of the constant immigration furore in Europe, where among the angry and shrill cries of indignation are the quiet voices urging us to remember the high price people have reluctantly paid in leaving behind their homeland and their own innate sense of identity to come to a foreign land. So goodbye Luke, and good luck, I’ll miss you and your lovely family.

In other news:

• Today is ‘Australia Day’. Why anyone would celebrate the arrival of a boatload of convicts and their unleashing on a wild and beautiful country is beyond me. But don’t question it guys…whip out that garish flag, grab a stubbie, get those coals going, adopt your best Joe Mangle accent, and toast those 19 million Aussies for their infuriating ability to beat us 60 million Brits at any sport they put their mind to.

• This week I bought two new pairs of shoes (see photo). The shoe that looks like 'one of those shoes you wear when you’ve got one leg longer than the other' was courtesy of the Central Bank, the first instalment of my forthcoming uniform. The second is preparation for my imminent signing by one of the local football clubs, the latest illustrious and lucky team to follow Mullet Argyle and Monj Too in securing my services

(Photos from top: Luke, wee Nesta, Emily eating pineapple, me with the fam)

My address...

Below, as some of you have requested, is my address in the Solomon Islands. Not an all-too-common yahhotgmail address. Not a geeky unmemorable http://?? eblogweb address. Not a dress. It is just my plain old postal address here at the Central Bank. But which actually, believe it or not, turns out to be completely reliable, with a London - CBSI desk average time of about 3 weeks. No need for a long letter, just a little card in your various scrawls will make me a happy man. Written, perhaps, from a steaming greasy spoon caf on a rainy afternoon, or a warm smoky pub on a cold winter eve. As good capitalists you will be pleased to hear that there is something in it for iufala too: I will be eager and happy to reply which means, of course, for the first times in ALL your lives you'll receive mail from the Solomon Islands (I would love to hear if anyone can contradict me on that statement). Anyway, after much oohing and ahhing and general hubbabubba my address is:

William Baron
Central Bank of Solomon Islands
P.O. Box 634
Honiara
Solomon Islands

Bush knife swinging Melody...

I have a gardener. Not a permanent arrangement I don’t think - just a couple of bush-knife swinging days – but decidedly necessary to help me get under control the jungle that is currently exploding in front of my house. That’s the thing with a tropical paradise: things grow at an alarming rate. I’m beginning to suspect that this partly explains the Solomon Islanders’ apparent obsession with tending their gardens. Every evening, every weekend, outside every house, home-owners and their wantak are to be seen weeding, clearing, pruning and endlessly trimming the grass down to a neat half inch, all to the rhythmic beat of the thwack-thwacking bush knife. The result is impressive, as the garden in front of even the poorest household is almost without exception neat and tidy, frangipani and other tropical flowers erupting everywhere, while pride of place is given to the bountiful orchids draped over home-made wooden trellis fences and growing from coconut husks nailed to trees. Now though, it’s recently dawned on me that what I thought was a bit obsessive is in fact just a healthy and wise application of the old adage… a stitch in time.

In contrast, I have been putting off tending my own little patch. I’ve got plenty of excuses, naturally, which I can explain in detail to anyone who seeks further justification. But the long and the short of it is that returning on New Year’s Day, crawling up the Mbokona road to my house in a snail-pace taxi, I was surprised to find No.5 Central Bank Quarter practically hidden from view. Have to say I felt a little ashamed. There, standing out like a sore thumb amongst all the neat gardens was the haos blo waetman, complete with shoulder high grass and bulging bushes threatening to engulf my little drive. I half expected to be greeted by Robinson Crusoe bursting from the undergrowth in a dodgy goatskin hat.













So that was the clincher - the time had come for action. I rolled up my sleeves and grabbed my bush knife, rudely awakening it from its leisurely life resting in the corner of my kitchen cracking open the odd coconut. Fearless of the hard labour that lay ahead I promptly… hired a very sweet lady in her sixties named Melody, who is now working hard clearing the effects of my procrastination. I should say at this point that I didn’t intend to hire a pensioner. My initial choice was a bulky dreadlocked fellah named Sally, but after hearing my terms he passed the contract on to his mami, the smiling and eager Melody. As a female friend pointed out, she’ll do a much better and more careful job, particularly, it seems to me, since our man Sally spends his days from early morn to dusk perched behind his little betal nut stall, and judging by his teeth and eyes is not above “getting high on his own supply”.

(The photos show the inside of my so-called shack, as requested by various people. For those of you thinking of heading this way, the room with my washing hanging in is yours in exchange for two hours gardening each morning).

Reflections on a beginning...

There’s nothing like gazing out over the ocean at sunset for putting the mind in a reflective and contemplative mood. And after a week of sunsets in the West, I feel like putting a few reflective words onto paper before my mind reverts once again to the immediacy of new events and people. Just a few words, mind, as there is much to say about the present. But as my life here becomes increasingly ‘normal’, it now seems important to give a little nod in recognition of the period when I first arrived, and the extraordinary experience of coming to terms with this abrupt new reality.

Even the smallest changes can be a struggle (I tried to change newspapers once and got the shock of my life). But uprooting from everything and everybody I had a connection with, travelling almost as far as it is possible to travel, then settling down for a two-year stint in a place where I knew nobody, represents one of the more monumental upheavals in my life. Yet difficult as those first few days and weeks of entering a new reality often are, there is also something uniquely special about them. There are the obvious things of course, like the fascinating novelty of everything and everybody. But there is something more subtle too.

In that transition period, before your new life slowly begins to take shape, there is a brief period when you’ve left one world behind but are yet to fully enter another. For what amounts to a very brief moment in the timescale of life, it is as if someone has pressed pause in your mind - a rare sensation, in particular for those hailing from the hectic lands of the West. While the world buzzes around you, you occupy your own space, observing from afar. This is the moment, if you are arriving alone at a party, that you seek out a familiar face, or better still the bar. But here in the Solomons, with two years rolling out in front of me, I felt no such time pressure or inclination to break out of this unique bubble. Soon enough, of course, the world around you, or more specifically the people, break through for you. You meet a couple of people, then a few more… and suddenly you are part of the new reality you inhabit.

I make it sound like an intrusion, but far from it. After a few weeks of acclimatising, when my mind had just about caught up with my body, it was a welcome respite to emerge from the cocoon of new beginnings into the tiny but active social world of Honiara. And once you step out there is no going back. A couple of barbeques or nights on the lash are all it takes. Perhaps this is what makes such beginnings so unique: the mindset you find yourself in is fragile as a Scottish summer, and once gone there is no way to rediscover that same state of mind and perspective. The blank slate is soon filled with familiar names and faces, knowledge, associations and memories. Normality, if that is what we call life, resumes.

Xmas travels part I...Getting there

Like all my holidays since I was about 16, my trip to the West began with a flurry of frantic last-minute packing and a nearly-missed flight, accompanied (and probably caused) by the inevitable departure hangover of stomach churning proportions. This being the Solomon Islands, however, the obstacles were so unexpected and pernicious that even an old hand at such antics like me began to feel just a wee bit stressed by it all.

Firstly, and totally unexpectedly, Honiara awoke on the Saturday morning of our flight to a total fuel cut. Every taxi firm and friend we phoned said their cars had no fuel to get us to the airport, all exhausted the night before, no doubt, ferrying pissheads such as me and my pals between Top Ten, Flamingos, Paradise and the various other Honiara nightclubs. This started as amusing, but rapidly became less so as the hour of our flight approached. As a last resort we managed to commandeer a diplomatic car from Foreign Affairs (despite concerted efforts this is a trick I’ve not yet pulled off in London) where Fiona works and we were whisked to the airport in air-conditioned luxury. The plan was to drop off one of her colleagues then quickly to return to town to collect her stuff before heading back to the airport.

This plan though was nearly undone when we found on the first trip to the airport that our flight time had been changed to an hour earlier and was leaving in 45 minutes. An hour EARLIER! As Fiona raced back home to collect her stuff I tried to explain to deaf ears the absurd impossibility of a flight leaving earlier than scheduled. The various smiling responses undermined my efforts and suggested they were not so convinced it was beyond the realm of possibility. The six other people I met at the airport were also far from reassuring: the flight they’d booked had been due to leave 5 days earlier but each day since they’d been told to wait all day and here they were still waiting and, incredibly, still grinning and smiling while they explained to me how frustrating it was that they might not get home for Christmas. I pictured myself, wrinkled and grey-haired, waiting many years from now like a tropical Tom Hanks for my holiday in the West to begin. In the nick of time, or so it seemed, Fiona leapt out of a cab and we checked in. As we walked out to the tiny aircraft, naïve old me loitering for a snap, it suddenly became clear there wouldn’t be enough seats on the plane. Second to last I just made it, while the poor girl behind me was abruptly turned around to face an unknown fate.

Once aboard the tiny plane (see picture), however, our hangovers were instantly forgotten at the excitement of being aboard. We were welcomed by Indian Dave the pilot, who then clambered past us all before shouting the emergency instructions a couple of inches from my face, spraying those in the front row with a little complimentary airline spittle. He squeezed into the cockpit bum first, took his seat practically on my lap, and then 1 minute later, doing about 22mph and accompanied by desperate cries from me of “Not Yet Mate” (fortunately drowned out by the din of the engine) we lifted up and were away. The flight was only a little over an hour but completely compelling as we flew over remote islands, azure lagoons (see photo) and tiny lines of sandy reefs visible just below the water’s surface, like secret ocean footpaths. We also flew over the widespread tracts of deforested land, now green as everywhere else, but crushed flat as if a giant with misshapen feet had been trampling here and there. And then, before I’d had a chance to yield to the strong urge to reach out and flick a switch or two, the runway was abruptly beneath us and the altimeter I’d been observing so keenly hit zero. Along with our fellow passengers, mainly Malaysian and Indonesian loggers who smelt of tobacco and old wellies, we were bundled out and stepped into the warm air of Munda on New Georgia Island.

Xmas travels part II...Christmas and the Devil

We spent three days in Munda, allegedly one of the Solomon Islands’ most populous towns, but to my eyes nothing more than a small village strung along the water on the edge of the magical Roviana lagoon: sleepy, immaculately tidy, very friendly, and peaceful. Before I left England I found myself repeatedly quoting the fact that there are 992 islands in the Solomons (practically the only thing I knew before I left), but only when I arrived in the West did I realise the implications of this. All around, stretching as far as the eye can see, are hundreds of small, lush green islands, most fronted by thin stretches of sandy white beaches. Christmas Day we spent on just such an island, with Fiona’s auntie Alice and large extended family. A day of relaxation, gentle exploration, paddling about in the wobbly dugouts, a slap-up barbeque including motu pigpig (a whole pig roasted underground – rapidly becoming my favourite local delicacy), and capped off by finding myself face-to-face with the devil.

Now everyone has always told me that the first time you encounter sharks it is a magical experience. How they are serene and peaceful, gliding below you like shadows. Well, all I can say is…Not for me. I had swum out over the shallow reef to the lagoon drop-off, where the reef drops down one hundred-odd metres to the deep ocean beyond, and where warm rising currents carry nutrient rich waters that attract a boggling variety and quantity of fish. Merrily snorkelling around alone, and a good 500 metres from land, I turned at one point and to my horror found a shark less than a metre from my face. Now I’m not going to get carried away and say that it was a monster, but it was as big as me and that was enough. I shat myself, needless to say, nearly swallowing my snorkel in shock. Then as I splashed my legs to get away it turned towards me, perhaps attracted by my bright blue flippers or blood red swimming shorts, and rapidly darting its head from side to side as it zigzagged closer I thought I was a goner. But I could see in its eyes it was as scared as I was, and when I kicked out again it took fright and darted off like an arrow. Thank f***, I thought, as my heart slowly descended from my mouth. I tried to carry on enjoying the spectacular snorkelling, but somehow it wasn’t quite the same after that. Ten minutes later when I saw the same shark circling me about 20 metres away I decided to call it a day and I swam back to shore, retrieved my dugout and paddled back to the main island for a Crimbo feast, sitting on a jetty at sunset (see photo). Fortunately, since that first close-encounter I have seen sharks on a number of occasions. Reef sharks in particular I now find as cuddly as kittens and each time I see them feel an insane urge to roll them over and tickle their belly.

Xmas travels part III...Lovely Lola

After those first few days in Munda, we spent the rest of our holiday in the delightful bosom of Lola Island. A classic island paradise: sandy white beaches, bountiful palm trees, just a handful of leaf bungalows and an open fronted bar on the water’s edge. As always with these places, it was defined by the people who ran it, and the other lucky souls staying there. Both were lovely, and though my diary is full of notes of the unique characters we met, I won’t bore you all with the details. But to Kate and Asim, Adi and Johan and Piero and Napoleon, in case you are reading this, t’was a privilege to meet you all and share such an amazing time: Long live Lola. I was particularly impressed with the latter two, lone sailors who had sailed from Panama, and tempted by the possibility of doing the reverse journey whenever I eventually leave Solomon waters. The long-term residents/staff of Lola were equally delightful - one minute catching barracuda, the next minute hooking fresh squid for lunch, and the next jumping on a surf board and bombing around the lagoon scurfing (which I failed miserably at). So cheers Lionel, Colin, Ramona and Fillis.

These Lola days were spent doing all the simple things in life: sleeping, eating, snoozing, reading, napping, swimming, dozing, fishing, while evenings we spent drinking and joking. Strange that paradise is so boring to describe. But paradise it was and with luck I’ll find my way back at some point again in 2007 or 2008. Initially we planned to spend New Year’s Eve in Honiara, but in the end we couldn’t tear ourselves away and one swift phone call was all it took for us to change our flight. The night was a memorable classic. Our little crew (complete with some wandering pikininis) spent 6 hours warming up on the jetty, boozing and eating and playing games, while little boats full of totally spakered villagers arrived one-by-one. By midnight the place was pretty packed, and by day-break, when Fiona and I tore ourselves away from barefoot dancing on the sand to island tunes and staggered back to our bungalow for a 2 hour kip before our flight, the dancefloor was still a mess of hilarious, staggering, incoherent and occasionally scuffing spakamastas.

Xmas travels part IV...Scuba duper

Among the days spent on Lola imitating sea-cucumbers, we managed to rouse ourselves for a couple of excursion days, including a day on Bikiki Island, a tiny and uninhabited island surrounded by colourful reefs. I also, unexpectedly, spent a day scuba diving. The morning before we left I was a tad apprehensive about the prospect as divers were meant to have at least 100 dives for the particular dive we were doing, whereas I last dived about 7 years ago and have done a grand total of about 7 dives (6 of which were in a lake). But I kept this quiet, and as the three other divers and I sped over the water I felt happily comfortable and excited at the prospect. It was no disappointment. As Stuart, an Aussie with over 200 dives under his belt pointed out afterwards, if I do another 150 dives it’s unlikely I’ll do one that surpasses the two we did today. The second in particular really captured my imagination.

It began with a short walk onto land before we climbed into a dark hole about 2 metres in diameter (see the crap photo) and with some effort manoeuvred head first down the narrow passage into the cold and total darkness. Armed with an underwater flashlight we headed downwards, the passage opening into a wide underwater cavern, before narrowing again until, at it’s lowest point about 35 metres down, it became just a small opening which we squeezed through, clanging our tanks against the rocks. Unlike the others I had no wetsuit and was clad in just my rather unstreamline orange swimshorts, but the adrenaline kept me warm in the cold water. We slowly ascended another narrow chasm and before long we found ourselves heading towards a far-off glint of celestial blue. As we neared, it deepened in hue and intensity, till we reached a large underwater cave and were surrounded by an explosion of blue so deep and bright you could almost inhale it. We lingered a while, enjoying the sensation, before emerging through the cave mouth into the mighty Pacific, finding ourselves still 20 metres below the surface, poking our heads out of a window in a perfectly vertical reef wall that stretched at least another 40 metres below us. The wall was an underwater Eden, thick with colourful coral and fish, and for the rest of the dive we traversed this wall, accompanied by reef sharks (and a hammerhead), an Eagle ray and a turtle.

That evening over a drink in the bar, Tuska, the spearfishermen-turned-divemaster who had led our dive, told me the history of the cave. It had been the Kastom (custom) shark cave of a nearby village till just a few years ago, inhabited by a 4 or 5 metre shark to which they would regularly sacrifice and then feed pigs. But then one day some young men from the village committed a tabu and took females to the island, and the shark had left. Sad as it is for the village in question to lose their shark god, the actions of those randy young men have opened up one hell of a dive for the rest of us.

Anyway. Love to you all and here's to a great 2007 (from a spaka waetman).