A short wander...

- “Bus hem waka?” I ask.
- “Nomoa, hem no kam yet”, the cheery response I invariably receive from the string of people selling betel nut, cigarettes and ring cakes from their little stalls.

Thus my day begins; the outcome of this little exchange a 30 minute walk down a dusty track to town and work. I have no complaints, however. Even when it rains heavily during the night, as it frequently does, leaving me slipping and sliding my way down certain sections of the route, I still take pleasure in this daily routine and wouldn’t swap it even for the whitest Hilux in Honiara.

It is strange how the strongest memories of a time and place tend to be connected with activities and events that are seemingly at the periphery of life. Forget all those thousands of hours spent in lessons in primary school, or the theory of Pareto efficiency I was supposedly studying at university. No. Instead, the types of memories that spring to mind from those respective times are kicking a flattened soft drink can around the playground with other munchkins, and the man playing a penny whistle beside the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, who I would walk past on the meadows each morning. Perhaps those sights and sounds that enter, as it were, on the sly, find some direct route into the long-term memory; sneaking past the everyday garbage of the mind such as telephone numbers, lecture notes and Big Brother.

In particular, the everyday routine of walking to school/work sticks strongly in the mind, and for me seems somehow to capture the entire atmosphere of a particular era in my life. What at the time might have seemed a boring trudge, in hindsight now gleams with meaning and an epic quality. When I think about it, the number of such walks I’ve experienced is actually very few, but they are so familiar I’m sure I regularly walk them in my dreams without knowing it. First was the short walk to Brookfield Primary School, escorted in the very early days by me mam and sisters or various Scandanavian aupairs, and a little later often in the company of a couple of wee friends. Later came the even shorter walk to and from my secondary school, the regular walk from my house in Paraguay to catch the Numero Once bus to Asuncion and the various icy meadows marches in Edinburgh that I have previously referred to in the blog.

And now… and now the morning wander down the Mbokona valley (but never back!!) joins this select list. Who knows which aspects of the walk I will remember in the swirls of time, if any? But for now, perhaps because I am no longer a lazy teenager/gapyearer/student and I am more than 4ft tall, this current edition seems easily the most pleasurable. Past the betel nut sellers and over the first ramshackle bridge. Past the cassava patches and the women hacking away at the heavy soil with their hoes. The teetering makeshift houses inhabited by a few Malaitan families, overflowing with pikininis and looking like they’re about to collapse at any second. The hordes of little boys and girls walking barefoot to Mbokona Primary School, in their striking uniforms of purple flannel shirts and dresses. The bus that has been in the ‘roadside workshop’ for several months and which is now apparently an elaborate climbing frame for kids. The sounds (and smell) of the pigpigs being fed their morning slops, or whatever it is that Solomon pigpigs eat. And betel nut stalls every 50 metres, I suppose just in case you get caught out by a particularly sharp craving pang.

I toyed with the idea of buying a car for a while not long ago. But the pleasure of this daily walk has been one of the major factors in my changing my mind, as even though I was trying to trick myself into believing I would only use a vehicle at weekends, in reality I knew deep down that I would be waving this morning wander goodbye.

Photos from top: The road begins; An inspired artist's impression of a ring cake (otherwise known as a donut); The 'roadside workshop'; One of the more elaborate betel nut stalls; Pikininis on their way to school; A wee Malaitan scally; Just one more bend...

Savo...

I’ve returned from this Easter weekend enthusing about the merits of Pacific village life, and specifically the absorbing timelessness of one particular tiny village on Savo. This was the first time in the Solomons that I have stayed overnight in a fully traditional village; no power, no running water, no motorvehicles (and no roads for that matter), no gas cookers, no televisions, no toilets. And above all no concept of time. Two days and nights was all it took, at the end of which I couldn’t say for sure whether it had been days or months since we’d first stepped ashore. Now, back in Honiara, I find it hard to believe that the individuals we got to know on Savo are still going about their business, doing the same things they do everyday and which their forefathers have done for hundreds of years probably with very little change. Was I really there? Was it really real?



















This, I suppose, is the beauty of the ‘village’, and the reason it is so firmly lodged in the hearts and mentalities of the Honiarians, almost all of whom refuse to accept this town as a real home. The village for them, as for me these past three days, is a place so far removed from the modern world that it is very easy (perhaps inevitable) to forget the ‘real’ world even exists. On top of that is the easy welcome and charm, but unreserved hospitality, which you receive as a visitor. No clamour as you arrive, no rush to press drink and food on you immediately, but instead a constant and steady accumulation of tasty offerings and behind-the-scenes efforts, which by the end leaves you bowled over at the kindness and goodwill of these people you’ve just met and who you may never meet again. Fresh coconuts, pudding, pana, betel nut and baked bananas appeared out of nowhere. Dishes were miraculously washed (thank you Janet and team) before you were even awake. Reef fish were speared during the night and then cooked in coconut milk for breakfast. And young men charged around the thick bush of the volcano, seeking out megapod nests and the delicious eggs to be found buried in their loose soil, as we wilted in the shade of a mango tree on the rim of the crater. And when we came to leave, the whole village (all of about twenty people), were there to wave us off, genuinely sorry it seemed that we were leaving.










Savo is the most distinctive landmark in the ocean view from Honiara, and just an hour away by motor canoe. Nevertheless, despite having lived in Honiara all their lives and gazed out at its familiar symmetrical shape several thousand times, for my girlfriend and the two other friends who we went with (Vaela and Solomon), stepping foot on the volcanic soil of Savo was a first too. The island is famous for two things… the fact that its entire bulk consists of one very active volcano… and the megapod birds that live there. The first of these is easy to forget while merrily eating, swimming, fishing and storying in the villages by the sea. But on the second day, as we made our way through the bush up to the main crater, the precariousness of the little villages hundreds of metres below, strung like beads around the coast of the round island, became increasingly clear.

First, the stream we were following became warmer and warmer, and was soon emitting thick eggy sulphurous steam. By half-way it was literally boiling, and the ground around the bubbling little pools was thick with crabs legs, left behind by villagers enjoying the luxury of not having to build a fire. No human bones, although Joel, our host on the island, informed us with a grin that the first missionaries to arrive on Savo had suffered the same fate as the wee crabs. As we climbed higher, and in the crater in particular, the sense that you were walking on the thin shell of a smouldering mountain was all about us, smoke wisping up from sporadic cracks in the ground. It’s now been 150 years since the last eruption, and no-one knows when the next one will be, but you have to fear for the lives of the peaceful inhabitants of Savo the day the volcano next blows its top. One truly great gift that the volcano provides for the humans who have chosen to inhabit its slopes, is that of a constant steady supply of hot water. Every village has a communal well, often not more than a few metres from the sea, which taps into an underground source that is somehow not salty, and even more remarkably is deliciously warm, particularly so since in these past five months I have touched hot water a grand total of three times.

There are a hundred other little snippets I’d like to relate (but which will have to be forsaken for the steak dinner I am about to eat). Like the fact that the native language of Savo is one of just a handful of languages in the Pacific which has no connection with the Australasian family of languages (stretching from the East Pacific to Indonesia and even Madagascar), and no-one knows why this is. Like little naked Ryan, who every time he saw me threw back his head and roared in fear, till finally on the last morning I offered him a lollypop and he bravely wobbled forward, before tottering back to his mami with it proudly clutched in his little grasp. Like my slightly worrying evolution into an archetypal Melanesian male, so that on the last morning I found myself sitting in the shade of the palm trees, chewing betel nut and storying with Solo and the local chaps, while our girlfriends packed the bags and tidied up.

It would be wrong to idealise village life too much - Poopoo Point, to be sure, is not one of life’s most pleasant toilet experiences. But on that last morning all four of us were reluctant to leave, firmly settled into the pace of village life as we were. Still, Vaela and Solo had two kids to get back to, while today (Easter Monday) I had pledged my allegiance to the Honiara Easter fun run and the CBSI Easter picnic (photos to follow). But we parted ways discussing future possibilities for a return, and the Christian/Kastom festival of the ‘pana’ in June is an appealing prospect.

Photos (from top): Savo from the sea; Point Cruz - the departure point for motor canoes in Honiara; Joel in front of the house we stayed in (all other houses were leaf huts) - I took the photo for him to send to a ladyfriend in Papua New Guineau, hence the smart red shirt, black trousers and shoes despite the midday sun; a typical leaf hut; the cracked earth of Savo's volcano; our village's warm water well; moi cooking eggs for breakfast; Below: graffitti scrawled on a boat on Honiara's beach, a reminder of the relatively politically-conscious world we had returned to, in such contrast to the concerns of life in the villages.

Measuring 8.0 on the Richter-scale...

Thursday Lunchtime... I've added a few photos showing some of the damage. Must admit that when I wrote the last post I wasn't fully aware of the scale of the disaster, and by no means expected the Solomon Islands to make front page news around the world (as it did in Spain at least, I'm reliably informed). Here in the Solos people were for the most part completely unaware that the country was being talked about. Which is just as well really, as once it became clear that this was no repeat of the Asian Tsunami (the scale of which was quite simply unbelievable), the momentary spotlight of the world's media disappeared just as quickly leaving the country to pick up the pieces, hold memorials for loved ones lost, and try to prevent disease from claiming more lives. This event will no doubt also make it even harder for the Solos to lure the lucrative tourist dollar away from neighbours such as Fiji and Vanuatu, with the "disaster-struck" tag added to the "violence-ravaged" tag that already hangs like a millstone around our necks.

But thank you everyone who inundated me with emails regarding my safety. Sorry for the brief replies, but was a full morning's task convincing everyone I was still alive. And Happy Easter to you all. Enjoy those choccy eggs, and the daffs and the (hopefully) sunny clear spring weekend. But if you get a moment, spare a thought too for the poor Solomanders in the Western Province, camped out in the bush with no water, little food and no home to which they can return.

It's not often that the Solomon Islands makes international news, but this morning I noticed the following story on The Guardian website: http://www.guardian.co.uk/naturaldisasters/story/0,,2048180,00.html

In case anyone happened to read it, and in the even more unlikely event that they're worried, Honiara was not damaged by the earthquake, and not affected by the Tsunami that followed. Apparently the earthquake shook the Central Bank quite vigorously for five minutes, and caused those staff here early to flee outside. At 7.39am though, I was standing in the back of a truck bouncing my way to work, and an 8.0 Richter-scale earthquake couldn't compete with the bumps of the Mbokona road.

Out in the Western Province where the epicentre was, things look pretty bad however. The earthquake triggered a Tsunami, and water surged several hundreds of metres inland, with reports of many houses washed away. Fortunately there have been few deaths yet reported, but considering the fact that many of the islands in those parts have no communication at the best of times, little is yet known. Quite a large number of colleagues are from the Western province, and with all phone lines down they've been on the CBSI radio all morning trying to contact their families. At least one has lost a family member, and the mood is pretty sombre. Unlike many government staff who voluntarily gave themselves a day off, here at CBSI we're all still working, and I must go now to ponder my next task... drafting the Central Bank monetary policy stance for 2007.

Wantok (part two)...

As I was saying several moons ago…

In one sense the wantok system is admirably egalitarian. In village communities it is a social security net, with villagers providing care and food for those in need, ensuring no-one goes hungry. These days in Honiara it provides those of the rural population who come seeking work (85% of the population here live in rural areas) with a roof and food while they find their feet and if they’re lucky a job. It’s also extremely common for parents in the provinces to send their children to stay with wantok (often distant relations they’ve never met) in Honiara, where they will be able to attend secondary school. This was the case for quite a few of my colleagues at the Bank and another typical example is little Luku, a wantok of Luke Forau (my friend who left for Australia). When he was about 5 his parents sent him here to Honiara from distant Tikopia, and for the past 4 years he has been looked after by Luke, in that time not once returning home or seeing his parents, and now addressing Luke as ‘dadi’.

Wantok rules also play a Robin Hood-type role, robbing from the rich and giving to the poor, as in today’s monetary economy simply asking for money handouts from those of your wantok with jobs is an everyday practice. This can’t really be seen as voluntary social assistance either, for it is essentially obligatory if you have any spare cash whatsoever; it is virtually impossible for anyone except the highest highest earners to save money in the Solomons, as it all gets sucked away feeding extra mouths and sorting out wantok with cash. I find something almost amusing about the automatic nature of the process. When certain of Fiona’s friends ask her for money there is no shame whatsoever, even though they earn a similar income but just happen to have spent all theirs already on booze – it is an innocent request for something that you want, like a kid saying ‘Mummy, can I have an ice-cream’, except with little chance of refusal. On her part, when it’s her cousins and closest friends asking she doesn’t seem to mind in the least, but even when she feels someone is taking liberties and is reluctant it is still clearly very difficult to say no.

It is the obligatory aspect of wantok behaviour that really defines it, and which becomes problematic when applied outside the traditional setting. In the village environment there are natural limits to demands on a particular individual or family; if someone asks for food then you have little to lose in providing it, unless you are running short in which case it is straightforward and acceptable to refuse on the grounds that you need to feed your immediate family. In Honiara, however, if someone asks for a bag of rice or a few bucks it is altogether more difficult (and totally unacceptable) to say, for example, “sorry, but I was hoping to save that money in order to buy a new outboard engine/start a business/go on holiday”.

The failure of curbs in today’s environment is most evident in the common problem of wantok overstaying their welcome in Honiara. My colleagues, and the management of the Central Bank in particular who are seen as particularly successful, invariably have at least one or two wantok stopping with them, and often many more. For the young men from the provinces in particular, the appeal of coming to Honiara is all too evident.. They get to stay in a decent house, sponge a bit of cash, go for walkabaot in town and the inevitable betal nut chew, and get spaka at the weekend in the clubs (perhaps hooking up with a sophisticated Honiara lady). Thus their stays can be extended for several months, and is very difficult to ask them to leave. One colleague, however, has found what he sees as a foolproof and unconfrontational way of getting the young men to scarper… when they arrive set them a nice list of gardening and other household tasks to do each day, and you can be sure they won’t hang around very long.

There’s something funny in the canniness of this solution, using as it does the same idea of wantok (since they can’t refuse the tasks given them) to get back at the young men who are exploiting the system by overstaying their welcome. But openly defying wantok codes of behaviour has serious consequences. I’ve heard mention of a few people who outright refuse to engage in the game, who reject the visits of wantok and decline to give money to wantok less fortunate than them. The price for this behaviour, though, is a heavy one; word will soon get out that you are a ‘selfisman’ and the respect and warm welcome in your home village that you would otherwise receive as a successful earner and a ‘bigman’ would be exchanged for relative coldness.

For me it’s especially interesting seeing how the notion of wantok sits with the idea of economic development and a modern democratic economy. For example, it is common knowledge that one of the main reasons ALL retail shops in town are owned by waku (Chinese) is because if an entrepreneurial Solomon Islander opens a store they’ll be inundated with requests for freebies. More problematic still is that when perfectly acceptable wantok rules are applied in the political arena and in public institutions such as the police force, you end up with deep-rooted corruption and nepotism. Looking to the future though, trying to stamp out wantok is an undesirable solution from a cultural perspective and probably futile anyway. Instead a balance must somehow be found in Solomon society, enabling the incredible social ties and belonging that wantok engenders to be maintained, whilst also ensuring a democratic system of governance and business activities can thrive. Unlikely to be witnessed in the relatively short time I’ll be here I suppose, but perhaps one day…


(The photos are from a weekend trip not long ago to a piece of land down the coast that the Central Bank owns. Not owning a car the only option was for us to hire a Central Bank vehicle... which happens to be a big blue truck)