Sweet and Bitter Cocoa Taste of Chocolate

  When reading about main exports of Solomon Islands I realized how much I need a vocabulary. Actually even vocabulary doesn’t help much if you come from Europe, or other country with different climate, as most of the exports here are either exotic crops or raw materials. Leaving aside raw materials from logging and mining activities, we can therefore find among main export commodities such items as copra (dried meat, or kernel, of the coconut; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copra), kava (The roots of the plant are used to produce a drink with sedative and anesthetic properties; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kava) and cocoa (kakao). About 85 percent of the population lives in rural areas and practices subsistence agriculture (Information taken from Guadalcanal official provincial development plan), whereas who would try to look for some decent manufacturing sector would probably have to accept the fact that in this sector are Solomon Islands very underdeveloped (Work force (202,500; 2009): Agriculture--75%. Industry and commerce--5%. Services--20%. – US Department of State webpage).

   This Tuesday was for Guadalcanal province very special day as the Executive Director of UNCDF David Morrison paid us a visit here. After short presentation there was planned a visit of New Tenabuti village, where we could witness official opening of newly build clinic. Local community prepared program, speech and lunch. Short, but very interesting visit of the inner land helped me to get to understand logistic problems the local government has to face to. Infrastructure in the area is very poor and without proper car (meaning land cruiser or something bigger) it’s not possible to get anywhere.

  It’s all what one would expect and absolutely normal in country like this so let’s just get back to the cocoa topic. Cocoa is one of the main export crops at Solomon Islands. The other part of the coin is that as they export cocoa, the import of products made from cocoa, such as chocolate, are so expensive that local people can’t afford it.  When I asked my colleague Ronald about chocolate his answer was more than clear: “I’ve never bought it here. It’s kind of scarce resource and it’s so expensive so only expats can afford it. I’ve seen they sell chocolate here in Plaza, but I don’t remember what the price was”. So it looks like there is no chocolate till December for me. I think it’s another model example how it looks like when a country export is based on corps, maybe raw materials (under control of foreign companies) and economy is based on diminishing return activities (where SI obviously have comparative advantage, which so far doesn’t help islanders to enjoy chocolate bar).

   
   On our way from the clinic to the village was Mr. Morrison and the others advised to go there by car. As I was told it was only 200 meters away so I decided to walk there together with some locals. On our way I noticed this weird looking trees and it’s fruit I’ve never seen before. What a surprise when I realized it’s actually cocoa, one of the main export crops of Solomon Islands. When my friends from the village noticed my increased interest in this fruit they decided to show me one ripened, yellow cocoa. Under the shell there are seeds covered with white plaque. With the words “It’s like a lolly”, I was encouraged to put one of those to my mouth. My surprise was even bigger in that moment as I could taste very sweet/sour taste I would never expect from cocoa. Maybe it’s just my limited imagination, but I always imagined cocoa as coffee and now I could see it’s totally different.


  While enjoying my new candy we finally arrived to the village, at the same time as the rest of the delegation with cars. At the lunch we could drink coconut milk. I noticed one of the guys is eating the coconut meat. It was young coconut with thin coconut shell, so it was possible to break it without problems in hands. I expected coconut meat with coconut taste I’m used to from European shops, but surprisingly this taste was quite different. When you expect to eat something, but at the end it tastes differently, it’s always quiet surprising. One day I thought I have some kind of dry pineapple, but no, it was casava and it had taste very close to potatoes. Similar it was in this coconut case; very soft meat with taste sweater and fresher than what anybody would expect, just not like coconut.

   My European way of thinking and imagining products and situations I know, are here quiet different and many times even when I think I know what I will experience the outcome is quite different. The parallel line can be drawn when thinking about local Economy, administration and attitude of people.

Fingers Crossed "Bonitos"

   One week at MPGIS went very fast and I could finally visit the building of Guadalcanal provincial government, where I will spend most of my time here. My colleagues from PGSP are Collin Bentley (Local) and Ronald Amigo (Philippines). Step by step I get to know everybody from the provincial ministry and try to absorb as much information as possible, as fast as possible by reading some materials about Guadalcanal and it's economy, policies and resources. Aspect of Island developing country can be seen at every corner, but to get to know the real mentality of the people it's good to get to the work environment. In the office, I share with my colleagues, is very small window which is not possible to open. Air condition stopped to work on Monday morning. It started to run again on Thursday afternoon, when somebody managed to pay the gas so we got the power back. At the moment I can enjoy the luxury of cool air again, but for how long? 

                                     Photo: Waiting for Executive Director of UNCDF with prime minister of Guadalcanal Province and other provincial ministers.

   On Monday I could see an other aspect concerning electricity which seems to be absolutely normal here; whole city of Honiara (and probably entire Island) was out of power for most of the day. My surprised questions met with careless answers from local people who are, obviously, already used to it. At that point I realized what kind of adventure I was experiencing, without knowing it,every day at the MPGIS Anthony Saru building when I took the elevator instead of walking up the stairs. In case that such a situation would appear while you are in there, it might be long hours of darkness in small closed space.

   I think I got used to the local people and their look. In fact they are very friendly and easy going. This feeling is even enhanced by the reggae music coming from everywhere. Positive vibe makes every way on the minibus much more enjoyable and makes me smile. It looks like I don't need much; sun, island weather, sea, interesting tasks to do and reggae music, what else would one need to smile when walking on the street? Let's just hope I will not make the impression of this crazy smiling foreigner running around.

   At the moment everybody lives by the atmosphere of Pacific Games, where Solomon Islands football team got to the final. The final game is today, so fingers crossed for "Bonitos". Looking at the Guadalcanal provincial budget I start to understand why they are such a successful sportsman: from total budget of 9,021,291.00 SID, was 823,044 spent on Sports leaving behind budgets for other activities, among others as well budget for Development Planning (116,684 = almost 8 times less), Commerce & Investment (27,000) or Agriculture & Livestock (130,000). The priorities at the Guadalcanal provincial level seem to be clear to me.Olympic games are the way how to get closer to Europe as next year is London the hosting place; "Go Bonitos, go!"

First Week in Melanesia

After one week at Solomon Islands I decided to make this blog, so all the staff I consider as interesting will be written down here. I guess it is better than just screaming into facebook darkness my wild status updates. As I have a lot of friends who are not Czech and my Czech friends are mostly well educated students, I think it's only fair to make everybody happy and write in English [if somebody has some problem with this, I will be very happy to give you translation of my words here in Czech, or my long time not used Italian via email].

Now let's get back to the point.

I left Prague 23rd of August 2011 and with one day stop in Brisbane I finally managed to arrive to Honiara on August 25. Next day I was supposed to come to the Ministry of Provincial Governments and Institutional Strengthening (MPGIS) and Provincial Governance Strengthening Programme (PGSP). The fact that they were supposed to have workshop on capacity development turned out to be very useful for me as well as this way I could participate and so get to know most of the people I will be dealing with in upcoming months. What more, the workshop was concluded with the official dinner where I could shake my hand with minister of MPGIS. Who would imagine better start of my internship - I'm talking about the free food of course?

First weekend in Melanesian style I spent with Doubravka (my sister), Lada (her husband) and little Jonas (their hypercute son). This way I could experience the beauty of local beach on Saturday and wild nature of rain forest on Sunday. There I could as well see the direct impact of logging activities on the island, rich on natural resources.This week I spent at the MPGIS, where I was supposed to get to know how does the ministry functions, before I start with my duties at the Guadalcanal provincial government. So far I could see a lot of incredible facts, which pull this country behind. With it's natural resources those 500 000 people living here were supposed to be rich, enjoying the sun and money. Instead of that the reality is a lot different. Especially the story about one of the Islands [Rennel and Bellona - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rennell_and_Bellona], where because of foreign aid people forgot how to catch the fish, or make the oil from coconuts and so they wait for the plain to arrive with those commodities they need instead of doing anything. Full dependency on external factors and giving up all the agricultural, not mentioning industrial activities. One week and I've heard enough to have some broader idea about how should I address the problems and questions in my master thesis.

After one week I even got used to the fact that everybody around is black. Very weird feeling to be only white person walking on the street, or sitting in the bus. We live on the hill and so I have to go every day down to the sea side, where I take my minibus. On my way down every second person says hello, good morning, or good afternoon when I go back home later. I don't know to what extent are people here so polite and to what extent it's just the fact that I'm white and that means exotic to them. In the bus you need to do weird sound with you mouth if you want to stop which I will probably never really learn and so I just passed the stop where I wanted to leave my bus first couple of times. Now I somehow whistle, or do whatever makes them to realize that this guy maybe wants to get out. And it works...

On the street most of the people walk barefoot. Very popular here is local drug betel nut [http://www.wikihow.com/Chew-Betel-Nut-in-Papua-New-Guinea], which leaves teeth of it's users nicely brownish. Chewers of betel spit everywhere around red liquid, which looks like blood on the ground. But what I find extremely interesting was the black albino lady I met today on the street, which looks pretty awesome.

I hope somebody got to the point to actually read it till the end. For those who did congratulations, I'm proud of you. For those who didn't there wasn't probably enough pictures, so you just got back to facebook - but don't worry, I will try to do something with it and I will add some picture in the near future.