Exotic Place or Exotic Guy?

        When thinking about exotic places I used to forget what makes the place exotic for me and how will the environment accept me. For 28^th September was planned visit of some projects around west and south Guadalcanal. We were supposed to go to the eastern part of the island passing Guadalcanal on western side to Veramogho, visiting various projects on our way back. As the infrastructure at Solomon Islands is very poor, there are no roads and ways how to get to the places by car when travelling on the islands, we had to take a boat. On Wednesday we all (myself, Unity – Planning Officer, Collin – Local Advisor and Ronald – International Advisor for Guadalcanal Province) arrived to the port. The boat was waiting for us, ready to be loaded. Our excitement got soon very cold shower as the engine didn’t start up. And so we returned to the beach/port waiting if some of the local guys will discover his technical skills. Ronald thought it must be the flooded spark plug and kept repeating it. Whatever it was it was already 10 am and so the sea would be too rough to go and we had to postpone the trip for the next day.

              On Thursday I woke up once again at 5 am in order to be ready to go. When we arrived to the port the boat wasn’t there yet. After the previous experience I justifiably felt slightly concerned. Unity explained me that she managed to get another engine and so everything should be fine. It was double surprising for me when I’ve noticed the boat is coming, but the guys are paddling instead of using some proper horse power. The engine didn’t work again. The déjà vu appeared to be true. After two hours of waiting it turned out the problem is in spark plug, as Ronald said the day before. The situation where driver and fisherman is at the same time mechanic who is supposed to fix engines simply doesn’t look like to bring any benefit to anybody and my trust in this engine decreased rapidly.




FINALLY ON OUR WAY 

We left Honiara around 8:30 am, heading to our first stop at Tangarare, where is located one of the PGSP projects; community high school. We arrived at lunch time. Many kids there are blond, even though they are all black, which looks pretty bizarre.  The school looked fine, dormitories for girls and boys from vicinity were in place. What caught my eye was local library. Or what was left of it. I couldn’t resist and I had to ask why it ”used to be” a library. It turned out that most of the books disappeared after the ethnic tensions and so the library is not in use anymore – obviously, without books it’s complicated to maintain a library.

WHO IS THE EXOTIC ONE HERE?

                 From Tangarare we continued on our way straight to Veramogho where we were supposed to spend our night. In my naive hope that we will enjoy our boat ride for maximum I asked our driver whether is the southern part of the island called Weather Coast because there is nice weather. They started to laugh and soon I understood why. On our way we met many people fishing on their traditional canoe and beautiful places we couldn’t really enjoy because of the rough sea. Until now I try to understand how they keep balance on that small wooden canoe. After several hours of jumping on the waves we finally arrived to Veramogho (around 6pm). Local community was waiting for us and as soon as our boat touched the ground they grabbed our staff and piece by piece was taken to the village.

 

Soon I realized who is the exotic one at this exotic place as all the kids were just staring at me or even crying when I got closer; they probably haven’t met many white people in their life before, if any. And as I felt their curious looks and I’ve heard somebody shouting “white man arrived”, I just followed our hosts to their village. Lovely huts and good atmosphere with friendly people made me feel very nice. I decided to go for a walk to the beach before it gets dark and so they told one guy from the village to make me a company. Soon we were not alone. Kids from the village were joining us one after the other, touching my skin, holding my hands, giggling and running around. At the end of our walk I had whole kindergarten of more than 10 kids with me. On our way back they started to laugh and so I asked my company guy why. “There were two kids who ran away after seeing you”, answered the guy with calm voice.

The next day we checked the project in Veramogho. Even though there wasn’t much to check as the community just didn’t do what was required from them. They were supposed to build staff house and to lower the expenses they were given necessary resources to cut timber trees and produce the wood locally instead of buying it from logging company and transporting it to the village. Idea it was nice, but the plan missed the lack of mobilizing capacity from within the community. Nothing was build, timber trees still standing, gas provided was partly utilized and cement was stored in a hut at the coast and will not be probably possible to use it anymore. Their main income is mostly based on copra (dried meat, or kernel, of the coconut) they sell to Honiara (boat comes every month to pick it up) from where is exported further, transformed into oil or used as feed for livestock.

Our stay was over and so we left Veramogho. On our way back to Honiara we were visiting different projects financed by PGSP and Guadalcanal Province. Closer we got to the northern side of the island the more advanced the facilities seemed to be. In one village they had very similar task as Veramogho: cut the timber trees locally. The only difference was they actually managed to do all the job and the school there was nearly build. The difference between those people was so obvious. Guys had haircuts, earrings, in front of the school very nice football pitch. The influence of civilized world was much more obvious. Nevertheless something was in my eyes missing. The friendly atmosphere was gone, people looked scary and obviously they know what and how to do in order to get more money from the budget.

Collin wanted to make it to Honiara by Friday because Saturday is Sabath for Seventh-day Adventists. Unfortunately for him we didn’t make it and had to spend the night in Tangarare. On our way we caught rainbow fish, so we had something to prepare for dinner (lunch). Half of it was boiled in coconut milk, second half prepared by Ronald in Philippino way as Sushimi (so we ate raw fish). At night Celestyn, our driver, decided to go to catch some more fish. It was beautiful sky full of stars and I wanted to see how does he wants to catch it so I decided to go with him.  Simple fishing line on hairspray (as a handle) with crab on it was supposed to do the trick – but definitely not in my hands as I realized soon.

The next day in the morning I could hear nervous Collin walking around as his Sabath has already started and so he wanted to be in church as soon as possible. When I left my room I could see him sitting infront of our hut, backpack on his back, ready to go. That was the signal to go back to our boat, back to Honiara. City which now seems to me like a very advanced place on earth in comparison with what I could see on the rest of the island.