craving community
what life in the Solomons taught me

“Intercommunal tensions”, as The Commonwealth describes it, started in the Solomon Islands in 1998. It was a fight between Guadacanal militants, the Guadancanal Revolutionary Army (Isatabu Freedom Movement) and the Malaita Eagle Force (made up of Malaitans, the largest of the Solomon Islands and only 100km away from Guadacanal) over control of Honiara, the capital. In June 2003, at the request of the Solomon Islands Government, a Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands (RAMSI) arrived to assist in “restoring law and order.” A combination of police officers and civilian staff, drawn from 15 nations across the Pacific region, worked in partnership with Solomon Islanders to “lay the foundations for long-term stability, security and prosperity.” Last month (June) RAMSI officially concluded and it was deemed a success. John Howard, former Australian Prime Minister, and in charge of the initial RAMSI intervention, regards “Australia’s involvement in RAMSI as one of Australia’s, and my government’s, finest foreign policy achievements.”
I’ve been thinking a lot about the Solomons recently. I moved there in 2009 so I could work as part of the civilian side of RAMSI. Apart from a vague idea of its location (somewhere in the South Pacific Ocean, kind of near Papua New Guinea), that it was really hot and that you had access to young green coconuts every day, I knew very little about the country and the environment that I was walking into. Foolishly, I thought I was going there to help them. A little self-conceited I admit now, coupled with a whole lot of naivety, because, when I look back now, I realise that the Solomons gave me more, way more, than I gave it.
The Solomon Islands are only three hours away from Australia. It’s really easy to get there. Sol Air Flight 3001 flies three times a week from Brisbane, Australia to Honiara, the capital of Solomon Islands’, located on the island of Guadacanal. You fly in an north-easterly direction over the Pacific Ocean and, for just over three hours, you see nothing but a vast expanse of blue — looking straight at the horizon you can’t tell if the sea is the sky or the sky is the sea. When the pilot announces that descent has commenced and the Sol Air flight attendants, with white frangipanis tucked behind their ears, politely remove your empty glass, once filled with chilled guava juice, you still see nothing but ocean views out of the window. It is only as the fasten seatbelt signs light up that you finally sight land: small, lush, green islands pop up out of the blue, literally. You fly over wooden huts, rivers, and people, finally coming to land on a tiny airstrip with a tin garage that serves as the country’s arrivals lounge.
On my first flight there, I remember the plane doors opening on the tarmac and, instantly, being hit with an almost impenetrable wall of heat. Sweat started dribbling down my chest instantly and I regretted the fact that I had worn a black dress, or anything at all, (later on, when I became one of the regulars on the plane, I would change into Solomon suitable clothing just before landing). Standing in line at the arrivals “lounge”, I couldn’t decide whether it was better to wait outside in the blazing hot sun, at the back of the long line but with a slight breeze, or be inside with still, stifling heat, (sometime during our two and a half year stay air conditioning was tantalising introduced but quickly taken away again). The fading posters on the insides of the tin shed showed pictures of Gizo, an island paradise, (I never made it there) the Solomons Casino (I never went inside), and the Mendana Hotel, (there, I did spend a lot of time). I don’t remember having any conversation with the Immigration Official who considered my passport— just that he had incredibly long fingernails and he seemed to look at me for a very long time before finally stamping my passport and gesturing me over to the Quarantine Officials. They were a little more chatty, and seemed disbelieving of me when I said I had nothing to declare, (this would be the only time as we, like every other fortunate expat, became accustomed to entering Honiara hauling backpacks full of vacuum sealed frozen meat and blocks of cheese). I proceeded through, grabbed my luggage from the broken down belt conveyor, wished I had gone to the toilet before landing, (the one at the airport was out of bounds for good reason), and, with a knot in my stomach, I found myself outside.
The Solomon Islands has existed as an independent country since 1978, after achieving self-government in 1976 from the British, (they had established a protectorate over it in the 1893. Before then, it had largely done its own thing). The Sols cover a land mass of 28,400 km², an area that encompasses almost 1,000 islands, with nine main island groups, called provinces (including Malaita and Guadacanal). The official population is said to be 550,000 but everyone thinks that the real figure is at least 700,000. There are 63 distinct languages. Around 80% of the population live in the jungle — literally — despite extensive logging the country has retained around 75% of its original forest covering. There are nine volcanic mountains. And the country is poor. 12.7% of the population live below the national poverty line. 65% of the population do not have access to electricity. 19% do not have access to safe water. 70% don’t have access to proper sanitation. It makes the list of both Small Island Developing States and Least Developed Countries.
This is how poverty plays out on a daily basis. John Junior can’t do his homework because his one pen is broken, (there is only one over-priced stationary shop in town), and there is no money for the recycled kerosene being sold by one of the many roadside stores in re-used plastic bottles to power the light, (look up in Honiara and you will see a maze of illegal electricity wires energing from one house connecting power to many). At least John Junior gets to go to school. He is the eldest of five children so John Senior made the economic decision that the only the first two are allowed to attend. Sick? You can’t afford the local clinic, if there is one (expect to walk for a few days if you are outside the capital), and don’t expect there to be supplies, or running water or electricity. People face impediment after impediment. Our hause marries, (house helpers, almost compulsory in the Sols), whom we come to know intimately, routinely succumb to bouts of malaria and dengue fever, eat their chilli tao (tinned tuna) and instant noodles for lunch and tell me of the times they lived in the forest to escape the danger from the city. I learn that Helen defends her house time and time again from the rains that flood the riverbank; that Maggie is one of the strongest people I will ever meet, (not allowing her husband access to money for gambling leads to an inexcusable beating from her father at the disobedience he believed she had shown. She held me as I cried at the injustice of it); and that Annemarie, who often scares my children with stories of the wild pigs that live in hills (she also believes in the giants of Guadacanal), is deeply, deeply conflicted, fervently believing in both the ways of the white man and witchcraft.
When you ask a Solomon Islander where they are from they will never answer “Solomon Islands”. Tribe is first. Everytime. Because it all comes back to wantok. Wantok is pidgin for one talk and it means you are closest to those who speak the same as you, who understand you implicitly, who are your family, (remember, there are 63 distinct languages in the Sols and close to 1000 individual islands). What you have you share, always, with your wantok: what you have is not “yours”, it becomes everyone’s. In the two and half years we lived there, we shared our space with 7 security guards and two, sometimes three, hause maries (house helpers) and a lot of children, (not all mine).
At first, I found it weird, hard and slightly annoying. I like my alone time and my things being mine, particularly my children and the washing. I’ve been taught well in the western ways where individualism is the underlying principle: a family is a complete, self-contained entity and your family responsibilities are yours and yours alone — you should expect that no-one else will help out because they are also busy with their own unit. The neighbourhood is full of closed doors, curtains and, I assume and hope for the sake of my sanity, parents suffering from the same daily fights of forcing kids to eat their vegetables and brush their hair. You do it yourself. But that’s not how wantok works.
Washing and sweeping were the first things I relinquished, (in all honestly, that really did not take much convincing). It took a little longer to agree that any one in the household could do the market purchasing. I grew up with a Mum who did all the food shopping and cooking so that being my role was strongly ingrained in me — surely no-one is able to pick better tomatoes, cucumbers, limes or watermelons than me. Oh, how wrong I was. I took Maggie to the Central Markets and not only did she know most of the sellers but she also knew the best tomato heap to buy, who to get the bush limes from, which watermelon was ready to eat today and which one was better for tomorrow.
Caring for children is where the wantok system really challenged my western notions of responsibility. I left the Solomons briefly halfway through our time there and returned with baby no. 3, (I was lucky and got to go to a hospital in Australia. The one in Guadacanal had no running water, you needed to bring your own mattress and, as I was told later, had no suture thread available around the time I gave birth which would not have ended well for me — it would have ended me actually). I came back to the Sols expecting Zoe to be mine. All mine. But she wasn’t. She was everyone’s and everyone pitched in to help — which was particularly required for sleeping, (Zoe was given the nickname “Angry Baby” from an early age for good reason). Getting her to sleep required a combination of me, Maggie, Helen, whatever gaurd was on duty at the time, back to me, and then usually end up settling down for a nap, accompanied by Maggie and Helen while I washed the dishes. It was a true collective effort of child raising.
Before too long, our house was a wantok: the electricity, the water, the chickens, and the eggs they produced, was for everyone. The coconuts were shredded and shared, everyone looked after my three kids, and, more often there were more. Maggie wasn’t able to have her own kids, (she didn’t know why), and she had “adopted” (loose term as it was often the case that those without kids would be handed some from one of their wantok) two kids from her village who became our family too. Helen’s niece would come for a visit. John’s kids liked playing with mine for hours at a time. We were our own little community.
The wantok idea eeked its way into other parts of our Sols life. School pick up became communal — whoever was going that way would pack the car with all the kids and drop them off one by one. A call would go out that lasagne has been made for 20 so dinner is at Sarah and Steve’s tonight. Lou finds extra cous cous at the supermarket and brings over a few boxes. We hear from down the road that the cargo ship from Australia has arrived, and has unloaded — cheese and one day past its use by date yoghurt is in store. Bronwyn runs the kids weekly swimming lessons, Megan takes the school photos, Linda and Paki run the exercise classes, (followed by cocktails), Kylie and Warren build the flying fox adventure playground for kids. Daniella’s Camilla couldn’t sleep so she brings her to mine where we can battle our babies together. We shared clothes, food, children, adventures and made memories that will last a lifetime.
We left the Solomons five years ago. In the early days of “re-entry” my kids would consistently ask every night who was coming over for dinner or where we were going to eat that night. To this day, the three of them love social gatherings of any kind and, usually, share easily and happily. For me, I remember the dirt roads stained red by bettel leaf spitting, the two earthquakes that we felt, panicking from a tsuanami warning one morning as we raced to higher ground. I remember watching the clouds roll in and Savo Island disappear from the horizon as we looked out across Ironbottom Sound from our veradah, waiting for the spectacular thunderstorms and tropical rain that would break the heat for just a moment. And I think of what we are missing out on living here and not there.
Yes, Solomons is a really poor country and living there is really, really hard. It sucks that receiving an education or obtaining healthcare is a challenge, deforestation is taking place at an unsustainable rate and that there is lack of clean water facilities. Yay for RAMSI and the development efforts that followed, and continue to follow, to improve the standard of living for all Solomon Islanders. Yay for me for being there for part of it. But whatever it was that I did as part of RAMSI seems almost inconsequential to what the Sols gave back to me. After two and a half years of living there, in a country that I knew extremely little about before moving, I learned that attaching to a community — where your neighbours are your extended family and not everything is your responsibility alone — is one of the most important things you should do. Your wantok is powerful. It connects you. It grounds you and it gives you a sense of belonging to something bigger. I wonder, if in all of our “development”, we have lost a little of that along the way. I hope that the hundreds of people from all over who went to the Solomons as part of RAMSI have all bought this bit of their Solomon experience back with them.
