This trip’s more than half over already, and the real meat of it is still yet to come, the Melanesian and Polynesian islands in a radius from Fiji. The hardest part- Papua New Guinea- is long gone by now, and I seem to have survived it with little or no trauma. I spent a couple days in Fiji in transit, but didn’t get around much, as it was still on holiday. Hopefully the Solomons will give me a better taste of what’s on offer in the region.
Of course the Solomons are in fact closer to PNG than Fiji… but only in distance, not dollars. So coming here is something of another stab at the cultural and social nexus that includes Papua New Guinea and Fiji, loosely termed ‘Melanesian’, but which in Fiji is much modified by immigrants and tourism. PNG also includes a much older Papuan racial substrata, and… is a bit out of control with lawlessness and subsequent fear. Advance research indicates that the Solomons should be a bit better at least, but upon landing I’m not sure. Actually my main fear is getting stuck, since Air Pacific flies here from Fiji only once a week. This is not the time to miss any flights. Well, the rain starts up on landing, so that’s a bad sign, and there are no ATM’s…
Then I get to my lodgings and the staff seem pretty scarce, and apparently oblivious to the fact that I was supposed to arrive today, and even more oblivious to the actual specs of the booking. Worse than that, I seem to be the only one here, not surprising since I’m on the outskirts of town, so the only bookings would be advance ones, the reason they’re one of the few accommodations available by Internet, no doubt. It obviously pretends to a groovy Rasta vibe, but with only a small handful of rooms, it needs a full house just to have a vibe at all, other than loneliness. So I’ve got my work cut out for me the next day… find a new place. I had half-way intended to go to Gizo, but I’m not even concerned about that now. I need a crib with some amenities. Chill…
I go out to check the local environs, at the end of a bus route, so something of a market area. Mostly I see betel nut and something else which may be kava; I’ll make discreet inquiries later. Kava is definitely on my list of ‘must-try’s, a ritual drink with the ability to numb you, pleasantly I assume. Betel nut? Naaa, I want nothing that induces spittle, especially when it’s blood-red… and everywhere. There’s also plenty of greasy fried fish… too bad I’m vegetarian… maybe. Then I find the last- I mean the absolute LAST- thing I ever expected to find out at this lonely neck of the woods: an ex-pat bar, populated with various Brits and Aussies and refugees of the Commonwealth, in addition to even more locals, obviously glad that somebody is brave enough to open a bar here. The Chinese don’t go there.
Turns out one of the Aussies owns the resto-bar… that explains the high prices- but pizzas that start at $14? They’re cheaper than that in Sydney. But prices are fairly high generally in S.I. and that may be because key components of the economy have been pegged to the Australian dollar, which is super-strong right now. If room rates are maybe a little cheaper than neighboring PNG, then food prices seem maybe a little higher. The owner fills me in on a little bit of the local scene, though, so that’s half-way interesting, though not much more. Then the rain starts thumping down pretty hard, so that gives me a pretext to skip out on the pricey menu, and head back to the lonely lodge.
The storm doesn’t let up all night, rain slashing and waves crashing, howling like holy hyenas out there, and I’m in here curled up womb-like in some flimsy moz-net not-so-bridal-sweet. I picked up some minor cough in NZ, but it’s been lingering, and in my mind’s eye it’s starting to advance into double p-p-pneumonia of course. The intensity of a problem increases inversely squared in proportion to your perceived ability to solve it, Hardie K’s Law of Fear. Soon I’m drowning, of course, as synchronicity allows that same stormy soundtrack to be used in other ways in dreams, the perfect storm. The fan overhead keeps turning throughout, aircraft propellers making sorties against my battle-worn defenses. In the waters outside my window Japan and the US each lost twenty-four naval vessels and God knows how many aircraft in the battles of 1942-3. I could be the next casualty. I sleep only lightly, ready to man the anti-aircraft gun at a moment’s notice…
The sun rises right on schedule, though, and the new day dawns clear and bright, calm and contained. My B&B even makes a decent cup ‘o ‘cino for breakfast, in addition to fresh-baked whole-wheat bread and fresh fruits, so I’m feeling better. I’d like to work out, but hesitant when I don’t know where my next meal is coming from, burning calories not so easily replaced. First I need to find another bed. So I go into town. Honiara looks better on second glance. It ain’t pretty, to be sure, but it ain’t bad, either. I’ve seen much worse, e.g. PNG, where you could cut the paranoia with a knife. I know, ‘cause I did. Some of the shops here are pretty ugly from the outside, but I’m sure the Chinese shop-owners are somewhat hesitant to rebuild when every political crisis becomes a pretext for their shops to be pillaged.
I dicker for a special rate for five days on an A/C room downtown, and book a cheap fan room with the Anglican brotherhood, just in case. I also find out that the speedboat schedules to Gizo probably won’t work for my itinerary anyway, so five more days in Honiara will probably have to suffice for the Solomons. That’s OK. Much of my travel is actually more like ‘serial residencies’, living in many places in succession , while maintaining something of a normal life at the same time. I’m a lousy tourist, actually, and tours here are pretty pricey, so that’s just as well. I don’t jump out of too many airplanes or climb too many peaks. I WOULD like to see some of those underwater graveyards, though. It disturbs me somehow that they’re there, just rusting away at the bottom of Iron Bottom Sound.
The new place has a mini-fridge and a tea kettle, so that sounds like a kitchen to me. I’m home, for a few days at least, everything but the wi-fi… and the wifey. I’ve even got five channels on the TV, including BBC, Al-J, AussieBC, and snippets of Nat Geo, local PI stuff and American crime dramas with theme songs by the Who (Who? Get it?), solving more mysteries than Dr. what’s-his-name on a house call. So I’m out looking for produce first thing, that and dairy products. Chinese may run the local eateries, but they aren’t cooking any vegetarian meals here. It all looks pretty much the same, actually, whether chicken, beef, or pork… sound familiar?
The market has lots of leafy greens and onions, peppers (capsicum), eggplants, cucumbers, peanuts, tomatoes, fairly typical except for the greens. In the fruit department there are the standard watermelons, pineapples, mangoes, papayas, and melons, star fruit being the only rarity I spot. It’s amazing how uniform the world has become in its food production. Buy two here, and they’ll often give you three, like ‘pocket’ rates for your CD, or extra scenes on your DVD, but mostly just an indication of good will on the seller’s part, better to give a bonus than throw it away at the end of the day. Here, have another paragraph…
Boiled eggs are everywhere, only slightly more $ than raw ones, but still not cheap. I guess they’re ‘free-range’. Do happy hens make better eggs? I also find the righteous corner bakery with the killer scones (Am. Biscuits; scones ‘n gravy? Naaa…), so I time their daily emergence from the oven and adjust my schedule to it, best I’ve had since way back when way back where down South. The only other thing that looks attractive is the ubiquitous fish and chips, dirt cheap, which I’ve promised myself at least once on this sojourn. Priced F&C in London lately? It’s okay, since they have no feelings, right? I’m convincing myself that the oil-soaked paper bags are far preferable to a puddle at the bottom of plastic ones.
I almost wish I were a diver, given the casual opportunities for ship spelunking here. Imagine exploring WWII wreckage, frozen in time, frozen in space! Imagine what this area would look like if the sea levels fell fifty meters! The dead machines would rise from their graves! But I content myself with the land-based massacres available, memorialized on both the American and Japanese sides. There are waterfalls and other natural attractions here also, some within walking distance. Security is not a problem in Honiara, at least not during the day. The natives are downright friendly, in fact, any scowls easily disarmed with a smile (they were scared of me!). Though I long ago gave up on the trip to Gizo, there is a daily trip to Auki that I consider. It even stops at Tulagi on the weekend, but… naaa. By 11:00am it’s typically 35C-95F here and climbing, hard to enjoy long strolls around town in that heat. I didn’t get much Aussie TV in my cheap hostels there anyway, so I’ll catch up here.
What else? Oh yeah, then there’s the language, Melanesian pidgin. If at first it seems like a joke, some pathetic bastardization of English, I assure you it’s not. Though Melanesian Pidgin may closely resemble my fantasy language- the one used in the fat fluffy cartoon parallel reality that I simultaneously co-inhabit with the hard cold cruel ‘real’ one, it also closely resembles my Asian wife’s honest though more-intuitive-than-intellectual approach to learning English. The important point is that it is mutually unintelligible with English.
Some non-English words I already recognize from other sources- assorted pidgins and creoles- like ‘pickaninny’ from US Southern English (not to be confused with pequeninos from Portuguese), or the verb ‘savvy’ from the movie ‘Sand Pebbles’ (not to be confused with the French word savez). But the part I like is the use of the suffix –fela, derived from the English word ‘fellow’, but used as a counting-word ‘classifier’, similar to the Chinese ge, but attached right to the number itself! So you count wanfela, tufela, trifela, etc. I like this language! If I strike out everywhere else, I might have to give S.I. another look. They’re nice folk… and know how to talk! (Now I get it. My cartoon world is my wife Tang’s real world, that makes sense… then there’s the Buddhist middle path). I’m outta’ here, back to Fiji first, then on to Samoa.