Page updated:
Monday, 13 August 2007

The sea seen through pawpaw...

Wednesday 10.12.03: Silolo

Steve's call startles me. I have been in a free-floating state of mind while the truck has run along the narrow road beside the beach. With muscles stiff from being cramped in the back I stand and jump from the tray. I help Fiona down, shoulder my pack and join Steve. We walk across the road and into the hamlet of Silolo.

Silolo email station, Community Peace Restoration Fund and Kastom Gaden Association office, North Malaita

Hamlet by the bay

Silolo is a relatively new hamlet occupied by an extended family who moved from a nearby village in the 1990s.

The largest house is a permanent structure of milled timber with an iron roof. Raised high off the ground, family members sit in a hammock and on seats to talk and play guitar in the shaded, cool space under the building. Large tanks store rain water and close by is a building used for dining. The boy's house is a traditional building of pandanus and sago palm leaf and is occupied by two adolescent males.

Here, the Kastom Gaden Association (KGA), the non-government development organisation I am producing the books for and for which Steve works, shares an office with the Silolo email station and the Community Peace Restoration Fund. The Fund was set up to foster reconciliation after the ethnic conflict. Lucienne, a retired police officer, manages it's work.

The email station is one of about 10 around the Solomon Islands that have been set up by the Melanesian Farmer First Network at KGA regional project centres. There is no power or telecommunications grid anywhere near Silolo, so the station draws its energy from solar-electric panels and sends and receives email over the high frequency (HF) radio network.

The email system works like the old telegraph. People sending emails write them out on a form. An operator types them into a laptop computer, then transmits them over the HF network. The small charge for sending emails and for printing out incoming messages yields a modest income for the centre. Even police from the Regional Assistance Mission make use of the station.

The Silolo hamlet is swampy and the office and adjoining guest house, which the KGA built and which is joined to the office by a raised walkway, stand above shallow, brown-coloured water. Strangely, mosquitoes are few.

On the other side of the compound where the forest starts, a small wooden pen has been built above the swamp and is occupied by two piglets. Their parents are housed in a larger fenced area in the bush. In a large chicken house nearby, the poultry shares the accommodation with another piglet.

Life here is good. It is only a 50 metres walk to the beach and there is a twice-weekly market in the open shade below the tall trees on the shore. Other times, groups of young men sit around in the market place. They talk, kick around a soccer ball or play basketball. Children spend a great deal of time swimming in the warm waters of Suva'a Bay.

The young men are in that 15 to 30 year age group that made up the core of the Malaita Eagle Force militia. It is this demographic that the project I am here to produce manuals for is offering traineeships to but, looking around, it seems too few positions for too many youths. The programme needs to be scaled up and I hope AusAID, back in their air-conditioned enclave in distant Canberra, know this. The future may be limited for these youths without training and a livelihood.

The town of Malu'u and the waters of Suva'a Bay, looking beyond the reef.

Just a short delay

"The motor canoe is being used at the moment but it will be here at twelve o'clock to take us to visit some of the trainees", Steve announces. We had expected to leave earlier in the morning and had been told on leaving Honiara that everything had been arranged. By now, we knew that everything 'being arranged' does not mean quite what we think it does.

Twelve comes and goes. One o'clock. Two o'clock. This is beginning to look like a repeat of my experience on Choiseul where meetings took place hours if not days after they were scheduled... if they happened at all. I experience that now-familiar feeling of resignation and realise that we may never get to meet the people and visit the sites to collect the information for the handbooks. Solomons time again.

The unreliability of Solomon Airlines had already complicated our work. Flight cancellations delayed our arrival here. A motor canoe had been sent to pick us up in Auki but when the driver found the flight cancelled he could wait no longer. Our lateness also led to us missing a meeting with a group of trainees who had been assembled at Silolo to share information. They waited an additional day but had to return to their farms.

Now, it seems, the motor canoe will also be a no-show. I experience that sinking feeling familiar from Sasamuqa and wonder how the information gathering can be salvaged. I am thinking about this when I hear the sound of an outboard. Yes, it is a canoe, and, yes, it is our canoe. At last. Steve comes in to tell us to be ready to move. Within half an hour we are speeding over Suva'a Bay's smooth waters towards the opposite shore, a low rise of land on the horizon.

A solution to shifting cultivation

Joseph Kirio, retired soil scientist, knows that the traditional shifting agriculture of the Solomons, particularly on Malaita, has no future.

Retired soil scientist, Joseph Kirio

In the traditional system, after a bush garden has been cleared and the vegetation burned, the land is farmed for as long as the soil remains fertile. This might be two, perhaps three years. In the tropics, the nutrients are not held in the soil as they are in temperate climates. They are stored primarily in the biomass - the foliage, grasses and shrubs of the forest. Burning them releases those nutrients as ash so they can be absorbed by crops.

After the soil is exhausted and woody weeds have moved in, the garden is abandoned and another is cleared. Traditionally, the garden might be left in fallow for 15 or more years. Now, with pressure on the land to feed a rapidly increasing population, fallow periods have fallen to as little as two to five years. This is insufficient time for the soil to restore its full complement of nutrients. The result is declining farm productivity.

Traditional shifting cultivation remains viable in those parts of the Solomons where population is lower than on Malaita. Unless village farmers learn the techniques of settled agriculture or at least replace their slash and burn methods with slash and mulch - where the cut vegetation is left on the ground to decompose into nutrients rather than be burned - then food production may fall behind the rate of population increase. Another reason why more food must be produced from the same area of land is that, with larger families, land handed down from parents has to be divided between a greater number of children. This means less land per child.

Joseph lives in a village about a kilometre away and canoes to his farm. The first we see of the farm is a line of five-corner, the local name for Carambole, a green, angle-sided fruit that is juicy and refreshing to eat. These trees have been planted as a border along one side of the farm, itself about the size of three football fields. Standing among the cassava and sweet potato of his fields, Joseph points out the lines of Gliricidia sepium trees planted across the field. Between these are the cropping alleys with cassava, sweet potato and other vegetables.

This is alley cropping, Joseph says. "Every month or so I slash the Gliricidia and throw the foliage onto the soil. It decomposes and releases nitrogen and other nutrients that are used by the crops. I have farmed this same land continuously for 12 years now. I have no need to clear more land in the bush".

The truth is in the soil. Fiona scoops up a handful of the red, rich-looking stuff. It is quite different to the depleted, sandy soil we will to see at another farm tomorrow.

Beyond the reef

The canoe slows as the helmsman alignes the bow with a break in the reef. He twists the throttle and off we go over the chop, gaining speed as we pass between barriers of broken, jumbled coral on which the swells break with a roar and cascade of white foam. Better not to get caught in that.

We are outside the reef and riding the low swells. A turn to the east and we follow the line of the reef towards a low attoll on the horizon. Between us and the island, though, is a patch of dark cloud from which falls a curtain of grey rain. It becomes a race between getting to the island and getting drenched. The cloud wins and the temperature falls, as does a pounding rain.

I take a nylon poncho from my pack, making sure that no rain gets in to damage the cameras although I have taken the precaution of putting them into a waterproof bag of the type used by river rafters. The helmsman and Iro, the KGA project coordinator on North Malaita, are saturated but unperturbed. I get the feeling that getting saturated is common to travel by motor canoe and nothing to even comment on.

The downpour becomes a drizzle as we approach the island, the highest point of which would rise no more than three metres above the sea. Coconut palms line a beach of yellow sand and between them, here and here, leaf houses are visible.

Motoring slowly across the aqua-green waters of the lagoon, the driver takes care to avoid the corals that protrude from the sea bed. We climb out into the shallows and make our way to the house of Roselyn Adawene, a young woman trainee in the pig farming module offered by the Kastom Gaden Association.

The drizzle stops as we sit and talk and talk to Roselyn about her experience. Rose is in her late twenties, perhaps, and lives in a leaf house with her children. The training is aimed at creating livelihoods so I ask her how many pigs she has sold.

"Wait", says Rose, as she gets up and goes to her house. A few minutes later she returns with a day planner in which she has recorded the dates of sale and the income she received for all the pigs she has put to market. I'm overwhelmed - a day planner is the last thing you expect to find in the Solomons. Most farmers store such detail in their heads.

Rose's pigs are kept in the bush about ten minutes walk along the beach. There are two timber pens in the shade of the trees, one housing three healthy-looking animals and the other, two skinny pigs.

"I cannot grow enough food for five pigs", she explains. "Three is the most I can keep. I had ten but have sold the rest."

We move from the shade of the trees where Rose has her pens and into an open bush garden. What a contrast to Joseph Kirio's garden, I think as I look at the depleted sandy soil and the crop of sweet potato, cassava and greens grown to feed the pigs.

"There is not the land to make the garden bigger", she explains. This is a small island and space is limited. "If only we could introduce Joseph's alley cropping into Rose's field", I say to Fiona.

Roselyn Adawene at her pig house on an atoll off North Malaita

Tuna chase

We are not far from the entrance to the bay when the helmsman stands and points excitedly to a flurry of activity on the surface. Birds are circling and swooping, the surface is agitated and every so often large fish leap from the sea.

We are still outside the reef and this is too good an opportunity to miss. A heavy duty fishing line is produced and a plastic squid attached to a viscous-looking, double-pronged hook.

Steering towards the agitation, the line is fed over the stern. The canoe slows as we pass along the edge of the commotion... no bites. So it is around and back again. Then the line goes taught... something has taken the bait. Hand over hand, Iro pulls it in. On the end of it is a large blue tuna of the type known as bonito. The hook is removed but the unfortunate fish is not going to go quietly. It thrashes around, banging against the fibreglass sides. Fiona gets out of its way as the helmsman grabs it and whacks it hard against the side... once, twice, three times. Now it lies still in a pool of its own blood, its tail occasionally flicking.

Iro again deploys the line, feeding it out over the transom. The helmsman twists the throttle and executes a sharp turn as we again steer towards the area where the bonito was hooked. Throttling back, he executes a wide turn and again the line pulls taught... another struggle as Iro pulls in a blue bonito. In losing its life it becomes our dinner that evening, food caught from a sea generous in its bounty.

Searching

Whump! Whump! Whump! ...the approach of the Australian Army Iriquois is betrayed by the sound of its engine. It is low and we cannot see it from the office at Silolo. The noise fades as a declining whirrrr... then disappears. A few minutes pass and back it comes... it is close... then it appears, a squat, olive green machine low over the coconut palms.

We would hear and sometimes see the helicopter over the next two days, always flying slow and low as if searching for something. We could only speculate about its presence. We knew that the village up the road, near where the helicopter was loitering, had been home to the infamous militia leader, Jimmy Rasta, now in prison in Honiara. Was there some connection?

We have slotted into the local pattern of life in Silolo: up early for a breakfast of Hard Navy biscuit and jam, off to visit trainees when Lucienne is ready to take the motor canoe out, a late afternoon swim in the bay followed by a walk down the road to wash in the cool waters of the stream that serves as local washroom. Then back to the hamlet for an early evening meal of freshly-caught fish, vegetables and taro or sweet potato and rice.

After eating we sit on the verandah of the office building and talk, then retire to our room over the swamp. Our hut is of grass and our bed is a woven grass mat on which we place those thin, self-inflating air matresses and where we protect ourselves from malaria-carrying mosquitoes under a net. The silk sleeping bag liners we bought in Sydney are all the cover we need during the warm night.

Although it is a little cooler here than in Sasamuqa, the late afternoon swims are something to look forward to as is washing off the salt in the fresh water of the stream, which is much cooler than the bay's tepid waters. We wash dressed in shorts and, for Fiona, a T-shirt - it is the custom in the Solomons to wash clothed. Occasionally, passing children stop on the bridge and watch, intrigued by these white people washing as they do.

Now it is time to go. Lucienne assures us that a truck will pass the hamlet at 10.30 tonight and we will be in Auki just before sunrise. Solomons or Japanese time, I wonder? We pack, then eat a meal of tuna, rice and vegetables from the bush garden and grab a broken sleep that brings little rest as I wake up every so often to check the time. It is always like this when preparing to travel, even in Australia... an awareness of time and an edgy anticipation of being on the road. Having traveled by truck before, we know there will be no rest as it bumps its way along, picking up more and more people and cargo.

"Time to go", calls Steve. I look out and, sure enough, there is a small truck at the entrance to the hamlet, its lights illuminating the narrow strip of road ahead. I must have finally drifted off to sleep. Surprisingly, it is 10.30... Japanese time after all. We say our goodbyes, throw our packs aboard and climb in, finding nooks into which we wedge ourselves between the cargo.

On through the night we travel, past sleeping villages, below arching trees, sometimes only metres from the sea. More people board through the morning's early hours and soon the little truck is brim full. We're cramped and travel becomes uncomfortable. We are packed so tight that there is no longer space to stretch out. Then, as if to prove that discomfort knows no bounds, it starts to rain, a downpour. A tarpaulin is hastily put up, eager hands holding it above our heads as we attempt to shelter under it. This is mostly in vain, there are so many holes that the water gushes in. We reach Auki wet and cold.

Sunday 14.12.03, Auki airstrip...

Inside the small, concrete waiting shed it is hot. The flight from Honiara is two hours late but people take it calmly, sitting and talking or wandering around outside. A pessimist remarks that the flight might not arrive at all.

A police four-wheel-drive pulls up and out steps a short but tough-looking man, his crew-cut head and white skin making it obvious that he is with the RAMSI police contingent. Then out gets a more familiar figure, the same one with which we shared that bottle of Australian red in the restaurant. Nick, the magistrate, his work on the island finished, is returning to Honiara and from there, later in the week, to the UK.

We have been talking for awhile when we hear the distant but distinctive sound of a helicopter. A few seconds later the green and white Iriquois banks over the lagoon and lands near the small, sandbagged military installation on the edge of the airstrip, a modest encampment crewed by PNG and Australian troops. The machine is delivering a fresh team of Australian soldiers. Four get off and the same number amble out from the position, bags in one hand, rifles in the other, ready to return to Honiara.

Nick siezes the opportunity. "I'm going to see if I can get on the return journey", he announces to the police officer and me. As magistrate, he is entitled to travel in the helicopter.

"See if there are three extra seats", I say hopefully. No chance. The machine is making a run up to Isobel before flying the strait back to Honiara. Refueling complete, the crewman closes the door, the motor wines, rotor spins and the machine takes off to disappear over the palms to the north.

I am left with the police officer, a fit-looking man in his mid-forties. I see from the kiwi emblem on his uniform sleeve that he is with the New Zealand contingent.

"Enjoying your posting?", I ask.

"Well, we're here for six months. That's too long. Three would have been better. I'm not keen on the heat. I'm off on leave soon and I'm going somewhere cold".

"And where would that be?", I ask.

"New York", he says.

And we are going too. After our days at Silolo and Auki we are going back to Honiara - if the flight does actually come today - then back to Australia a few days later.

The afternoon wears on. Waiting is one of life's constants in the Solomons. Then, off in the distance, against the mountains, a small dark shape appears. It becomes more distinct the closer it gets. With a puff of dust the Twin Otter touches down and soon we look down on the blue waters of Indispensible Strait.