September 18, 2007
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I stepped out into the humidity and got a good look at Henderson International Airport. It was designed nicely enough, but it was smaller than a Costco. On the roof there was a kind of balcony bordered by a chain link fence, and dark figures crowded there, like prison guards. They looked absolutely ominous, until I squinted into the sun and saw that most of them had skirts and fros and I realized that they were locals smiling and waving to their friends who had just deplaned.
I don’t think deplane should get to be a word, or if it is, we should be able to use “to plane” to mean to get on a plane. If deplane means to get off the plane, then delouse should mean to get off a louse.
Anyway, after that I had to go through “immigration” and then “customs”. I use the quotations because the people were too nice to take either one all that seriously. At the “customs” counter I set my backpack in front of two women and they examined my passport while they talked to me.
I always seem to find myself in places where people wonder how I got there. Japanese school as a kid was one; being the only white kid I stuck out a little bit. The Asian Business Association at Berkeley was another. I joined because my two roommates were in it and because they agreed to put me on the newsletter committee. (Mmmm… photoshop) At meetings, the gag-inducingly diplomatic cabinet members used to walk up to me with their best 4 years of braces smiles and ask “So… how did you find out about ABA?”, as though I’d discovered a well-kept secret and not one of the biggest clubs on campus. What they really meant to ask was “What are you doing here?” If I was feeling charitable I would answer the latter question rather than the former and save us both some time. If I wasn’t, I would be as literal as possible and force them to ask more and more specific questions in my personal quest to see how blunt I could get a girl in her best Banana Republic pantsuit to be.
Anyway, being an American in the Solomon Islands turned out to be one of those things, especially since I wasn’t there for work. As the woman’s eyes roved over my backpack and then my passport I could see the question in her face. “So, what are you doing here?”
“So, you come from… America?”
“Yeah.”
“And you here for… work?”
“No, vacation.”
“Vacation.”
“I’m visiting a friend”
“Oh really.” She smiled, and clearly realized that was the best information she was going to get on me and sent me on my way without even asking if I had any liquid-filled novelty key chains in my bag.Fortunately I didn’t have time to indulge in the question “What am I doing here?” for too long. Connie, a friend of Roycie’s, was waiting to outside to remind me, and although we’d only hung out for a few days before I was very glad to see her. She had her brother Donnie in tow because she can’t drive stick and apparently there are no automatic cars on the islands. After hugs and introductions we drove into town, the two of them sliding back and forth between English and Pidgin as seamlessly as Donnie weaved around slower moving cars. The road from the international airport passed by some leafhuts and some coconut groves and over two small bridges before leading into the main drag of Honiara: a few kilometers of paved road following the coast and lined with shops and a small crowd of pedestrians. There were a couple of roundabouts but no lights and no crosswalks. Cars passed each other approximately whenever they felt like it, and people crossed the street when they deemed it safe or when they felt they had been waiting long enough. There was honking when a driver saw someone he knew on the street, but not when someone cut him off.
The dust in the air and the pastel painted shops reminded me a little of Mexico, but everything else was just plain new.
