n There was so much stuff to carry that they actually let me help, rather than fussing over me and watching to make sure I didn't slip and fall. We loaded two big bags of rice, some clothes, kitchen utensils, soaps, and other random necessities into a motorboat and clambered in. It was only 5 minute boatride down the coast of the island but Ghizo is so hilly and forested that it would have taken forever to get there by car. We docked the boat at the end of the most rickety warf I'd ever seen, the ancient planks about 4 feet above an expanse of mud and muddied water. We unloaded the boat and began to walk down it carrying the huge bags of supplies. I was given something light and fairly uncumersome to carry, but still could only inch my way down the warf. At some places it got narrowed down to a single wooden board, not even nailed to, but just resting on the support beams. Meanwhile, after a few minutes, some barefooted children came running up to meet us. May and Roycie squealed with delight and scooped them up in their arms, bags of rice in one hand, child in the other as they strode across the unstable wood. I just ignored them and tried not to lose my balance.

We emerged into a huge clearing containing four or five wooden huts, some small gardens, and a few tiny streams whose flows seem to have been redirected through PVC pipes into outdoor sinks and showers. There were chickens running everywhere and a couple of dogs, but nothing more present than the air of total joy over May, Roycie, and May's sister Eva, who were all back after long absences overseas.

The huts

May and the kids.

We gave them the gifts that we had brought and we settled down near the kitchen to watch Eva and her mom finish the cooking. Some of the preparations had been going on for a day. They had made a Motu, which is casava, fish, or other things that have been wrapped up in banana leaves and cooked under hot stones. This is Eva's mom unwrapping the casava.

Eva set to work making a stew with chopped chicken and packets of dry ramen noodles and flatly refused mine and Roycie's offers to help with anything.

When everything was prepared we gathered into one of the huts- they called it the "Chapel", to eat and have their weekly family church service. The missionaries had swept Christianity into the islands long ago, translating bibles and hymnals into the local languages (Of which there are many) and converting people even in remote areas. It seems to have stuck pretty well, although no amount of churching can rid a lonely island nation of all the ghosts and spirits they are used to having around, as we will see later. The hymns were sung in Babatana and a little bit of English. I recognized some of the melodies, but the way they harmonized seemed to transform the songs. I wish I were a music major and could explain the pecular way the men clung to the harmonizing notes and the women dropped down a third to support them, but it was something I'd never heard before and was haunting and pretty at the same time. An older uncle read from the Babatana bible and gave a sermon that I didn't understand one word of while the women fanned the flies away from the food.

After the dancing was over we decided to go down to the Bamboo bar, the dance club underneath the Gizo Hotel restaurant. We met some of the dancers there, one who was May's ex boyfriend and the other who was distantly related to her. He was the leader of the dance troupe and  was introduced to me as "Uncle Losa". He greeted me in English, as he had toured as a dancer to Tonga and PNG and several other surrounding islands, making him a bit more worldly than most. We danced for a little while in the hot, smoky room in the flashing colored lights, May making it her personal responsibility to protect Roycie and I from sketchy Solomon men, and enlisted Uncle Losa in her quest (since he was 'wontok', he could be trusted). She brutally waved away several hopeful looking men holding SolBrews until she began missing her boyfriend and became morose and distracted. I was approached by a younger guy with a huge blonde fro and a cigarette and was too fascinated to say no. I'd been entranced by the blonde- haired Malaitan kids that I'd seen in the markets, and was reeling from the idea that it was genetically possible to have such dark skin but such light hair. We danced, him looking down and keeping his cigarette out of the way, which seemed to be the popular way for men to dance. He began moving forward and I began moving backward, inch by inch in subtle evasion, until I nearly stepped on the toes of someone sitting on a chair near the wall. At this May perked up again and flew to my aid. "Hey!" She yelled at the guy in pidgin, "You're too close!"

The blond haired man took my hand and said "You are a very good dancer. Very beautiful." and gracefully retreated.

When Roycie and I couldn't take the heat and smoke anymore, we stepped outside and crossed the street to the warf. Uncle Losa came with us and unlocked a gate so that we could sit on the docks. We relaxed in the dark on the new wooden planks and stared up at the milky way while the notes of Paris Hilton's "Stars are blind" echoed on the water.

"You know, this dock was destroyed by the tsunami" Uncle Losa told me.
"Yeah."
"After the earthquake the first wave came up" he gestured with his hand "and destroyed the docks. And the second one, it came up to the main street to the shops, and the third one, " he lifted his hand higher "went up into the hill."
"How many were there in all?"
"Seven, but they came down after the third or fourth."
"Where were you?"
"Up the hill. We know, you know, that when there is an earthquake you must run up into the hill because of tsunami. But after the third wave I remember that my brother is in school so I run down to make sure he is safe. Many people on the hill were looking all over for their family but they couldn't find. You know, my, uh, the woman I gave a child to, her mother was killed that day."
I looked around at the inky black water and the blurred reflections of lights sitting innocently upon it. After the earthquake all the water around me had receded back, only to return and batter the tiny island and its people. Uncle Losa continued in pidgin, naming all the buildings that had been damaged or destroyed in the Tsunami, noting what had been repaired or replaced and what hadn't, and pointing to where the watermark had changed. Then he shoved his straw hat over his eyes and looked up at the stars.

Roycie and I woke up
the next morning to the sound of the rain still falling and the sight of the
clouds still obscuring our view of the ocean. We lounged around in our pajamas,
making bracelets and gabbing. Eventually, Connie came bearing coconut biscuits
and instant coffee mix, saving us from our starvation. The three of us and May
stretched out in the wood paneled- living room. Hemmed in by the rain, we
indulged in the luxury of zero agenda.

Just when we were
getting restless, the rain let up a bit, and we decided to lunch at Fat Boys, a
resort on a neighboring island only accessible by boat. We traipsed down the
hill, sliding and slipping on the saturated ground, and had a local hotel radio
the Fat Boy’s boat to take us on the 8-minute ride.

I was really beginning
to enjoy the feeling of zipping around on motorboats. The slight ocean spray
and the cool breeze alleviated the humidity for a moment, and one could concentrate
on the rippling blues in the ocean and the islands slowly passing by in the
distance. Even on a day like that with the murky sky turning the ocean dark it
was still really pretty.

Connie and May with Fatboys in the background.

To the left Connie
pointed out a mountain ridge on one of the larger mountains that was shaped
just like a woman lying down with her hands folded in her lap. She also told me
her name and her story, but I forgot.

The lady in the mountains, and a school of fish in the foreground.

Great weather.

When
our boat reached the restaurant, we were greeted by a grinning Australian in
earrings who knew Connie and had heard of Roycie as we clambered out of the
boat and onto fatboys restaurant, which stood on wooden stilts in the middle of
the ocean on the end of a pier. We sat down to a great lunch and then just relaxed in the otherwise empty restaurant, chatting and spotting fish in the shallow water.


Relaxing Roycie

These little guys are everywhere.

 
See, its funny because she's not.

Damn Rain

We wrapped up our (super busy) day at the Gizo Hotel to eat dinner and watch some entertainment. There aren't really that many restaurants in the Solomons since everyone pretty much cooks their own food. You might be able to get some fish and chips, or some market food guaranteed to make you sick, but other than that the only places to get a meal as a visitor are the hotels or other pricey, tourist-catering locales. In Gizo basically you have the Gizo hotel, PT109, or Fatboys to chose from. That's about it.

Anyway, Roycie was excited about the entertainment; a dance troope of mostly Gilbertese youths.

Costumes looking a little familiar? Apparently about 50 years ago some Hawaiian Red Cross workers came to the Islands and taught some of the natives how to hula. They've certainly put their own twists on it over the years but the basic idea is still the same. I have no idea where they got the music though. It sounds like hula techno, and they play it really loud through bad speakers. Somehow it works though. We had fun watching the dancers, especially the boys, since they move around a bit more and yell things to stay motivated while the girls just sort of... gyrate.
We also had fun watching their Gilbertese uncles and cousins cheer and get drunk. A couple of them went on stage and started dancing and putting money in the girl's skirts and hair wreaths. At one point one of them shocked us by putting money in the youngest girl's top, something that made her cry and run to the back of the room. She wasn't quite old enough for anyone to be really concerned about what was going on in her top, but she was clearly embarassed and a bit disturbed. We later found out that the dude wasn't even one of her uncles. Creepy.

Hot

It may not have been a
word exactly, but rather the conclusion that my body forced out of me, from
bottom to top, like a tube of toothpaste. Hot.

I could see the thin
folds of the mosquito net undulating in the wake of the violently, and noisily,
spinning fan only a few feet away, but all that came through was soft puffs of
air. The fan was an absurd luxury for Gizo, but how its effects could be almost
completely mitigated by a thin sheet full of holes I had no idea. I arched my
back and collapsed back in pain.

The rain outside was
pattering softly and melting the bright red dirt that surrounded the “Old House”,
the cabin that Connie’s mom was nice enough to lend us for the few days we were
there. I was alone in a twin bed under a thin sheet trying to sleep, but my
sun-addled brain seemed to be stuck on the word hot and couldn’t get
past it.

Roycie and I thought
we were pretty clever for beating the rain back to Gizo after snorkeling, and I
thought I was pretty clever for making it a whole day in the sun with nothing
more than a few pastry pink burns on the back of my thighs and calves to show
for it. But by the time we got back up the hill I realized that the space on my
back between my bathing shorts and top was a vermilion red I’d never seen on skin
before. It was hot to the touch, and by evening was extremely painful.

I flipped over on my
stomach and pulled the elastic of my pajamas way from the burnt stripe and
sighed. Somewhere between exhaustion and frustration my mind lumbered to a halt and I finally slept.

Just so you know, I am still blogging about the Solomons. Why? Because I'm a lazy bastard. But I will finish before the year is over, and then I'll be doing a photoblog of all my favorite Japan pics from the last two years. And that's a promise.

Back to our regularly scheduled programming.

And, Merry Christmas.