Roycie landed in Honiara one day after I did, and then the trip really began.

Roycie is a good friend from University, a half- American, half- Solomon identity crisis in progress. She spent her first 8 years of life in the islands, and then moved to America when she was nearly nine. When she got to University she spent a good amount of her time studying the history, language, and economics of the Solomons, making herself into a mini-expert about the place she can never really return to. I've listened to her explain herself a thousand times, heard her mapping out the location of the Islands, recounting the history of her parents, and repeating the pronounciation of her name to strangers, trying to talk that quizzical look out of their eyes. Animated, pretty, and seeming somehow fragile, she draws people to her. Roycie is a reason for things, an event in herself.

When Connie and I arrived to pick her up at the airport, her whole family was waiting there for her. Several of her mother's sisters and all their children, people descended from her Grandmother's sister's and cousins, and other people with connections to complicated for me to remember. Among the faces I saw two preteen girls with Roycie's strong chin and heavily lashed eyes and smiled. The one pidgin word I learned before I got to the islands was the word for family- Wontok (One- talk, get it?). I'd wager that wontok is one of the first words any one learns, and no one who can't grasp the importance of it could ever hope to understand the way things work there. Introductions often involve lengthy explanations of "wontok blong me", and the discovery of mutual connections. Wontok have the right to expect things from you, and if you're in a position of affluence you have a responsibility to take care of them . People say that this is why all the shops are owned by Chinese people; if a Solomon Islander owned a store he'd be out of business in a week from all the free handouts to wontok. If somone is destitute, people ask, "but, doesn't he have any wontok?". Wontok isn't just a nuclear family, it is an extended network of aunties, uncles, cousins, grandparents, and more distant relations whose titles are habitually shortened. It is a large, warm, crowded place to belong, and seeing all these bits of someone I knew in a large group of strangers was something strangely moving.

While we waited for her to get through customs and immigration Connie struck up a conversation with May, one of Roycie's cousins. May greeted me in English and then launched into a long story in Pidgin which I gathered had something with boats and leaving her husband. She wasn't quite finished with her tale before Roycie finally emerged from the Airport. She came out with too much luggage, tears and smiles. Connie and I left her to her wontok and arranged to meet up with her at her aunt's house later for a coming-home feast.

All the flights to Gizo were booked through Thursday, and so I was stuck in Honiara for a few days, which was good for getting my bearings. To make these entries easier for you to read (and me to write), I thought it might be good to explain a bit about the Islands as best I can, especially since I know many of you are American and you don't like, have maps, such as. So, question and answer time! Keep in mind that this is stuff I either gleaned from others or skimmed off Wikipedia, so I can't vouch for the accuracy of everything 100%

Uh, the what Islands?

The Solomon Islands are a chain of over 900 islands that neighbor Paupa New Guinea

Yeah, that doesn't help me.

West of Fiji

...

Australia?

Oh, OK. So, tropical?

Yep. Hot and humid, although summer in Tokyo was worse.

What are the people like?

Although there is a significant population of Micronesians, Micronesians, a smattering of Chinese and Auzzies, and the occasional American Peace Corps volunteer who came in the 70's and simply never left, most of the population pretty much looks African. The people who live there that have traveled a bit and know this find it amusing. One of Roycie's aunts joked that she was going to sneak into the States, throw away her passport and live life forever undetected as an African-American.

Actually, there is one island in the east where people are blond. Their skin is just as dark as everyone else's, but their hair is totally blond, nearly white. I thought this was the coolest thing I ever saw in my life. Everytime I saw a little girl with blond curls I started seriously considering adoption. These were the first of many baby-snatching thoughts I had over my two weeks there.

By and large, sustenance living is the rule in the Islands, especially once you get away from the city. If you want food, you grow and cook it yourself. Even people who live in more urban areas still live this way, although they do make some money doing odd jobs that they use for things like clothes, petrol, and SolBrew, the Solomon's very own beer. The highest denomination of printed money, by the way, is 100 Solomon Dollars, about US $14. So that should tell you something. And, those bills are always crisp and clean, as opposed to the other bills which are practically disintegrated, so that should tell you something else.

What language do they speak?

Most people speak at least two languages: the language of their family (in the broad, tribal sense), and Pidgin English. Most people who have parents from different Islands speak or at least understand the language of both families, so some people can get along in as many as four or five different languages. The pidgin spoke in the Solomon Islands uses mostly English vocabulary plugged into the grammar of an indigenous language. It was developed in order to communicate with English-speaking traders, and also for the Islanders they hired as laborers to communicate with each-other. Most people seem to prefer speaking their own language, but it is considered extremely rude to speak a language that someone with you doesn't understand, so the language you hear on the streets is mostly Pidgin. English is the official language.

Nobody likes Honiara. In the guidebooks they warn you about the dust and the doldrums, and most Islanders would agree that there's not much to be done. Even the people who live there poo-poo it.

The capitol became the capitol because during the war the Japanese began building an airstrip on the island, which would have given them an invaluable strategic position in the Pacific. Determined not to let this happen, an American pilot by the name of Henderson crashed his plane into the base, destroying it and killing himself in the process. The Americans rebuilt the airstrip for themselves and named it Henderson Fields. The American presence in the area meant plenty of work for the locals, of which there weren't many. The work ended up drawing people from other islands, whose presence causes tension even to this day.

The Tension

Roycie wonders why the latest Lonely Planet Solomons is nearly 10 years old, but it turns out there's a whole slew of reasons why tourism in the Islands has slowed to barely a trickle. Especially if you read the US State Department's travel warnings, which always make every country seem like a death trap. Reason number 1 is malaria, which is so common in the islands that people talk about it like its the flu. Thanks to modern medicine, most strains of malaria are not fatal to people who are otherwise healthy, but most people in America put malaria right up there with smallpox and the black death on their list of obscure and presumably deadly diseases. But setting malaria aside, the other big caution on the interwebs was the tension in Honiara that, a year ago, culminated in a riot. Its a bit difficult for me to follow logically the sequence of events from wikipedia and listening to people talk about it, but then again riots rarely follow a logical pattern anyway. Most of the trouble seems to stem from the rivalry between the original residents of Guadalcanal (the island that Honiara is on) and immigrant workers from Malaita. However when the riots broke out, they ended up setting fire to the downtown shops that are owned by Chinese residents. And then of course there was the damage done by people who just felt in the mood for some lootin'.

Honiara seemed perfectly calm to me, and most people I talked to agreed that things seem to have blown over. There is a fairly large Auzzie police presence, the RAMSI, and they seem to be doing a decent job keeping the peace, even if the residents do resent the hell out of them.

I spent my first days in Honiara doing all those chores that can only be done in the "big city" (of around 60,000 people): I exchanged money at the bank, shopped around for a razor and some replacement detergent, and secured plane tickets to get the hell out of there.

So while I'm doing that, why don't you look at some pictures.

The international airport, as seen from the plane.

I didn't get a lot of pictures of the main drag in town, but it all pretty much looks like that. Kaleko Koporeisen is Pidgin for "Clothes Company" Kaleko comes from the word "Calico" that became a general word for fabric, and Koporeisen makes a lot of sense if you sound it out and remember that the islanders have trouble with sequential consonants.

Up in the hills things are a lot nicer. This is the view of the harbor from above.

The 5 Billion dollar parliament building. A gift from G. Bush senior to the place that was so instrumental to the US during the war. Behold, a giant cement cone.

Kids playing near the US war memorial.

The US war memorial

More pics from the hills. The smoke means it's dinner time.

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.

The Solomon Airlines flight I was taking was to leave from the very last gate at the far wing of the airport, and when I arrived there was no one else there. I watched the other passengers trickle in, the distinction between those leaving and those returning home painfully obvious. First there were some older, jovial Australians, who could not have screamed "expat" any louder if they had had their much younger wives with them. Then a tall dark haired Australian who had an air of being intellectually curious about the world. He sat next to a tall islander with jeans and a strong chin and began telling him about his recent trip to Israel. Sitting near me was a big hipped Solomons woman with a wild fro, a long skirt, and a t-shirt. With her was a small girl who was half white and looked so much like Roycie I could hardly stand it. She was around 6, still with her baby teeth, and her large brown curls hid a fresh cut on her forehead. Everyone cooed at her; no one could help it.

When it was finally time for our flight we gathered at the gate and an large woman with a gray bun made a comment about my backpack being "rather large hand luggage" as she ran my ticket through the machine. I walked through the door and was surprised to find myself standing in the Australian sunshine, and then chastised myself for being so. The plane was in front of me, a smallish aircraft that said "our airline" on it in a island-y script. We walked single file to the aircraft and I put on my sunglasses, feeling that my tension must be visible.  Why was I walking on a runway? I had watched "Liar Liar" enough times to know that that wasn't allowed. Had I packed everything I needed to pack? How old was this chintzy airplane anyway? The dimpled tin steps wobbled a little as I climbed into the aircraft, but the relative calm of the other passengers, who looked as though they regularly made this trek soothed me a bit. I set to work on jamming my pack into the overhead compartments, and then was finally able to relax as the little aircraft pulled itself into the air.

Cloud cities over an unfamiliar ocean; cotton, feathers, pillows and vanilla ice cream passed soundlessly below me as I ate my lunch: a salad with pieces of ham on it and a dinner roll. In front of me the little girl sat on her mother's lap, fogging her breath on the window and pressing her tiny finger into it. I smiled at her. She smiled back but then hid her face.

First I saw sandbars and reefs lurking under the water, turning it green. Then I saw land, real land. Thick and covered with green forest. The ocean broke white on the thin strip of beach, and radiating out from it were dirt roads lined with houses. Honiara, the capitol city. We swooped down near it, inched towards it, and then we were on the ground. Outside the window, the landscape looked just like central California; green hills dotted with trees under a soft blue sky. I smiled. To have arrived. To have arrived with no more than 20 people in a tiny Solomon Airlines plane the morning after I was supposed to have been there.  It was something new.  The seatbelt light chimed and we clambered off the plane.

The JAL flight to Brisbane was comfortable as always; I had a sneaking suspicion that it was more comfortable than anything Air Niugini had to offer, anyway (PS, I was right). I took some codine to knock me out and I slept most of the way there.

The weather in Brisbane was lovely that morning; the perfect kind of temperature where any outfit is comfortable, blue skies and a light breeze. Still as I felt myself moving farther away from the plane and the politely bilingual stewardesses, I began to feel sick and uneasy. The posters were too bold and too easy to understand. The gift shop area was too brazen; I was accosted by buckets of honey-roasted peanuts and bricks of toblorone, all for low, low prices. I shrank inside myself. I wasn't prepared for the realities of another English-speaking country. The cloak of Gaijin fell off  from around me and I was exposed. The secret power and pride of being able to speak Japanese when I don't look it was replaced by the disorientation of being expected to know the language and culture in a country where I hadn't even intended to go.

Going through customs didn't help any. My bag of liquids was too big; they gave me a much smaller one, one that assured me in big purple letters that it was OK to buy duty free in Brisbane. Goody. They confiscated my mosquito coils, saying it was a "dangerous good" which made sense to me, and my detergent for the same reason, which made no sense at all. They said my packet of moist towlettes counted as liquids, so that had to be thrown away as well- it wouldn't fit in the bag. The mini- 8ball key chains I had brought as gifts turned out to be a bad idea as well; they counted as liquids and also wouldn't fit in the bag which, while quite accommodating on the subject of purchasing inexpensive bottles of fine whiskey, was not quite accommodating enough for several tubes of lipstick, shampoo, conditioner, sunblock, and keychains to boot. In the end, it turned out that what had actually set off the x-ray was a pack of colored pencils. And, as the moist towlettes and detergent had all been in Japanese packaging, I probably could have lied about their contents. But, hindsight is 20/20, and my bag was certainly lighter as I continued my journey. I pictured myself on the plane to Honiara, bursting open 8-balls in an airplane bathroom and using the insidious blue liquid inside as the key ingredient for my lipstick detergent mosquito coil bomb. The infidels in the Solomon Islands will pay!

The less said about my pack-laden, self-pitying journey to Ueno the better; once I was on the Keisei Express all was forgotten. Riding the Keisei Express to Narita airport has become one of my favorite rituals. The ample baggage space, the legroom, and the perennially half empty trains conspire to make the hour plus ride intensely relaxing, especially when you figure in the view, which is lovely. Northern Tokyo fades into Chiba in faint degrees, from high buildings, to short, and finally into the inevitable rice fields, which neatly mark the seasons in their height and colour. I put on my favorite playlist and stare out of the window until I fall asleep, but wake up well before the the train reaches the airport. I almost don't want to leave. The obscene amount of legroom has spoiled me for any plane ride. But leave I do, at Narita Terminal 2 which, as I found out, is the far inferior, dark and old-looking terminal that houses all the obscure airlines. My flight to the Solomon Islands was Air Niugini, transiting at Paupa New Guinea. I guess that applies.

I walked over to counter K with a vague sense of foreboding. Even from a distance I could see several long, completely stationary lines. I tried to walk past it, saw from a sign at the front that it was indeed for my flight, and had to walk back to the end in a way that people who stand in lines always find totally gratifying and annoying at once. Yeah, thats right, back of the line, lady. On my way back, I saw an oddly familiar bearded figure. I stared for a second, blinked once, and told myself I must be mistaken.

At the end of the line I joined an older woman with short blond hair and the Africanesque clothing that all older women seem to wear when they have taken an interest in another country. Being two foreigners in one improbable country and headed for another we began chatting. She was working as a missionary in Paupa New Guinea and I was visiting a friend in the Solomons.
"Oh really?"
"Yeah, she was born there and her mom is from there. She just finished school and... and that's Sean Lennon."
The bearded figure had walked away from the line and on his way back I got a good, unmistakable look at his face.
"Oh, really?" The woman asked, only slightly interested.
"Yeah, I recognize his girlfriend too."
"Hm."

Its far too embarrassing to rehash every tiny detail of the following 10 hours. Suffice it to say that the horrific line in which myself and the son of John Lennon and Yoko Ono were standing in was the inevitable result of Air Niugini not having paid the lease on their planes, and therefore not really having one that evening. We were all of us bussed off to a hotel and in the resulting flurry of the fellow expat "Ugh-can-you-believe-this" camaraderie, I was able to chat with him a while.

I should explain that I'm not just enamored of the last name. My friend Mig introduced me to the album "Friendly Fire" this January, and I listened to it non-stop for about a month and a half. Its still one of my favorites. And, a couple weeks before all this happened I'd gone to see him at Summer Sonic. It was a great little show on the beach in Chiba. He was pretty much the only reason I'd gone to the festival. Well, him and Bright Eyes. So, yeah, I was excited.

The next morning at 4:30 we were all bussed back to Narita only to wait there for several more hours. As everyone else was boarding I realized I hadn't been given a proper boarding pass the night before. I quick-stepped back to the counter and they told me that, actually, I wasn't getting back on the plane with everybody else. It was faster, they said, to wait until that night and fly to Brisbane, and then to the Islands. They put me up in another hotel for the day, and told me to make sure I was back in time for my flight.

I had to temper being pissed off with being relieved. After all, I hadn't wanted to fly while I was sick, and now I had an extra day to recover. Besides, meeting one of the few famous people I'd actually care to meet somehow made the whole trip feel ordained. I thought about how I'd nearly postponed my trip a week and smiled. It was all an adventure. I spent the day sleeping, abusing the ghastly internet consoles, adventuring out to the neighbouring 7-11, and watching some truly awful TV shows. Then I got up, took a bus to the airport, waited in one line after another, and before I knew it I was on a plane to Australia.

Exactly two weeks ago I was pacing my room and hyperventilating slightly in a way that would have been very dramatic, had someone been watching. But no one was and I was thereby forced to control myself and really think. The helpful gentlemen on the phone had told me how much it would cost to fly to the Solomon Islands a week later than I'd planned. I was three days into being diagnosed with pneumonia, and although my fever had disappeared my first day of antibiotics, I was still coughing and was pretty exhausted. But I was still pacing, really not wanting to change my flight. It was the money. Was it the money? I had the money, I didn't want to spend the money, I could spend the money. It was a lot of money. Same-day cancellation money. My flight was to leave at 9:00 PM. I'd done all my shopping but wasn't quite done packing; my backpacker's backpack looked like it had vomited plastic bags and t-shirts all over the floor of my room. Was it bravery? Was I trying to be brave? Was I trying to be stupid? I began looking for confirmation that what I already wanted to do was going to be OK. I googled 'flight' and 'pneumonia'. I chatted with my medical student friend online, I made my worries sound stupid, unreasonable. I was getting better. I would be fine.

I paced, but pacing made me tired. I lay down and realized something- I hadn't asked about changing my return flight- how much it would cost or if there were even seats available. When I had tried to book it originally there weren't- that's why I was going this week in the first place. So that was settled. I was going. I finished packing mechanically; there was only mechanical work to be done anyway. I filled my tacky touristy rucksack with tropical-friendly clothing, a new pair of crocs that I will never wear in a city, thank you, and random gifts for islanders I may meet and want to give things to- potential new friends. One ziplock bag of diminutive liquid containers, and then I was done. I placed the heavy, stupid thing on my shoulders and snapped the belt around my waist to relieve the weight. The weight was on my lungs, I imagined, and berated my stupidity for the millionth time. Then I was gone, out into the warm, sticky air, headed for Ueno and then Narita airport. And thats when the adventure began.

Its important to capture these moments while you're still there, while things are still happening. When you're there you can still get out those regular things, like the pale blue chinese storefronts, the small piles of raw peanut at the market, the vivid red earth. Later, when you're back home and the world seems normal again, you might only remember the representative things of there, the barefooted women with sacks of rice on their heads, the Eastern Islanders with chocolate skin and natural wavy blond hair, the beetlenut stands and the spray from a young coconut when opened with a large knife. Not that those things are bad or uninteresting. But why should we forget the normal everywhere? Disappointment in travel happens when you forget you're not landing on another planet, when you hop off your plane and are shocked to see land and sky, grass, trees, laundry. So, its important to remember the locally bottled pineapple juice, the dogs that no one pets or feeds but stick around anyway, the way people wave and say hello to a white face, the unbearably close searing sun, and the extra air conditioned expat cafes, full of red-skinned auzzies sipping coffee and availing themselves of the wireless internet.

Pictures later.

After shoveling in 400 yen into this Coin Internet installation, I figured I had had enough. I was going to get off the Internet, get off my ass, and go find something productive to do in this hotel. But, after my time ran out and the console asked me for more money, the screen cleared again and went right back to my browser. Translation: free internet and therefore, blog.

I actually feel cheated; I should have let the thing run out sooner. I would demand my money back, but the sign on top of the console clearly states "The once invested any coin doesn't return"  Also, so as to clear up any confusion, there is a watermark on the screen that says "Cautions! After insert coin. Don't pay back. The coin."

I'm stuck in this Hotel until my flight this evening. Being stuck anywhere near Narita blows. All the hotels are surrounded by freeways and random pockets of forest or rice fields. Theres nothing to do, nowhere to go, and certainly no way to get there. I'm completely at the mercy of Japanese television and 100 yen per 10 minute computers, the weirdly magnified screen of which is slowly eating away at my retinas. Seriously. What the hell am I supposed to do all day? They should pay me back for my boredome. Also for that 19 dollar buffet breakfast I was forced to buy. Woof.