Coconut Wireless

by Nicola Baird

  The logic runs: make George "Christian" and the MP will then donate more money towards the music fund. The truth is: their MP is sure to stay in town during Christmas because he hates the constant demands of his relations and constituents for cash and IOUs. He also hates village life, thinks of it as boring; all time not spent wheeling and dealing (for himself) is wasted time. Many of the Honourable Members think the same.

  Henderson helped his father create a simple storyline for the play. He envisages a troublesome journey for Christian, through gangs of town-based rascals (wild child types, often unmarried and unemployed) and exotic temptations of beer and loud music on the way to the Celestial City. In his own mind the Celestial City is also crowded by gangs of rascals and exotic delights of beer, loud music - and girls - but he knows better than to mention such thoughts to his father. The project has left him even more determined to try the bright lights.

  The village students are excited too and have insisted a number of extra characters are introduced. There has to be a pantomime cow for instance - two of the older men, who tried to set up a cattle ranch back in 1976, rigged one up with copra sacks last Christmas and then lurched from leaf house to leaf house singing carols, shameless from potent home brew. They raised more than 50 Solomon dollars and their crazy Left foot, Right foot, Left foot, Hiccup progress is still imitated by the more playful, smaller kids.

  Someone also has to be a devil, though no one is very keen to volunteer for this part - names (and reputations) after all stick for life in a village. Even primary school students are all too aware of that.

  With the singing, the atmosphere of impatience dissolves. The women sway rhythmically - delighting sleepy babies - craning to see their older children perform. One little girl sings a verse on her own. It is lovely and Henderson finds his irritation at being discovered reading - yet again - ebb a little. There is a gecko busy in the leaf roof above his head. Over by the big mango tree, that marks the centre of the village, there are about 20 tiny colourful parrots feasting. A small boy is sent out to distract them - shoots a stone with his catapult into the top branches - and the marauders fly off in an angry swoop to a safer restaurant by the edge of the village. As Henderson watches the blonde haired boy come back to the church service, his eye is caught by a flash moving along the far side of the reef. He looks again - it's a motor canoe slowing up to come through the passage. The speck grows and as it judders through the reef, the sound of the surf pounding the reef is masked, a little, by the drone of the Yamaha engine. The village doesn't usually have visitors on a Sunday. Henderson makes to get up and meet the strangers, but his father stops him with a glance. In defiance Henderson turns back to his novel, this time without pretending it’s a prayer book.

  At dusk, just as Henderson's mother passes out portions of rice, tinned fish and sweet potato on battered orange plastic bowls, the Capital Letter uncle comes by, very self-importantly, with the visitors. As ever his mother enables the food to stretch amply for another three mouths. No one speaks, but after wolfing down dinner, Henderson and the men move to the bamboo bench outside to story. The visitors are agricultural extension officers based at the government station about six hours canoe journey along the coast. They are due to visit spice growers in the southern part of the province, but were delayed by the taller man's daughter coping badly with malaria.

  "There's so much malaria at the moment," he complains. "It used to be worse at Christmas and New Year when it gets wet, but at Auki everyone gets sick any time of the year. My wife is head of the Mother's Union and I tell her off for not making her members keep the place clean, but the truth is she does. I sometimes wonder if there is a special malaria devil going round at night planting tins of Taiyo brand tuna fish and coconut shells so the station's drainage ditches will have the perfect stagnant ponds for Mother Anopholese!"

  "Yes, it's a problem here too," says Henderson's father slapping theatrically at mosquitoes busy eyeing-up his ankles. "Our village is kept clean, but the government stopped the spraying programme back in l981. In fact that wasn't too bad because the spray seemed to make the pussycats die, so then we got an invasion of rats.” He pauses to roll up a smoke.

  “Then we poisoned the rats but when they were dead the women used to complain there were more snakes around - no rats to eat them I guess - and even more mosquitoes! No, the worst thing here is that when people get sick it's a long way to the clinic. There's a bush road, which goes through the mangrove swamp, and takes a fit person two hours or so. Or there's Panatu's clinic, which we can reach by canoe - but sometimes there's no petrol or the engine's broken, or some small problem," he laughs resignedly, "like no money to pay for canoe hire. We've given God two of our children early because of malaria."

  The visitors nod their heads sympathetically and then switch their attention from sickness to the betel nut being offered round. Henderson goes to fetch his father's pot of lime powder and some fresh leaf for the men to take with it. He's been chewing betel nut since he was tiny and is always surprised to hear people say foreigners call it "Solomon beer". Besides a chalky, numb-mouth feel he's never had the slightest hint of being drunk - but then maybe that's because he doesn't drink or for that matter use lime. He would, but he's always been a little vain and doesn't much like the idea of staining his mouth red, like a town girl with lipstick, or worse losing his teeth like most of the adults in the village.

  What does lipstick taste like? He silently guesses while the other men chew and spit, companionably watching the stars, until the other visitor starts talking again: "Have you heard that the Honourable Member for round here is negotiating with people up at 'Are'Are for bait fishing rights? I met a man who'd been at one of the meetings and the MP says if they give the go ahead he will make sure a really good clinic is built. The deal is good too, they just let the Japanese come in and pick up their fish and get paid - that's not bad development is it? I mean the work we do with the agricultural section involves hard work, nothing is as easy as bait fishing deals. Not a bad way to find money for an engine or pay the school fees is it?"

  Henderson's father isn't convinced. "We had bait fishing round here for about five years. It was an awful time. The foreigners paid us well, but they only came at night and they used loud generators so the whole village was unable to sleep - except my son here, who can sleep through anything!" The crack makes the men laugh.

  "Some of the fishermen would come over to my store to buy tobacco, or whatever small things they needed, but it was just a way to go off with our girls. They weren't Christian people. They left in the end, but we wouldn't want them back ..." before he can continue his wife walks out of the kitchen hut a few metres away and mutters something in low tones, before laughing raucously. She's pointing out that the fishermen also took all the small fish so that now the bigger fish don't like being caught, which is why they ate the tinned version this evening - and it is also why her son Henderson is still unmarried. She is looking forward to her youngest starting his own family and worries if a wife isn’t arranged for him soon he'll go about it the wrong way.

  The conversation ebbs and flows, fuelled by betel nut, until the second kerosene light splutters out. Again Henderson's mother walks past, pretending to talk to herself but really aiming her comments at her husband. This time she seems cross. With the kerosene gone, that's the end of their fuel. There are no candles, the torch batteries ran out long ago and still their cargo, sent from town by a wantok (one talk = relation, friend or sharing same 1st language) won't be arriving for another week. "Yes that's right," says the Capital Letter uncle importantly (even though he heard it on the radio), "the Boat has Engine Problems, it's due in on Number 22 though." In the distance Henderson can hear reggae music being played at this uncle's house - if his little nephews play their tapes that often he can bet his uncle won't be hearing any more shipping reports until a supply of new batteries arrives.

  It's late. Henderson leaves the older men storying and goes inside to sleep on a tightl
y-weaved pandanus mat that doubles as a bed and a waterproof shield during the regular afternoon downpours. His home is on the weather side of the island, down a protected lagoon. But sometimes the seas are so rough - known locally as "alive" - that the fortnightly boat from the capital cannot unload the vital village cargo even when the schedule isn't spoilt by the constant engine problems. His mind drifts: no kerosene is a worry and he doubts if his mother, despite her ingenuity, will be able to borrow some, seeing as it is their family who runs the store and usually does the lending. The village will be a bit quieter when the only light is from a waning moon.

  Nearing sleep Henderson thinks again about why he's stayed home leaning on the counter of a store. Those visitors from Auki station seemed so confident about life and their jobs and what's going on in the country and government. Village life seems even more backward and boring now. This restless feeling, this fear he's missing out, his growing hatred of the traditional life of a bush boy is one that's taking his mind over. He was 15 when it started, two Christmases ago, when the wantoks come home to the village to holiday. He knows the town dwellers’ complaints about the price of food, and how they never have time. During the Christmas holidays every village house echoes with relations repeating the same two phrases: "In the village life is free" and "In the town time is your boss." The words spin round and round his head: town life has to be more ... has to be better ... has to be ... for a single boy ...

  ***

  Henderson wakes suddenly from dreams of offices, traffic lights, big men and night clubs. Sleepily straightening his lava-lava he looks out of the unshuttered, unglazed window towards the direction of the noise. It's already first light and the sky is shifting from a ginger beer and pink streaked dawn to another blue, blue morning. Yesterday's visitors are heading back down the lagoon and out towards the reef. It's time he left too. When the ship comes in next week, he'll go - just to see - just for a walkabout.

  His first ever walkabout in his country's capital, Honiara.

  ***

  Dear Dan

  I know you’ll have second-guessed this, but I really don't know what I'm doing here! Picture me, Suzy, Englishly white skin (going brown, going brown slowly) a vast-brimmed raffia hat (from tacky old Miss Selfridge) and a necklace of sweat running from my throat to my belly button so my dress could be called a sweat rag. The heat’s like a bath. And my hours have changed: it's only 9.05am and I'm at a collection of buildings masquerading as an airport. They chased PIGS off the runway before our international flight could land!! The sky's a mucky, muddy blue and I'm struck mostly by the lack of stuff. Here I am, my first visit to the tropics, and there's nothing. No sudden whack to the senses of exotic vistas and perfumed plants. No gin slung expats in sight, not even a postcard for sale. I'm just stuck at a stupid, sleepy, aid-built terminal with a handful of other jet-lagged (no, depressed) tourists.

  No one to meet me of course - so I'm jettisoned into Pacific time pretty quick. And then when someone does talk to me, asking if I want a taxi, I realise I've NO IDEA where I want to go anyway - in all the hurry to fill in visas, swallow anti-malarials and buy factor 910+ sun block cream I never noticed I hadn't been sent the address of where I was going to live. So what's a girl to do? I just sit at the edge of the departure lounge, under a rapidly heating sky and wait, and wait. Where do you think everyone was? In church, maybe; out fishing, perhaps; rioting to put some life in this boring place, unlikely ... the much-talked about islanders just weren't around.

  Still it was lucky I did wait - after all it kept the tension another few minutes. And then when someone did eventually pick me up from the school he decided to SHOW ME ROUND before I'm decamped at my rooms. It was the last thing I wanted to do after two days travelling (that's my calculation based on the amount of aeroplane meals I've been fed - eight, or maybe nine!) So what did I see? Well some crashed planes at the foot of a burnt out look-out tower (once used by the Japanese, or the Marines, or maybe both to shoot the other to bits during WW2 - great view on to the runway, great tourist attraction for a pacif-ic!-ist ...) Oh yes, a collection of huts, that I'm told is a typical Melanesian village, surrounded by long grass which seemed to be on fire - clearly normal as the guy driving me didn't even blink, let alone brake (which I personally feel wouldn't have been a bad idea every now and then, even if there was no other traffic).

  And then suddenly it's nearly Honiara and I'm really quite panicky, stomach in knots - not because I'm excited, this is going to be home but because there's a one-lane, super-rusty Bailey bridge marking the town boundaries. And we've got to cross it (I mean I ask you would you have driven over a bridge which creaks and groans even when nobody is on it?) so I half-close my eyes, and look at my feet and to my HORROR find I'm looking through a hole in the truck's chassis, through the Bailey bridge slats, down x-thousand feet and into a swirling river. And, before I'd got over that near-death experience suddenly there's a welcome sign. Not, thankfully from McDonald's, I don't think they've even bothered to hoist burger eating habits on the islanders, which is, I suppose, one plus in the country's favour. It's a painted wooden board, that says "Welcome to the Happy Isles" decorated with what appears to my sensitive eyes to be a warrior with heads of his enemies under his arms and needless to say in my, yes, terrified AND jet-lagged state I saw more as an advert for home, sweet home.

  Boy did I want out - and I still hadn't got to this mythical town of Honiara, or what turned out to be a name masquerading as a town. For instance it has one road going one way through it, and another going the other way. There's ONE traffic light, ONE 24-hour store (which wasn't open when we drove past) and ONE zebra crossing which drivers AND pedestrians ignore. The place is filthy - lots of rubbish and broken sticks (why broken sticks?) lying around. No evidence of a cinema, well you knew that. I think I saw a stationery shop, BUT there’s absolutely ZERO chance of a pub crawl to drown my sorrows: you've guessed it, there are NO pubs.

  You know what, if there'd been a bus I'd have thrown myself under it. As it is I've got TWO years here - god knows what I'll write to you about. This is the sleepiest, dullest, dustiest town (whoops, c-i-t-y) I've ever seen, let alone imagined. Perhaps there’s a football league I can keep you up-to-date with?

  With love, Suzy

  CHAPTER 3: THE BRIDGE

  FOR HENDERSON, HONIARA has always been a dreamscape. At night the city is lit up like a flare, throwing shafts of phosphorescence on to the dark harbour water, deep into Iron Bottom Sound. By day it is a garden of hills, with houses and shops clinging to volcanic folds. Cockatoos dare to fly in the main street, a striking contrast against the red-flowered flame trees which garland the avenues. The pad, pad, pad of the residents' bare feet disturb fine trails of dust, giving the town an unworldly atmosphere. Henderson was in love before his soles touched the wharf.

  But when they did, it was a tough landing. The melee of wantoks meeting, greeting, collecting, shouting and haranguing produced a scene Henderson had never imagined possible even when the over-full boat arrived home at Christmas. Every conceivable part of the little wooden boat, MV Mali, was covered with people dragging their baskets of village food, or mattresses, or families on to the wharf. In the distance was a low roar, like the reef back home, but as it came inland he guessed it must be from traffic. And sure enough, when Henderson shielded his eyes against the midday sun he saw a snake of cars, jeeps, taxis and mini-buses crawling along parallel to the sea. These didn't seem to be moving fast at all, much to their drivers' irritation whose swearing was only masked by violent horn blasts - the sounds of city reggae.

  The wharf smelt acrid from the copra waiting to be shifted by a foreign-registered container ship which dwarfed MV Mali. It also seemed very hot after the cooling breezes of the ship's deck and so Henderson slung his homemade rucksack, a giant yellow Tru Kai rice bag over his shoulder, and headed up the track to the main road in search of someone who knew the way to his auntie's Mbokonavera house.

  "Hey bush boy, look out," shout
ed a man about his age over a squeal of breaks.

  "You just be careful wantoko – there are lots of rascals out there today. It's not a good day to be in town," and with that the man drove bad-temperedly towards the boat to pick up, what Henderson guessed must be, the sisters still waiting at the wharf. After that near miss with a truck, and several others, Henderson decided to collect his bearings after a short rest. Seeing a big banyan tree up by an iron shelter, presumably a bus stop, under which a whole crowd had gathered, Henderson eased himself into a shady space and then set about slowly rolling a cigarette, just to get his bearings.

  "You got a smoke?" a man with coil dreadlocks and dark shades, wearing a dirty ripped T-shirt, jeans and Australian workman boots joined Henderson. "I'm Patte. Hi! Everyone knows me, but I haven't seen you round town before so I guess you must have just arrived."

  Even during such a short conversation Patte punctuated his conversations with well-aimed hisses to attract the attention of friends passing along the road. The pair shake hands. Henderson has heard of Patte (or hustlers like him anyway) much to his new friend's pleasure. Just before he left the village one uncle told him to look out for men with dreadlocks. What the uncle meant was: "Stay away from trouble" - but Henderson missed that particular subtext.

  "Yeah," replied Henderson trying to imitate Patte's easy manner, "the boat just came in this morning - we left last night."

  "Ah, so you're another from Malaita come to crowd up our small town?" laughed Patte with a certain good-natured menace. Henderson didn't quite know what this disarmingly friendly stranger was getting at, so feigning coolness, he takes a puff on his cigarette and waits for more clues.