Coconut Wireless

by Nicola Baird

  “What’s wrong with algebra? Co-signs? Pythagarus’s Theorum?” demands her tormentor. “We have a situation here in the Solomons where half of our primary school children are refused a secondary school place. These students are the best we have, but you have set the sort of exercise a barely literate shipping clerk can do. These boys and girls will be running our country soon enough and they demand a better standard of professionalism from you. You whitemen turn up here. You ignore our culture. Ignore the Pacific way. And then you leave. What we need is better teaching, better standards and better discipline. Never have I walked into a classroom with such a scruffy layout of desks. See to it that this is sorted out… Mrs…”

  “Suzy, Suzy Trevillion. But sir, in my defence, may I say that this exercise gives the students a chance to apply their knowledge. Everyone here has made good or outstanding progress over the past three months and I think there is plenty to be proud of…” she has no chance to splutter to a stop.

  “Mrs Trouble was it?” interrupts the MP. “The desks are in chaos: where are the orderly rows? The students did not stand when I entered. You did not cease your supervising. I expect King George VI, our national school, the one where standards are set, met and broken to exceed in every area of the school curriculum. You have singularly failed at developing the students’ good manners. Indeed you have not taught them anything, you’ve un-taught the basics…

  Lovelyn can’t help herself. She leaps up in defence of her strange teacher from England. “She’s quite good,” she says quieter than she meant to. Another friend stands up. And then another. There’s a screeching of chairs as they are forced back until the whole class, all 35 students, are standing in what seems to be support of Suzy.

  The MP is swelling up like a puffer fish. He looks at a chunky watch on his left wrist, grimaces and turns on his heel, walks towards the doorway. Then turns again, points at Suzy, or is it Lovelyn, and says menacingly. “I’ve got my eye on you” then slams the screen door shut and is gone.

  For a few moments the class is so silent you could hear a seahorse swim by, and then one by one they start to laugh. It’s not often you’re in a maths lesson where a Big Man talk spoils your teacher. Suzy just hopes the Minister can’t hear.

  CHAPTER 15: WHEEL OF FORTUNE

  STELLA WAKES LONG before first light - the cicadas are still calling but there's a foreign buzz too which she guesses must be the first trucks. She smiles, pushes Henderson's arm off her shoulder, where it has fallen in his sleep, pulls up and then smooths her lava lava ready to go outside where the air still smells of night. The passage is unlit but she can see the outside door's been left open. Briefly she wonders what to do until she sees a kerosene light burning in the local style kitchen at the back of Patterson's section of Labour Line dormitories. Like a moth she is drawn towards it, but like a woman she is pleased to discover someone already there - busy grating mangrove pods.

  "Morning, morning. Are you making koh?"

  The woman, who is about her own age, nods.

  "Come, let me help you." Stella doesn't wait for an answer. She picks up a sharp shell from the pile in the corner of the leaf house, finds a low piece of wood to sit on, her legs outstretched but with lava lava carefully covering her thighs. The two women are facing each other, but neither talk for a while, just busy recalling thoughts as they scrape the tough sides of the mangrove off with expert ease - shell clasped in the right hand, pod in left, scratch six times the length of the pod then throw it on to the pile with its friends.

  "I'm Lodu," says the girl-woman, "the koh is for our Christmas feast tomorrow."

  "Hello, I'm Stella." She stretches out her arm and the pair shake hands formally.

  "Where do you come from?"

  "From Malaita, but my mother's side is from Guadalcanal."

  "When did you come here?"

  "Last night."

  "Are you married?

  "Yes,” she’s confident now. “A boy from Malaita."

  "Do you have children?"

  "Yes, I’m Ellen’s mummy. She's five now." Well, that's almost true.

  Satisfied the questioner focuses again on her pile of koh. Then starts to sing. It's Walkabout Along China Town, a tune Stella also learnt at school:

  Makem kossi anga long kona

  Suti upu sekem hed

  Kikim bakate en kaenii

  Yes you laugh half senisi watanatingi

  Ting ting bak - long iu, ting ting bak - long iu

  Losem home - long taem, losem home - long taem

  Tu ias ova mi no lukim iu

  Dastawae mi no likem iu

  Mama karange karange heddi

  Lossim moni

  Ting ting bak - long iu, ting ting bak - long iu

  Losem home - long taem, losem home - long taem

  Nomata mi dae long HONIARA

  Samting mi lossi long taem long iu

  But sapos iu ting long mi, iu kan wait for two years more

  Rerem kam lighti sikini long lelebeti.

  Ting ting bak - long iu, ting ting bak - long iu

  Losem home - long taem, losem home - long taem

  Mid-chorus Stella gently joins in, and their voices harmonise in a sweet way, instinctive a cappella - but not quite quiet enough to stop a dog shaking itself into guard duty and beginning to bark, or loud enough to hide the ever-increasing drone of laden trucks heading to Honiara's main market.

  "Are you sad then?" asks Stella cheekily when they finish the last chorus. "Has someone left you behind for two years?"

  "No, I'm not sad. It's true that a special someone has left me behind while he's gone to study over in Australia, but he'll send for me. Until then I'm living here at his bro's house," she gestures over her shoulder towards a shadowy cement box shaded by a pink frangipani tree, under which there are three stiff looking forms still locked in sleep. "This is my first time living in town," continues the woman, "it's a good place isn't it? There's so much development. It's so modern." She doesn't sound convinced though.

  "Well I don't like it that much, and I really don't like it here on the Labour Line,” Stella struggles not to be rude. “I mean, I'm glad to be living with friends but it's not very hygienic for ... for ... my daughter. There are too many people living here aren't there?"

  And as the dawn properly eases into daylight Kukum Labour Line shows its true colours. Stella is right, there are ugly dormitories crowded with people and rat-riddled houses crowded with people, all cunningly guarding scratches of yard by a higgeldy-piggeldy arrangement of washing on lines. Even at Christmas time most houses sleep at least a football squad, but some of the families have 'subs' there as well. As the biggest of the houses were built with just two bedrooms there is an overspill of adults and children sleeping outside. Insects love the Labour Line – already Stella can feel the familiar tingle of head lice biting. She picks up a comb and pushes at the spot, fearing her imagination.

  Most families have put up their own leaf-and-timber kitchen, but some, like the one Lodu uses are uncomfortably close to the toilet block. This may boast a flush toilet – but it might be more sanitary if the local water authority could guarantee a supply of H2O. The newer houses, built illegally, do not have running water and so peppered like islands around Marovo Lagoon are leaky standpipes. Inevitably this water collects into pools and attracts breeding mosquitoes, the same ones that carry malaria.

  To brighten up the place admire the piles of rotting food - potato skins, cabbage leaves, fish bones, fish scales, psychedelic coloured fish guts, paper scraps, mountains of rice - mixed with non-biodegradable rubbish of every sort - plastic bags, pink Bongo wrappers, Taiyo and Maling meat tins which announce the junction of every Labour Line street.

  As the early sun grows hotter, the dogs of Kukum wake hungrily, and their first thoughts are clearly to check the rubbish heaps and littered drains for food. Despite Lodu's storytelling gift and songs, Stella can’t help being distracted by three sandy-coloured dogs' intense interest in the nearest rubbis
h pile. Lodu picks up a stone, left for just such an occasion, and without needing to stand aims at the dogs. It hits the one with a sore eye, who runs off whimpering.

  "I hate dogs," Lodu says with surprising vindictiveness. "When I was little I went to visit my grandfather in the hospital at Auki. He had cancer in his leg and the doctors had said if he wanted to live then the leg had to be cut off. My mother sent me up to the hospital with some food on the day after the operation. Gran was still very weak, couldn't believe what he'd done to annoy God so much and so wasn't able to eat all the fish I'd brought - just picked at it. So when he'd had enough I just took the banana leaf parcel back and started to finish off the contents. I was eating very fast. He was a difficult man, very hard to talk with even when he felt happy, and there I was - just a little girl with nothing to say. So as I ate I looked out of the window and that's when I saw a terrible sight: a dog trotting across the hospital's lawn dragging a human leg. And that leg had to be my grandfather's! I just screamed, and that made my gran look out of the window too, and he saw it as well - his leg, still with his special long policeman sock to cover the sore place, in the dog's mouth. It was awful! Since then I've had hideous nightmares about dogs!"

  Stella tries so hard not to laugh that she begins to stutter. "H-h-h-how did the doggy get his leg then?"

  "Oh it came out on the radio later. I think hospitals usually burn the things they cut off, bandages and horrible things like that in some kind of special place, what's the word - incinera is it?"

  "Incinerator I think you mean."

  "Oh you are a scholar girl! Yes that's it, an incinerator. Anyway the day they cut off my grandfather's leg, the man whose job it was to burn the 'rubbish' was sick. So it never got done, and those horrible hungry dogs of Auki must have smelt raw meat and come running," Lodu shakes her head in complete disgust and taking another stone targets a large black dog that has sneaked back to the steaming rubbish pile outside.

  "Lodu, you are a crazy lady! I think I may like living at the Labour Line now I know that we'll be friends!" says Stella - and they both start shaking with laughter. That's how Henderson finds them, by following the sound of giggles to the kitchen. Neither notices him at first.

  "Morne, morning," Henderson coughs out, admiring the dark-eyed girl, his beautiful wife.

  "Oh, hello," says Stella getting to her feet. "I'll see you again then Lodu. I must go with the boss now," and with a wave of her hand she's out of the kitchen and into sunshine. It's Christmas Eve, and it's going to be another beautiful day.

  "There's some good news Stella," announces Henderson. "Patte tells me he knows of a job going on his cousin's Wheel of Fortune down at the central market. He says I'm to go up with him to his wantok, pick up the prizes, and then start work. I can't believe it's that easy - that I've got a chance to earn a bit of money for us both, for us all," he adds quickly as Ellen makes a sleepy path towards her mother's leg.

  "Ellen! You are too big to be hugging me like that," Stella says pushing her away. "Come on, don't cry, let's go and swim before we eat breakfast. But first you say goodbye to your daddy."

  "He's not my daddy," whispers the girl boldly.

  "OK, say goodbye to Henderson then." But the new stepfather and his new stepdaughter's first proper leave-taking is cut short by a horn blast.

  "Henderson, hurry up, we are waiting for you," shouts Patte from a truck parked on the roadside. Henderson heads towards it and squeezes in between a gang of young men and a 2 metre diameter board circle divided into 12 sections by wobbly red lines; two of the slices have a picture of a drunken looking hen inside and the rest have even more drunken looking pineapples. "Happy Christmas!" the men shout and with that the truck speeds off leaving behind a dust cyclone that coats the washing on the lines and leaves little Ellen sneezing and with the start of red eye.

  Two hours later Henderson is sweating for a promised payment of 20 bucks, half a carton of beer and a live chicken (not bad money this) on the Wheel of Fortune. Patte has lent him a large cowboy hat ("the crowd see you good that way," insisted Patte pushing it down hard on Henderson's curly locks) but he hadn't bargained on how hard he would have to work - or how good his showman skills have turned out to be. The truck is parked in no man's land, the edge where the taxi drivers (all male today: the one Gilbertese woman has gone back to her village in Western Province for the Christmas holiday) wait for customers and where Guadalcanal women like to set up their temporary stalls of coconut oil in lemonade bottles, betel nut and homemade brooms. These women are not at all pleased about having their best selling sites crowded out by a daggy Wheel of Fortune this Christmas Eve. The truck's bad enough, but the noise from the trussed chickens, lying at the foot of the Wheel, the smell of the over-ripe pineapples, used as 'consolation' prizes, and the troops of people playing the game, or staring in wonderment at the spinning pointer, irritates them much more. In a sulk about 15 are forced to shift their sack-sized selling areas to the back of the market, closer to the seashore.

  "Where's your horse then, Mr Cowboy?" shouts a joker from the crowd - and at that moment Henderson starts to enjoy himself, standing alone with 50 complaining hens. Tipping the Stetson he plays to his audience.

  "Sure forgot that horse of mine today, he's back home hav'n a rest, doin' the dishes! But before I went out he said you just get down on to the market and give those people the best Christmas of their life. You boys just need to give me one nguzu nguzu dollar coin and let Lady Luck win you a fat hen for your Christmas dinner. Make your Mrs smile at you this holiday time."

  With that a forest of hands is raised, each holding a coin. Henderson's offsider, another wantok of Patte's, runs around issuing red and blue tickets as he collects the players' money.

  "OK folks, what you've got to do to win Your Special, Your Marvellous, Your Wonderful Gift this Christmas is to tell my assistant here, Roland, whether you think the spinning arm of the Wheel of Fortune," he shouts that bit, trying to imitate the intonation of his capital letter uncle back home, "the WHEEL OF FORTUNE, is going to stop on a chicken picture or a pineapple picture. If you choose the right one, then you've won yourself the best prize - something to make your Mrs happy with you. You could spend just $1, I repeat $1, and win yourself a whole chicken - that's TWO chicken legs worth $8, TWO chicken wings worth $6 and ONE chicken body worth $6 - that's a $20 chicken you'll have bought for just one little coin. It's an unbeatable offer 'cos EVERYONE HAS A CHANCE TO BE A WINNER."

  Roland rushes round the gullible arms, collecting money and handing over raffle tickets - red for chicken prizes and blue for pineapple prizes. The colours have been chosen this way deliberately. There's a good chance, figures Patte and his gang, that lots of the gamblers will be Malaitan. In Malaitan custom red is considered unlucky, blue is lucky - hence the prefered colour for their boats. So a superstitious Malaitan Wheel of Fortune punter would rather risk his dollar on winning a pineapple (which statistically is more likely to turn up trumps anyway) than to waste it completely on the off chance that the Wheel of Fortune arm spins round and then slowly, slowly, slowly grinds to a halt on a picture of a chicken.

  "This is a crazily good deal, Suzy, don't you think," says an expat woman talking at her friend, another expat Mrs. You'd think they were twins - in their uniform of pastel shaded Aertex shirt (each with a croc motif on her left breast pocket), long flowery skirt and with a rustically-plaited marketing basket tucked over each arm - if one wasn't a bit taller than the other.

  "I guess it is," replies the other weaving through the shoppers towards a guava seller, "but I bet there's some kind of catch," she thinks briefly. "No, maybe not a catch, you'll probably find that the someone who set this up owns a pineapple plantation and is just desperate to get rid of them all before the Christmas holiday starts properly. Didn't we just see them selling pineapples for 50 cents down at that far corner? Yes, that is right! So effectively these guys are selling off their pineapples for double the going price - just by giving the vague sensation o
f a bargain and a chicken for next to nothing. I bet most of the punters spend $2 each spin in the hopes that they win something for their money. In fact I'd say that's pretty good entrepreneurship! What's more a chicken is pretty cheap to breed, it doesn't take long before it's big enough to eat and they are much cheaper live and unplucked than the way that boy up their is describing them, you know frozen bits shipped over to the supermarket from Oz."

  "Yes, maybe you're right - lucky you teach maths, I expect your students will get some similarly good ideas next term!"

  "Oh, they don't need ideas from me about how to make ends meet," corrects Suzy. "Everyone here has a way of earning a little bit of cash, from selling their produce - even the school does that to help cover costs - to sewing, or fishing, or working as a house girl or cleaning windscreens or whatever. I can never understand why the old pupils often say they don't have a job. I suppose lots of those that finished in the third, fourth and fifth forms don't really have a formal job as such, but most have some kind of way to earn a little bit of money. The problem here seems to be more one of underemployment - but absolutely never lack of initiative."

  And with that the two fade, as much as white complexions and striped cotton sun hats can ever fade in a country of black skins, into the throngs of last minute shoppers. Patte, who's overheard them, laughs - they've got it bang on. The Wheel of Fortune makes his mobs a fortune every Christmas. He begins to imagine what to do with the dosh and - better still - how much the boys will make today, when his thoughts are interrupted by a tremendous crashing. Even Henderson's heroic sales talk, aided by a loudhailer, is lost. The Voice of the Lord has arrived - Father Lotunao a well-known crazy with the gift of the gab. His entourage includes the band Low Life Revival who are responsible for the outburst after plugging in their keyboards and starting to blast the shoppers with Voice of the Lord's special spiritual tune. It's a toe-tapping number and though it eventually has to stop, the damage is done and most of the Wheel of Fortune rubbernecks by that time have crossed the road to enjoy free live music instead. They all know Father Lotunao. His evangelical preaching, and sermons that sound like songs, is famous round the islands and today, as it's Christmas Eve, should be extra good. He may even do some curing of the sick - that's always good to watch.