Discrimination

Kohimarama is the Solomon Islands' Anglican seminary.  The nation's training ground for new priests sits about an hour or so down the coast line from Honiara, nestled against the rising mountains, surrounded by cocoa and pineapple plantations.  There is a potholed dirt road that connects Kohi with Honiara and the rest of Guadalcanal, cutting through the jungle but never out of sight of the beach.  It was down this road that I bumped in a public transport van, sharing the seat with a local friend.

I was excited, high on the thrill of independence.  My parents had never let me take this trip alone before, but it had been determined that I spend the weekend in Kohi with some friends.  And best of all, I would ride the jungle road on my own.  So I sat hugging  my backpack, watching the trees reach over the road and relishing my happy freedom.

Every fifteen miles or so the van would stop at wayside villages, picking up and letting off passengers.  There weren't many travelers today, or perhaps there were more transport vans than usual, but either way the seats in our little van remained relatively empty.  My legs stuck to the vinyl, sticky from countless sweaty passengers before me.  My friend was closest to the window, her head leaning out so that the breeze could lift the curls from her neck.  I said a silent thank you that we didn't have to share our seat, which was made for three, with a stranger.  I didn't want to be stuck between two perspiring, swaying bodies.

My luck lasted to the next stop.  When the van slowed and the door opened, people started piling in.  We all began the inevitable dance that repeats itself in elevators, buses and subways across the world.  Who shall sit where?  The seats filled up quickly, until the only places left were the seat opposite me.  And beside me.

I should stop here and say that I was the only white skin in the van.  I was used to being the conspicuous on Guadalcanal, my blond hair and pale skin made more obvious by my height.  On Luaniua, everyone knew me, and familiarity had long ago nullified any gaps caused by physical differences.  But in other places in the Solomons, I was immediately categorized by the strangers around me as loose, easy, and rich.  Most Islanders' exposure to Westerners came from movies, and  most white women in moves filled these stereotypes.  The weight of men's assessing eyes and women's judging ones became a familiar, if not easy, burden whenever I was on the mainland.

So I sat there on the van, trying to ignore the invisible bubble the Islanders had created around me.  My friend's leg pressed comfortingly against mine.  A woman boarded last with her daughter and a large basket of taro.  She quickly took in the situation, and barked at the girl in Pidgin, "You sit with the Arokuao.  I'll sit here."

I could feel my friend stiffen beside me.  The woman had used the Island equivalent of the 'N' word we use here in the States, except it was their word for a white person.  The daughter was looking at me, her face betraying her hesitance at having to sit next to the white skin.  I gathered grace around me and smiled at her.

"You can sit here, there's room,"  I said, in flawless Pidgin.

As the girl slid down next to me, I looked over her head and watched her mother's slowly dawning realization that I had understood what she said.

To quote the inestimable Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, "Darkness cannot put out darkness.  Only light can do that."

The Epic Boat Trip, pt 5 - The Storm

We passed through Auki with little fanfare, picking up some bananas and fried bread at the little, muddy market. The Baruku then turned East, heading out into deep sea for the little island of Sikaiana.


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Standing on the bow of the ship that evening, I could see massive clouds building on the horizon in front of us. Turrets and fortifications added themselves to the towering structure as I watched, billowing up into the atmosphere and out across the sea. The space between clouds and sea turned black. As the sun descended behind us, the brave Baruku marched on toward the angry mass.

I went below as the wind picked up. Sailors were already lashing down the sides of the tarp that stretched over the cargo hatch. Soon, we were all enclosed in a dark little cocoon, rocking up and down on the increasing waves.

I tried to sleep that night. I know I must have, because periods of time would pass suddenly between long minutes of agonized waiting. Waiting for the sun to come up. Waiting for the storm to pass. Waiting to be sick. The ocean released its full fury on us in the night. The ship was tossed like a soap dish in a toddler's evening bath. We would ride up a wave, then fall with a heart sickening CRASH!, rock side-to-side madly to stabilize, and repeat the process all over again. People around me were groaning and puking over the side of the hatch onto the metal deck. The tight tarp closed in the smells of vomit, body odor and fear. Another wave of nausea socked me in the gut and even more acidic waste rushed up my esophagus and out of my mouth.

As I lay spent, I tried to gauge the incline of the ship when the deck in front of me dipped towards the sea. My mattress slipped a little a the steepest point, and everything that wasn't tied down slammed against the railings. Desperately, I flattened myself out, clenching my body into the mattress and hard wood below. Ocean rushed in to claim the deck for a few breathless moments. Then, the ship tipped back the other way, and I relaxed while the passengers on the opposite side of the hatch braced themselves.

The process continued on through the night. The faithful Baruku battled her way deep into the tempest. Far away in Austin, Texas, a man watching the news saw that there was a storm in the Pacific, near the island nation of Solomon Islands. God spoke a word to his heart, and he began to pray for us.

Dawn came dreary and wet. It brought hope in the form of a little black dot, sitting defiantly between grey sea and sky. Word quickly spread among the beleagured passengers that Sikaiana was on the horizon. By now I was past the point of caring, caught in the hellish cycle of slipping toward the sea and back up again, crashing down, vomiting, crying.

The island, however, slowly grew larger and larger as we approached it, until finally we were skirting the ocean side, a safe distance from the reef, soon to be on the lea of the island and finally sheltered from the storm. That's when the engine stopped.

The Epic Boat Trip, pt 4 - Dolphins and Flying Fish

Next morning, children's shouts drew my attention away from my breakfast (dry Navy biscuits and bananas). I hopped down from my nest on the cargo hatch and climbed the ladder up to the bow of the ship. Kids were hanging over the railings at the front, pointing excitedly into the water. Pushing into a free spot, I looked down and saw the source of the commotion.

A school of dolphins was frolicking in the frothy furrows cut by the ship's hull. I watched in delight as the playful creatures leaped in and out of the water, chasing each other in their race to get ahead of the boat. We laughed and clapped and pointed at the playful abandon with which the dolphins carried out their dance below us.

Leaning over the railing, the sea breeze hit me full in the face, fresh and sweet. The sky had only a few token puffs of cloud, and had already turned bright, deep blue. The breeze must have been created by our movement through the water, because the ocean itself was stretched taut around us, like silk sheets on a slightly hilly bed.

Flying fish now joined the dolphins in the water around our ship. The funny little creatures would suddenly shoot out of the waves in a shallow arc, almost like a covey of quail startled from their bush. They looked like some medieval wizard had been dabbling in alchemy, and accidentally stuck leathery wings on a fish, or, from the top, like little silver airplanes sailing over the water. I sat down on the deck at the very edge, hanging my bare heels over the side, with my arms slung over the bottom railing. I let the breeze tickle my toes, and the kids push around me. I was sitting in that attitude when first land was sighted.

The Epic Boat Trip, pt 3 - Asleep on the Cargo Hatch

I went to sleep that night curled up between my mom and sister on the little two-inch thick foam pads we'd put over our square of cargo hatch. I covered myself in a lava lava and lay there for a while, listening to the settling sounds around me. There was a cranky baby's cry, followed by steady and contented sucking as its mother put it to breast. The tarp overhead went 'slap, slap, flap' in the breeze. Rigging jingled and clanged against the metal posts and awnings. Two women talked quietly together in rhythmic Polynesian. Underscoring it all was the deep chug-chug as the Baruku made her patient way across the vast openness.

My mom, on the cargo hatch.

From where I lay I could see some of the horizon. The ocean breathed quietly, blue-black underneath the star scattered sky. The water was a calm, gentle friend tonight. The ship's lights spilled out onto the water in ethereal amber swatches. Stars looked down on us aloofly. I could just see Orion rising out of the sea. I always greeted Orion as my friend, because it was a constellation that I recognized from the Texas skies. Wherever in the world I traveled, Orion was my constant night time companion. He watched over me kindly as I finally let sleep take me that night.

The Epic Boat Trip, part 2 - Departure

The sun had completed its rapid descent into the sea. Its reds, yellows and golds were mopped up by the clouds, leaving the sky a tired plum fading to indigo. My mom, sister, youngest brother and I were clustered in a tight little group on the wharf, waiting for Dad to show us the spot he had secured for us on the cargo hatch. Nathan had disappeared with some friends to help load last minute items onto the ship.

The entire pier was packed with the sweating, brown bodies of both passengers and well-wishers, there to see their loved ones off. Harsh, electric lights illuminated the scene, glittering off of the inky water and various clanging metal fastenings. The harbor glistened ominously in the dark. Mike, our SITAG director who had brought us here, prayed briefly with my dad over us.

Mike always gave me the impression of a charming Southern gentleman, suddenly transplanted from his plantation porch into the tropical jungles of the Equator. He had a quizzical smile that you couldn't help responding to, like a father in a Normal Rockwell painting. His wife, Sal, spoke with a soft Georgian lilt. I don't know if I ever heard her raise her voice above the level of mild agitation.

"God's speed, guys," Mike said, encompassing us all with his reassuring smile. "Lukim iu." (See you later)

Anna, Matthew and I, with some SITAG 'cousins' and an Islander friend.

Some unspoken signal rippled through the crowd as the passengers all suddenly started boarding the boat. People swung up to the top deck from the wharf, aided by hands above and below, or jumped over the narrow space between dock and boat into the lower cargo area. A woman next to me grabbed her niece's face with both hands, and rubbed her nose on each cheek in the island good-bye kiss. Little tremors of change electrified my arms and legs, causing my hands to shake slightly and my brain to schiz from one unconnected thought to the next.

I climbed with my mom and sister onto the boat, grabbing friendly hands for support as I transitioned from the solid dock onto the gently rocking deck. Hair thin treads of anxiety wound themselves surely around my heart. Looking over the side, I could see the water, glossy in the darkness, alien and sinister.

Deep shouts from the men sounded as the fastenings were loosened of their moorings. The ship eased away from the restricting wharf. One foot. A yard. There was suddenly a yell of alarm. A young man had been talking on the other side of the boat and hadn't realized that it was departing. He raced to the wharf side, stood on the railing for a brief, breathless moment, and launched himself at the concrete pilings. He barely made it.

A second later, we were several yards away from the wharf and the engine kicked on reluctantly. I ran with Anna to the bow of the ship, claiming a spot against the railings. Behind us, the lights of Honiara spread cheerily up the hill. I savored my last look at the wonders of modern conveniences as we slowly chugged deeper into the harbor. The heavy, engine-oil smell of the wharf dissipated as a fresh ocean breeze claimed us. The air became cooler and lighter. The water, which from the dock had seemed ominous and angry, now embraced our little boat. We would spend the next three days cradled in its bosom, trusting it to treat us kindly and gently, helping us on our way.

As the last of Honiara's artificial lights faded behind me, I turned my face out towards the open sea and whatever adventure awaited me.

The Epic Boat Trip, pt 1 - Guadalcanal

The trip started simply enough, with the six of us standing on the packed wharf in Honiara, the Solomon Islands' capital city. Honiara is nestled on the Northern face of Guadalcanal Island, a throw-back from the GI's fight against the Japs in WWII. It consists of a cluster of concrete block buildings that line a dusty main road, sidewalks that are stained red from betel nut spit, and piles of the inevitable assorted garbage and rotting brush inherent to all third-world cities. People from villages all over the Solomons live there, in the sprawling slums that spread backwards through the hills. These grass and jungle covered hills are peppered with old fox holes, rusty bullet cartridges, and even the occasional grenade, pin still intact. Every other Saturday, you can hear explosions as the government explodes two weeks worth of still-active bombs, grenades, and other live munitions left over from the War.


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The group we served with, SITAG (short for Solomon Islands Translation Advisory Group), had a couple of houses strung out along the first big hill that rose against the harbor. I remember one day, Matthew and some other SITAG kids were playing down in the valley behind the houses. They had found a heavy, rusty orb in the soft soil beneath a cassava plant, and were playing a game of hot-potato with it, throwing it back and forth over increasingly wider distances. They were standing about five yards apart when my mom caught them. "MATTHEW!!!" she yelled in the panicked, sharp voice instinctive to mothers across the world. It is the voice that says, 'you are doing something potentially life threatening, and you'd better ... stop ... NOW!'

"What is that? Bring it to me!" They all trooped up to her, and relinquished their plaything. Turns out, it was a still-active grenade. I don't have to tell you about the lecture we all got over the dinner table that night. You can probably imagine it.

We came in to Honiara for group conferences, and to have a respite from the harshness of village living every six months or so. We would enjoy the modern comforts of electricity, bakery made bread, flushable toilets, and (wonder of all wonders!) television. SITAG formed our little family away from home. We were all aliens in a foreign land, and bonded together into a sort of extended family. The other parents were my aunts and uncles, and the kids my cousins.

My family had been in Honiara for a few months, and it was time to return to the village. Mom had spent the past weeks stocking up for supplies to last us over the next six months. We loaded cases of canned food, buckets of rice and flour, Christmas and birthday presents to cover everyone, enough hygiene products to cover a family of six for half a year, dish soap, laundry soap, school supplies ... all these went into the hold of the rusty old cargo ship, the Baruku.

The Baruku, recipient of our hope and faith for the next three days, was an old freighter put out to pasture by the Japanese, but regarded by the Solomon Islands government as having many good voyages yet in her. The term 'rust bucket' could have been coined specifically for her. The decks turned your feet and hands orange from the rust. The engine had an odd knocking rhythm, and had to be kept continually going in order to pump out the water that constantly gushed through the many gaps in the hold. If you stood at railing and looked over the side, you could see the stream of water shooting out from the pump into the ocean. It was as round as the opening of a fire hydrant, and ran full force, constantly.



The cargo hold was filled with everything from our stuff (which probably took up half of it), to supplies for the village trade stores, bags of dried fish, coconuts, chickens, bolts of cloth, and anything else the villagers wanted to transport to or from the outer islands. Passengers on the Baruku slept under a tarp on the raised roof of the hold. My dad went out to the wharf hours before the rest of us got there in order to secure a spot for us to sleep on that coveted, elevated place. If you didn't get a place on the cargo hold, you were relegated to sleeping at the bow of the ship, which had no cover and you could get rained on, or on the deck itself. This was not optimum, because on the deck you were a target for any wave that splashed over the side, and in danger of being assaulted by the slosh of refuse that sought the lowest point; salt water, vomit, pee, pig poop, and engine oil, to name a few. There was one trip that I spent curled up across two barrels, because the cargo hatch was full. But on this time, we were lucky.

My First Jungle Experience

Our first stop overseas was the volcanic island nation of Papua New Guinea. The plane bounced down on the cracked runway like a reluctant child called home for supper. I stared at the line of dense vegetation curiously. The pilot's voice came on the overhead speakers, "Please remain seated while we fumigate the cabin." My mom twitched in her seat, and I was turning to ask the question forming on my tongue when I was arrested by the sight of a stewardess at the head of the aisle. She was holding an aerosol can in each hand and walked quickly down the row, spraying a stream of noxious, choking mist over our heads. "Cover your mouth!" my dad called, panicky, leaning across my siblings and yanking Matthew's t-shirt up over his face.

When the cabin door finally opened, we spilled gratefully out onto the tarmac, stumbling over our rolling suitcases and carry-on bags. The fumes cleared from my watering eyes and burning throat as I sucked in my first taste of tropical air.

I felt that if I bared my teeth and bit down, I could take a bite out of that air. I felt that if I had a piece of bread and knife, I could spread it like butter. I was sure that if I filled a balloon with that jungle air, the balloon would sink to the ground instead of floating. That was how thick the jungle air was. It was heavy with tastes and smells I couldn't identify - green, growing, rotting, pungent things, whose scent clung to the hairs on the insides of my nostrils and dripped from my fingers. The tropical air embraced me in a warm, moist cocoon of promise. I followed my family as we pushed our way through the thickness to the waiting terminal ahead.

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Days later, we had passed through customs, met up with the rest of our fledgling missionary group, and boarded a truck that would take us up to Jungle Camp. There, we would receive a crash course on 'how to survive bush life', including making mats, fishing, sewing up flesh wounds, and fraternizing with the natives.

Nathan and I, at Jungle Camp.

The truck that took us to our new destiny must have been left over from WWII, abandoned by the GI's when the Allies won the war. We sat on wooden benches along the back, under a canopy tarp that was pulled up to let in the breeze and scenery. I sat between my father and older brother Nathan, watching in wonder as the new world flashed past me. Clap board and cinder block houses quickly faded as the coconut and banyan trees rose on either side of us and met over our heads. Little brown children ran from huts the size of my garage back home, waving their hands and smiling and shouting at us. I waved and smiled back.

I turned to look at my dad. He was sitting upwind from me, with his hand grasping the metal support post and his back turned towards me. I could see his profile as he was gazing out at the passing bush, and saw an inner something being set free. The part of himself that had been repressed by parents, teachers, and then society his whole life suddenly flashed out into freedom, and birthed a new expression in this primitive, unfettered land. I felt the elation radiating from his triumphant back, and together we let our free spirits soar on the laden wind.

Bright oranges, yellows and pinks flashed by - fruits and flowers that grew in a glorious riot along the roadside. The road steadily grew steeper, as we climbed the mountain to our hill-top camp. The truck bounced along, heedless of the crater-sized ruts in the dirt road. I braced my feet against the bed and rode each jolt like you would a bucking horse, or skiing moguls. Then, the sky suddenly became dark.

The sun is the only thing that hurries in the tropics. It slips quickly below the horizon at dusk, with a brief and painfully brilliant show, splashing color on the clouds and ocean in its haste to descend. It rises again each morning with equal haste, impatient to start its long, intense trek across the sky.

We foreigners were taken by surprise at the quickness with which it set. We suddenly found ourselves hurtling through a dense, alien blackness. The open sides of the truck offered no shelter and little separation from the bush. The jolts grew more precarious and the truck began to sway as it took tight curves up the side of the mountain. Thankfully, we couldn't see the steep drop down in the dark. I didn't think to be scared, because my father's strong back was in front of me. I leaned my cheek against it and watched the glistening darkness rush past.

It began to rain. Fat drops came like an army of invading paratroopers, rolling off the tarp overhead and blowing in through the open sides. In that moment, I heard a high-pitched, unearthly cry. It rose out of the darkness as if birthed from some dark, hidden thing lurking there. The sound sent an arrow of fear into my heart, which quickly spread into a sick panic. My mother reached over to pat my kneed. "It's OK, Danica," she said, low and soothing. "She's just scared. But you're alright." I suddenly realized that the sound had come from an adult woman, one of the mothers, pushed beyond rational thought and reacting with animal-like desperation.

I know that my parents were praying for me then, because the fear left. They sat on either side of us, my dad in front and my mom in back, with the four of us kids sandwiched between them. We were safe in their love and faith.

The Very Best Place to Start

My first sight of my island was from the bow of the Baruku, an old rust bucket freighter that had been abandoned as scrap by Japanese fishermen, then resurrected by the Solomon Islands government to ferry faithful citizens to and from the outer islands. I stood there, not worrying, as I'm sure my mother and father were, about the constant discharge of water from the ship's bowels as the pumps worked overtime to keep equilibrium with the seawater seeping in. Nor was I concerned by the people pushing around me, chattering in a strange language of k's and gutturals.

No, my first thought was: "Is that it?" Floating on the horizon, barely distinguishable from the low lying clouds was what looked like a long, hazy hot dog. It grew hair, as the Baruku faithfully plodded over the waves, and then more islands began popping up on either side of it, like peas on my dinner plate.

Even though I didn't know the language, I began to sense a shift in my traveling companions' moods. The air began to vibrate with the anticipation of reunion and homecoming. I heard my mother call (the only English voice in the mix; very discernible) and I ran to her, my bare feet slap-slapping on the rusted metal deck, down a ladder and then reporting in front of her. My mother assembled her children to her, like a mommy duck hiding her babies under her wings as the rain approaches. She didn't know what was coming, but instinct told her to hold us close.

The ship moved through the passage in the reef like an old person with nothing but time. Now we could see each tree individually, and huts crowding up to the beach, and dark figures forming groups on the stretch of white sand. Dissipating. Reforming. Shorter figures ("Children!" I thought, excitedly) darted hectically in the crowd.

The villagers had already dispatched canoes out to meet us, and my father loaded the six of us into one, with a few of our bags. I set mine, which held my prized and priceless possession (my blanket) on the seat next to me, out of the puddle of water at our feet. Compared to the giant slowness of the great freighter, the canoe felt like a mosquito, whizzing along with its propeller in the water.

Suddenly we were there, at the beach, and the swarm of Islanders thronged around us. My would-be friends and playmates grabbed our belongings and took off into the village with them; in under a minute we had been stripped of all our worldly possessions. Fear quickly followed outrage then, as I stepped with my parents out of the canoe and into the unknown.