Su'u: part tu'u

The second part of our adventures at Su'u at Easter weekend (which now, admittedly, was a long time ago) will take a different angle than our first. You see, there were alot of things we thought about and observed at SWIM, but then there was the actual experience of being thrown into the world outside Honiara, the capital of the Solomon Islands. So this is the story, how we felt it.

We woke up very early on Good Friday to go to the wharf and catch a ship. You must understand that it was only on the Tuesday that we actually firmly decided to go, so it was still all a bit new. We certainly didn't know quite what to expect. We did have breakfast, but it's hard to eat quantity at 4am! So anyway, we jumped on the ship (an ex NZ catamaran) and got to Su'u school at about 10:30am. When the whole group and all the materials for the tiling job had arrived, we had some "tea" with "biscuits". I learnt that biscuits are actually hard navy crackers, and to make them palatable, you've got to let them bathe in your tea so that you can bite and chew them. I think this is a fairly common Solomon Island breakfast. We were under the (wrong) impression that it was morning tea. Ahh, we had so much to learn...

Then the leader said, "well, we won't have time for lunch today; so we'll meet back at dinner." Well, this got me worried. I mean, what about afternoon tea? Let alone lunch! So we tried to eat as much 'biscuits" as we could and prepared ourselves for the long haul. That first day was quite hard. Not only was Su'u run down, nobody explained things like how to get water (it didn't come out of the tap - I don't think it occurred to them that this was new to us, that we come from a place where water always comes out of a tap), where to shower, go to the toilet, when food would be, how to shower, what to do. We thought there'd be tonnes of work and so I (Lauretta writing) felt bad for napping in the afternoon, but then, most people were...

Around "dinner time" we were starving, but we first had to do a play practice... but the women had already eaten. Well, in our western eyes it seemed so rude! Eventually we ate our dinner but there was no prayer, no sense of fellowship and being together while enjoying food. You just get your massive plate of rice and eat. It's part of Solomon Island culture that you eat at dinner and talk afterwards; but we realised our culture was different - dinner was a time when you talked and ate simultaneously!! So it opened our eyes to our culture and theirs.

After dinner eventually (everything takes a while), we went to the main dining hall, they had a bit of a Good Friday service with the students. Jair got an instant migraine because he was a bit dehydrated. The group we were with performed their easter play. More singing. More speeches. I started getting just a tad restless and tired! I mean, it was coming on 10:30 and the principal was still going full speed ahead! After it finished, we dragged our feet to bed and collapsed on our thin mattresses, looking up at the gigantic hole in the ceiling, hoping that the rats wouldn't come through in swarms, listening to the laughter and talking of the Solomon Islanders sharing the house with us.

Saturday didn't start much better. We were (rudely) awoken at 5:45am with the beating of the drum to tell the students to wake up. Well, after that there was a series of drums at different intervals. We didn't get out until 7ish and had our breakfast of "tea" and "biscuits". There weren't really any jobs for the women, apart from preparing food, but there were plenty of women. It all kind of came crashing in. We felt so out of place - everything was different. The eating patterns were different, the daily schedule was different - wake up early, nap in the afternoon, stay up late. Water and electricity were intermittent and you never quite knew when it would be on. Lunch and Dinner were always rice with noodles, taio (tuna) and slippery cabbage on top. Every meal was the same. Despite this being a country where fruit and vegies grow well, they didn't use that many fruit and vegies. So on Saturday morning, we were pretty lonely and culture shocked and sad and disappointed, missing our home and our people and our way of doing things. One lady said to me, "oh, you're probably finding this difficult, aren't you?" I couldn't have said it better.

I was almost hoping that a ship would be going back to the relative civilisation of Honiara!

But....

then we started talking to people, finding out about their lives, sharing ourselves with them, learning about their families, their experiences, their difficulties, appreciating their efforts. We spent more time with people, relaxing and working and we started appreciating them for who they are and their culture for what it is.

On Saturday morning, Jair was hard at work with the tiling and I went with a bunch of other youth to buy some chickens for the Saturday Feast that they do at Easter.

The chicken train...

So we went "wokabaot" to a village nearby. They instructed me that I was walking too fast; that I had to do the Solomon walk, slow, relaxed, gentle strolling. The scenery was so beautiful, walking close to the sea, through the jungle.

Five chickens soberly waiting in line to attain the same fate as the one at the back

In the afternoon I watched and talked to the women as they prepared the food in a motu. A motu is kind of like a hangi except that it's above ground. They light a fire and then let it die out a bit (I think) and then put rocks on it, then layers of banana leaf, then all the food, often wrapped in banana leaf, then they put another layer of banana leaf on top with bits of wood to hold it down. And it just cooks. In the end, when we ate it at the feast, it tasted great (although it can be a bit dry). The tables were laid with these dark red leaves. It was really quite festive.

Saturday night feast

Sunday we had two church services. It really poured down with rain while we were in there. We walked to the river on Sunday but it was too dirty to swim in because of the rain. Monday we played sports. Jair joined the boys playing soccor and I joined the girls playing netball. Many Solomon Islanders are short, so I had a bit of an advantage with my height.

Even netball is different here

Even the netball is different. No concrete court. We played on grass, with etchings of dirt to mark the boundaries! Before we went to Su'u everyone told us that the river was so nice to swim in, but every day so far it had rained so it was dirty. Well, on Monday, after netball, we went down and swum in the river. It was beautiful! Clean, fast flowing but still shallow. You swim against the current and it's like going on a breast stroke treadmill! In the late afternoon I went for another swim (and everyone said I was so strong, to be able to go for two swims a day... I still don't know what they meant...). The word "swim" in pijin usually means washing yourself (I wonder what people think we do at SWIM?!?), so I had two baths that day. I must say, there's nothing better than lathering yourself up, washing your hair and then sitting on a rock, leaning back and letting the water run over you. So refreshing. We had a "Solomon walk" back home as the sun set on the sea behind us.

Tuesday morning we were up even earlier than Friday - 3am this time. It was dark when we got to the wharf and I reveled in the still, calm night sky. Other people slept on the way over, but to me, what's the point in getting up at 3am and not staying awake to see the sun come up. It was just exhilarating. This photo only captures a slice of the beautiful colours rolling through the sky. I think this photo nicely finishes off our adventures - in the end, even in the middle, we had a great time. We may have had a bumpy start but we adjusted and learnt to appreciate these beautiful people of God!

This was worth waking up early for...