Village Stay: the tropical beginning

Hi everyone - sorry about missing last week. That was a mixture of procrastination and forgetfulness but now I'm waiting for something so I'm going to finish my story of the village stay.

ahh. Canaan. The promised land. It certainly is a place of lovely memories for us. The photos testify to its beauty. In fact, next week I might put some more up because it was such a wonderful place to be. It was kind of like an island paradise. We stayed in this little guest house, a leaf house, which was right by the sea. The high tide lapped under the house.

Canaan is a very close knit village - the houses are all closely huddled together on neatly swept white sand. The house next to us was occupied by a small family about our age. The father was a carpenter and each day was busy making a wooden couch. They had a little son, Lawrensi as they called him, who literally spent the whole day in the water, playing, "surfing" with a foam board. They had to hide the paddle otherwise he would go in a canoe and row into the depths. He is only 4!!!

The wife's name was Judith and we got along really well. I would pop over to see what she was making in the kitchen. She happily took me to work with her in the garden. Everybody had an area of the village to keep clean and tidy around their house. So then, I took up my duties by helping her rake the debris that the sea washed up under neath our houses.

The other remarkable thing about our friendship is one stark similarity. Both of us are infertile. She was married for four years before she conceived a son and she's had another four years of unsuccessful trying. So this was a bonding connection between us. Solomon Islanders end to deal with infertility in a "don't worry, just pray, God will give you children" kind of way. (Then again, I think Western Christians have the same mentality). Then they go onto relate a story (as do Western Christian) about how their mother's sister's uncle's cousin's neice's friend hadn't managed to conceive a child for 14 years and then suddenly God answered the kids almost live in the water! their prayers and now they have more than they can manage.

But then, obviously with Judith, she was in the middle of this hardship, as I am. And for us we know that just because someone's father's brother's auntie's neighbour's wife managed to have a child after 20 years of nothing, does not mean that we will be so blessed. We live with the fact that today, as yesterday, and as probably tomorrow, we do not have a baby in our arms and no matter what you say, you can't possibly say that, "don't worry, God will give you a baby." You simply do not know that that is what God will do. How can we, I, let alone any onlooker, possibly presume to know how God will answer our prayer.

So Judith and I found plenty to talk about and had plenty of time to talk too. She would maybe be sitting under the house with me, cleaning her blackened pots with white sand, and we would talk. Or I would come over and visit. Or we would rest in the hammocks under the house. There was mutual encouragement. And I think she was comforted by a response to her sad, sorrowful situation that was not trite, and easily packaged in an over-used, but hardly true statement. Barrenness, indeed grief in some ways, doesn't seem to be something that Solomon Islanders discuss at length. Then again, neither do us Westerners. Laugh and the world our house by the sea laughs with you, as the poet says, but cry and you cry alone.

While we stayed in the guest house, we were officially hosted by a lady called "Asanet" and her family. So we were summoned or wandered over to her house for meals at around 8am (that's not because we slept in I assure you), 2 or 3 (whenever it was ready) and after evening devotions at 8ish. Solomon Islanders miss out on all those wonderful things like morning tea and afternoon tea ("Under certain circumstances there are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea" as Henry James begins his famous novel.) and supper. We kiwis tend to eat small amounts at regular and small intervals. But Solomon Islanders eat large meals at infrequent intervals but certainly only 2 or 3 times a day. Needless to say, in order not to faint but somehow make it through the day, I too acquired a Solomon belly. Much to my surprise, I did not lose a gram of weight, as you will remember I was afraid of doing.

It was kind of weird, but I think hospitality in this culture means that the guest (especially if he/she happens to be white) eats in the lounge with the host and the kids and rest of the family wolf down their food elsewhere. Whereas, generally in our culture, the whole family eats together and you talk and socialise over the meal. In a culture where people and talking are important, it is surprising that Solomon Islanders do not talk over their meal. Talking is what you do afterwards, but not during. You eat because you need to, but it's not a leisure activity as it is for us.

Our mealtimes with our host were rather lengthy because she would talk alot afterwards, but we appreciated the conversation (except that it was really really hot inside and I didn't know why we didn't eat outside). As much as possible we tried to help out with things like cooking and she wasn't adverse to me helping out in the kitchen, chopping up vegies etc. She was rather surprised that I knew what a grater was - much less how to use it! I told her I grate things all the time.

In Canaan they eat a lot of fish. It's a seaside village, a salt water community, and so they spend their days fishing, finding shells and then cooking and eating fish and other things that live in the sea. It's rather sad, but they seem to be fishing in a rather unsustainable manner. Fish are getting smaller and smaller. It was quite weird to eat tropical fish with beautiful coloured skins. In fact, getting a whole fish, either motu or fried, and eating it was a novel experience - but definitely a tasty one.

They have a tradition in this village that every Saturday afternoon the ladies all in their own houses make casava pudding. Casava is kind of like a potato thing which I think doesn't taste that nice, and pudding is the word they use for things that are baked. But they make casava pudding by grating the casava and then squeezing all the water out of it, and then making and boiling coconut milk and then mixing the coconut milk with the casava and then putting it on layers of banana leaves in a motu. It's rather quaint that on Saturday afternoon you wander around, as the ladies do themselves, to other peoples kitchens to see how far they are in the pudding making process. They motu it over night, go to devotions in the morning and then eat Casava pudding with freshly caught and cooked fish. I think that was one of the yummiest breakfasts ever. Casava pudding (when warm it's nice, when cold it's rather rubbery) and fried fish whole. I can see that Jesus was onto a good thing when he cooked fish for breakfast for the disciples after He rose again.

Canaan also has the lovely tradition that each Sunday afternoon they have a village meeting where everyone gathers around the "square" and the chief and whoever else stands up and talks, reinforces the rules, talks about upcoming events or just funny stories.

Also, as with most SSEC villages, they have a devotion service morning and evenings. For people who can't read the Bible for themselves, this is important to get spiritually fed on a regular basis. Not everyone goes every time, but we made the effort to go as much as possible. In fact, they asked us to take it quite a few times. the village square After the evening one, the youth would often get together and sing. So we would join them. I think they were quite surprised to find that a white lady could actually sing, even harmonise!

On the last night there, the kids (who we had spent alot of time playing with during the week) organised a farewell night where they all did dances for us. It was so funny. They really get into their dances so the children would do these cute dances, and then the youth would do some, all to the same funny track that played on the key board. It was a very happy night.

My thoughts have really been rambling on this blog. There's much else I could tell you. Every day in the late afternoon, all the guys play soccer. Jair joined them, and then taught them to play rugby. But, the stories have to end on this blog, even though the treasured memory lives on in our hearts. Hopefully one day we can go back there for another visit.

village stay: the middle second

Ok, so let's take a step back from our dramatic departure, to the middle part of our stay and the middle part of this story. We stayed in two different villages when we went to East Kwaio. We stayed for a week at each and today, I'll divulge into our time at the second village - a bush village by the "hamba" (what, like a Humber super snipe? No, a harbour...). Sifilo.

Sifilo was where we initially thought we would stay for the duration of our trip, but before we got to East Kwaio, our host had decided we'd stay at a different village first and then stay with her family in Sifilo. So we came to Sifilo after a fruitful week in Canaan (which you'll hear about in the first, or rather third, part of this story). We came, ready to try it out, but sad that we had left the promised land.

One experience I had on the first night neatly sums up the challenge I felt the whole time. I came into the Kastom kitchen outside (this house, which was quite flash by Solomon standards, had three kitchen areas - an inside kitchen with gas, a sink with running water, a "scullery" for storing and preparing food and then an outside kitchen leaf hut type of thing). I was all keen to learn as much about women's work as possible so I was in the kitchen as our host was cooking over the fire. She said, "I think this must be the first time you, being a white person, has seen a fire." This was the first of many such misinformed generalisations she made of white people, many of which were negative. Well, I explained that I didn't cook over a fire back at home, but we used a fire to heat the house and heat the water and that as a young girl I would have to chop the wood and light the fire. Anyway, she went out for a few minutes so I sat by the fire to stir the vegies. Then she came back with a packet of noodles and taio (can of tuna).

Ah, good old rice, noodles and taio. Jair and I can't figure out who brought this phenomenon to the Solomon Islands, but it has become something of a staple. The recipe is simple. Cook rice. Fry the taio in the oil, add noodles and spice packet. Stir. Mix cabbage or egg plant in the taio noodle mix if you have any. Serve noodles on top of rice. Bon Appetit. Or not...

So I asked her, why do you add noodles and taio to your cabbage? I never do that... She came over to me and said, "shame. It's because I feel shame about my food." Believe me, I prefer their local food, kumara cooked in coconut milk (hmmmm) to noodles, rice and taio. And I tried my absolute hardest to show her that what they normally eat was fine for me too, but she couldn't get over that shame.

It reminded me of many times as a young hostess in my early married life of feeling a similar sort of shame about what I was serving our guests. Maybe the muffins hadn't cooked properly, or the couscous was too dry. But in any case, often, I let my shame get in the way of really showing loving hospitality. In fact, often I didn't show any hospitality because I was too worried about what people would think. Our culture is very much a culture of perfection (as opposed to excellence... yes there is a significant difference between those two words) and so if my food wasn't perfect, I was ashamed of it and ashamed of me for cooking it.

But both cases, me with my shame and her with her shame, reminded me of a verse in 2 Corinthians where Paul tells us to take our eyes of our light and momentary troubles and focus them on Jesus and what He is doing in us through our troubles. To tell you the truth, his "light and momentary troubles" at the time were no less than facing a church that had disowned him. So if that counts for a difficulty as big as that, surely it counts for our shame with the little we have to offer. Fix your eyes on Jesus.

In the village I longed to tell Joy (our host) to fix her eyes on Jesus, even though she had this huge burden of having two white people over... But I wasn't in the right place in our relationship to do that yet. I pray that one day I'll have the opportunity to talk to her about it. For me, I had to consciously fix my eyes on Jesus and what He was teaching me in this time.

The rest of the trip went much the same. They didn't want us to do things, like go for a walk to a neighbouring village, or go bush whacking in the garden, or cook over the fire, or even do the dishes, either because they thought we were white so we were too weak and unable to do it, or because they felt shame, or because they considered us to be on holiday and so we shouldn't do anything. "Rest first time," became the hourly instruction and by a few days, we

Jair drinking from the first coconut he ever chopped by himself- were pretty sick of resting.

believe me, this is a feat

Maybe we were a bit pushy. I insisted that they let me go to the garden and I ambushed the vines and plants and small trees with the rest of them, wielding a trusty sharp bushknife. We walked as often as possible (even when to visit a waterfall), and took their local food to eat.

We went into the village stay hoping to be able to walk in their shoes, but I think our plan for our village stay was different to God's plan for our village stay. God taught us some other things, including:

-submitting to God's plan and trusting that He knows best

-humility. Sometimes when you are honoured, you realise how small you really are and how little you deserve that honour.

-that over the past decades, white people have come into the Solomon Islands and done things which probably weren't good and have resulted in the way Solomon Islanders view us. E.g. A white evangelist once came to this very

the waterfall we climbed - no safety features here! village 40 years ago (they still talk about him) but every day he and his entire film crew (because they filmed his little "crusade") would fly back to Honiara to sleep and then fly back again the next morning. Honiara is on a different island! No wonder they think their kinds of houses aren't fit for white people when this evangelist they remember with fondness wouldn't even sleep a night in their village.

-we stepped out of this rich, comfortable culture and immersed with this "less developed" culture and there were many things we wondered about (e.g. why do they kill birds and insects just for fun) and we would wish they wouldn't do those things. But it made us think, Jesus came from this amazing place - heaven - and came down to earth, which is well below the living standard of heaven, and he probably thought, why do these earthians hold so tightly to their material possessions etc etc. It gave us a small tiny glimpse of the amazing sacrifice Jesus made just by coming down to earth, let alone actually dying for us.

looking down the falling water -that we, white Protestants, have an addiction to work. We struggle to not work. Laziness is not a good thing, but I don't think our addiction to work is a good thing either. How often is it that we ignore people because we are in a rush, that rather talking to people, we opt for pushing paper around instead. I mean, it's not like pushing paper, or fixing a car, or building a house, or whatever your work is, isn't important. It is. But people are more important. What you invest into people has eternal value. You never read of someone coming up to Jesus and him turning around and saying, "sorry, I'm too busy working right now to help you. Just talk to Simon Peter; maybe he might be able to book you in some time." Yet how often do we treat people like that because we think we have to work work work all the time.

There were many many more things we learnt and many things that are just going to sit, mulling in our minds for a bit longer. I don't know if you'll "get" this when you read it. Sometimes you have to experience it. We're just thankful that we have been able to experience this.

village stay: the end first

It was only when I was sitting in the plane, explaining what I'd been doing to the curious and oblivious white lady beside me, with my seat belt firmly fitted in place, that I wondered, when in all that excitement, did I take off my jersey??

I have never felt quite so joyful as that moment when we heard the plane landed and the little boy cried out to me, "quick, follow me, watch out for the mud, be careful about the branches..." and I ran, laughing, bubbling over with joy.

So this is a backwards story. I think when analysing and telling the story of our village stay, I can only start at the end with the last twenty four hours. We learnt alot during our village stay - about Solomon culture, our culture, ourselves. We might not have learnt or experienced everything we wanted to learn. I think God had different plans about what He wanted to teach us. So anyway, I'm telling this story from the end to the beginning. You see, by the end of two weeks we were ready to go.

Ready to go, not because we were tired of roughing it, or because we were dying for our own food, or we didn't want to face another squat toilet. We were ready to go because in true Solomon Islands hospitality, they treated us like royalty and we had had enough holiday. Maybe that sounds bad. I've been tossing and toiling for the last ten minutes of how to explain the reason for our "readiness" and that's probably the most polite. We were overwhelmed with their hospitality, but we wanted to walk in their shoes, or in this case, jandals (well, they call them slippers). But as I said, God had other ideas about what He wanted us to learn.

So on Monday night, we listened eagerly to the radio at five to seven to find out the flight information for the next day - praying that it would be a morning flight not an afternoon flight. It was a morning flight - yay, we thought, praise the Lord! Tuesday morning came, we packed everything, gave out our gifts, left the house just after nine, got in the canoe to paddle over to the hospital and airfield office. We weighed our baggage (and had to get weighed ourselves too!!) and sat outside to wait.

Then a thunder storm came. It poured with rain, there was lightning and thunder that literally roared as it rolled through the heavens. It was terrifying, really. And all the while, it rained mice and elephants. Then we heard that the plane couldn't come because the weather was rather inclement (the plane was only going to be a dodgy little 8 seater...) but they said it might come back at 5pm. So our host decided that we would go to another friend's house to wait. They lived about a five minute walk from the airfield. So when it stopped raining (by this time about 12pm) we walked there.

There was a stream to cross - except by this time it had expanded into a raging torrent of muddy water. We waded through, skirts pulled up to our bottoms. Then we walked and scrambled up the muddy, slippery hill to their house were we waited. There were about five hours to go. We had lunch of rice and noodles and the rain kept coming. The thunder and lightning got worse. Sometimes it was so loud, it resonated in your ears. We were a bit fed up and disillusioned and disappointed. We just wanted to go home that day. I kept praying, please may the weather clear so that the plane can land. But the weather got worse - the visibility decreasing to only being able to see the next house.

The women came and said, oh well, it looks like the plane won't come. don't worry, you stay here, we'll walk to the office and find out what time it'll come tomorrow.

I kept praying and yet was very aware that I had to submit to God's plan, even if that meant bunking down for another night. Well, at about 4:15 the rain stopped and the clouds looked a little less foreboding, but it wasn't that much better. At ten to five, the women said, well, let's just go down to the airfield just in case. If it doesn't come by six, then just come back again. So we all left the house, scrambled back down the hill and walked to the edge of the stream. it was certainly raging and there was no way we could wade through with our bags. It was over waist deep on one of the women who tried to cross (they don't have bridges - it's usually ankle deep) and she was struggling to walk. then someone said, "I hear the tractor coming, taking passengers to the airfield."

So the guy whose house we had lunch at took a canoe, put our bags in it and then rowed up a few metres and then let the current and a few deft strokes with the paddle and landed safely on the other side. It looked so effortless but we realised he was incredibly skillful. then Jair got in this little canoe with him. It looked so freaky, but he too, got to the other side safely. Then I had to get in. I was sure it would tip (these local canoes feel so unstable) but he took me safely to the other side. Then Francis came over with our bed rolls and we were standing there on the shore, looking at our friends on the other side who were going to get a ride one by one as well, still thinking that the plane wouldn't come, that this adventure was all a bit futile and that we'd just be waiting around with the other hopeful passengers, when we heard a plane!

I cannot quite describe the joy I felt when I heard the plane. All of a sudden, a little boy grabbed the bags and said, "quick follow me." So we ran through this ankle deep muddy path, dodging low branches, him shouting all the way, "oh be careful, don't fall in, watch out for the branch, this way now", and me just laughing all the way, giggling, thanking God so much that the plane had come. I couldn't get rid of the gleeful smile on my face. It was exhilarating. I didn't care that my legs had mud all over them. I just ran through, puffing and laughing till we got through the clearing and there was a plane - a bigger one who had detoured from its journey to pick us up - passengers all ready to go. They grabbed our tickets, didn't even ask for our tickets and we jumped on and left.

The whole thing, from leaving the house to getting on the plane, was only 15 minutes - yet what a range of emotions! And then I was chatting to this white lady, realising that I could still speak English and I wondered, when, in all the excitement, did I take off my jersey??