Far and Away: Reporting from the Brink of Change

The four of us—a friend from high school, Jessica; her husband, Chuck; my boyfriend, John; and I—flew into Honiara and met with our trusty agent, Wilson Maelaua, who was to get us through every difficulty these remote islands could throw our way. I had chosen to start with the island of Makira because Chuck had introduced me to Roger James, who was coordinating Conservation International’s operation there. Makira supports more single-island endemic birds than any other island in the Solomons, and CI is working to protect its interior rainforests. Local landowners have established a plan for forest management under the guidance of CI and other nongovernmental organizations, which entails showing the villagers how the protection of the land serves their own interest as well as that of the world. Roger married a Makira bushwoman and has made a life more local than the locals’. “If you want total immersion,” he promised me, “I’ll give you total immersion.”

Soon after we landed in Makira, we set off for the highlands, accompanied by Roger, a posse of local guides, carriers for our baggage, and John Waihuru, the bigman (pidgin for “man of status”), who was the expedition leader. We meandered through the valley for some miles, then came to the first of sixteen river crossings. We walked against the current through water up to our waists while the carriers balanced our rather substantial suitcases on their heads. From there we began the climb upward through the rain forest. As we scrambled along a path invisible to the untrained eye, each of us was helped by our own guide: gentle, steady, and—amazingly—barefoot.

One thing you should know about the rainforest: it rains a lot there. We kept under mild skies for some time, but then the storms began—cascades, avalanches of water that drenched us within seconds. Our way grew muddy and slippery, and each of us clung to his or her personal guide. We seldom fell because we were in good hands, but we were always on the brink of falling, and the water beat into our faces, at one particularly inopportune moment washing out one of my contact lenses. We ached from the climbing and the slipping and the chaotic feeling that we didn’t know where we were or where we were going; from the river crossings when the current came up to our shoulders; and from the weight of our wet clothes. In the middle of the day, in the middle of the worst rain, John Waihuru announced, implausibly, that we were stopping for lunch. This seemed a ludicrous proposition, but as we watched, he and the other locals dragged sticks from the jungle, pulled down enormous fronds, and erected a shelter with a floor of banana leaves. Palms were quickly woven into plates, and within five minutes we were able to sit down on logs, dry off, eat, and recover from the morning’s climb.

We made it to a halfway house where we would spend the night: a lean-to of dry leaves that felt impossibly luxurious after our long day. Another day of trekking brought us, near nightfall, to Hauta. The villagers who had not been part of our trekking party, some twenty-five people, lined up to shake our hands. Aside from Roger, we were the first foreigners they had seen in more than two years.

Hauta was situated high in the mountains, with a commanding view, beside a fresh stream. The houses were made of leaves, and opposite the bigman’s hut, where we were to stay, was an almost equally large hut for the village pig. We went to the stream and washed off days of mud, then toured the garden plots where villagers grow taro, cassava, and sweet potatoes, the staples of local life. We had dinner in the shared kitchen hut by the light of the sunset and a fire that burned in a circle of stones. The villagers have metal blades on their knives, but aside from that, life in the bush is much as it must have been a thousand years ago with one exception: ramen noodles. These seem to have taken the Solomons by storm; for nearly a month, we had everything with ramen noodles: ferns with ramen noodles, cabbage with ramen noodles, taro root with ramen noodles, sweet potatoes with ramen noodles, green papaya with coconut and ramen noodles, even rice with ramen noodles. Having lived through the trip, I would sooner eat dirt than encounter another flavor packet. But that first night, I had not yet learned to deplore them, and though the food was not good at least it had the advantage of newness.