Driving Blind

Sheesh!  S’been a wild and crazy week; work, drink coffee, eat, work, drink coffee, little bit of sleep, drink coffee, work, drink coffee, work, eat, work, little bit of sleep … am completely knackered but have that wonderful sense of happiness and fulfilment that being in the Islands gives you.

Have also got some fun little observations for you over the next few days, but for now, until I get some shut-eye, this will have to do.

Given how much of my everyday schedule involves wistful sighs as I reminisce about the things I miss most from my years in the Pacific, it always comes as a surprise when I arrive back on-island and am reminded of something which is so typically Melanesian, and which I always marvelled at before, but which has completely slipped from my awareness until I see it again.

Case in point was what struck me after striding purposefully out of the arrivals hall on Monday, past all the confused, first-timers staring wild-eyed and paralysed with fear at the menacing-looking savages which they imagine are and drooling over their succulent hambones .  I smugly head straight for the taxi stand, and even just the 20 metre walk through the oppressive heat has me dripping by the time I collapse into the front seat, to the welcome, air conditioned darkness … hang-on, darkness?

As a taxi passenger in the Solomons, one doesn’t have to travel much further than a kilometre or so before one’s neck starts to develop a permanent, aching stoop.  This is a result of the DIY window tinting that adorns every taxi here, and which almost completely blacks-out the windscreen, apart from a narrow, horizontal strip across the lower 1/3 – the cause of my acquired, tropical upper spinal kyphosis.

Now I can appreciate that a taxi driver’s complete privacy is conducive to receiving blow-jobs in the front seat during quiet moments at the taxi stand, but surely being able to see out the window is somewhat of an occupational requirement, and a greater priority for the sustainable economic development of the taxi driver and his family?

It’s good to be back!

Admittedly Solomon Islands is not the only country I’ve visited where the transport workers aren’t as alert as they should be.  Pic:  http://tomstock.photoshelter.com

Coming Home

Tomorrow I’m off to the Solomon Islands; first time back in over five years, and although the homesickness has eased a bit since, sobbing with grief and anguish, I wrote this all those years ago while I sat uselessly at my desk with absolutely nothing to do inside Saving the World HQ, I find myself very, very excited to be returning to good ol’ Honky Town.

Ah yes, Honiara.  Where the smelly crowds jostle you along the crumbling pavements towards filthy, rat-infested, sparsely stocked supermarkets, and where over-crowded, clapped-out minivans which serve as buses pull-up and disgorge their hopelessly poor passengers beside to fat-and-fed expats lining-up outside the best (although absolutely over-priced and atrocious) café in town for their third coffee and bacon sandwich of the day.

I can’t wait to be amongst it all again … to listen to the conversations, swelter in the heart and the dust, and to wander beneath the shady, swaying branches of Hibiscus Avenue to escape the midday sun.

Why wouldn't you wanna be there?  Pic: Hagas