The Three Sisters of the
Solomons
So. Here we are in Malaupaina Lagoon, in the Three Sisters
Island Group, 10 miles east of Kira Kira, San Cristobal, in the Solomon Islands. The
voyage is behind us. The pressure is off. We have arrived.
Except Walter is not here.
 We
unpack the big Avon inflatable and mount the
35hp motor on it. We fire up the outboard
and zoom around the lagoon. It is one mile
in diameter, just like Walter said, and about
40 feet deep in the middle.
The entrance is narrow and just deep enough for the Moira
to enter at half tide or more. Some nice little reefs adjoin the pass and the corals
look alive and rich.
A rickety wood
dock juts out into the lagoon on the north
coast. We tie up the Avon and go ashore.
A shed nestled
into the dark green edge of the rain forest
turns out to be Walter's workshop. His diving
gear is strewn around casually. We continue
up a little path through the rain forest and
find three well built tree houses in the huge
branches of some Banyan trees on the shore
of the lagoon.
The island is
magnificent, and there are no people. Walter
and company must have gone to Honiara to get
supplies or something. Anyway, Freddy and
I are alone on this lovely little tropical
island with absolutely nothing to do.
In the afternoon, we walk through the coconut plantation to
the eastern shore of the island. Just looking around. We take a picnic lunch and sunbathe
nude on a little sand beach with the open ocean swells lazily booming onto Malaupaina's
windward fringing reef.
I close my eyes, soak up the sunshine, my future an empty
horizon. In a way, I feel really comfortable with that. My old life is finished, gone. The
voyage here was a trial by water, a task to accomplish. And for the first time
since....since I was a child, I have no obligations, no ties, no projects, no
expectations.
A coconut falls from a 100 foot high tree in the rowed
plantation. It makes a very convincing "Thud." I open my eyes a little to look
up at the coconuts in the top of the tree over where we are lying. They are off to one
side of us. No problem. I close my eyes and as I drift off to sleep, the plantation says
"Thud" again.
Walter
The birds are singing in the trees ashore. It is a
glorious, magnificent, superlative dawn. From the companionway hatch, I look out over
Malaupaina's quiet lagoon at the rows of tall coconut trees guarding its southern end. To
starboard the rain forest yawns green and lush and golden in the dawn sun.
I am just putting the kettle on when I hear the low,
powerful thrumming of big propellers. I look out the porthole and there she is, big, fat
and ugly as Hell the El Torito. Walter designed her himself, along the lines of a pumpkin
seed. A very big pumpkin seed, 65 feet long and 35 feet wide. He built her back in 1970 as
his personal research vessel. She isn't fast, she isn't beautiful, but she is as strong
and stable a sea boat as has ever been welded together.
I call Freddy and go on deck, grinning and waving. I can
see Walter at the helm in the wheelhouse. His new wife Janice and his friends and his
children are all out on the broad foredeck waving back. I'm not a bit surprised by the
tears in my eyes.
As Walter ties up to the dock, Freddy and I come alongside
in the Avon and climb aboard into the arms of our dearest friends in the world.
Dr. Walter A Starck II evolved from a different branch of
the ape family than the rest of us humans. Maybe a spider monkey branch. In any case he
bears only a superficial resemblance to a tall, very thin, odd looking human being. He's
grown a somewhat scraggly beard on his narrow, Lincolnesque face. He has windblown hair,
big hands and feet. Walter is not good looking, but his eyes are alive with the mischief
of the universe. He moves with the grace of a cat; a blur of constant motion. One can not
focus on the physical Walter. Something about him grabs the psyche of the normal people of
this planet. We are seized and held by his spell.
I might add that he is twice as nimble, twice as strong,
twice as intelligent as anyone I've ever met.
For most of the day and into the night Walter and I talk in
the air conditioned lounge of the El Torito. I have no idea what the other people are
doing. When I'm around Walter there simply are no other people. And I can't recall,
afterwards, what we talk about all that time. I can only remember talking earnestly about
a wide range of things, from coral reefs to dolphins to the mysteries of the mind, to
practicalities of living on a tropical island 3 miles by 1.5 miles in size, to the
political situation here in the Solomons. I do remember that last part.
While he was in Honiara, there was a big hoohah about the
Solomons upcoming independence from Mother England. The release from colonial paternalism
has engendered a backlash effect. Over the years, Mother England kept a lid on many of the
Solomon Islander's natural inclinations. With independence, they would like to resume
their normal behavior patterns. Hopefully, this does not include such fun and games as
head-hunting and cooking bushmen for dinner.
 It
turns out the Melanesians are, like many small
town people, very prejudiced. The hue of one's
skin is of maximum social significance between
them. Thus, a man from New Georgia who has
a blacker skin than a man from Guadalcanal
is inferior. And vice-a-versa.
People who live
along the coast traditionally feel those who
live inland are "bush people" and
in the old days bush people were used as slaves
and dinners and sometimes they got dropped,
alive, into holes to help hold up the main
house supports. Their spirits are still holding
up some of the houses here.
While these are
long standing, and thus acceptable, social
problems, there are even less acceptable hominids
in the islands these days. With independence,
the Melanesians hope to be rid of these pesky
people. In particular, England, during a period
of crisis in the Gilbert Islands, moved a
colony of Micronesians to one of the Solomon
Islands. They would have to go. And the Chinese
- who own the stores - must never be citizens
of the new Solomons. While the soon to be
Solomon Government recognizes the need to
have Europeans around they should be allowed
to stay for only limited periods. A couple
of months for casual visitors, maybe two years,
at the most, for contract workers. And Europeans
must, like the Chinese, never be citizens
of the new Solomons.
Their new constitution has a clause in it which says only
people with all four grandparents born in the Solomon Islands can be true citizens of the
new country. Everybody else will be second class citizens or temporary residents at the
discretion of the immigration officials. Only Solomon Island Citizens (first class) can
own property. The property now owned by Europeans (white people) or Chinese or anyone else
(including anyone of mixed blood) will become property of the State and leased to the
individuals. The government will revise the rental fee annually on the basis of what is
happening on the property.
Walter was in the final stages of buying Malaupaina when
the government announced all this. England is flabbergasted and protesting stuffily about
the bigotry clause in the constitution. She might not give the Solomons the promised 40
million pounds sterling in aid unless the Solomon officials modify the offensive clause.
At least, Mother England suggests, one might allow someone born in the Solomons with just
one parent born in the Solomons to be a true citizen. The Solomon Islanders are thinking
of a compromise, something like a person, born in the Solomons who has one parent born
here, providing both the parent's parents were born in the Solomons.
In any case, Walter does not have any Solomon Island
ancestors at all and is not especially keen about being a second class citizen nor is he
wild about leasing Malaupaina from the government. He has several reasons for his caution.
First of all, the government will set the rental fee later and alter it at whim. Not very
good. Second, one of the Fisheries people in Honiara, an Englishman named Dick Clark, is
unable to imagine why anyone would want to be off by themselves on a little island
investigating fish and coral reefs.
"Surely
this Starck fellow is up to something out
there," Mr. Clark is fond of saying at
the Honiara Club. He also can't comprehend
how anyone can do research and support a large
research vessel unless the work is being done
for the Government. Since Walt and I are independent
scientists with a small private foundation
which does nothing at all to support us, Mr.
Clark concluded Walter must be a CIA agent.
A spy.
Malaupaina is,
according to Mr. Clark's profound logic, a
CIA facility. Clark feels his deduction is
proof enough and so does not mind telling
other government people he has conclusively
proved, to his own satisfaction, that Walter
(and everyone else who visits with him) is
CIA. Walter and I, two of the world's most
ardent nonjoiners, have a good laugh about
this. But Walter thinks it is typical of the
problems which will follow independence, and
potentially not humorous at all.
Another problem is the attitude of the Solomon Island
Government officials about research or any activity in their area. There has to be a clear
cut benefit to the Government (usually this means cash) from any "outside" business. They are paranoid someone might come to their islands and reap some reward from
their visit without the government getting a cut of the action.
For example,
should a research student come here and investigate
something (i.e. sex habits of clown fish)
and then go home and get a doctoral degree
with a dissertation based on their research
here, this would be unfair - a con game. The
student would get a university degree based
on information stolen from these islands.
Therefore, the stolen information would provide
the student plenty of money over the years.
And what would the islands get out of it?
It was their own (undiscovered) information
to begin with. The student will benefit, so
why shouldn't the Solomon Island Government?
Sure, they would have a copy of the published
papers and could read all about sex habits
of clown fish, but what use is that to anyone?
Who cares about the sex habits of clown fish?
The government frowns on research unless conducted within
the context of island development by people who are paid by aid programs (never by the
island government). Researchers must be U.N., government workers or consultants. They can
ignore this research, Walter points out, because the aid programs agree not to release any
information which the government does not approve of.
For all these reasons, Walter has decided to leave
Malaupaina at the end of next year and go to Australia.
So. There it is.
The long range plans which I didn't have won't
develop. No dolphin research. No proposals
or projects.
When I arrived last week I was comfortable with the idea of
having no firm plans....Well, I still am. In fact, I'm happy not to have anything to do
for a year.
Maybe Freddy
and I will sail around the Solomons to have
a look about. Just be tourists for a few months.
Why not? The only thing bothering me is the
strange drive that made me rush here in the
first place. The odd Moirae events, pushing
me along from one coincidence to another.
Was it all for nothing? I feel like I've been
chasing something, tracking something, only
to rush out into a clearing and find the tracks
end in thin air. I stand in the clearing and
turn around slowly looking for my quarry but
the clearing is empty. The trail gone.
Maybe there is something
about the clearing itself I
am missing?
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