SOLOMON TIME

An English schoolteacher describes his year in the Solomon Islands on a development project.

After ten years of teaching French and German to unmotivated students in the West Country, Randall was handed an adventure. A man known as “the Commander” had died; the executors of his estate were looking for someone to travel to his former coconut and cocoa plantation on the Solomon Islands. It had fallen into disrepair, and Randall was hired to come up with a project that would provide income for the villagers to use on community improvements. When he arrives on Mendali, a fishing village reachable only by canoe, he is immediately exposed to “Solomon time . . . a fluid that cannot be contained, that has no master, that sloshes backward and forward and even from side to side . . . schedules and timetables become irrelevancies.” What follows is that welcome rarity, a travelogue that does not mock or belittle the locals. Randall is painfully aware that his “mission” is paternalistic and that the Commander was a remnant of the Colonial past. No matter: he sets about learning how to speak Pijin (“Goodfella mornen long yu. Yu oraet?” means “Good morning. Are you well?”), how to paddle a canoe (with disastrous results), and how to fit into his new home. For the development project, Randall and the villagers decide to raise chickens. Several amusing episodes later, the residents open a fast-food stand in the local market and eventually an outlet in town (“Chicken Willy’s—Nambawan Nice One”). The resulting funds allow repairs to the church and the installation of a new rainwater tank, among other things. Along the way, the talented Randall writes compellingly of the landscape and the culture, throwing in excerpts from Robinson Crusoe and Robert Louis Stevenson’s In the South Seas.

A wonderful story and a rare treat for the armchair traveler.