TUTUVATU

The Christmas decorations are everywhere. They dangle from the ceilings, plastered on walls, and glitter in display windows. In the middle of the Ala Moana Shopping Center is a huge Christmas tree, intricately decorated with miniature doves, bells, colored balls and ribbons, sleighs, and all the ornaments that mark the Christmas season. I stand a few feet away, admiring the towering tree and then took a deep breath, inhaling the scent of fresh Christmas tree. There are people everywhere. They snake in and out of the shops and eating places. Most are bargain seekers, looking for cheaper prices that come with the holiday season. It is November 28:   Black Friday. I never quite understood what Black Friday was all about, but heard that it is the first day of the shopping spree that marks the beginning of the Christmas holiday.             “More like shopping crazy,” I said to myself as I watched people rushed by trying to catch the bargains. It was aro

TO SCHOOL IN JOSEPH’S COAT For primary school, I went to St. Michael’s Catholic Primary School at Avuvu on the Weather Coast of Guadalcanal. Most of the teachers were either nuns, or relatives – uncles, aunties, kukua’s, etc. The other children and I would walk to school in the morning and back at the end of the day—about two miles for me and longer for children from villages further away. We carried our beho —cooked sweet potato, taro, or yam—for lunch in little kei (string bags), or wrapped in leaves. When it rained, we used banana leaves as umbrellas, or folded our clothes and wrap them in leaves and ran naked in the rain. At the end of the day on our way home we would play, climb trees, make spears and throw them at the moss that grew on trees. For grades five and six we boarded at school in order to prepare for the grade six exams. Boarding was difficult. Although the school was only about two miles from Haimatua, I was constant

There is a scar un derneath my left arm. It’s a testament to that fateful day, years ago, when I had a horse bite.           Yes, I had a horse bite. Not a love bite. Well, it’s a bit like a love bite, but from a horse.            It started innocently on a typical hot and humid Saturday afternoon when everything at our school grinds to a crawl. It was when most kids were either taking a nap, or hanging out in little huts, called “camps,” that lined the banks of the Tenaru River. It was a time to relax.             The school was St. Josephs, Tenaru, located a few miles east of Honiara, the Solomon Islands capital. I can’t remember the year, but I must have been in ether Form 3 or 4. So, I was about 14 or 15 years old.              And despite my small stature, I was already trying to establish a reputation, among my peers, as a budding rascal. Perhaps, nobody else saw me in that macho image. It was all in my screwed-up little head. I thought I was the dude t

I still remember my first pair of jeans. How could I forget? It was, for me, a source of pride and embarrassment all wrapped in one piece of garment. It is hard to believe that a simple pair of jeans could unwrap so much emotion that I still remember it vividly, even years later.          For kids these days a pair of jeans is no big deal. Kids grow up with jeans.          I didn’t have my first pair of jeans until I was in high school. Before that I wore lavalava and shorts, mostly hand-me-downs, from I don’t know who. I never really cared who donated them. I was happy whenever I got a pair of shorts.          When I was in high school at St. Josephs, Tenaru, I was determined to get myself a pair of jeans because most of the other kids owned one, or a few. So, I saved for it. Whenever relatives and wantoks gave me money, I would put some aside. It was my project: the jeans project. I eventually had enough money. And when the opportunity to go shopping came up, I grabbed it

I swear it wasn’t my fault. But, it didn’t matter. Everybody was convinced it was my fault. I was the one who ran into the barbed wire fence.              And now, I stood before my mother, crying at the top of my lungs, blood dripping from a gash across my chest and down my naked round tummy, settling in little pools on the folds of the lavalava, held up in knots just below my belly button.            It was itchy and painful. I was about 8 or 9 years old, and a bit of a rascal, always getting into trouble.            “Aaahhhhhh nau matahu,” I cried out loud as the coconut frond mid-rib broom landed on my backside in rhythm with my mother’s yells.             “Hia sinia, taiha sa dona horo kacho. Koe vanigho horo kacho mo ngalugalu o volau babai.” Nearly every word accompanied a swing of the broom, like the synchronized pattern of a punishment dance.             But, I wasn’t crying because of the wound, or because of the punishment. No, that didn’t bother me. I was