TUTUVATU

When I woke up the sun had climbed high enough to peek over Hairasa Point to the east. Its rays squeeze through the holes on the thatched wall and dance on my sleepy face.   I know I have to hurry if I was to avoid the punishment gang. That is what they call those who cut the grass around the school compound after school because they had broken the school rules. Being on time is one of those rules that Mr. Totosasaha enforces diligently. He is the school principal and had taught at Puratangisia Community High School long before I was born. He seems to have been trapped in the era when Solomon Islands was still a British colony. He is in his fifties or maybe sixties, has a long unkempt beard attached to a wrinkling face, and an infectious  smile that reveals his betel nut-stained teeth. His hair and beard look like they’ve never seen the tooth of a comb. He wears shorts, shirt and a pair of slippers that have seen better days. I often wonder how he became the principal.  My Kaka and Nan

  The sound of tavuli echoes in the distance accompanied by fearsome shouting. It is still so far away that by the time it reaches my village it fades into the reverberating cries of a distant war.   Baleo is quiet for a village preparing to host a big kabu. Smoke filters through the thatched roof of several huts, drying the dew left from the previous night and sending geckos clambering out from their hiding places between the woven sago palm leaves. Inside the huts women are busy preparing food, undeterred by the suffocating smoke and the heat of the fire.  My Nana is in our kitchen, the little hut next to our sleeping house. She is cooking cabbage, kumara and uvi by placing red hot stones in the popo with the food. She then covers the popo with banana leaves, and ties a rope around it to hold the leaves together. I was helping her until I heard the tavuli and shouting.             My family had lived in Baleo ever since I was a kid, although my Nana tells me that our ancestors were o