Today I embarked on a walkabout on the logging track that leads away from Kia village. It was a great walk that took me up to one of the highest peaks around Kia. On the way back to the village I caught up with a pair of old ladies doddering along at an island pace, carrying kumera back from their garden. I walked alongside them and had a chat.
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| Logging: as environmentally friendly as Fonterra. |
They were great company and really quite funny even though most of their jokes were directed at me and the general weirdness of white people. But what really struck me (with grim delight) was how forceful they were in their assertion that the local chiefs and politicians were generally corrupt, self-interested slobs.
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| View of the Pacific from the top. |
They effectively reassured me that, although they may be rather suppressed, the complexities of traditional culture are still hanging about; wise elders are still alive and kicking. But this wisdom is of course, not to be found in chiefs’ meeting houses or provincial government departments or on conservation management boards; it is not resident in the institutions of high Solomon society; it is hauling bags of kumera along the road to the Kia village.
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