Three Weeks Left

It’s as though endings are never meant to be a neat cut off. Due to the end of the contract being close to Christmas it means by nature it’s going to be a rushed and chaotic finish, many people are away on workshops and trainings, other will be heading off for holidays before or at the time I end. It would be nice to say that everyone who has been part of the experience will be there at the finish, but I suspect the final bash will be a mix of those stragglers who still haven't headed home and those that need to be on Taro for work reasons. It has that end of year feel to things right now; I can almost see the last two years roll out before me when I stop to think about it, it’s a mix of satisfaction at the scale of the experience and sadness at it finishing.    

Three weeks out I am still in the dark as to what I will do next year there has been talk about various things; a position we developed to support the Provincial Government has been sent out to many NGO’s and agencies, oddly one group has come back offering to support a senior planner and another a town planner, both of which were never requested and I guess it also shows how much these groups are really paying attention to the needs of the Provincial Government. We are still wondering if the position will get eventually get supported....we will see. Another agency has mentioned coming back for a few weeks work as a consultant in January and early February to help with some planning work in Choiseul, It would be as a consultant and it would look good on the CV, but still needs to be confirmed. Thirdly, there is masters degree option. This may be a good option as it would assist me in working overseas and I have developed quite an interest in strengthening community planning as a way to improve environmental management. 

So for the next three weeks until I fly away it’s going to be busy old time. I have a number of reports my volunteer agency wants me to complete and I have a few small jobs to finish as part of my assignment, including some reporting templates so that the technical Planning Unit can better monitor implementation of the Medium Term Development Plan. I’m at a stage where I know I need to get really organised and get things done, for some reason I’m not in that headspace yet and I needed to be at least a couple of weeks ago.

      

        

         

The Countdown

Opening a diary that I bought earlier in the year with an advertisement in it with the heading Hello or Goodbye, has some resonance with where I find myself at the moment. I’m in some sort of transition limbo asking myself will it be goodbye to the Solomon’s for ever or will I be back. I don’t currently have the answer either way and the meter is running. Today is the 6^th of November and I am due to fly from Choiseul (possibly my last flight out for a while, possibly ever) to Honiara on the 10^th of December.

Walking around in the bush last week in south Choiseul got me thinking that there is still so much that I could do here and want to do here. Rolling through my mind was a quote that David Suzuki the Canadian environmentalist refers to in a documentary about his life, the person he quotes once said the two most powerful words a person can say are “I’m staying”, meaning once you decide to stay in a place it means that you have committed to that community and the people in it.

There are Internet forums which where people discuss the issues faced by the Province (to the point of being pretty repetitive), but corresponding action by people involved in these discussions moving with any real urgency out get out to the Province and their hands dirty seems to be somewhat non-existent. Somewhat oddly there are a number of trained lawyers and doctors from Choiseul, none of which appear to have any interest in working in Choiseul, yet there is a dire need for both of these. It appears these people are working in Honiara or overseas where I guess they consider the grass is greener. It’s a situation that’s pretty similar to what kiwis know of with continual migration of skilled people from New Zealand to Australia and other places overseas, in Choiseul though it’s substantially worse.

I guess this is where I feel that I have something more to offer, I want to stay, to help out and do what I can and yet there is no clear option to make the that decision myself. Staying or at least having the opportunity to return to Choiseul and the Solomon’s is what I would like to be able to do, but with NGO’s and donors moving glacially slow to provide any clear support for a proposed position put to them to support the Provincial Government and also no obvious leads on other jobs; knowing that I will be finishing as a volunteer at the end of this year is about the only certainty I have right now.

                     

On the Home Straight

April came went and it was all a bit of a blur really. There were trips to Simbo Island in Western Province as well as Gorabara and Sepa, both in South Choiseul.

There also seems to be a bit of a pattern happening to my visits to villages in Choiseul  I have started to notice. It’s based around a three day cycle and goes like this; Day 1 travel early from Taro, arrive and spend time with the people that are hosting you in village and then go fishing.  Day 2 is usually a full day of the activity that you actually came down for either a workshop/training event or walkabout in the bush and then in the evening its fishing some more. Day 3 is either finishing up with a workshop/training or just chatting with people who want your input on something, then it’s time to head back; more often  than not it’s with a whole lot of extra people as well as bundled up sago palm, cassava, taro or sweet potato, green coconuts for drinking and maybe the odd chicken. Once we have dropped off all the passengers with their various cargoes, I like to do a nice detour out into the ocean chasing schools of fish by following were the seabirds are going.

Cruising up and down Choiseul in an open boat is a privilege that few ex-pats have and I still even now just in awe of how beautiful this place is. There is nothing like coming up from the villages from along the coast of South or North Choiseul and approaching Taro as the sun is setting over the Shortland Islands and Bougainville, those sunsets are well and truly etched into my brain.      

Getting out into the communities and away from Taro (often referred to as Taro Station) is to experience the real Choiseul. The issues that come up in communities are generally universal for most communities around Choiseul; its sanitation, water supply issues, sea level rise, population growth, finding sustainable opportunities for using natural resources, infrastructure etc etc, but there is always a local twist on how these issues are related or prioritised.

After what feels like so long here you start to see very clear patterns in all things, especially with the work that I have been doing which is essentially trying to help out organisations strengthen their internal structure. You start to see why some organisations are clearly failing, while other NGO’s who are doing similar work are succeeding. You start to see where the aid industry and donors are creating dependency and where they are creating innovation. As I approach the end of my tenure here I feel that it’s important to communicate what I have witnessed in the hope that someone or some organisation will use it to improve things for the better of the people here. I think it’s reasonable enough to say that there are issues around people not directly confronting organisations and individuals head on that need to be held accountable if change is too occur within a short timeframe (I would argue that with Climate Change, time is short) . As time goes on and I come nearer to the end of my contract I feel it’s more and more appropriate to communicate these things. There is a quote from a book that covers stories of three UN volunteers working through various countries in the 90s that I keep coming back from the book Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Measures;

“Who has the authority to resolve the dilemma, to place it on the moral spectrum? Who makes the conscious decision to bear witness, to tell the story? We need a volunteer”

Although this comment was in relation to UN volunteers in vastly more dangerous situations than I find myself in here, I think the principle is the same for any volunteer.

I often wonder that with all the big statements from organisations and governments about helping those who need help such as the Solomon Islands, I think about what is really being committed to this province and realise that in many ways I’m it as far as help on the ground is concerned, when I make this connection, I’m blown away. Millions get pumped into supporting the Solomon’s and most goes through government agencies or NGO’s, a great deal of resources probably never make it out of Honiara, actual people helping out on the ground from other countries, basically me, priceless.