by Paul Turner
British High Commissioner to Solomon Islands
A psychologist friend once told me that a child’s first thousand days were the most important. It is in those thousand days that life’s foundations are laid.
I figure if a child has a thousand days, a diplomat in a new country has a hundred.
And so, as I approach my 100th day in Solomons, I take a moment here to reflect on what I have found in this beautiful corner of the South Pacific.
This will not be a piece on the good works the British Government is doing in Solomons. You readers are inundated with such articles from all corners, I know. Rather, this is a personal piece of my impressions of your country.
Written perhaps in naivety, but nonetheless in good heart, this is my sense of Solomons a hundred days in: the positives, the puzzling, the problems.
I could perhaps have added ‘the politics’ to that list of Ps, especially given recent events. But, as you’ll see later, the trials and tribulations of politics in Solomons is not much different to other countries, believe me!
I start with a short storyline. One cold morning in January 2024, I was making my way up a misty Mount Elgon in eastern Uganda.
At 4,300 metres, Mount Elgon is half of Everest – almost twice the height of Mount Popomanaseu.
Up pinged a message on my phone (navigating a dodgy signal) from a certain Brian Jones in Suva (you may remember him from a few years back as British High Commissioner).
With a brevity and clarity, the message illuminated my screen: “You’ve got the job in Honiara – congrats!”.
I was to be British High Commissioner to the Solomon Islands. In slight shock, I paused alone for a few moments on the mountainside, wondering what I had got myself into.
I continued through the lobelia and fern forests, ascending one of Africa’s highest points whilst pondering my next career-move to one of the world’s lowest-lying island states. I was South Pacific bound…
Fast-forward a year, I arrived in Honiara in February this year, unaware of what was about to confront me.
I had had months of briefings in London and Canberra and was now in Solomon Islands. At last.
The Pacific Islands are an exotic far-away place in the British and European imagination: the intertwining of Melanesian, Polynesian, Micronesian; far-flung histories lost deep in the sands and sea-beds.
Images come straight from a child’s storybook: remote palmed beaches; women dancing in grass-skirts; ghost-like shipwrecks. And since arriving I have seen them all (-including the grass-skirts, courtesy of Dreamcast Theatre…)
But beyond the reassuring cliches, there are always shards of darkness. Before arriving, I read about ‘The Tensions’. In the UK, we had a similar term for the conflict between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland which lasted decades: ‘The Troubles’.
However, reflecting on my time here so far, I find much of the reporting on ‘The Tensions’ and inter-ethnic conflict somewhat exaggerated. That’s not trivialise what happened, not at all, but it is to put it in perspective.
Having worked in Northern Ireland, the Balkans, Afghanistan and in large parts of Africa, I feel I can offer that perspective.
In some of these regions of the world, there are deep-rooted conflicts going back centuries, walls of blood that pass through the generations. I don’t see that in Solomons.
‘The Tensions’ in Solomons were recent, not generational. They were economic, not ethnic. Everyday pressures boiled over into violence – pressures linked to jobs, land, migration.
Tensions of these kinds happen in many countries, including in Europe and America.
In the countries where I have been posted, there have been far darker divisions amongst the people, far deeper than anything in Solomons.
In former Yugoslavia, you couldn’t start a conversation with a Serb without him harking back to the fifteenth century and the wrongs inflicted on ‘his people’ by Muslims and Croats.
It was there, in the Balkans in Europe, that I witnessed raw ethnic conflict – ugly, unbridled and unforgiving.
That is not what I see in Solomons, it’s not the Pacific way. What I was told to expect – with much talk of ‘The Tensions’ – is not what I see amongst the people here.
Another misconception I often heard before arriving was that Solomons somehow lacked a nationhood, it was simply a huge archipelago brought together artificially in the lead-up to Independence. I would counter this statement.
Solomons is the sum of many different parts, true, and I have been privileged to travel to some of these parts in my short time here.
Based in Honiara, I have marvelled at the history and landmarks in every corner of Guadalcanal.
I have seen the energy and enterprise of people in Malaita; the beauty and colours of Western Province; and the old-world charm and serenity of Central. More provinces for me to visit in the months ahead, each different and distinct, I am sure.
But my point is that these differences – of people, cultures and histories – are Solomons’ strength.
Yours is a mosaic of a country, not a melting-pot: a country made up of fascinating differences, not uniformity. And all the better for it, in my view.
The best countries I have lived in are mosaics of peoples and cultures. I think of Canada with its English and Quebecois; Belgium with its Flemish and Walloon; Switzerland with its French, German, Italian and Romansh.
And, believe me, these mosaics have a nationhood – not the type of nationhood or ugly patriotism that is in your face (I won’t mention which countries those are) – but nonetheless proud and at ease with themselves.
The rock-guitarist Frank Zapper said every country needed three things: its own airline, beer and football team (!). Well, you have the three of them, and a lot more of course.
But I don’t want to paint an idealised picture. This isn’t paradise in the Pacific despite the cliches mentioned earlier. Nowhere is. I know there are hard challenges in the Solomon Islands.
First and foremost, I see how land issues are a break on economic development. I see the chronic need for more quality jobs for your young people; how migration to towns and cities is putting more and more pressure on already scant services and infrastructure.
These problems are very real, but they are problems that are shared by many other countries in Africa and Asia and in Europe.
There is so much Solomon Islands has as a country and my message is a simple one: from time to time, remind yourself of its positives and understand its problems are not unique, far from it.
They are problems shared – and that includes twists and turns in our parliaments too.
Here’s to my next thousand days…