I’ve been in the South Pacific for more than a month, within view of the ocean almost every moment, and yet yesterday morning was the first time I got wet. I phoned around when I got in to find a local diving operation, but just about everything in town has been closed. But I reached one fellow, an Aussie expat named Gareth, who has run the dive shop at another local hotel for the last three years. We arranged a two-tank morning dive with two other divers--an old Aussie gentleman and a marine biologist from Barbados who studies sea turtles. It seemed like a busy day for the shop, which consisted of only Gareth and his local assistant Johnny. I asked Gareth how much business he regularly gets and he sort of gazed off for a moment. Used to be a lot of divers, he said, the only tourists the Solomons ever really got, but not so much--and here Gareth pursed his lips as if swallowing hard--since the “tension.”
The tension, of course, is ethnic. Here it is between peoples from two neighboring islands basically visible to one another across the Indispensable Strait. It was a relatively short-lived direct conflict, but it crippled the country for several years afterward and the tourist industry has yet to recover.
With so much economic opportunity in Honiara, it has long attracted people from other islands in the Solomons group. It seemed to the Gwale people native to this province that people from the neighboring island of Malaita were coming in, buying up land and getting all the good jobs. So in 1999, a group of young Gwalese banded together as a militia and started terrorizing rural Malaitans, who fled to their home island or joined up with a Malaitan army of their own. The two sides signed a peace accord later that year, but it broke down rather quickly. The Malaitans eventually gained the upper hand, took control of Honiara and deposed the prime minister in June 2000. The other side responded by assassinating a Malaitan cabinet minister. At one point, with air service to the island shut down for six months. The Gwalese tried to reopen the airport, until the Malaitans, who controlled the utilities, shut down their power. In short, hundreds of people died and things generally fell to pieces. Another agreement was reached and the conflict was formally over by October, but the tensions have continued to fester and the government was unable to restore law and order or rebuild its institutions. Oh, and corruption also bankrupted the country. Finally, in 2003, the prime minister asked for help. An Australian peacekeeping force was sent to disarm militias and restore law and order. Their intervention is seen as a significant success; the country is much safer now, the government is more stable and the economy is even growing a little.
But judging from the look on Gareth’s face, the tourism industry continues to founder. Four years of violence and instability will have that effect. Strife or no, there is a lot for divers to see here, especially wrecks in the deepwater sound that fronts Honiara. In a tiny boat, tripping over our gear, we went to see a couple yesterday morning, a recently sunk ferry and an old fishing ship, each about 150 feet long and sitting on their sides in about 100 feet of water. It is difficult to grasp the geometry of a ship when you approach it like that. It is too close, too out of context, too jumbled. Only when you see something unmistakable, like the pilot house, the propeller or an antenna, does it start to make sense. The wrecks had some easy points of entry into mysterious looming caverns where masses of small fish flit by the edges of your vision. Combined with the 100 feet of water over your head, it is claustrophobic in the extreme.
I also tried a night dive with some expats I met, bankers and IT people who have become very serious divers since arriving here, but the entry point was getting choppy, so we agreed to try again at dawn. We were in the water by 6:30, spent an hour down there and saw some nudibranchs. Nice wake-me-up.
All these dive spots are in the large, semi-circular sound formed by the triangle between Honiara and two small islands--Iron Bottom Sound. That name must be music to the ears of wreck divers. While there are a lot of civilians wrecks like the ones we dived today, they are only a small part of what gives the sound its name. I’ll be going on three dives tomorrow morning and will have a lot more to say about what is down there. But it is hinted at, especially for history buffs, by the name of the island on which Honiara sits--Guadalcanal.
The tension, of course, is ethnic. Here it is between peoples from two neighboring islands basically visible to one another across the Indispensable Strait. It was a relatively short-lived direct conflict, but it crippled the country for several years afterward and the tourist industry has yet to recover.
With so much economic opportunity in Honiara, it has long attracted people from other islands in the Solomons group. It seemed to the Gwale people native to this province that people from the neighboring island of Malaita were coming in, buying up land and getting all the good jobs. So in 1999, a group of young Gwalese banded together as a militia and started terrorizing rural Malaitans, who fled to their home island or joined up with a Malaitan army of their own. The two sides signed a peace accord later that year, but it broke down rather quickly. The Malaitans eventually gained the upper hand, took control of Honiara and deposed the prime minister in June 2000. The other side responded by assassinating a Malaitan cabinet minister. At one point, with air service to the island shut down for six months. The Gwalese tried to reopen the airport, until the Malaitans, who controlled the utilities, shut down their power. In short, hundreds of people died and things generally fell to pieces. Another agreement was reached and the conflict was formally over by October, but the tensions have continued to fester and the government was unable to restore law and order or rebuild its institutions. Oh, and corruption also bankrupted the country. Finally, in 2003, the prime minister asked for help. An Australian peacekeeping force was sent to disarm militias and restore law and order. Their intervention is seen as a significant success; the country is much safer now, the government is more stable and the economy is even growing a little.
But judging from the look on Gareth’s face, the tourism industry continues to founder. Four years of violence and instability will have that effect. Strife or no, there is a lot for divers to see here, especially wrecks in the deepwater sound that fronts Honiara. In a tiny boat, tripping over our gear, we went to see a couple yesterday morning, a recently sunk ferry and an old fishing ship, each about 150 feet long and sitting on their sides in about 100 feet of water. It is difficult to grasp the geometry of a ship when you approach it like that. It is too close, too out of context, too jumbled. Only when you see something unmistakable, like the pilot house, the propeller or an antenna, does it start to make sense. The wrecks had some easy points of entry into mysterious looming caverns where masses of small fish flit by the edges of your vision. Combined with the 100 feet of water over your head, it is claustrophobic in the extreme.
I also tried a night dive with some expats I met, bankers and IT people who have become very serious divers since arriving here, but the entry point was getting choppy, so we agreed to try again at dawn. We were in the water by 6:30, spent an hour down there and saw some nudibranchs. Nice wake-me-up.
All these dive spots are in the large, semi-circular sound formed by the triangle between Honiara and two small islands--Iron Bottom Sound. That name must be music to the ears of wreck divers. While there are a lot of civilians wrecks like the ones we dived today, they are only a small part of what gives the sound its name. I’ll be going on three dives tomorrow morning and will have a lot more to say about what is down there. But it is hinted at, especially for history buffs, by the name of the island on which Honiara sits--Guadalcanal.
posted by Samir S. Patel at 9:35 PM
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