Peace Corps

Solomon Islands

Is A Hit

From George Atkin in Honiara Solomon Islands does not re ceive bilateral, government-to government, aid from the United States, but the Solomons Government is not

complaining.

A government official says Solomon Islands gets its share of American aid through re gional organisations such as the South Pacific Bureau of Econ omic Co-operation (SPEC), the South Pacific Commission (SPC) and the University of the South Pacific (USP).

It also gets American aid

through voluntary organis

ations, with the American Peace Corps the most obvious one, the Foundation for the Peoples of the South Pacific, and World Vision.

The American Peace Corps programme in Solomon Islands is changing its form.

Now the volunteers will be

expected to help solve

problems which are met by the 95% of the country’s 200 000

population who are villagers.

These problems include water supply, food, health, sanitation and nutrition.

The Peace Corps Director for Solomon Islands and Kiribati, Terry Marshall, says that the programme is chang

ing from highly technical jobs,

which many volunteers have done in the past, to meeting ‘basic human needs’.

Mr Marshall says there is a heavy emphasis now on train

ing, particularly language

training. All volunteers must go through nine to 10 weeks training after they arrive. Be

fore they begin their work, they

must master pidgin, begin to understand Solomon Islands culture, values and customs, brush up on specific job related skills and learn how various ministries work. ‘Our training has changed to go in line with our rural emphasis,’ he says. In fact the newest group of Peace Corps volunteers lived with families at Kakabona village, about one km from Honiara. This was part of their training. They worked together with the vil lagers to build their own house

of local materials. Here they are expected to live for the next two years.

Another change is that more and more of the Peace Corps volunteers are married people, whereas in the past they had been mostly young men, gener ally in their early to mid-20s.

Mr Marshall has six couple

volunteers working together as

teams.

Of the 30-odd volunteers here at time of writing, 10 teach mechanics, carpentry, agricul ture and home economics in

the country’s provincial sec

ondary schools, which are set up by the government with the basic task of training young

people to help rural develop

ment. Five are assisting in business development, four are assistant business advisers they are based in provincial government headquarters out side Honiara four work as fisheries officers, helping to develop local fish marketing as distinct from large-scale com mercial fishing, and eight are

village-level development

workers.

Solomon Islanders do not seem to mind the Americans, especially people in the rural areas. They seem to get on with the local people better than the Australians, Englishmen and New Zealanders. This is prob ably because they do not seem to mind the dirt in the villages like others do, especially the Australians and the English.

Raymond R. Rumsey Jr, 26, of New York, a black American who is a business adviser for the Honiara Con sumers’ Co-operative store in Honiara, finds Solomon Islanders courteous and polite individuals. He finds no prob lems with the locals. ‘Maybe because I am black and others take it for granted. I don’t know,’ he told me.

He advises that the country should not develop too fast, otherwise its people will lose their real identity. Ray says the country should develop with out losing its culture ‘other wise it will be like us. We have lost our culture through our resettling in America’.

The pleasant thing about the Americans here is that they do not whine and moan when things aren’t to their liking.

They keep out of local politics

and are not trying to influence anyone with ideas about ‘this is the way the country should be run’.

Unlike the Australians, and

the English especially, they mix

with the locals more. The fact that they communicate with them in pidgin wins them more friends than others, many of whom, although they may have been here for ages, still cannot master the language. Therefore the locals tend to keep away from them.

According to government statistics only four American businesses are operating here.

The main one is the joint ven ture. Brewer Solomons Associ ates Ltd, which grows rice. The company’s head office is in Hawaii. BSAL exports its rice to Papua New Guinea, New Zealand and Europe. At home it is making every effort to get Solomon Islanders to eat BSAL rice, rather than the expensive

imported Australian product.

BSAL is a subsidiary of a multi-national company and here it runs a piggery and a chicken farm, the Honiara butchery and the Honiara Mendana Self-service, a super market which caters mainly for

expatriates.

Although BSAL is one of the

biggest employers in the

country, it is believed it is also one of the worst payers. One worker told me he has been with the company for eight years but he is just now getting $BO a month.