Dev Nadkarni
Despite several attempts, the aerobridge at one of Brisbane Airport’s gates fails to engage with the door of the smart new Embraer 170, which is only on its third commercial flight to Honiara.

The aerobridge is not yet configured to this new Brazilian-made regional jet, its commander tells us after we board, using the humble but time-tested ladder.

Once inside, it’s not hard to see why the state-of-the-art mid range aircraft is making such waves all over the world. Smaller than the comparable nineteen sixties designed Boeing 737, its seventy-seat single class cabin with a 2x2 seating configuration, is spacious, airy and comfortable.

The onboard service and meal are excellent. The only downside is that there’s no entertainment on the E-Jet for the three-hour flight.

At Honiara Airport, a ground official matter-of-factly tells us that 18 pieces of luggage had to be left back in Brisbane because there was no room in the plane. They should arrive in a day or two, he says. Cold comfort.

The E-Jet being pushed away from the aerobridge. Pics: Dev Nadkarni

“But I’m off to Gizo just now,” says one harried backpack-less backpacker. Pat comes the official’s reply, “Then we’ll send it there.” “But I’m sailing to another island from there,” the young man persists. “Just tell us which island and we’ll send it there.”

The duty officer tells us this is a regular thing. Which explains the official’s practiced ease while answering our questions. There’s simply not enough room on the plane, they tell us—the 737s were better.

But I learn the real reason later from one of the airline’s senior executives: because of low aviation fuel stocks in Honiara, the plane often has to fly with enough fuel to cover most of the return trip—having, therefore, to leave some bags behind!

Anyway, good on Solomon Airlines to be the first in the region to fly the E-Jet. 

Lachcha Paratha meets Nguzunguzu

A few Ks up the road from the airport towards the city stands Honiara’s own Taj Mahal. I ask my cabbie to slow down. It’s the country’s first Indian restaurant, he tells me.

The scrumptious Indian spread.

‘Taj Mahal Sri Lankan and Indian Restaurant,’ says the sign outside the biggish building. “It’s new,” the cabbie says. Like the E-Jet I think, shuddering at the prospect of checking into my hotel without my stuff.

Later, some of us journos here for the PINA (Pacific Islands News Association) convention decide to try out the place. The buffet is completely Indian, no hint of Sri Lanka—no, not even the pickle: Lamb Rogan Josh, Chicken Tikka Masala, Baingan Bharta (curried, stuffed egg plant) and stacks and stacks of mouth-melting, layered Lachcha Parathas (an Indian flat bread), besides Dal and long grain rice.

I am intrigued. Didn’t quite expect this authenticity—complete with presentation, aroma and flavour—here in the heart of Melanesia. The food is delicious, we all agree.

I seek out the chef. After all, this is the best Lachcha Paratha I’ve tasted in Oceania. He turns out to be a pleasant young man from Bangalore, who has come here after spending a few years in a top Sri Lankan cricketer’s restaurant in Colombo.

Like Taj Mahal and the country’s newest aircraft, he’s new too. But fortunately for us, his big bag of Indian spices wasn’t offloaded at some airport en route.

Taj Mahal’s owner is a Sri Lankan entrepreneur now calling Solomons home. He’s now a proud owner of a Solomons’ passport. The soft-spoken man is apologetic because he can’t serve us alcohol—he’s yet to get his license. But with a little native ingenuity, we’re soon washing down the delectable curries with Solbrew, which is as distinctively Solomons as Nguzunguzu.

Logging’s growing pressure

At the rate they’re pulling down those huge trees all over the archipelago, there won’t be many left five or six years down the line. Local environment groups have been crying hoarse for years. But now there’s growing pressure from international agencies to cut back on the scale of deforestation.

The government is dead serious, the finance minister tells me but others say it’s easier said than done because there’s too much vested interest in that industry. There’s no doubt though that logging will taper off pretty soon, one way or the other. If government action fails to stop the felling, the islands will simply run out of trees to fell.

Apart from the government’s plans to focus on agriculture and tuna, there are some bright new initiatives on the technology front in the Solomons. The People First network or PfNet has been a success story for some years now. It’s expanding its network across the islands with e-mail stations that work wirelessly in some places and are powered by solar energy.

The country is proving to be a bit of an innovator in harnessing appropriate technology in an infrastructurally challenged environment.

There are no phones or power supply outside the immediate vicinity of Honiara. “That’s the last electric pole,” the cabbie tells me on a drive just a few Ks out of the city. “No supply beyond this place.”

Yet the country has just launched its first solar powered, wirelessly operated ATM in a remote location a dozen or so Ks outside Honiara.

There will be six more soon, a government official tells me. Hi-tech cash vending machines where shell money was the only currency until not so long ago.

Jubilee outdoes jamboree

With all save one of its office bearers in attendance, the convention is a bit like a news report without a headline. But the media workshops are well attended and useful, I am told.

Some of the musical treasures at SIBC.

In any case, the jamboree is overshadowed by the silver jubilee celebrations of John Lamani’s Solomon Star—the paper reaching that milestone after a struggle not unlike many one-man media enterprises in the difficult developing world.

On a visit to the nation’s only public broadcaster, SIBC, I stumble on a musical treasure trove: a dedicated unit is engaged in digitising hundreds and hundreds of 33 RPM vinyls from the forties through the seventies, thanks to a UN grant. And while being digitised, the broadcaster’s librarian is re-cataloguing them. Pity the SIBC has had its state funding slashed this year.

The print media, though, looks vibrant. There’s a range of tabloids breaking interesting stories whenever they hit the stands. I am pleased to find half-a-dozen USP journalism grads contributing busily to that vibrancy.