In my fantasies about my new life in tropical paradise, I had joined a local mixed gender soccer or basketball team. I was rudely wrenched from this fantasy earlier this week when I was told that soccer and basketball are for boys only and that women play netball in the Solomons.
"Netball? Lame!" My brain thought.
I played netball when I was in primary school but somewhere along the line my brain created a binary thought pattern that characterised netball as lame and girly and basketball as cool and edgey.
I attended 7 different schools between the ages of 3 and 18 and each time I was "the new girl', a similar scenario would develop.
Stage One: the teacher invariably pairs the new girl up with a girl belonging to the second coolest group of girls.
Stage Two: new girl bonds nervously with the second coolest group of girls.
Stage Three: the second coolest group of girls decide to persecute new girl out of their gang for reaons best known only to themselves.
Stage Four: alone and adrift in the terrifying terrain of the playground, the new girl plays basketball with "the boys" as they are the only ones who will talk to her and not say things like "Is there someone talking or is it the wind blowing in the trees that I can hear?" when the new girl talks.
Stage Five: Coolest group of girls immediately adopts new girl as a strategic move to facilitate romantic trists between themselves and "the boys" ("the boys" of course are infinitely valuable resources in the battle for status and popularity.
And thus was born the idea in my head that basketball was cool and netball was lame.
Years later, you can imagine my shock at having my binary thought pattern ripped in an untimely manner from my world view by the idea that if I was to bond with my fellow Solomon Islanders through the pass time of team sports, I was going to have to join a netball team.
After consirable psychological struggle I have managed to adjust my tropical Solomons fantasy to incorporate netball in place of soccer or basketball. I have the feeling that this will be the first of many challenges to the way I view the world over the next 12 months and I look forward to them all with anticipation.
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Your lazy, computer allergic, technologically tragic best friend is actually writing a comment on your Blog. The same girl who has not checked her facebook in three months and let two email accounts die, one after the number of emails in the inbox caused a brand new Mac to explode and the other because so much time had passed the password had been forgotten along with the secrete question. Based on my definition, keeping up with technology involves my dad checking my emails, and my boyfriend pretending to be me and writing on my facebook page so people know that I am not dead. People I count as close friends don’t know I am getting married, don’t even know I have a boyfriend, don’t even know that I live in the Solomon Islands. But the whole point of my rant, Sophie my love, is this blog is awesome, it has broken my moratorium on written communication and has given me a whole new lease on life, possibly not to write a blog, or even a proper email beyond, “glad all is good. I LUV U 2” but it has reminded me how much of an adventure living in the Solomons has been. Love you. XO Cate.
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