Sardines and In-Laws

The honeymoon is over, apparently. The psychologist at pre-departure training told us that in a year-long contract overseas, the first three months are considered a honeymoon period, after which reality sets in.

If having to challenge exorbitant water usage bills and being groped by a man in a stair well constitute reality, then I suppose the psychologist was right. However, there’s a lot more to reality than bills and groping. We’d been in real trouble if there wasn’t.

One thing that is a part of my reality here is being white. It’s something I have no control over, I can’t hide it and it is always an issue.

The walk to work can be very long when it is peppered with laughter and name calling. In the right mood, I realise that people are having fun with someone who is a novelty, in the wrong mood it chips away at my confidence and I feel people are taunting me.

In the workplace being white is a strange sensation. People treat me with more deference than I am used to or feel I deserve. I have become an IT expert which is surprising to say the very least.

Being Australian here is also part of my reality. Solomon Islanders want their nation to be autonomous and heavy donor presence contradicts that desire. People are generous and welcoming, but for some there is an element of resentment beneath.

Part of being white in Solomon Islands is the complex petri dish that is the expat social scene. The psychologist did not mention during pre-departure training that we would soon be delivered into the centre of a gossip vortex of unknown proportions, where there is nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.

Unlike the end of a real honeymoon, I still get to eat tropical fruits every morning, swim in baby blue seas, listen to island reggae and buy fresh fish from the market in the evenings. If it were the end of a real honeymoon, it would be back to sardines on toast for dinner and in-laws (I imagine, having never been married, or indeed returned from a luxurious honeymoon into a life of filth and boredom).

This entry is of a different timbre to those that have come before. Even you, my beloved and faithful following, might soon grow tired of mangos, pikinini and azure oceans. The honeymoon ending isn’t as dire as sardines and in-laws. The honeymoon ending is about the realisation of complexity, feeling fragile occasionally and learning to accept that I am ‘the other’ and always will be.