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40 Dei Ramble
Sunday, May 24th, 2009I need to say a few things about Wan Smolbag as an artistic institution, and the only way to get there is to indulge in a deliberate bit of hand-waving that runs the risk of belittling the dozens of non-theatrical activities they manage. There’s a small mountain of data out there expressing in very finite terms just how effective this group is.
My point, I guess, is that no matter how good that makes them – and they are very good indeed – there’s more to it than that. And that’s what I want to write about today.
I’m not going to attempt to structure this in any useful way. This really is as much a personal exercise as a public one: If I succeed in conveying a sense of what makes Smolbag so unique to you, I might understand it better myself….
Kastom and Reconciliation
Sunday, May 3rd, 2009[Originally published in the Vanuatu Daily Post’s Weekender Edition.] Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s April 30 arrival in Honiara, Solomon Islands marked what everyone hopes is a historic beginning of a new era in Solomons – and Melanesian – politics. When the Nobel Laureate first posited the idea of Truth and Reconciliation, it was, for South Africa [...]
Counterpoint
Sunday, March 1st, 2009Picture Kalori, a young man of rank and potential in the 1970s, watching his fathers become isolated and shifted out of power, while young, foreign-educated firebrands radioed political speeches from hiding places in the bush only a few kilometres from his nasara.
The young lawyer who preached, Castro-like, over the bush radio is now President of Vanuatu. Chief Kalori remains in his village, very much the injured lion. He is quick to reprove the country’s founders, men he – not entirely without reason – considered under-educated and ill-prepared for the demands of ruling a newborn nation.
While Kalori is alive, there will be another view of Independence: not undesirable, but in the 1980s untimely and rash. He feels that everything that has transpired since then, the venality, pettiness, lack of political coherence or cohesion… all of this can be laid at the feet of some brash young men who lacked the education and the wisdom to take a more patient tack.
The View From There
Saturday, October 11th, 2008[This week's Communications column for the Vanuatu Independent.] I spent a couple of weeks last month in Timor-Leste, the world’s youngest nation. I’d gone to lend a hand to civil society there, to apply a few of the lessons learned in Vanuatu to the communications needs of this nascent nation. The lessons learned were mostly [...]
Housework
Wednesday, July 18th, 2007Ever since I arrived in Vanuatu almost four years ago, I’ve woken every morning to the rhythmic shushing of the scrub brush as the women in the neighbourhood do the morning wash. It’s often the last thing I hear before sundown as well. Anyone who’s ever washed their clothes by hand knows just how arduous [...]