Islanders have long memories

Be careful what you do on these small isles. I worked in Chuuk on and off more than 12 years ago for a year. A group of kids who must have been about 10 at the time met my offspring last night at a party here in the states. They remembered me. And her, despite the fact that she had been with me only one time for a couple of days. And I had not spent more than a couple of weeks in total on the island.

So watch your behavior.

Same applies for ALL the Polynesian islands... I cannot get over how a Samoan who had only chatted with you for an hour 5 years ago can run into in the streets of Apia, even if your look has changed, and totally recognize you and chat you up like a long lost friend.

Charming and creepy at the same time.

My friends visiting me in Solomon Islands were amazed how many people on the street knew me. But after they travelled around the islands with me for a while, everyone knew THEM too.
I can usually tell the difference between people I don't recognise that know me, and the ones that say hello, but have never seen me before, which is quite a frequent occurrence (and one I find a bit irritating, especially when they ask questions that are a bit impertinent in our culture) .
Generally, the ones that know me know my name.

I found it a bit unnerving at first, last visit to Solomons, when taxi drivers - ones that I'm sure I hadn't used before - would call be by name and they always knew the house where I was staying in Honiara. Then some the 'bus' drivers &/or conductors would call me by name as I walked along the street, even though I had never told them my name. Don't expect to get away with anything in the islands, someone will know and very soon the whole country will know as well.

When I took my son back to his island he was similarly unnerved. Everyone knew me and/or was related to him. At one point he begged to go someplace on the island where everyone didn't know us so I took him up the coast to a new remote "resort". On the way I go lost and stopped in a small village to get help. Asked some folks in a summer house. It was his uncle's house. Even I began to get a bit freaked out by it.

LOL 5Waldos. I felt a bit paranoid at first, especially when a total stranger walked up to me in "downtown" Honiara and told me I was staying in the "house of the man from East Kwaio." I can understand taxi drivers maybe getting the word out, but this was something else.

I tend to forget how small the islands are, though. On one trip when I stopped in Auckland before going on to Honiara I ran into a Solomon Islander who turned out to be a relative of the people I stayed with on North Malaita several years previously. The second incidence, on another trip, happened when I was having dinner at the home of a Solomon Islander and his wife who were studying in Auckland. He had a friend staying - and the friend turned out to be the "true" brother of a woman in Honiara I had lost contact with and was trying to track down. My host and his guest were not even from the same island or language group. When I got to Honiara the woman I was looking for was already expecting me.

So I guess it's no wonder that when I go somewhere, inevitably someone will ask if I know "so and so" who happens to be studying in my home town, not realizing how big western cities (and my country) really are.

So not only will the whole country know of any misdeeds or other actions of yours, the news will spread to other countries as well.

I was in the states when an islander came to pick up some things a friend had delivered to us. When she hit the door she took one look and said- Ah- so it was YOU. I had gone to a ceremony in the islands about 2 years previously and a video had gone around back here in the states. Everyone but this one stranger was recognized. I turned out to be the stranger. It is a very very small world out there.

And the Solomon Islander you met is is probably the brother of my daughter's former dance teacher. And a second cousin to my son by marriage. Which means that you and I are probably related by island.

Hi wontok!!

Howdy!