Chinatown

Wakabauti longo Saenataoni

Makem kosi, anga long kona

Suti apu sekem heti kikim bakete eni kaeni

Ies iu lafu hapu senisi longo lelebeti

CHORUS:
Ting ting baek
Long iu
Lusim hom
Long taem
Tu ias ova mi no lukim iu dasta wea mi no laekem iu,
Mani karage, karage heti lusim mane

No mata mi dae long Honiara
Samting mi lusim longo taem blo iu
Bat sapos iu tingim mi, iu mas wait for 2 ias mo
Man i karage, karage heti, lusim mane.'

Ask any Pacific Islander what song they associate with Solomon Islands, and it will be "Wakabauti longo Saenatowni" - a walk in Chinatown. Chinatown was the commercial heart of Honiara, and in many ways the song was a national anthem before the nation was born. That classic was penned almost 50 years ago, when the beautiful daughters of a certain Chinese trader were the best reason to saunter through that part of Honiara.

1950s Chinatown was a meeting place and because of that in many ways the forge of a prototypical Solomon identity. Away from their homes, villages and territories, Solomon Islanders met in the neutral ground of Chinatown not as Roviana, Kwara'ae or Arosi but as something else - common travellers in the communal administrative and commercial ship that was the Solomon Islands.

So the Chinatown of "Wakabauti" fame was more than a shopping precinct. It was a crossroads and host to shared experience, the emergence of joint understanding and the precursor to nation. The Chinatown of Wakabaut fame was host to dreams of a shared future between different peoples and walks of life.

This is why Chinatown matters. This is why the loss of Chinatown matters. This is why the betrayal of the spirit and time of "Wakabauti" matters. And this is why the thick black smoke roiling above Honiara last month carried not just the millions of business owners but a dream of a past in Solomon Islands. A past once real, now almost forgotten.

Though most Solomon islanders might not realise it, Chinatown has played a part in almost every stage of their lives, indirectly thorough the experiences of our founding governmental, educational and economic elites and directly through the provision of goods to almost every corner of the country.

Chinatown - where couples went shopping for their first baby bath, their first pots and sheets. Where they would find the kerosene lamps, spare wicks, matches. where they would buy the rice to put in the pot, the fishing line and hooks to catch fish with, the bush knifes and axes to clear their garden with.

Chinatown - where almost every piece of soap, packet of noodles, tin of fish, stick of tobacco passed through before sailing away from Honiara, into the houses of villages across the nation

Chinatown - shopping centre and workshop for Solomon Islands.

In a very real sense, Chinatown was a workshop for the formation of a national identity. It is no accident that "Wakabaut" is iconic to "Solomon Islands", and the era of nation building that was the mid- to late-twentieth century. This was because it was a song of the urban experience, of longing for a distant home, of a common meeting place in a country where there were few. It was the song of the experience of a Pacific archipelago feeling its way towards a common space and experience, towards something like a national consciousness.

But on April 18 2006 it was not a saunter, and there was no beauty. Crowds of Honiara's people passed through the streets, windows and doors were smashed and the looting began. A building was torched, then another. The breeze off the Mataniko River did the rest. By morning almost the entirety of Chinatown was ablaze or smouldering.

The occasion, some might say excuse, was the election of the new Prime Minister. The truth may never be known, but already there are clear suggestions of planning, of incitement and of gross, you could say criminal, negligence on the part of RAMSI and the police.

But while the pundits, media spinners and assorted observers are debating the implications, the why and the where to now?, the fact is, the Chinatown of Wakabaut days is gone. The secret is - it was gone long before last month.

What happened happened to the national vision of Wakabuati days? To this we need to look to the Chinatown after Wakabauti was penned.

While the shopping and meeting centre for Solomon Islanders of all origins, Chinatown was also where a handful of Solomon Islands businessmen - both Chinese and Melanesian, cut political deals, paid and accepted bribes, and passed the cash to ply willing politicians with liquor, women and cash.

In the casino (yes Honiara’s first was in Chinatown), in the hotels and lodges, deals were made, money flowed, actions were that deprived people of their birthright in land, forest and earth. Power was bought and sold, abused and bartered, while the thousands of subjects of that power steadily, invisibly sank lower into hardship and strife, not knowing how and why their lot was ever worse.

Was Chinatown the sole site of this theft, this abuse? Of course not. Were Chinese in Chinatown the only practitioners? Of course not. For every waku hand handling dirty money, there were at least two Solo ones.

Indeed, if the houses of corruption were to be razed, nothing much would be left standing in the expensive suburbs of Honiara, nor amongst the precincts of government, or indeed amongst the rest of Honiara’s donwtown. Herein lies the hypocrisy of the finger pointing at Chinatown. A huge part of the Solomon Islands establishment has participated or benefited from the betrayal of the dream of Wakabauti, of the dream of Solomon Islands.

These businessmen, these politicians, these brokers, through their betrayal of public ethics, through their usurping of public power, betrayed the Solomon dream, betrayed the Chinatown of Wakabaut years before the mob did so physically last month.