Honiara: Bus stop town

By VOHGNU RARAHA
Honiara

HAVING visited our country recently I have noticed a lot have been said about ‘breakaway’ and less time given to the ABC TV show ‘home and away’.
Which is good isn’t it? From a former Solomon Islander’s viewpoint I don’t know whether it is good or not that people are now putting more effort into the idea of others and us. Iufala and mifala! lo kastom blo mifala hem osem, lo langwis blo iufala hem hao?
This is the shared representation that people do have on each other that established the ongoing psychological schema of the ‘different’ or ‘difference’.
Defeating the very purpose for unity as achieved by the fathers upon independence. Indeed it is truer today than before that the idea of sovereignties is challenged to a new degree.
It is good that people have seen that the few remains of hope for a quick recovery be devastated because it is skin deep and may not be a proper formula for the not to far future developments of this nation.
We have to be violent to achieve what we want. We have to be aggressive in whatever we think is better and for the good of the future of this nation.
There is a relationship problem in this nation. That people have tended to see each other with mistrust and suspicion. That the nation may not go well according to how one might think it should go.
There must be room where people aggressively express themselves in a manner where other people must listen to them. People from different regions in this nation are safer closer to home than anywhere else.
This led to the on going ‘attitude problem’ that is describe by the SWIM director when he mentions that on the very day the ‘clean (Honiara) campaign’ one still see people throwing rubbish.
There is no sense of belonging. Honiara is a bus stop township that people came off to dine, wine, excrete and leave. This defines best why Honiara is such a town that needs municipal emancipation, both in its very sense and that of its structural factor.
Simply, the people of Honiara need to address the problems of the city as a nation and the structures of the township both civil and material need to be reformed.
Municipal emancipation must take place in the minds of the communities that populated the township.
That even though the inside of your house is clean, neat and tidy, the air that surrounds you and your house is environmentally disastrous, because of the fact that all your neighbours choose to make the rubbish dump outside of your homes.
This led to the municipal authority that deals with the rubbish. Why non-(systematic) collection?
The Guadalcanal people should start evaluating its formula to ask for compensation for the rubbish dump, and Honiara resident should start thinking of a new burial site or the alternative to change burial practice.
The culture of violence learnt from several years of social uncertainty may be of importance to the idea of aggression and energy that we may convert into building a more vibrant but harmonious socioeconomic model in the nation capital.
The trigger is that people respond to the sound of breaking glass and not of mutual advice.
The thing is that we are dealing with a generation that saw both the ‘humour’ of the hapi isles and the ‘wrath’ of the hapi people. The people that need to transform the youth of the nation have now socialised into different socio-political, economical and culturally people.
So their responses to good clear-cut advises by organisations and institutions are most of the time short lived. The real situation is that things happen just for the “shake” of things that happen and not for the “sake” of it.
So it’s like when all the do-nots come in, the immediate response is donuts. So don’t worry too much about the attitudes of people in Honiara and the fact that Solomon Islanders respond slackly to good things and jumps when mischief is there.
No need to take care, because virtually there is nothing to care for in this township. Our leaders held on to the same old Chinatown ever since.
We are talking about improving ourselves and so forth but nothing comes in the face of what you leaders call ‘investors’. Leaders still do not understand why a missed goal in the soccer pitch resulted in more stone shots booted at the shop windows in Chinatown.
We still do not want to share a thought that may seem like, “I think these things happen because the place (Chinatown) looks old and dusty and contributes to the face of the ‘dusty bus stop township’ mentality”.
That stoner-players rocketed their “rooney” shots of stones at the shops windows just to make sure that the next time they come around it looks new.
The missing factor that makes people sway to good music needs to be found and blended well with the people. Why can’t we see that the public service is a slack giant organisation with out of date procedures and in-efficient professionalism?
The very people we want to teach must also be identified. The missing factor is definitely not something to do with women’s groups either, because they talk about equal rights but they ask for more rights!
More so, they have grouped themselves thus maybe isolating them from assimilation. What equality are we speaking of in this world today?
Solomon Islands is a sick nation and needs to be diagnosed properly; both mentally and physically. The medication must come alongside other things language and culture and not of anything else.
The best advice sounds like, do not subscribe to the plan of humanism, namely, the shared human nature, respect for law, constitution and the ideals of democracy.
If you do not understand what democracy is all about, what is stated in the constitution and what the law inscribes or still identifying oneself with special rights. Then in essence, the problems faced by the one stop bus stop nation capital of Honiara will have to be prolonged.
In reality people who do not understand that these factors tend to make less damage than those that do understand and carry the capacity to find medicine for the disease of inequality.
Unfair tax regulations, tax exemptions results in losses, misused funds, diverted funds, money politics and majority democracy, logging friendly and many other factors.
We hope a lot more energy is placed on identifying trouble spots and readily prepare some herbal healing at hand