Thursday, 10 July 2008
Vanuatu was always going to hold some special moments for me during this journey. There are some very strong connections for me here. And among them are the sort I try to keep off the radar especially on assignment.
But when it’s about family, it hits you when you least expect it. And that’s what happened to me in Port Vila on my first day here.
I have a first cousin Basant, who has long been part of family folklore, whose last contact with me would have been when I was barely a toddler. He was the only one of our generation who had formal pictures taken with my maternal grandparents. He was in fact adopted by them and grew up as the youngest of my mum’s household. But once they died (when I was very little), he disappeared and was never at family gatherings. But I continued to hold him in awe as the “chosen one” of all us cousins. The pictures only reinforced that, the mystery only grew bigger and the urge to meet grew stronger.
Read More
Sunday, 6 July 2008
It’s Independence weekend here in Solomon Islands and things are building up to a big climax tomorrow, with parades, performances and celebrations at King George grounds. So naturally, everyone’s relaxed and chilled out.
But right now, there’s a group of intense, focused Solomon Islanders on a plane heading for Marseilles, France. They’re the Solomon Islands national beach soccer team – the Bilikikis. And for the third year in a row, they’re carrying the hopes of a nation and Oceania at the FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup which kicks off in over a week’s time.
When this energetic and youthful team first made it to the World Cup, all of Oceania celebrated. And I still remember trying to get hold of a then obscure anthem known as the Bilikiki song to play on our program, just so we could be part of the magic. Calling the team at odd hours of the day to get them In the Loop was another story. Two years on, I just had to catch them, before they left for France.
Read More
Saturday, 5 July 2008
It’s one thing to hear musicians and their special relationships with fans. But to witness this first hand is something else.
I’ve known Sharzy’s music for a while. Musician Sharzy is one of Solomon Islands’ favourite sons. But when more requests for his songs on our In the Loop program started coming in from elsewhere in the Pacific, I realised how much he was fast becoming a regional phenomenon. Now this sort of thing is rare. On his homepage, I found comments from fans not just from Melanesian countries like Papua New Guinea, but from as far as Samoa as well. Anyone who knows about Melanesian and Polynesian rivalry would know that this type of cross-Nesian adulation is indeed unique. So even before arriving in Honiara, I decided Sharzy’s was going to be one of the first stories I covered for our new TV program Pacific Pulse.
In the peaceful lush surrounds of the Solomon Botanical Garden, Sharzy told me about his vision for his country, its youth, what inspired him and why he could never separate these from his music. He says what was foremost on his mind when he first started writing and performing was acknowledging the pain of the nation as it recovered from the violent and bloody ethnic tensions earlier this decade.
Read More
