Gizo

Ghizo Island was settled long before Europeans arrived, and the New Georgia group around it was known for canoe building, shell valuables and long-distance raiding. In January 1900 the British established a government station at Gizo, with orders to suppress headhunting in New Georgia and the islands around it, and a hospital followed; the town grew as the administrative and trading centre of the Western Solomons, its wharf, stores, offices and hospital strung along one street.

The Second World War reached the district in 1942–43. Japanese forces occupied the islands and built airstrips; Allied landings on New Georgia in mid-1943, the fighting for Munda, and the naval actions in the surrounding straits pushed them out over several months. The channels near Gizo hold the results — sunken transports and warships, aircraft on the reef, and the small island where the crew of the American patrol boat PT-109, commanded by the future president John F. Kennedy, came ashore after their boat was cut in two in Blackett Strait.

Gizo has been the capital of Western Province since independence in 1978, and had 4,620 people at the 2019 census. On 2 April 2007 a magnitude 8.1 earthquake centred about 40 kilometres away sent a tsunami into the town and the villages of Ghizo within minutes; fifty-two people were killed across the province and waterfront buildings were wrecked. The town was rebuilt, and resettlement to higher ground was weighed in the villages worst hit.

Gizo is a mixing point for the peoples of the Western Solomons. Villagers from Ghizo, Simbo, Ranongga, Vella Lavella, Kolombangara and the New Georgia lagoons trade and study here, and Solomon Islands Pijin is the common language over many first languages, with English in offices and schools. At Titiana and neighbouring villages on the south coast there are communities of I-Kiribati descent, resettled from the Phoenix Islands after earlier moves from the Gilbert Islands, who keep their own language and fishing traditions.

Church shapes the week. The United Church, heir to the Methodist mission that worked across the Western Solomons, the Catholic cathedral in the town and Seventh-day Adventist congregations all have followings; Sunday is quiet, and in Adventist villages Saturday is the day of rest and pork and shellfish are not eaten. Custom remains the basis of everyday authority outside the town: land and reef belong to clans, chiefs and elders settle disputes, and compensation payments are a recognised way of restoring relations.

The province is known through the country for carving. Nguzu nguzu, the figureheads once fixed to a canoe's prow to give protection on a voyage, along with bowls, spears and model canoes, are made for ceremony and for sale. Head-hunting shrines still stand on islands in the lagoons, music and dance mark every gathering, and betel nut is widely chewed.

Gizo is a town of a few thousand people, small enough to walk across in fifteen minutes and busy in the way that a provincial capital is: the provincial government, the hospital, schools, the police, banks, trade stores and the wharf are the institutions, and the market is where the town gathers. Outside the centre most families live in villages around Ghizo Island and come in by truck or canoe.

Livelihoods are fishing, gardening, and work connected to the sea. Households sell fish and produce at the market, copra and cocoa when prices allow, and the tuna cannery at Noro, along the coast on New Georgia, is a large employer. Diving and lodge tourism provides a modest income for guides, boat crews and cooks, and public-service wages and remittances support many households.

Water, electricity and telephone services are limited and interruptions are normal; freight, fuel and medical cases all depend on boats and small aircraft. People remain conscious of the 2007 tsunami, when the shaking itself was the warning that sent many to high ground before the wave arrived. Logging, reef health and the cost of imported food are steady concerns.

Food in Gizo comes off the reef and out of the garden. Tuna and reef fish are eaten fresh, grilled over coals or cooked in coconut cream, and shellfish, octopus and mangrove crab appear at the market. Taro, cassava, sweet potato and yam are the staples, with taro leaves and other greens, and food is often baked in an earth oven of hot stones covered with leaves.

The market sells cooked food alongside produce, most of it fish or root crops with coconut cream. Canarium nuts, whose trees are a measure of wealth in island society, are picked around September and October, and pawpaw, watermelon, banana and green coconut are sold all year. Poi, made from fermented taro, is served at celebrations, and the families of I-Kiribati descent at Titiana are known for their fishing.

Imported rice, flour, instant noodles and tinned tuna or corned beef make up a large share of the everyday diet in town, and the bakeries turn out bread and buns. The tuna canned at Noro comes from these waters. Drink means green coconut, tea, cocoa and beer in the hotels; kava is not the local custom, and betel nut with lime and leaf takes its place.