Honiara

Honiara is a young town on very old ground. Before the Second World War the site was a stretch of coconut plantations and coastal villages; the colonial capital of the British Solomon Islands Protectorate was at Tulagi, across the sound. That changed in 1942, when Japanese forces began building an airstrip on the Guadalcanal plain east of the present town. American landings on 7 August 1942 opened the Guadalcanal campaign, six months of fighting on land, at sea and in the air that ended in February 1943 with a Japanese withdrawal. It was the first major Allied land offensive against Japan, and so many ships went down offshore that the water is still called Ironbottom Sound.

The Americans left behind roads, wharves, buildings and the airfield they renamed Henderson Field. With Tulagi in ruins, the administration moved to the site, which became the protectorate's administrative centre in 1952; the name comes from nagho ni ara, roughly "place of the east wind" in one of the Guadalcanal languages. The town grew quickly after independence in 1978 as people came from Malaita and other provinces for work.

That growth brought strain. Honiara was the centre of the 1998–2003 conflict known as the Tensions, and rioting damaged the town in 2006 and again in late November 2021, when protests that began over the government's switch of diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to China turned to arson and looting in Chinatown; police and troops from several Pacific countries were sent to help restore order. Rebuilding has continued since, and a national stadium, a gift from China, was built for the 2023 Pacific Games.

Honiara is the one place where the whole country meets. People from all nine provinces live here, speaking dozens of first languages and using Solomon Islands Pijin as the common tongue, with English in offices and schools. Kin ties hold the town together: the wantok system, the obligation owed to those of one's own language and clan, means households in Honiara routinely support relatives arriving from the islands, and a single wage can carry many people.

Church life is central and visible — Anglican, Catholic, South Seas Evangelical, Seventh-day Adventist and United congregations all have large followings, and choirs, youth groups and Sunday services shape the week. Alongside them kastom endures: shell money from Malaita's Langa Langa lagoon is still exchanged for bride-price and compensation, and carvers sell nguzu nguzu canoe figureheads, the protective prow carvings of the old canoes, and ebony work in the town.

Panpipe orchestras, best known on Malaita and Guadalcanal, bamboo music struck from open-ended tubes, and modern Pijin reggae and gospel are the sounds of Honiara, heard at Independence Day and at the province-day celebrations. Betel nut chewing is a near-constant social habit rather than a vice. Manners are quiet and indirect: greetings come before business, raised voices are poor form, and modest dress and respect for elders are expected of visitors as much as of residents.

About 130,000 people lived in Honiara at the 2019 census, roughly a sixth of the national population, in a strip of town squeezed between ridges and the sea and growing faster than its services. Formal jobs are in government, aid organisations, shipping, retail, schools and hotels, but much of the town lives on informal work — market selling, transport, betel nut, casual labour — and on money and food moving between relatives here and in the villages.

Settlements have spread up the hillsides and along the river, many without secure tenure, and pressure on water, drainage and electricity is constant; power cuts and water shortages are routine. The Mataniko and other creeks flood badly in heavy rain, as in the destructive floods of 2014, and the ridges above the town are prone to landslips.

The day is early and hot. Minibuses fill from dawn, offices and shops open by eight and close in the middle of the afternoon, and by early evening the streets empty as people head home. The central market is the town's clock, busiest in the morning when trucks and canoes bring produce in. Unemployment among a very young population, the cost of imported food, and the rebuilding of the areas burnt in 2021 are the issues most discussed.

Honiara eats root crops, fish and coconut, dressed up with imported rice and noodles. Taro, cassava, sweet potato and yam come from gardens across Guadalcanal, and taro leaves and other greens are cooked with them. Fish is grilled over coals or cooked in coconut cream, and food is still often baked in an earth oven of hot stones lined with leaves for Sunday and for feasts.

The market is the town's kitchen. It is the country's largest outlet for fresh produce and fish and the cheapest place to eat in the capital, with root crops, greens, fruit and fresh coconut water on the stalls. Canarium nuts, whose trees are a measure of wealth in island society, are picked around September and October, and banana, pawpaw and green coconut are sold all year. Poi, made from fermented taro, is served at any celebration.

Chinatown's restaurants have made fried rice, chow mein and fried fish part of everyday town food, and tinned tuna and corned beef with rice are the standard quick meal. Solomon Islands tuna is canned locally at Noro in the Western Province. Drink means green coconut, cocoa grown on Guadalcanal, tea or beer; kava is not the local custom here, and betel nut takes its place as the everyday stimulant.