Why I Love Living on the Solomon Islands

It has been five months now since I packed up my life and started living on the Solomon Islands. People back home are still confused as to where I am living. On an island in the South Pacific somewhere?

Expat life on these remote island can be both great and frustrating. Things do not always work the way they do back home. A simple task like mailing a letter or purchasing prepaid electricity credit can take days instead of a few minutes. Sometimes things are not open or there are long queues of people or bad traffic jams or it rains.

Other days, though, living on the Solomon Islands can be a breeze.

Some days I laugh, and I love everything about this country. But there are the odd days when I think it’s all just too hard–even though I chose this life.

Some days the power and the water work, while on other days, there are power cuts. Some days the water tanks are almost empty because it hasn’t rained. Or the water pump is broken. Or the electricity has gone out so your water pump, which is run on electricity is not working either.

So when it does suddenly start to rain, you run outside to fill up buckets just to be able to flush the toilet.

Some days I laugh, and I love everything about this country. But there are the odd days when I think it’s all just too hard–even though I chose this life.

The thing is, the reason that I love living overseas and traveling so much is that I love the challenge. I love that nothing works like it does in Australia I love that things are slow and steady and on island time. I love the frustrations. I love needing to purchase something at the shops when I see it because it most probably will not be there the next day. I love when the supermarket shelves look empty because a shipment has not arrived, even when I really need to buy something.

Why the Rain and Droughts Make Me Love Living on the Solomon Islands

It is what makes me step out of my comfort zone. To explore. To try to grow and learn and have new experiences. It is what makes me feel alive.

But I also love being able to eat fresh pineapple, mango, star fruit, guava, papaya and bananas every single day. I love that most of those fruits grow in my garden and I simply just have to wander outside and pick them fresh from the tree. I absolutely love being able to drink as many fresh coconuts a day as I like. I love being able to go outside and pick up a coconut that has fallen from a tree in my garden and use it fresh in my cooking.

I love walking down the streets and smiling and raising my eyebrows to people as we pass each other as a way of saying hello. I love the school children who race past on the back of trucks yelling hello to me. I love when it is steamy and hot and I am constantly a sweaty mess. I love when it rains and I have to jump over puddles and end up with mud on the back of my legs.

I love being able to walk along postcard perfect white sandy beaches with coconut trees and no one else on them.

I love that I can wear flip flops to work. I love that I have time to paint, draw, write, dream and relax. I absolutely love sitting in my hammock on my traditional leaf hut deck and looking out over the ocean at the islands in the distance as the sun sets.

I love speaking the local language of ‘pijin’ and getting it right some days and wrong other days. I terribly love listening to snatches of reggae playing from buses and cars and houses as I walk past. I love laughing and joking with my work collegues. I love being able to walk along postcard perfect white sandy beaches with coconut trees and no one else on them. I love that I have access to some of the most remote and untouched islands in the world.

I most love that tourism has not left its mark yet on many places here, and that I can be the first woman to go into a cave in the remote Makira Province.

But mostly I just love the Solomon Islands. I love living here. I love the frustrations of living here. I love the perks of living here. And I know that I will be very sad when my time is up and I need to leave.

 

 

Photo credits for Why the Rain and Droughts Make Me Love Living on the Solomon Islands by Unsplash.