Somewhere over the Rainbow

The national radio station has been broadcasting from the covered sections of the Alotau market. I can hear them as I arrive, picking my way through the altogether more transient set up sprawled outside the gate – neat pyramids of rich, tiny tomatoes and pawpaws basking in halos of their own ripened scent, all spread on palm leaves with tidy signs that say K2; 70t. The sellers smile mildly as I make my laboured and ill-informed selections, and hustle me in a collective effort towards the lone pile of thick-leaved, dark and bitter parsley I have been searching for.

In my first week, Sisi swept me through the steaming pans and idling palm fans – swat, fly, fish – and selected the best of everything for me: a big, rubbery chestnut, spotted fish with the skin on, the softest piece of tapioca – then, starfruit, ready to eat, and the right kind of oranges (thin-skinned). Her soft disapproval – a little snitching sound between the teeth – when I reached for an inferior onion, or pineapple too-ripe. Oh, the skills of grandmothers! I have a sudden, heartsick longing for my Nanna, who came from a village too, after all, and who would have known how to go about the parsley.

Inside, people are seated along the benches usually covered in produce. Lisa waves from the other side – she is about to be interviewed – and I wander through to a perch among the crew. I can see the bay from here, bent palm trees and the bruised, ominous tropical blue sky. They are interviewing a band – old men from Milne Bay who nurse guitars and the puny punchline of a ukulele. Then they begin to play.

I don’t know how to describe it. There is a breeze, warm and salt-smelling, which bowls against me like a labrador, and somehow those thin high happy notes are riding it, guiding it, even. It is one of those moments when I feel so palpably Elsewhere – the sky, the water, and the fat frangipani tree, this music – they belong to each other. They harmonise. I am enthralled by the strangeness and at the same time nostalgic, in no particular way, for places I belong.

The man with ukulele is singing softly, as mournful as a ukelele song can ever be: and there, he is smiling the words, his mouth a crumbled half-set of teeth, stained a bloody red with betelnut. At the end, there is more chatter – this band, it appears, is one of the last of the traditional Milne Bay string bands. The man was singing in his first language, which belongs to the hill country of the southern side of the bay.

“Can you translate the meaning of the song?” asks the interviewer.

The old man smiles.

“It is about the wind. When it blows, it brings memories of home.”