Bougainville - Bugurup

The 10th or 20th time the boat's engine refuses to restart, Russell throws the lump of metal he calls an anchor into the water. Metal and rope separate faster than Yugoslav republics, and I stare, unsurprised, at the loose soggy knot that floats back to the surface. It could't really be any other way. We are now adrift in the South Pacific and no one's singing. The only thing left is for us to sink, and I start wondering exactly when that will happen.

Wondering when things will happen has been our main source of entertainment for five weeks now, and in the next five will change my philosophy of life. I now believe people to be divided into three basic types. The vast majority are Brians, who tend to look on the bright side of life. Then there are the Murphys, who believe that anything that can go wrong-Slavs, (Luton) supporters, filmmakers. And last, there are those who know that Murphy was an optimist-filmmakers trying to make a documentary in Bougainville. Bougainville is an island 600 miles east of the capital of Papua New Guinea and only 6 miles west of the Solomon Islands. Despite the fact that its geographic, ethnic and cultural links are patently with the latter, in the first half of the century it was made part of PNG during the close-your-eyes-and-draw-a-line-on-the-map-somewhere territorial carve-ups by the colonial powers that have kept arms dealers in profit ever since. While there were muted demands for self-determination when Papua New Guinea got independence in 1975, it was the excavation of the world's biggest copper mine on the island that finally catalyzed the locals into rebellion in 1989. A people whose life, soul and tradition is the land they own grew increasingly fed up with the huge hole appearing in the middle of their island, the damage its chemicals were doing to the environment they lived off and the minimal compensation they were getting for it.

When their demands were ignored, the landowners decided to close the mine with force, Papua New Guinea sent in a heavy military response, the Bougainville Revolutionary Army was formed and a war for independence started in earnest. Since then the Papua New Guinea Defence Force has maintained a sea blockade around the island with a shoot-to-kill policy, one of the reasons why only a smattering of journalists have got in since and why most of the world has never heard of Bougainville. Gizo in the Solomons is the gateway to Bougainville and Bishop Zale is the man with the key, a priest of the airwaves who constantly relays messages to and from the island on his shortwave radio. He greets our still fresh and eager faces with a broken-toothed smile and tells us that the seas are too rough for boats to come for us from Bougainville at the moment. Tomorrow maybe. We set off to explore Gizo.

By lunchtime we are finished. Gizo is the second largest town in the Solomons and a pretty one, with reefs and truly emerald isles scattering the vivid shades of blue around it. But with only 4,500 people, two streets and one bar there isn't a whole lot to do. The life here is all underwater at some of the best dive sites in the world, a wholly different planet of which we get a tantalizing glimpse on what we can stretch out of the budget. The rest of the time Carlos, the soundman, Alex, a photographer, and I spend reading, sitting in the bar, patronizing the local cinema (where a large TV plays pirate Z-videos that make Van Damme movies look like Citizen Kane), sitting in the bar, listening to the cluck of the geckos, reading, sitting in the bar. . . .

As the days trudge by we begin to realize that the bishop belongs to the Church of Godot. When the weather clears there are boat engines that need to be fixed. We duly fork out and are told, "Tomorrow maybe." But then our captain vanishes without a trace to another island. Other excuses follow until one fine day, four weeks after our arrival, "Tomorrow maybeâ" actually becomes "Tomorrow." Newly versed experts in Beckett as we are, we don't believe the word, but nevertheless turn up at the waterfront at six the next morning for a covert rendezvous with our new captain who has been described as dreadlocked and fat.

Five hours later someone finally approaches us and, as we should have expected all along, he is close-cropped and thin. We don't care-he has a boat and right now he can take us where he likes. Which turns out to be a nearby island that even at low tide just the three of us make as crowded as Malibu Beach when surf's up. As our only link with the world assures us that another boat will be along soon and chugs into the distance, we wonder how many nights we'll have to spend on our shadeless little Alcatraz. Various atavistic scenarios flash before us, envisioning a quick regression to Lord of the Flies territory, maybe still hiding out here in 20, 30 years like diehard Japanese soldiers while our mothers and producers are flown overhead, trying to assure us that the war is over. "No!" we will scream back defiantly. "It's a trick! The war is still there and we still have to film it!" Inexplicably, though, a boat does appear almost immediately. It even has a hefty, dreadlocked skipper at the helm. This is Russell, soon to be known as the Dead Albatross for his curse on all things maritime. He is relentlessly optimistic and assures us the trip to Choiseul Island. The northern part of the Solomons, from which the BRA will take us through the blockade, is only four hours. No worries. Everything will be fine. And indeed it is, for an hour. Then the engine breaks down for the first time. Russell isn't phased when it refuses to restart and decides we just have to wait a little bit.

No worries. For the next two hours he manages to get it going intermittently, each time with a blindly faithful grin that it will never break down again, and takes us one step forward while the rest of the time the current confidently washes us two steps back. When the engine finally throws in the towel, the Albatross does the same with his unattached anchor and I realise that anything that canât go wrong will. Some hours later a local fisherman tows us to the nearest island where we spend the night while repairs are paid through the nose for at a nearby logging camp. Before we go to sleep in the dusty pungency of a copra shed, the Albatross promises, "Tomorrow everything will be 100 percent okay. I am skipper for all weathers. Just two hours to Choiseul now. No worries." Strangely, I almost believe him. I guess it's better than crying. Two hours into the next leg of the voyage of the damned there is still no land to be seen ahead of us. Or to any side of us, for that matter. The Albatross assures us that's because it's too cloudy, though my swiftly crisping skin tells me otherwise. Still, we relax slightly in the knowledge that time here is not the one we know, and a two-hour trip will invariably be at least twice that, just as tomorrow really means next week. Some years later Carlos glances at the afternoon sun to our right. . . . Our right? As we're meant to be heading north, this seems a little odd. He looks at the compass on his all-singing, all-dancing watch. Back at the sun. Back at his watch. "Russell, we're heading southwest." None of us really believe-none of us really want to believe this. But the fact is inescapable-the Albatross has been cheerfully steering us into the middle of nowhere, straight into the great wide ocean. We have no idea for how long or how consistently, but rapidly do a U-turn and head northeast, hoping to hit Choiseul at least somewhere along its coast before it gets dark. The Albatross still won't admit the reasoning of compass, sun and total absence of land, but he clearly isn't sure enough of himself to protest and pretends he's changing course just to make us happy. He shrugs and grins-no worries. I flinch because now I know something bad is going to happen. And sure enough, the engine dies within five minutes. In brief spurts of life thereafter, it struggles to push its heavy cargo through increasingly choppy seas, but with the Albatross in charge it's a Sisyphean task. The only advice I can give about malfunctioning machines is, "Hit it." And again. But it's been clear since we set out that Alex, and especially Carlos, know more about this engine than the Albatross. Any polite deference to our supposed skipper is jettisoned in direct proportion to the amount of water we're taking on board. Carlos moves to the stern and instructs the Albatross on exactly how to treat the motor to keep it alive.

Alex, meanwhile, who has read enough horror stories of people adrift on the ocean for this to be his worst nightmare, has bypassed the agnostic in himself and started silently praying. And it seems to be answered. Ahead of us he spots a cloud that he likens to a flying turtle. As I watch, it fills out into something remarkably like a dove. I remember a story about an ark and an olive branch and there-that's not a mirage is it?-just beneath the cloud-is that?-it must be-yes, yes-I think-land! And then the dolphins come. A school of 30 or more, surrounding us, comforting us, coiling in and out of the blue, and leading us, yes, it must be, leading us to land. Hallelujah! The sight of it is so beautiful that it almost makes everything seem worthwhile. I grin, Alex grins, Carlos grins, the Albatross, as ever, grins. And then he has to, doesn't he? He has to say it, "You see-no worries!" As the dolphins vanish, I wonder if I should make a sacrifice of the Albatross to appease whichever god we've so clearly pissed off-Yahweh, Allah, Neptune, any will do. Just give me the excuse. The dim sanctuary of terra firma dissolves as the sun slips down, dragging with it the dregs of our hopes. In the distance Alex spies a trawler. He ties his T-shirt to an oar, waves an SOS from the bow, and I realize we're on the raft of the Medusa. The trawler speeds off, the night settles down and the engine's heroic bursts get shorter and shorter. Carlos makes it clear that it's going to die eternally under this weight. Something has to go. I have my own ideas on making the boat lighter, but, with only a half pack of custard creams and tin of tuns on board, we might need to cannibalize the Albatross later. He agrees with Carlos, though, and says we'll have to lose either some of the petrol or the beer. Excuse me? Beer? What bloody beer?

And so it turns out that the mysterious boxes under all our luggage are not medicines or schoolbooks or clothes for the people of Bougainville, but enough cans of beer to keep a coachload of Liverpool fans happy, well, at least half the way to Wembley. It isnât even going to cheer up the soldiers of the BRA, just to a bar in Choiseul, and so, sacrilegious though it seems, presently we are leaving a trail of bobbing Solbrew in our wake. Even this isn't enough, though, and a 200 liter drum of petrol soon joins its tiny alcoholic cousins. At least the engine chugs constantly now, but to make up for it the Pacific spews more of itself into our faces. Captain Carlos (for such he has become) constantly barks compass directions at the Albatross who hasn't even mastered the notion of steering towards a particular star and veers off course every few minutes. The rest of us try to peer through the barrage of waves for any sign of the land we pray we're zigzagging towards. Phosphorescent algae plays tricks with our eyes, suggesting cozy little villages on the horizon before hurling itself into the boat-but finally the consensus comes that faint lightening of the sky over there is some sort of life. It could just be a ship leading us into uncharted waters, but Crusoes can't be choosy.

Just before midnight, we pull into a small village, which suddenly seems the acme of civilization, and a couple of dim figures on the beach assure us that we have in fact reached Choiseul. I decide to remember Carlos in my will, shine my torch on the two figures and find the welcoming insignia of the Royal Solomon Islands Field Force. At least the Albatross has been consistent. Not content with frazzling, half-drowning and completely scaring us, he has now delivered us into the hands of the Solomons border patrol, whose current main occupation is stopping journalists like us from crossing to Bougainville.

Seeing us arrive at dead of night with a Bougainvillean, on an island that sees about ten tourists a year, naturally arouses some suspicion. Names are taken, passports checked, but right now we don't really care. It would be a blessing if they deported us. We are denied even that way out, though. Of course no one really believes we're just tourists who've paid the Albatross to boat us around, but no one really cares either. In general the Solomon Islanders' sympathies are with the Bougainvilleans, and it's quite clear there are ties between the BRA and the Field Force. One of them even offers to take us to our rendezvous with the rebels, and the next morning turns up drunk after an all-night binge, no doubt on some of the beer we didn't find when we were throwing things overboard. In true yeasty tradition, he mumbles about wanting us to trust him. He'll see us all right. Then, in even truer yeasty tradition, he disappears for good. For the next few days we are shunted from village to village, awaiting boats that never turn up to fulfill arrangements that change by the hour.

Finally a horde of heavily armed BRA do turn up at our fourth resting place in as many days, and when we make it clear that we're either on their first boat in or on the next plane out, they hurry us to the beach. As, with relief, I watch the Albatross dwindle to a squat speck on the shore, I realize that it's been such an effort just to struggle through the "Maybe tomorrows" of the Bougainvillean network that I've utterly forgotten the main danger of the whole enterprise-the Papua New Guinea Defence Force and its gunboats on the border. It comes home with a shock as the three BRA boats we're heading in with stop in the middle of the sea and a short prayer for a passage that won't "bugurup" is offered. I look at the five armed men on my boat, at the canisters of petrol stacked around me and realize that it isn't really a case of the PNGDF catching us-just one stray bullet will be enough to fry us. The burnt scar tissue twisting the face of the guerrilla next to me is eloquence itself. Still, the Albatross isn't aboard, so maybe we stand a chance. As we set off at the speed we've been looking for since we left Gizo, getting the back-slamming, bum-battering, bollock-breaking ride of our lives, it becomes obvious that these people do know what they're doing. It doesn't, of course, stop our boat breaking down on the wrong side of the border, but no gunboat appears on the horizon, and by nightfall we have actually staggered onto Bougainville, disproving all our theories that it was really some never-never-never again land at the end of a concocted rainbow.

The plan is to make our way to Guava, the mountain base of Francis Ona, leader of the Bougainville revolution and president of its self-declared republic. He, at least, we have been told, is awaiting us. Plans, however, not being worth the optimistic electrons they're dreamt up with on Bougainville, this gets stamped down on morning one. Instead we are intercepted by a group of officials headed by a member of Military Intelligence who soon reveals himself to be proof incarnate that that term is an oxymoron. Suspicions of white visitors is high since PNG hired a British company, Sandline, at the beginning of the year to supply mercenaries to finish off the BRA. Media exposÄs, followed by protests in the PNGDF (who'd sort of admitted they were beaten anyway) and domestic and international protests soon scotched this idea, but it's clear that we, as Brits, are being regarded as possible spies in the vanguard of a future attempt. That may be fair enough, but what I find rather staggering is that the Military Stupidity official doesn't even know the basic facts about Sandline and the expert force, which could well have proved to the greatest threat to Bougainvillean independence yet. His line of interrogation includes such gems as, "Do you have anything to hide?" and "Is there anything you're not telling us?"-cunning traps that I just manage to avoid falling for. In the end I decide he's just trying to throw his weight around to impress us (at least I hope so for the Bougainvilleans' sake), while achieving exactly the opposite. What he does make obvious is the success of eight years of PNG blockade in keeping many of the islanders out of touch with the rest of the world. Despite the fact that in those years there have been fewer journalists here than you'd have found on a quiet day in the Sarajevo Holiday Inn, the officials ranked before us seem to have decided that said journalists' ability so far to change the minds of their governments about the war means they're a waste of time. We don't pretend that we'll make any difference either, but do point out that if it wasn't for those journos, even fewer people in the world would know Bougainville existed. And that if some of the journos hadn't broken the Sandline story, a lot of Bougainvilleans might well be dead by now. And that killing the messenger tends to be counterproductive anyway.