Triumph For Solomons' Unwritten Language

Publishing Triumph For Solomons' Unwritten Language

www.radioaustralianews.net.au/stories/201003/2834641.htm

By Geraldine Coutts

MELBOURNE (Radio Australia/Pacific Media Watch): Compiling a book on leading women in Solomon Islands is no easy thing when a major language in the country - pijin blong Solomon, or Solomons Pidgin - is only a spoken language.

But Marilyn Waring, editor of Being the First, rallied to the cause, with the help of the subjects of the book, the country's leading women in the period following independence from Britain 32 years ago.

Professor Waring, a former New Zealand MP, learned of the lack of a record of top women when she worked with the Solomon Islands' Alice Pollard on women's issues for the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands, RAMSI.

She told Radio Australia's Pacific Beat: "Alice is a Solomon Islander, and became aware that there was no book at all of any kind by Solomon Islands women on Solomon Islands women."

Ministries
Women selected for profiles in the book, published by the Pacific Media Centre for RAMSI, include Hilda Kari, "the first and only ever woman member of Parliament.

"About 12 of those in the book are the first women ever to become permanent secretaries or deputy permanent secretaries of government ministries," she said.

"One, Cathye Adifaka is the first woman who was a public services commissioner, and Catherine actually conducted all the interviews in Solomon Islands pidgin, which isn't a written language.

"And then we had to have that transcribed by another young Solomon Islands woman, Cynthia Wickham."

Wickham, who graduated in marine science from an Australian university, was on a boat in the Pacific when the editors sent her voice files to check.

"And she would transcribe them in pidgin, then make a first translation into English.

Spell
"And then they would come back to us to start working on them.

"As pidgin isn't a written language we actually have to debate how you spell every place name, every person's name.

"It's been a pretty unusual editing experience, but I think one of the most important things I've done in more than 30 years working outside of New Zealand."

Professor Waring said: "The public service is the single largest employer in the Solomon Islands but only six per cent of the women in the service are in senior roles.

"So we're hoping that the book provides mentoring in that way."

She believes it is going to go into the high school curriculum.

The launch in the capital, Honiara, is next Monday, March 8 - International Women's Day. A launch in New Zealand will follow on March 17.

ENDS