Island Time

March 27, 2017

This Wednesday marks one month since I arrived in Bougainville.  At first it was ticking off the days and now four weeks have almost come and gone. Time doesn’t fly here. In fact, it can crawl slowly, like beads of sweat collecting between spaces. Alone insignificant, but together a pool.

Yesterday we trekked through the incoming tide, donned a mask and snorkel and entered the Buka passage. The water was swift and I instantly felt afraid, pulled on a current I could not control.

The scene below me: iridescent starfish, pulsating seaweed, a wrinkle of coral, it slipped through my fingers, before I could contain it. I put my feet down trying to push back against the momentum, but could not linger.

My time here is temporal, measured and fixed, with an end date in sight.  As an expat time becomes a marker. “How long have you been here?” “When will you leave?” A way to anchor ourselves, yet hovering in the back of our mind is the awareness: this is fleeting.

I had to adjust the clock on my computer and phone. An hour behind, they stubbornly adhered to Papua New Guinea’s schedule. My colleagues joke that they come to work on PNG time and go home on Bougainville time. Perhaps a way of marking a line in the sand.

This division manifests itself in other ways, categorising Bougainville’s timeline into pre or post-conflict. With a glaring space in between. Preparations for the 2019 referendum are hopeful, yet suffused with a nostalgia for the past, when Bougainville was one of the most successful provinces of Papua New Guinea.

Rushing towards an end point, trying to hold on to something, I can’t help but wonder, what comes after.