Among the Solomons' six South Pacific islands and countless atolls, only Guadalcanal is well-known—remembered for the bloody World War II battle in which U.S. troops wrested the island from the Japanese in 1943, the year of Kenilorea's birth. (The prime minister's parents, who were active in the native resistance, were on the run from the Japanese when he was born.) The chain of volcanic islands, where head-hunters dwelled even in this century, has a population of 200,000, most of them English-speaking Melanesians. The Solomons gained their independence from Great Britain last July after Kenilorea, a former high school teacher and civil servant, had negotiated a $43 million settlement from the British government. "Britain had not done enough for us economically," says the PM, whose countrymen earn an average annual income of less than $300. "I told them they had an obligation to make up for the past, and I think they had no choice but to agree."
Kenilorea is the son of an evangelist missionary and a lay preacher himself. He lives with his wife and their four children in the Solomons' capital city of Honiara, where he drives to and from his ministerial duties in an unchauffeured Toyota sedan. Though the islanders take pride in their admission to the U.N., they have no plans to send delegates to the General Assembly immediately or to maintain any missions abroad. They simply feel they cannot afford to. Still, says Kenilorea, "We definitely have a role to play at the United Nations at some point. Small though a country may be, you've got a vote. Perhaps one day ours may mean something."
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
