For nearly two weeks, we would sleep with the sonorous drone of choppers circling over our Hotel Le Paris, and we had no way of leaving the island. A state of emergency had been declared, a strict curfew imposed, and no restaurants or shops were open for business. Had we greedily ignored the warning signs?
From East Timor we had planned to travel to Vanuatu via Sydney. But then Air Vanuatu announced its bankruptcy and cancelled all fights. Since we intended to travel onward to New Caledonia before returning to Singapore, we figured we might as well spend some extra time on Grand-Terre, the largest island in the Melanesian archipelago.
The road to Noumea had become the site of protests, with the local Kanak people angrily holding up banners protesting a bill discussed in Paris which would give voting rights to recent immigrants. Having advocated their independence from France for decades already, the Kanak felt this would disadvantage them even further as they account for less than half the island’s population.
Heaps of tyres ablaze, the occasional car set aflame, black smoke billowed up, darkening the sky. Our hotel’s owner, a jovial fellow from Mumbai who has called New Caledonia home for 30 years, told us that shops were being looted, shots having been fired with multiple fatalities.
A lonesome restaurant managed by a Vietnamese lady occasionally opened for business. In an almost deserted city, it became our refuge. Initially, she would serve us generous portions of poulet et legumes, pulled crab, and chop suey. But once she started running out of ingredients, portions would decrease, the taste of the food resonating with the drab feeling that saturated everything.Gradually, our hotel filled up with French soldiers who were flown in to restore order. Unaware of the food scarcity, they would serve themselves to multiple plates. Tripping over machine guns lying about in the dining room became the new normal, bumping into heavily armoured men rushing outside to quell unrest somewhere, something one only offered only a faint desole for.After nearly two weeks, we received confirmation of a possible evacuation. Driving to the local airstrip, where the French army was in firm control, we got a glimpse of the utter devastation. It was hardly safe on the road. But our driver seemed on good terms with local groups of insurgents, waving energetically while informing us that he was a sought-after tour guide.
A long queue of weary travellers awaited. Our immediate destination was a table with a bunch of papers containing the names of those who would be evacuated. Ours wasn’t on it. As we watched names ticked off the list, we waited for urgent calls with authorities in Auckland and Paris to be conducted to confirm our evacuation.
Flight to the international airport, normally an hour-long car ride but not possible due to violence, wasn’t the shortest we ever took. But it did feel like the longest we had ever waited for. Next was our journey to Singapore, stopping only for gas in Brisbane, fuel running in short supply on the island.
As we flew out over New Caledonia’s islands, tiny dots of verdant green encircled by dreamy beaches, we realised how easy it is to reduce its local squabbles as mere trouble in paradise. However, killing many hours awaiting departure, we had become well-versed in the islands’ troublesome colonial past, the haughty attitude of Paris, located some 16,000 km away and, intriguingly, Azerbaijan’s involvement in stirring up unrest as punishment for French support for Armenia’s claim over Nagorno-Karabakh.
In addition to this, New Caledonia is one of the largest producers of nickel, which is crucial to car batteries, and one starts to appreciate that these islands may be far-flung. Still, they do matter to our tiny blue planet.