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Published: July 20th 2008
Thirty one years ago in 1977, Sheryll attended a Girl Guide camp at "Omatua" the local area guide camp near Rissington in Hawkes Bay. She made friends with Georgina Sagote who was attending the camp from the Solomon Islands.
After returning home to the Solomon Islands Georgina and Sheryll continued communicating as penfriends for about 6 or 7 years up until Kris was born in 1983. For one reason or another the link was broken and they lost contact.
Georgina's address remained in our address book for the next 15 years and I often said to Sheryl we should try and find her again. We had checked several times in the Solomon Islands phone book but there was no listing for Georgina. Sheryll assumed that with all of the political unrest that the Solomon's had suffered and the terrible cyclones that have occurred there that something may have happened to her.
Late last year I decided to try and find Georgina myself as a suprise for Sheryll . I searched the Solomon Island's phone book again online, but still there was no listing, the surname that Sheryll had for Georgina, luckily was her married name as she was
a few years older than Sheryll and had married quite young.
A general search of her name on the internet however located a woman by the same name who was involved in various aspects of Community work in the Solomon Island's including a group called Women for Peace. I found that she had been reported as giving talks to various groups in her community including discussions regarding the prevention of HIV Aids.
Could this be our Georgina, I wonder, at this stage I decided to still kept it a secret from Sheryll as what I really wanted to do was put them in contact with each other by phone as a suprise for Sheryll.
Unfortunately none of the articles that I had found gave any way of contacting her, so I was still at a loss to know where to start, one of the iternet hits I had read said that she given a talk to the staff at Central Bank of the Solomon Islands.
The penny dropped, as through my work at a Security Company in Auckland I ofton speak with the person in charge of security at the Central Bank of the Solomon Islands, now
it looked like maybe things would start to fall into place if David at the bank knew of Georgina and might be able to help me find her.
I made a call to David and explained to him what I was trying to do, he said he thought that there was a woman by her name in Honiara and that he was happy to assist me in locating her. I was to ring back in 2 weeks and hopefully he would have some details for me. I still handn't told Sheryll what I was doing at this stage, so keeping the exciting news quiet, was a bit of a mission for me.
The two weeks passed and I contacted David again, he had good news for me, not only had he located Georgina, he also had spoken with her and she remembered Sheryll well, now nearly 31 years from when they first met and 25 years after they lost contact. David gave me Georgina's address and home phone number.
I called the number several times but the person answering the call either didn't understand English or the line was bad, but all I got was silence then
the call would be hung up, I felt so close but also so far from reaching my goal. I tried again late one afternoon and this time the person answering spoke English to me and said that Georgina was at work at the "Holy Cross Church" and gave me the number to call.
I phoned the number I had been given and the call was answered by an Australian Policeman on his direct line at the Honiara Police Station, I thought I maybe had dialed incorrectly so I tried again but got the Aussie Policeman again, he laughed and had a dig about Kiwi's and found the number I should have been ringing for me and wished me good luck on my "Special Investigation".
The call to the Holy Cross Church finally was answered and the person who took my call didn't speak English well either so I just kept asking to speak to Georgiana, finally she said to call back in 5 minutes. The Solomon Island language is a form of Pidgen Ehglish and you can pick up most words, so I hoped that my message was going to get through.
I called back in 5
mins and the call was answered with "Hello Murray this is Georgina" for a moment I didn't quite know what to say, (yes I know lost for words, not quite like me) as Georgina didn't even know me, how much had David from the bank told her.
The first few things she said were "Murray thankyou for finding me after all this time, I still have your wedding photo that Sheryll sent to me many years ago, I have lost most of my possesions in my life including my home to tornadoes and all of my children but I still have my photo album of my trip to New Zealand with your wedding photo"
Racing through my mind as she spoke was holy crap how the hell am I going to explain that the man in the photo is not me, that in fact it is Sheryll's former husband, I decided to bite the bullet and leave that one up to Sheryll, I'm sure she will be far more diplomatic at explaining that one away. Phew off the hook at this stage anyway. We chatted for a while and tried to arrange a time for Sheryll to call
her.
By the time Sheryll got home from work my excitement couldnt be contained any longer and I had to tell her what I had been up to and that we were going to be making a call in the evening to Georgina, the Soloman Islands are only 1 hour behind New Zealand, so calling there is easy from a time perspective but bloody hard getting a line.
By the time we got through we were up against the person at the other end who didn't understand our English again, so it was several days before Sheryll actually got to speak to Georgina.
The reunion was quite tearful for Georgina, she was amazed that after all these years , they had found each other again and referred to Sheryll as her sister from New Zealand. They both agreed to keep in contact and a few weeks later Sheryll sent off a long letter with pictures of our family and grandchildren.
Georgina replied a month or so later, a handwritten letter filling us in on her background and family, she is still married to her husband who at the time when they met in New Zealand
he was a Policeman, he is now retired but works for the Customs Department in Homiara.
Georgina asked us to come and stay with her in the Solomon Islands, we did wonder if maybe we would could this and checked out the cost of flights, they were very expensive so we decided to maybe think about it in couple of years time.
Georgina's second letter arrived with the news that she was going to be attending the World Youth Day 2008 in Sydney, Australia in July as a leader with a group of students from the Solomon Islands
She told us about her volunteer work with several groups in Honiara and how busy she was having to write letters to various agencies. It was clear that she didn't have a typewriter or computer to help her with us and all her correspondence was done by hand. That may not sound like a big deal but the sheer volume of work and correspondence she does must mean that it is a mammoth task to keep up with.
What if we could somehow get her a computer and send it to the Solomon's or better still, what if we
went to Sydney and met Georgina there and gave her a computer. I checked flights to Sydney around the time with our usual airlines and they were mainly booked up or very expensive, about $800 each return. I phoned Sheryll and put the idea to her of flying to meet Georgina at Sydney and trying to find a second hand computer for her. We both agreed that we could only afford the trip if we could get cheal airfares to Sydney and return. I trolled the internet looking for other airlines out of New Zealand to Sydney and found that Lan Chile did a flight from Santiago to Sydney via Auckland and we could both travel for about $850 return, this was half of the price of other airlines, so I thought "Let The Journey Begin".
Where the hell are we going to get a cheap PC to take to Sydney for Georgina, or more to the point if we did get one how are we going to get it there. We both spoke about it and wondered if maybe the IT department at Sheryll's work might be able to help us with a cheap PC that was no
longer needed or used, so Sheryll put the idea to her IT department at Fuji Xerox and received a pleasing response that not only were they happy to supply one, a laptop but also a near as new printer to complete the package, but it was to be a donation to Georgina to assist with her Community work from Fuji Xerox.
It was all starting to come together, so we called Georginga to tell her the news, she was so excited and reminded us that it was not long before we would all meet up in Sydney whilst she was at World Youth Day 2008.
Saturday July 12th and were up at at 1am in time to get to the airport for our 5am flight. The lapptop stowed away in my luggage and the printer now travelling door to door to the Solomon Islands, free, coutesy of DHL Couriers. Fuji Xerox had told them what we doing and DHL came onboard with the free offer. I had checked on the internet before leaving and found that the flight was being rescheduled, (well what does that mean), at the airport we were told the flight was delayed by about
5 hours. The nice early arrival in Sydney of 7am was now looking like a midday arrival. Kelly my daughter who is a Nurse in Sydney had arranged to meet us at the airport after she finished her shift at 7am and take us out for breakfast. That all fell through and we made plans to meet later in the day after she had slept.
We were staying at the Central YHA in Sydney, which is a great location in the middle of the city close to trains and buses, neither of us realised quite how many people were in Sydney for the World Youth Day 2008, the Pope was also in Sydney and it was estimated that about 500,000 pilgrims would be attending a mass at Randwick racecourse and sleeping out under the stars, the event even though called World Youth Day,runs for about a week.
Well half of those 500.000 pilgrims seemed to be at every Railway Station we used, every public transport station you went to there was a sea of people moving to catch trains to and from their venues and accommodation sites
Georgina was going to be staying at Oak Hill College in
Castle Hill about 30 kms out of Sydney, her group had been staying at Lismore prior to coming into the city, which is about a 7 hour trip away from Sydney. Trying to make plans as to where and when to meet prior to leaving Bew Zealand had been difficult as she was at the mercy of the organisers and had very little control over the timetable, she had suggested that we arrive about 4 pm on Monday.
We decided to make a day of the trip to Castle Hill and started off getting a Ferry, the River Cat from Circular Quay across the harbour and then up the Parramatta river to Parramatta, it took about an hour, we could have just gone by train but the river trip sounded interesting. At Parramatta we jumped on a train to Pennant Hills (at one point our weekly transport pass wouldn't let us on to the platform as we had strayed outside the green zone that we were allowed in) One of the Rail Australia staff looked at us and said "No worries" and let us through. From Pennant Hills it was a bus trip to Oak Hill College, but it
was still quite early so we visited the
Koala Park Sanctuary 
Koala Park was created in the 1920's and officially opened in October of 1930 by the founder Noel Burnet. He became alarmed at the high numbers of koalas shot for the large export fur trade. He feared that if such harsh treatment was allowed to continue, this lovable and unique animal would disappear from the face of the earth forever. From that time on he spent his whole life fighting to protect, research and create a safe environment in which they could live and breed naturally.
This was the beginning of a unique family involvement with the koala that continues to this day. Noel Burnet's family (through his daughter Noela, now Noela McNamara) are still owner operators of the sanctuary following the same basic principles upon which it was founded.
After leaving the Koala Park we re-caught the bus to Castle Hill and then walked a couple of k's to Oak Hill College, a very nice modern Catholic High School, security was tight and it took a lot of convincing the Security guard on duty that we were legitimate, we had previously spoken to Brother David from the college who had authorised our visit, so the guard called him to check that we were allowed in. Unfortunately when we reported to the office we were told that Georgina's group still hadn't arrived and it could be another 3 to 4 hours before their bus was due. We were told it was OK to stay if we wished and wait in the office. A 5th form student, Glen, who had been helping as a host for the day heard of our predicament and offered to take us into town to the local mall so we could get a meal and fill the time in, he was most helpful and drove us to the Mall showing us where to catch the bus for our return trip to
the College.
We returned around 7 pm and waited in the Office again for Georgina's arrival, About half an hour later a lady fitting Georgina's description came in through the doors, she didn't see us sitting on the couch, Sheryll gave me a nudge and looked up at Georgina, she was speaking to the receptionist and asked if there had been any visitors for her. Sheryll got up and said "Georgina", she grabbed Sheryll and hugged her, sobbing and saying Oh Sheryll", she hugged her for about 5 minutes not letting go and pulling her into her chest and sobbing, it was a very emotional time for them both, but I think more so for Georgina, I guess the fact that we had travelled all the way from New Zealand especially to see her made her feel very special. Georgina is a very special lady though, the work that she carries out inon her home country, the Solomon Islands.
It took some time to get over all the catch ups and we were then invited down to the college gym where the rest of her group were. We were introduced to so many people, all friends of her's
and she usually said, "this is Sheryll and Murray who have come all the way from New Zealand to see me"
Georgina presented Sheryll and myself with a shell and pebble necklace made by the women of the Solomon Islands and told us that some villagers are very poor and making the necklaces and selling them is one of their main sources of income. It was time to present the Laptop computer to Georgina, until now it had been hiden amongst our daypacks.
Sheryll told her about the laptop and presented it to her and explained how we had obtained it and that it was a donation from Fuji Xerox. She was so grateful and said it would make her community work easier, being able to type instead of hand writing her communications to various other organisations and government departments.
One of her current plans is to encourage agriculture in the Solomon's and she is looking at a scheme for villagers to have small poultry farms. She is looking to do some study on the management of poultry and thinks she may need to travel to another country to get first hand knowledge of the industry. I
can just see Georgina's name up in lights at the first Solomon Island's Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet.
Georgina leads a very busy life, all of her own 4 children have died, however she has also adopted many children, one of her sons is living at home with her with his three children. She works for ther Catholic church in Honiara and curretly is studying "pastoral care" with the church. She is involved with "Women for Peace" a group that aims to encourage woman in the Islands to work towards peace within the family and the communities.
We left Georgina with her group and caught the bus and train back to the city, her group was going to be spending the next week in Sydney celebrating World Youth Day. I am glad we made the effort to travel to Sydney and see Georgina, it truely was an amazing experience and we look forward to the first typed letter from Georgina on her new computer.
I spotted Sheryll on the Internet the other day looking up fares from New Zealand to the Solomon Islands . Looks like maybe the " Journey didn't only begin - maybe it hasn't even
finished yet "
God Bless You Georgina
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Neil & Pauline
non-member comment
Amazing
Amazing Murray,wondeful stuff,that is a tear jerking story for an old fella like Me,How special for you Cheryll and special thankyou's to your employer,there are many wonderful people in this Life of ours who do these little things at Home but enermous to those in countries Like Georgina's,then Special People like you two who actually DO what you set out to do to the fullest,what a Lad Murray,I bet Mum Loves you Heaps Our Warmest regards Pauline and Neil