Is Anyone Out There?

About the Book

This collection of short stories is the second I am publishing. The first was in 1985, published by the Institute of Pacific Studies of the University of the South Pacific, based in Suva, Fiji, called ‘The Confession and Other Stories’. Those stories reflected the thoughts of a young person just starting out in life after leaving school. As a writer I am very fond of humor and presenting general imagery about life in Solomon Islands. Solomon Islanders love fun and laughter in spite of very serious situations - this is what I have tried to portray in this second collection. The stories in this collection have been written over different decades and are therefore different in style and content. The piece ‘In A Clinic’ for example, resulted from my previous work as Manager of Wantok FM, a commercial arm of the Solomon Islands Broadcasting Corporation for which I had spent 22 years working as broadcaster and journalist. I wrote this piece after a workshop the staff and I requested of a former head of the Sexual Reproductive Health Issues to conduct for us, late Ken Konare. The plan was to equip the Wantok FM staff with clear knowledge and understanding of the issues surrounding sexual reproductive health so we could dramatise them on the station. ‘Is This Fair?’ was written over a number of years and is not related to the radio drama serious. It was inspired by a seeming unfairness in schools, even up to this day, where females do not get respect and value and could just go as soon as something is wrong. As is perhaps obvious, the themes and general messages are different and varied but the one thing that is common is they reflect what life is like in Solomon Islands.

About the Author

Julian Maka’a is a former Civil Aviation officer, former Editor in the Publications unit at the University of the South Pacific Solomon Islands Extension Centre in the early 1980s; former Broadcaster and journalist with the Solomon Islands Broadcasting Corporation and former Programs Officer, Trainer for the Solomon Islands National Disaster Management Office of the Ministry of Home Affairs until it moved into the Ministry of Environment, Climate Change, Disaster Management and Meteorology in 2011. He has published a collection of Short Stories called The Confession and Other Stories in 1985 and helped to publish Solomon Islands Writing with the Waikato University of New Zealand and Pacific Quarterly Moana, a regional literary magazine of the South Pacific Cultural and Language Studies under USP Suva, Fiji in the late 80s and 90s. He is now the Communications Officer for the Tina River Hydro Development Project of the Ministry of Mines, Energy and Rural Electrification. He is a co-founder of the Solomon Islands Creative Writers Association. Other co-founders are Sam Alasia, late Celestine Kulagoe among others.