Every Day Is Special: June 8 - Temotu Province Day in the Solomon Islands

June 8 - Temotu Province Day in the Solomon Islands

Posted June 8, 2019

There are so many nations in the world, and they range in size from enormous to tiny. Obviously, many nations need to divide up into smaller internal regions, not just so that they can better identify places on maps, but also so that they can have more localized governmental structures.

In the United States, Mexico, India, Brazil, and many other countries are divided into states. I just visited the very small nation of Iceland, and it is divided into regions. Some nations call their administrative divisions departments, territories, or districts. A popular sort of division is provinces; nations as varied as the huge nation of Canada, medium-sized nations like the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and small nations such as the Solomon Islands.

The Solomon Islands are already divided, geographically, into islands. There are six major islands and more than 900 smaller islands! Still, there's no need to have a government for any of the hundreds of uninhabited islands; and a nation with a population less than the U.S. state of Vermont doesn't need hundreds or even tens of provincial governments, so the 300 or so inhabited islands are divvied up into nine provinces:

Today is the special holiday for the Temotu Province, which has a population of roughly 21 thousand people. I couldn't find the number of islands in this province, but there are lots of them, making up two separate chains of islands.

Here are a few facts about the Temotu Province:

Tinakula is a volcano that erupts once an hour! Not with lava, thank goodness, but with ash and smoke.

I wondered why Tinakula was so very active, and it turns out that the region of the Pacific Ocean where the Solomon Islands - and many other island nations - are located is very complex, made up of major and minor tectonic plates all moving over and under each other, rubbing and heating the lower regions of partly molten rock.

Pacific Kauri trees grow on some of the islands. These are evergreen trees with cones rather than flowers - but they are not the kind of coniferous trees I'm used to, the pines and firs and spruces and cedars, because they have proper leaves rather than needles.

Leaves and cones of Kauri trees

The Kauri trees are often referred to as "ancient," because they were widespread over the earth during the time of the dinosaurs, but now they are mostly found on Australia and the island nations of the South Pacific.

Rich soil, poor soil: Like other Solomon Islands, Temotu is made of islands that have mineral-rich volcanic soil - and those islands are good for agriculture - and also of coral atolls or islets - and those islands have beautiful white sand and palm trees, but not many crops or other plants can grow in what is basically limestone sand.

Five of the Solomon islands have disappeared into the ocean, as of 2016, and many others are threatened by sea-level rise from global warming. I'm not sure if any of the five islands that have already disappeared were from Temotu province, but for sure islands in this province are in danger!