Tailspins & Tiki Gods:Smoots Guide Porte Cochere

Towns & Settlements

You can divide the islands’ resident people into the town, and the hills. The town is Porte Cochere (population unmeasured), the hills are scattered with mixed settlements, and the jungle fastness is the territory of the Kamakama tribesmen. [Maori for ‘smart’, btw. Just a rib.]

Porte Cochere

Layout:

Like much on Ile Trouve, there is a low, and there is a high. The highest point (on a hill overlooking the town and guarding the lagoon), is the Old Fort.

The Old Fort:

A Frenchman named Bellerose designed this in the 1800s as a stronghold for the French. He used local ‘conscript’ labor as well as an Engineer detachment from the Legion to build it. (Both still have grumbling institutional memories of this.). Bellerose was something of a paranoiac. Or at least a huge pessimist- there are redundant protective walls, tunnels going down and out, out so far as into the mountains, to God-knows-where in the unlikely event of a siege. Even the current occupants (the Foreign Legion delegation) doesn’t know everything it has or hides.

In truth, the main defense of Ile Trouve in general is costliness. Until the advent of the plane, it was simply too inconvenient to send troops to, and not profitable enough to hold as unfriendly territory.

Le Haute Ville (the High town):

Consists of what few ‘classy’ older buildings there are: the Mairie (Town Hall) combining a lower level for business and an expansive upper level residence for the Mayor, old sea-captain’s houses dating back to the 1800s. One or two are being used inn style for people who “aren’t there”. There are old cobbles, now slightly mossed-over, in the street.

La Basse Ville (Low town):

This is the unzoned, unregulated part of the town. Basically, the most interesting parts. (Might look a tiny bit like this: http://p4.img.cctvpic.com/program/cultureexpress/20120921/images/1348191552136_1348191552136_r.jpg)

By necessity, it has narrow streets (too thin for a car, unless you wanted to scrape the sides), and few paved ones.

A lot of the houses are wooden, with ‘hatch’ windows held open by poles. Others go out into the edges of the bay, on ‘stilts’ like so: [1] )

There is unorganized gambling in everything from Pai Gow to Vingt-et-Un to Snakefights, but "you need to know a guy". There are places to eat, but they’re often people’s homes as well.

Out toward the lagoon proper (and salted all along it) you’ll see the small fishing boats where local fisherfolk ( http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2011/4/6/1302091757736/solomon-islands-letter-006.jpg ) bring back a lot of the town’s food.

Divers sail out to search the lagoons of surrounding out-islands for valuable pearls and sea-cucumber. A small rope-house at the end of town still has guys winding rope the old-fashioned way (with hempen materials from the hills).

There’s a small, but packed marketplace at the head of the bay, right at the foot of the road that goes up into Haute Ville and on the Fort. There’s no one market day (it’s all day, and- if it’s been too hot in the day- well into the night instead.). It’s a really haggle-intensive place. Francs are the local currency, but pretty much anything you can spend is okay.

-Guides can be hired for a quarter a day. Unless you’re going into the Hill Country. Then you need someone bigger.

Hospital:

Dr. Howard Yates, overworked, but plucky, English doctor and his assistant work out of a shack at the edge of town. Paid by the mayor from local funds, he does what he can to roll up his sleeves and help. (However, gunshots and other purely ‘optional’ injuries he may charge for.) He was a medic in The War, and agreed to come out here because it was so far away from it. He wants to go work among the Kamakama, but their reluctance to let outsiders in hinders him.

Schools:

The colonial government setsup schools, as the idea is that everyone in French territory should “be” French. Children are taught French, French traditions, and so on. This has many altruistic reasons, but it also has the aim of ‘making them French’. Mmslle. DeSaulniers is the tiny whirlwind assigned to oversee this. She has about twenty younger women under her supervision for the entire island- who reside in their local settlements while she travels the circuit, acting as a senior teacher, test-giver, and sole circuit-administrator until a more sturdy system can be introduced.

She, like Dr. Yates, has a goal of “modernizing” the Kamakama.

Settlements:

There are fisher’s shacks, not just in the area of the town, but dotting the outer beaches of the whole island. (They also smuggle, and sometimes put up people who simply don’t want to be found by anyone.)