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 Kamekame tribesmen. [OOC: "Kamakama" is Maori for ‘smart’. And it sounds cool.]

Port Cochere

Layout:

Port Cochere is the largest community on Ile Trouve. It has not been subject to censuses, so population is uncertain.

If a ship proves to be to large to make it into the harbor (as tends to be true since the advent of larger steamer ships) the primary access to town is by 'lighter' (small 'access boats'- dories, dinghies, native outrig canoes, coracles, etc). The recent advent of seaplanes makes access to town much simpler.

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.

A primer on the Chinese community in Port Cochere

There has been a Chinese community in Port Cochere for about 90 years. (Captains of ships of immigrants heading toward the Sandwich Islands (Hawai’i) and America found out about Ile Trouve, and wanted in.). They nicknamed the town Wǎngguān (Gateway).

The way the China Trade worked, in those days, was that Polynesian natives grew or gathered goods that the Europeans then transported and sold in China, in exchange for profits, some of which went to things for the natives. This triangular trade led to trade monopolies enforced by heavy tariffs and customs, in turn enforced by serious people.

Certain Chinese knights of industry decided to foster an underground trade, directly with the locals. They found the Kamekame as recalcitrant to deal with them as they would be with everyone else, but found that Ile Trouve made an excellent jumping-off point for dealing with more-amenable people, without too much scrutiny.

So, large Family Associations (or Clans, “Those who eat from the same pot”) sprang up, centered around very quietly handling what would have otherwise been legitimate trade. Those Associations were like small corporations as well as extended families, and soon included staffs, retainers, contacts and so on in their numbers. Rivalry got fierce. Stability was brought by the introduction of the Benevolent Society.

The Benevolent Society (or Tong) is a sort of community center and clearing house. The Family Associations fund it, together, and agree on mutual decisions there. Other people use it as a place to mediate disputes, seek work, dispense charity, and simply gather to not be home all day.

The Society has a Chairman, and a Vice Chairman. They also have a ‘secretary’ who speaks non-Chinese languages (French and English), and handles permitting, et cetera. There is also a gentleman who manages the ‘hiring hall’ aspects of the place- his job is to know who is around, who is available, and who can do what kind of work.

The stability the Benevolent Society brought allowed an actual Chinese community. While the core of the Chinese community were in the trading business, other businesses sprang up to support (feed, clothe, etc) and serve those businesses. A medium-sized fishing community sprang up (large enough that some Westerners simply refer to the whole area as the “Chinese Fishing Village”.)

The Chinese community is robust, and also serves as host to visiting traders and crewmen serving, not only on Chinese vessels, but in crews from other nations. (By agreement with the Port Authority, food, drink and entertainment may be provided, but common crewmen (not officers) must “lodge” aboard their own vessels.)

General Layout: -The Family Associations built compounds ages ago: Large houses, laid out in a traditional Chinese style (south-facing, on rammed-earth foundations, etc), walled from the street with a courtyard, and so on. They also have ice-pits under them, (the cold air wafts up and provides a sort of ‘air conditioning’ in the tropical heat.)

-As described elsewhere, the fishing village is catch-as-catch can as far as layout goes. Warehouses, shacks, proper homes, food-and-drink establishments, etc all exist where they can. (This is the catch-22 of the place: They are successful enough to want to organize more, maybe build some proper Hutongs- but demolishing the unplanned village and clearing construction on this scale would ruin the “privacy” that allows that success to happen.)

-The majority of trade takes place in Port Cochere’s marketplace. Some ‘private’ trades are dealt with quietly, and things that are specific to the Chinese community happen in the Village.

-There are few workshops and no factories. This is where the trade happens, not the making.

-There are no temples in town. (Some say it’s a lack of devotion. Most say they have family shrines in their homes, it’s too far out to get monks, and we don’t want to deal with permitting it with the Christian authorities.)

-There are people here from Chinese communities worldwide (as far as London, Malaysia, America…), and a few pockets of non-Chinese Asian peoples. The mix provides an interesting (if sometimes claustrophobic feeling) community.)

[More TBA]

Final Reposes

The somewhat macabre question comes up, sometimes- what to do with the bodies?. There are several answers.

Visiting mariners often perform burial at sea, far offshore- out of courtesy, not near Ile Trouve. [OOC: Though washed-up bodies are a great plot hook.]. People arriving by plane sometimes bring 'em right back when they go. The French colonialists go to the territorial capital in Papeete, or all the way back to France.

But what of the Kamekame? No outsider knows. No burial grounds are visible from the water (among the Coastal villages) and nobody has been permitted to see the interior well enough.

Now Porte Cochere- if there's no other way to dispose of the body, the soil doesn't tend to allow for a six-foot burial here. But a small, nearby island does. It's not big enough for any farming of use, and only has some trees and such on it- not so much as a rat- but it's a decent burial ground. It has a very small (12 person-pews) chapel and a caretaker's cottage for a guy who lives out there by himself. The visual of a funeral party slowly rowing out there, often with lanterns in the gloaming, can be quite arresting.

Hospital:

Dr. Howard Yates, overworked, but plucky, English doctor works out of a cottage 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 sets up 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 younger women under her supervision for the entire island- 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 Kamekame.

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.)

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