Leketo’s Account behind Kagata’s Strive for Success

BY TAVAKE SIMON HANA’AROA

UNLIKE Fiji or French Polynesia, this remote corner of Melanesia sees very few tourists, and as a result, allows travelers to experience real Pacific Island culture and history without the presence of mass tourism.

On the lagoon edge lies two bungalows each with a kitchen and private facilities. Restaurants nearby serve meals on request. These bungalows can cater for seven guests.

This is Kagata Village stay, a very remote homestay located on the island of Barora, one of the islands in the western tip of Isabel province, the longest of the Solomon Island’s archipelago.

Out on the island, a few minutes ride from the Village Stay is the surfing spot, a popular surfing ground for Kagata Village stay guests. This surfing ground is the famous Kagata Surf camp.

Kagata Surfing Frens or camp is a local surfing network that connects you to different Solomon Islands village stays where you will experience the real and typical culture of living, interacting, and meeting new friends within smaller local families who live in the most remote parts of Solomon Islands and at the same time surf the most crowd-free and untouched waves of the islands.

It was established out of surfing after it was initiated ten years ago by a local tourism operator, Mr. Laurie Leketo.

“I started to venture into surfing in 2009, but the initial idea came about two years before that in 2007,” Mr. Leketo said.

A surfer friend of his landed on the island outside Kagata in search of waves in 2007. According to Leketo that particular surfer already traveled from place to place in the western province searching for what he described as the perfect and uncrowded and untouched waves the island has to offer.

While there he briefed Mr. Leketo on the idea of starting a surfing camp as he discovered how potential his new surf ground was.

“It was in one of my holiday breaks from the university to which I had decided to spend it in the village.

“The villagers told me of him (a Surfer), who lived to ski the waves on the island.

“Surfing was new at the time ten years ago and so the villagers do not know the exact word for it.

“That is when I get to meet him and he pitched the idea of creating and running a surfing business to me after he discovered the potential our island has compared to the places he previously surfed,” Laurie said.

After graduated from the University of the South Pacific (USP) in 2009, without wasting more time and with how inexperienced he was, Kagata Surfing Camp was up and running and he started to experience few guests flocking in to try out the newest surfing ground on the planet.

With fewer resources and no proper planning, there is nothing Leketo could do more but to bring his first guests into his own home.

“Straight from the university with no work experienced, I found myself back in the village. My surfer friend sends me an email telling me that he was about to send in two of his friends and told me to get prepared to host them.

“No showers and toilets and I even hire boats from other people to transport them to and from the surfing spot.

 “For accommodation, I had to bring them to my house and explain to them the situation that I have just started.

“I was lucky they get to understand me,” he said with a smile.

To make things much easier according to Leketo, he agreed with his two guests that were to go camping and spend more time on the island.

Because of its remoteness, guests were advised to pay in one or two months earlier where the money would be used to purchase stocks and other necessities on preparedness. Now toilets and showers were able to be completed on time as well.

Towards the end of 2009 and early 2010, Kagata received 30 guests in total and about 7 guests per month.

Ten years on, Kagata Village Stay slowly emerge and rose to gain recognition in the tourism industry and ten years on, it continues to shine as more and more international surfers get accustomed to the spot and now, the number of guests rose to fifty to sixty per season.

Besides, some visitors are interested in other activities too, like snorkeling, scuba diving, fishing, site seeing while for others, they want to spend some leisure moment out from city life.

“Not all our guests are surfers. Some are here for other activities like snorkeling, others wanted to do bush trekking.

“One of the biggest activities that we would like to go into is sport fishing, he said.

Sportfishing is more recreational. Rather than killing the fish, tourists would take pictures of them and then released them back into the water.

Laurie’s oversea friends will help to conduct training for his staff and help them to identify fishing spots. Different species have different feeding grounds and this is one of the areas his staff would be trained on.

By venturing in the tourism industry for ten solid years now, Laurie has bigger dreams ahead of him. He wanted to see the tourism industry in the country to rose from where it is today to a level higher to compete with that of Vanuatu and Fiji.

“The future of tourism in the country is slowly coming up but not in the way we expected it to be.

“Authorities focus more on bigger things. They think that building and invests in many hotels will bring in more tourists in the country.

“But I think we lack basics like customer service, on how to treat our guests. If we build on that I think we can move forward,” the Operation manager said.

He, therefore, encouraged upcoming tourism operators to identify what tourists interest in before operating or seeking for funds and other assistance. He said this as there are operators having problems with their business, like no guests for months or even no guests at all.

“Most times our operators when they think of tourism the first thing come to their mind is a nice fancy house. And that is not a good idea.

“What important is the activity that you provide to your guests as actually enjoying activities and whatever attractions we have is their priority before accommodation.

“First it’s important to identify areas that attract tourists to our places, or why do they want to come to our place.

“Otherwise, by building accommodations before finding your guests is just waste of time and will result in property loss like roof leakage and then seeking fund for the second time to the Ministry”, Mr. Leketo said.

For Mr. Leketo and his Surfing activity, nothing much did he want from the government and ministry responsible.

“The idea of seeking or asking funds from the government is not helpful for me as it barely motivates one in his/her business. That doesn’t show one as a business person.

“What the government should and urgently need to do is to seal Suavanao airstrip with tar,” he said.

According to him, the deteriorating state of the airport is one of the greatest changes that he stumbled on countless times since ten years ago.

His plea to the government is for them to upgrade it so that it can cater for bigger aircraft than the twin otter.

“If they can tar seal it then maybe upgrade it to host the Dash 8 then I think it will attract more surfers,” Laurie said.

The Twin Otter isn’t catered to carry surfboards, not to mention the bare tar, rough runway.

Mr. Leketo is currently the Operation Manager for two surfing camps, Kagata and her sister camp, Vavaghio. Mr. Leketo took up the responsibility of managing Vavaghio this year when its owner and operator, Laurie’s aunt moved to live in New Zealand, what a responsibility.

Laurie invests in the project, along with the local community to enhance their livelihood. It is a pilot project that emerges in the western remote part of Santa Isabel which is still left untouched and is slowly growing to other remote parts of the Solomon Islands.