Scotland in Buka

There is a place on the west coast of Buka called Scotland! It was in the area that we were travelling in, but we didn’t visit it unfortunately. There is a health centre there that people use, and there used to be a school there, but it closed in the 1970’s.

The funny thing is that the place was not named after Scotland. It came about from a corruption of the name for the place in the local language. The people called it ‘chi kotolan’, and it seems that the early explorers had hearing difficulties and wound up thinking it was called ‘Scotland’. So now it has that name. The original name, ‘chi kotolan’, means ‘small beach’, because at its coast, there is only a small bit of sand.

Here’s a photo I took of Scotland from the boat as we were passing, you can see the small beach and a few buildings.