Wednesday 24th June

Kukum Market

Kukum Market

The saga of the Police commissioner and the “lady” just gets more extreme each day. I had it wrong a bit yesterday, it was after the Queens Birthday celebrations, not the football, but other than that, the facts have changed a lot more.

In todays Solomon Star News, the Commissioner was with 6 other police officers, having a few drinks in a secluded spot, when a group of masked and armed men held them up, raped a female police officer, and took their uniforms. And also trashed their car. Luckily they had civilian clothing to put on, it is a very confusing story, I’ll stick with the one I heard a week ago just after it happened before it spread out of control. That he was with a female junior officer when her wantok arrived and dealt to the car and him.

http://www.solomonstarnews.com/

It is proving to be an interesting thing to follow in the paper anyway, along with all the other bits and pieces. More letters in there today about the sewage enhanced fish in the markets, asking why it is allowed to carry on instead of protecting the health of everyone. At the levels of contamination, the fish would have had to be caught in a sewage pond, 7,000ppm E-coli is high by any standards. Then there is the continuing saga of the electricity blackouts. SIEA (Solomon Island Electricity Authority) are saying that their highly skilled and trained technicians are working around the clock to repair the #3 generator, and as soon as the parts, which have been coming by boat arrive finally, after 4 months, from Japan, it will all be well again. The best they can offer is that it will be all restored by the end of July.

I sent Jennifer and Imelda out with the truck today, to get as many cuttings of Bougainvillea as they could find around the town. I’ve found several we don’t have and gave them directions to find where they are. Hopefully in a couple of months we’ll have a bigger range instead of the dwarf purple, standard purple, and orange. Somehow they lost the mother plant for the variegated pink, and the other colours.

Mendana Ave is slowly getting back to pothole alley. Another month and it will be almost as bad as it was before they patched the holes. And this is without a lot of rain. All the roading machinery was destroyed in the troubles, so if it can’t be done with a road grader and a roller, then it will just be a patch up job. All they do is scrape the surface with the grader, then roll over it, spray tar and spread road gravel. No compaction or base course, it goes straight onto the coral. Again it comes down to the cost, too many fingers getting back handers along the way to leave anything for the actual job.

Tiffany and I both feel like a holiday already, she’s been nearly 3 years without a break, I’ve only been 6 months without doing anything. I think that is what is getting me so depressed all the time, waiting to actually do what I’m here for. All I can do is find fill in stuff to keep me occupied, and it has to be something that doesn’t cost anything because we haven’t the funds for anything. Totally frustrating and pointless.

I’ve measured all the tracks in the Gardens now, 4.6 kilometres in total, which will help the schools when they do the next crosscountry, we can work out some really good routes for them.

101 uses for dental floss

#1 Repairing sandals when the stitching comes apart.

#2 Replacing the eyelet binding on the top of my surfcaster when the tip gets damaged.

#3 Rethreading one of my shell money necklaces when it breaks. And it’s not as easy to get the pattern right as you’d think.

More to come

Further to the post on Sunday about the shell money paid as blood money in the murder feud. It is worth $100 per metre for plain, if there are patterns, or groups of other shells in it, it can go to $200 per metre equivalent. A heap of shell money is usually 10 metres in length, so the 45 heaps given as reparation and reconciliation would be worth a minimum of $45,000 in Solomon Dollars, about NZ$9,000, AUD$7,500, US$6,000, €4,200

And would probably take 1 person 2 –3 days to make each heap. A lot of families on Malaita start making shell money lengths as soon as their son is born, so they will have enough to pay bride price when he is old enough.

We heard back from the Japanese consul today, they have accepted our application, now it goes for translating, then forwarded to Japan for approval. Hopefully by the end of September we’ll know and be able to start doing something.