Tiffany and I have just had the two most stressfull days since I’ve been here. The MID Contract cheque didn’t clear the bank by Thursday night, and we had the crew wages due Friday. I had enough to just cover enough for them to pay debts in my personal account, and was about to clear it out, but we finally had enough cash to pay them Friday afternoon.
David arrived back Friday morning, from his bush trek to get timber. He’d carried a pregnant lady from her village way back in the hills to the road, found transport for her to #9 Hospital, then stayed with her and her husband till the baby was born, then walked back to White River and home at 3am.
You really have to see the conditions here to understand what all that means, it took 6 hours to carry the lady to the road, along bush tracks through the hills, then another hour or so to find someone with a vehicle to get to Honiara. From what David has said, I think they are going to call their son after him.
What David has said so far, the husband arrived at their bush camp in an advanced state of panic, his wife had been 2 days in labour at that stage, and was crawling along the track behind him. David, who keeps telling me he is not a supervisor/leader/chief, organised his work crew to go back, find her, and carry her out on a make shift stretcher, then once he was satisfied it was organised, ran ahead and found someone with a car. He hasn’t said if it cost anything, but I get the impression that there was no cost involved, David can really pull the doing good for everyone and don’t expect to be paid for doing this dialogue.
Then I had to tell him that everything he and Tiffany have been working towards for the past 10 years has been for nothing unless we can find a site to move to.
I am so really past the BS I hear from people here about the “locals”.
I had a laugh this morning in town, I’ve blown my budget for the month at Wings and bought wine and beer for a dinner invitation from Barbara at NZ Aid for tomorrow night. As I was walking back one of the buses pulled up at the stop, and the change collector calls out, “hey, white man, you got light for roll?” So I answered “ hey, nem blo me Warren, iufala savvy? He just about fell out of the bus laughing, and I’ve got another person here that knows me.
Honiara is really the dirtiest, grubbiest, filthy place I have seen. All the aid money is going in to things we don’t need, shopping malls, stadiums, and there is no sewerage system, reliable and safe water supply, electricity, and the parliament is in the process of approving $2.5 million in payments to MPs wives, plus a house and car in perpetuity to the Prime Minister, and all those that follow.
I’d misheard Steve, not an uncommon occurrence, I do that with everyone, hearing aids aren’t 100% accurate. Adele isn’t the Adele I’ve been dealing with in Wellington, she’s a NZ lawyer from London and specialising in international law that relates to what is happening here. Nice lady, she’s had a huge adjustment to make this week with the change in temp from London to here, plus the language.
I walked down to Panatina Ridge this afternoon and asked Barbara if I could bring a guest tomorrow, so Adele is coming along as well tomorrow evening. She’s in a house just along from me at Ba’hai.
Dinner with Steve, Gwen , Bruce and Adele on Thursday was good. Back to the Taj Mahal, the food is good, I’m not a fan of of the place because of the acoustics. It is just an open large room, concrete floor, hard surfaces, and echoes from everywhere. I can’t hear properly under those circumstances, so a lot of what was going on I missed. Add in a party of Australians with Sydney accents that can cut corrugated iron and it was a bit noisy. Plus the tv on Sky Sports and the ones watching it.
Gwen and Bruce are having fun on Matira, they are getting used to the land disputes that are a way of life here, and watching their neighbours arguing over a strip of land behind their house. Someone cut down a tree that was a boundary marker, so the disputes over a row of banana and cassava trees has been going on for a while now.
They have a shop there, but it stocks the very basics, rice, flour, sugar, salt and not very much else, so they look forward to coming to Honiara once in a while to stock up on necessities, soap, toothpaste, spices, tinned food. From what Gwen said they have 3 cartons of stuff to take back with them which she hopes will last till they can get back to Honiara.
I was a bit overly optimistic about the water in the house. Sunday and it’s been off since 6am this morning and not looking like coming back anytime soon.
Back from dinner with Barbara and Terry, we had a good evening. Terry used to be involved with Search and Rescue in NZ, and he’s been to a few places in the North Island I’ve gone through around the central North Island plateaux. Ratehi, the Bridge to Nowhere, some of theUreweras. He was based more in the South Island, and worked around the Homer Tunnel when that was being pushed through, so we had a few stories we could relate to with each other.
Adele has her first day at work Monday so that will be interesting for her. She’s already been told that the person she is meant to be working with won’t be available till Wednesday, so she has an office all to herself for a few days, and not alot to do yet. Similar to my situation.
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