Thursday 30th July

Almost another month gone by, and still no nearer to having my Nursery set up. I’m really having serious doubts that it will ever eventuate, it’s all a lot of smoke and mirrors, sleight of hand stuff. Fudging with dates, numbers, areas of responsibility, all in all, it’s just a scam to get hands on the money.

Vincent and I got the base runners onto the little truck today, he’s never used a power drill before, nor done much measuring and fitting so we had a bit of fun. It’s looking good so far, I have to take off one of the runners and shift it a bit, about 10mm out of line, but no big worry. Adrian is coming down in the morning to help put the flooring on, I can tolerate him if the work crew aren’t around, it’s when he starts his shouting and abuse at them I feel like burying a hammer into his head.

The next year is going to be interesting here. The guys at work are getting a bit worked up over the MPs and their entitlements, as they say, they threw one lot out in 1998 with a coup, it will happen again if things don’t change. I doubt that the RAMSI people will be able to stop it, short of forcing the Govt to resign en-mass. If a coup is all that happens it won’t be too bad, the last one degenerated into a lot of tribal and inter island conflict for 10 years.

The next election is due July/August next year, I’m pleased to be here watching it all happen, and seeing why, rather than reading the edited and biased reports.

I finally got some sun on me today, now my shoulders and back feel stiff from it. The modesty codes here take a bit of getting used to, you don’t take your shirt off if there are women who aren’t your family around, so working in the sunshine in shorts is frowned on, unless like today it was just Vincent and I at work. Very few of the ladies at work wear trousers or shorts, depending on which Island they come from. Some of them have strict rules about dress, so they wear skirts all the time, but they can get away with overalls but not shorts.
Then you see some of the women from the AID Agencies and tourists wandering around Honiara in really brief shorts and wondering why the locals treat them like tramps.