Tuesday 7th July

Solomon Islands Independence Day today. Plus the Swearing in of the new Governor General. I went along to Lawson Tama Stadium early this morning, well, I thought it was early , about 8 am, and there were already 10,000 people there. The stand was full, and the shaded bank was already near full. I was hoping for some good photos, but everyone had to keep back behind the field fence, so you’ll have to excuse the pictures being so distant.

I was thinking while I was there just how much Helen Clarks 9 years of government took away all the things that should be celebrated, or more appreciated. I couldn’t name the NZ Governor General if I tried, the last one I remember is Dame Cath Tizard, and Lord knows how long ago she was. Everyone in the Solomons knows the past one, and the new one, the decision making process for Governor General has been a major topic in the newspapers and radio for the past 3 months, the out-going GG has toured all the provinces saying goodbye, and today was a really big celebration of both Independence and the new Governor General.

The same goes for ANZAC Day. It’s a toss up between Sydney and Melbourne over which one I would go back for, or even the Commemoration at Torbay in Geelong. As far as New Zealand goes, other than the Cenotaph Dawn Service, it’s barely acknowledged in comparison with Australia. Typical of the grey society socialism creates, Nanny knows best in everything, and woe betide anyone having fun. Or being nationalistic. I’m pleased John Key bought back Knighthoods, I may not agree with the choices, I didn’t get one for a start, but the appellation means more historically than some Order of New Zealand medal ever will. I could go on and on and on about things I’ve noticed from being away from New Zealand for so long, then going back and wondering what the hell has happened. But I’d be typing for ages to do that. I’ll just slip things in as I notice.

I’ve had a few days sort of off from here, we had a meeting with Keithie on Friday, the outcome of which I had to spend the weekend going over in my mind trying to come up with some way of making it sound reasonable for the work crew, and us, then power cuts all weekend haven’t helped.

Keithie has finally accepted that we can’t keep doing the *free* work anymore, it’s taken me 4 months to get this realised, and it wasn’t till our bank balance got to one months pay left that she took action. I’ve mentioned before that half our work is the parks, roadside plantings, verges, etc, which we do, but no one pays us for it. It costs us $15,000 a month in wages, plus $5,000- $7,000 in overhead, diesel, tool repairs, plants etc. considering our income from contract work is only $19,000 a month, we’ve been losing $20,000 a month for a long time. All the letters asking for payment for the upkeep of the gardens and parks have gone out, asking for sponsorship for the parks, payment for specific ones, like the Central Police Station, City Centre, NPF Plaza. NPF have been good, they immediately agreed to $2,300 per month, and Kiethie is putting $1,000 a month into the Memorial Gardens.

In the short term however, I’ve had to cut the work week to 3 days, while Tiff and I work on getting everything paid for. I’ve put a lot of trust out to the crew, and told them that as the work contracts come in, I’ll increase the work week, and hopefully by the end of the month we’ll be in a better position financially. Once I have that confirmed, and a better cash flow, I’m after getting everyone a pay rise. They’ve been working for the past 3 years on a promise of one, now that we have a better financial base starting it may be possible finally.

We had a 2 hour meeting Monday morning to discuss it all. David and I have a good system now, I don’t know enough toktok pijin to explain stuff completely, but I can understand it, David has the English and toktok, so I talk first, with all the details in English, David translates into toktok, then I go back over stuff he couldn’t put into toktok, till everyone understands fully. The crew aren’t completely happy with the short week and pay, but we all agreed, any work at the moment is better than none. I’m hopeful it won’t be for longer than a month or so, 6 weeks at most. The cost of living here is horrendous, and the wage rates aren’t great for the locals.

Base rate here is $3.50 Solomon, about NZ$0.70c , AUD$0.55c, US$0.40c, €0.35c, the work crew average is SBD$5.25 per hour. There was some talk of cutting the rate, I managed to get that stopped, all the crew have been there for 5 years minimum, and all have Level 2 Certificates, and can work without supervision. If anything I feel they are underpaid, if I could get $0.50c an hour raise by Christmas that will be a good start.

We’ve laid off 2 people, Davids wantok, and Wilson, the caretaker at the memorial Gardens. Davids wantok I won’t miss or feel sorry for, his excuses have been getting more and more outrageous by the day, and having seen him drunk in town on more than one occasion when he was supposedly off work sick doesn’t endear him to me. Wilson on the other hand I felt really terrible about letting go. He’s in his late 60’s, and just potters around the Memorial Gardens, raking leaves, talking to any visitors, which was fine by me. He knows a lot of the history of Guadacanal, which has been good for any visitors, but we just haven’t got the money to support him at the moment. If we can get back into positive cash flow soon, I’ll take him back.

In some ways I’m happy about the situation, it’s the sort of thing I enjoy doing, not the laying off of staff, but the crisis management side of the whole thing. We’re that far in the hole financially, everything is being considered, so even the more way out things are finally being considered if someone can be found to pay for it. Add in the choices for new work now we can decide if we want it and we should be in a lot better position soon. Either that or I’ll be packing and going.

I’ve had no water since yesterday, the pressure is so low through Honiara that half the town is without water, not a good look for the hotels and guest houses, along with the power cuts which are still happening more frequently. We lost power at work yesterday from 10am till 12, then from 1 pm till 4 pm.

But we have a huge Rugby Stadium going up, and 2 shopping malls with 300 shops with Aid money. It’s the main problem with accepting Aid money from some countries. Japan wants buildings, and won’t give anything towards infrastructure, along with most of the other countries giving Aid money. So we end up with huge buildings, and no services for them.

Here’s my latest creation from the kitchen

Coconut Bread

1 coconut, meat grated and cream extracted (see Method)
or 500 gm dessicated coconut, and cream made from it (see Method)

600 ml coconut cream, tinned if not making your own will work as well.

about 1 cup heavy coconut cream (see Method)

4 – 6 cups plain white or wholemeal flour Use either or a mix of both, although wholemeal will make a fairly dense loaf. Start with 4 cups, add more as needed.

2 tsps Salt

3 tsps dried yeast.

Method

Fresh Coconut

Grate meat out, there are a number of choices here. Either the Island style grater, which is a flat piece of steel with a rounded and notched end, and the coconut half is scraped over it into a bowl, there is a superior Indian/Malaysian grater, which is a multi bladed shape like a large lemon squeezer, with sharpened and notched blades and very quick to use. Or, the not so traditional european method and use a juice extractor, Champion style machine, although as you have to prise the coconut meat out of the shell for this, you will end up with the brown skin flakes through the coconut. You can scrape the skin off, if you want to be fussy. I used a Kenwood extractor, it worked, so whatever you have will probably be sufficient.

If you use a juice extractor, you will end up with about 1 cup of heavy coconut cream, keep this aside.

If you grate the coconut traditionally, wrap the coconut in a clean muslin cloth, soak briefly in 1 – 2 cups boiling water, and squeeze out the juice, repeat until you have 600 ml of juice, or a bit more. Or use a blender, as for dessicated coconut below.

If you use dessicated coconut, put 500gm of coconut into a blender, pour in 600ml of boiling water, let stand for 5 minutes then blend and strain. Repeat once more. Keep the coconut meat, it isn’t necessary to let it dry out again.

Mixing

Put coconut meat, 4 cups of flour, salt and yeast into a large bowl, mix well.

Put room temp heavy coconut cream (if using dessicated coconut, omit this), and 600ml of coconut cream into the flour mix and stir well till mix is well blended. You may need more flour, it depends on which type of coconut method you have used. You may need more liquid also, use excess coconut liquid if you have any left, or water.

Once dough is to the almost not sticky stage, cover and leave for an hour or so at room temp to rise. It is 35*C average temp where I live, bread doubles in an hour here, adjust this time to suit your local temperature.

Once dough has doubled in size, tip onto bench and knead till it is stretchy and holds it shape without collapsing, again, add flour if needed.

Form into loaves and place in tins to rise again. You should get 2 loaves, normal household loaf tin size.

Heat oven to 250C, 450f, pour 1 cup of boiling water into a hot oven tray on the oven floor to create a steamy atmosphere and place loaf tins on the bottom shelf or next one up and reset oven to 210C 400f,

Bake 45 min - one hour, or until loaves have a good hollow drum sound when tapped on the bottom

Caution, the coconut may brown very quickly on the top of the loaf, cover with tinfoil if this happens and continue baking till done.


It is nice fresh or toasted with butter and honey, any other suggestions welcomed.

It’s really dry now, I’ve got the watering crew working 3 nights a week now, just to keep the plants through town in the tubs looking ok. Once we get everything replaced with bouganvillea it won’t be as bad, the crotons and duranta wilt so quickly and shed dried leaves if they go more than 2 days without water. The bouganvillea just sends up more flowers.

If we can get everything sponsored before the Japanese Grant comes through I’ll be a lot happier too. It won’t be siphoned off to pay for the free stuff, which I suspect is what has happened in the past to any money coming in.