Saturday 3rd October

Another week of power cuts, broken internet connections, in general, samesame as usual.


The mystery pic I posted is of Tiffany and her daughter Renee, here’s one of Tessie.



And if you ever wondered where kapok comes from, here's the tree, Cieba pentranda


The large fruit capsules contain kapok, you would get about 4 pillows worth off one tree this size.

For the past couple of months there has been a gang of guys from one of the settlements going around at night breaking into peoples houses, beating up the owners and taking whatever they could grab, till Tuesday night. They attacked the wrong house, the Police Commissioners, beat up the 3 security guards, threatened the Commissioner and his wife, stole laptops, mobile phones etc then left.

The gang has been incredibly hard to catch for the past 2 months, despite everyone knowing the cars they drive, probably exactly who they are, and where they live. They got picked up Wednesday afternoon, 9 of the 10, I guess until the Police Commissioner gets hit it’s all a bit too much like work to be out looking for them.

It was in the Star on Wednesday morning, and we were taking bets at work on how long it would take to finally catch the people concerned. It’s been nearly 200 burglaries in the past 2 months by the same group, one house has been hit 3 times in a fortnight. It will be interesting reading once they get to court.

Tiffany and I are still packing the office up, it’s not on our list of high priority things yet. The container was meant to have been moved to the Hasting-Deering site on Friday, but neither of us could be bothered checking. Monday Keithie is back, so there will be a meeting to sort it out hopefully. If the Nursery isn’t go to be continued with I’ll be out of a job, which I already know. It would be a good thing to get going from scratch though, at least we could make it a viable proposition without relying on Aid Funding, but I can’t see Keithie spending money on getting it going.

I never fail to be amazed at what happens here, I know I should be used to things but there is always something new happens each week. We got new boots and overalls for the work crew last week, to replace the worn out ones. Issued them all last Wednesday, Thomas arrives at work Monday morning with out boots or overalls. His uncle had wanted to borrow his boots over the weekend, and his brother borrowed his overalls for work on the wharf. Then he asked us to buy him some more boots and overalls because his uncle had gone back to Makira with his boots, and his brother had ripped the overalls unloading a ship etc etc. I was feeling sympathetic till Tiffany told me he had done the same thing the year before, and the year before that. So Thomas is working barefoot as usual without overalls.

I’m pleased there is no Dept of Safety here. I was tempted to tell Thomas that he couldn’t work without boots and overalls, but he is one of the really good workers on the crew, so we just let it go. I have no doubt that if we did replace his boots, they wouldn’t last the week till another of his wantok “borrowed” them and we’re not going to supply an entire village with work boots and overalls.

We worked Friday, the Monks Fire Festival Organiser contacted us a month ago, needing 800 one metre Carillia branches to decorate the altar with, to be delivered either Friday or Saturday. I asked whoever of the crew who wanted to work, they were all welcome to come in and help, with pay for once. Jacinta arrived still drunk from the night before, and David wasn’t in the best of moods either, he’d been playing chess till 2am, and getting beaten so he’d had a few bottles of Solbrew as well. We managed to get all the branches cut and delivered, and dropped everyone off when Yanni from Heritage arrived at the office looking for Jacinta. She was meant to be at an interview for the head gardeners position at Heritage, but obviously had partied the night before, and forgotten all about the interview. I don’t know if she’ll get a second chance, she’d be good for it, at the moment she’s the supervisor for the womens crew at work. I was going to go and find her, but Tiffany said not to bother, if she couldn’t get herself to an interview, which she’s been trying for since May, running around after her won’t make any difference.

Mother sent me a book by Ashley Wilson, who was here prior to the Civil War, with VSA based on Temotu. It’s interesting reading the problems he faced, and describes in his journal. All the things he saw happening leading up to the unrest and tension period are all back with us again 10 years later. The unemployment, Government corruption and bribery, the lack of any infrastructure, poor facilities, no reliable shipping between island provinces. The list goes on but I think you get the picture.

There is discussion now about changing the election process from first past the post to something else, either preferential or some other system. 50% of the current MPs were elected with less than 30% of the vote in their province, and of the rest only 10% gained more than 51%. So they don’t have to pay off many people after the election this way. I’ve mentioned that the elections are next year here, and the bribery is starting now, with villages being given solar panels, water tanks, new houses, and promises of more after the election if they vote the right way. The fact that the money is rightfully meant to be spent on the villages, is lost as the MP for the area has the say on what, who and where it is spent, so if you want something done for your village, you have to vote for the right person or else you will get nothing. It causes a lot of problems within a village when the MP has wantok there, and they receive the benefits, and the rest of the village miss out. It is common to see villages where only a few houses have water tanks, solar panels, generators, and the local shop is also run by the MPs wantok. The rest of the village miss out if they don’t sign pledges to support the MP.

Someone is probably thinking “well, why don’t the others set up their own store, shop, etc” Everything to the islands has to be shipped in, and when the MP can control who gets stuff delivered, opening a shop in opposition to the MPs wantok won’t last long when you can’t get supplies bought in. Or when you can, the price for shipping is going to be 3 or 4 times the cost of the other person.

There are a huge number of tourists in town at the moment, and will be for the next month. We have 450 Monks from Japan here for a week performing “Fire Cleansing” rituals for all the Japanese war dead on Guadacanal, a half marathon in 2 weeks, the South Pacific Public Services Annual Forum, which all means that the hotels and tourist places are booked out.

It also means the pickpockets and bag snatchers are having a field day at Central Markets as well. Adrian stopped a group going in there on Friday, all white, with big handbags, back packs, cameras slung all over, and told them to either close everything up, or go back to their hotel and leave most of the stuff behind. They wouldn’t have lasted 2 minutes in Central Market. The pikininis are the worst, they crouch below the tables and reach into the bags when people stop to look at anything, or hide in the clothing racks and grab stuff out of the bags.

You can tell the locals here, or people that have been here a while. You wear any bags slung over your neck, with the bag on your chest. Never slung on the side or behind.

I went in there on Friday to get some pictures, but after having some Kwaso drunk guy with a bushknife abuse me, and then start to swing the knife at me I decided that I didn’t really want or need any pictures of the place. Totally different to Kukum Fish Market, I can take pictures, chat, have a few jokes, buy stuff and know I’m not being ripped off there.

There is a new group of American Peace Corps people arrived, all young, in their early 20’s. Totally unprepared for what they are finding here. They can’t believe that there are still places on earth where you may have to go without things, like clean drinking water, electricity, where you are safer not going to hospital, rubbish isn’t collected. A lot of them don’t have the skills needed here either, or the ability yet to adapt to the local conditions and lack of resources. It isn’t a simple matter of walking into a shop and buying what you need. Especially once you get out of Honiara.

Personally I think VSA and AusAid give the volunteers a lot better background information, and the selection process with VSA and AusAid is more suited. They pick the people for the need, not like the US Peace Corps where it appears all you need do is volunteer, then they send you and try to find something in the host country for you to do. Very few of the ones I’ve spoken to this week had any idea of the conditions here, and none of them had skills that I would have thought were needed. Still, it will be a good period of learning for them, and it will certainly give them a better world view than they had at the start of their 12 months.