Thursday 8th October

2 days at Kolombano weren’t long enough. Considering that 4 hours of each day was spent being battered about in an aluminium banana boat bouncing from wave top to wave top Steve and I both felt a week would be better. We went down yesterday into the wind, with a slight choppy swell, that had everyone on board soaked in the first 30 minutes. The saving grace was that the sea temp was warm, the wind was hot, and the sun was shining.



We stopped halfway to refuel the boat.



Boat at Kolambano, the palm branches are used as skids to pull the boat over


Kolombano Rural Training Centre is about halfway down the eastern side of Guadacanal, there used to be a road into it, but the floods last February washed the bridges and most of the track away, and it hasn’t been repaired yet. The Training Centre is run for intensive farming training for predominately 20 to 30 year olds, to enable them to return to their villages and use the skills to improve the food production in the villages. They have a huge area under cultivation, I have no idea of the size, in 3 hours walking I only saw half of the farm area. A large coconut plantation for copra production, acres of cassava, pawpaw, eggplant, cabbage, kumara, lettuce. There are normally 20 students there for a year at a time, with very little contact with outside. The copra is taken by canoe once or twice a month to Honiara, and any surplus vegetables taken to the markets for sale, the cash being used to buy supplementary food, flour, salt, sugar, tinned tuna.



Coconut plantation



Aubergine crop

I’ll post some pictures in Google Earth, if you find Honiara, Kolombano is about half way to the South East of there.



Church building

The guest house is good, apart from an amazingly large collection of Huntsman spiders. There is no electricity, water is collected in rain tanks, and also a well. House lighting is kerosene lamps, and bottled gas for cooking in the guesthouse, but over wood fires through the rest of the settlement. Given the large number of people there, most of the food is cooked in a Mutu, similar to a Hangi, heated stones, with banana leaves over them, food wrapped in more banana leaves, then a cover placed over the top and left for 2 – 3 hours. It made me feel a bit homesick actually, even the taste of the food reminded me of New Zealand.





Inside the guest house, comfortable apart from the colony of huntsman spiders

I’m a bit annoyed we only had the 2 days available, I met Lazarus there, he is building his house in the settlement. Yesterday he was only up to the framing stage, and starting to make the leaf panels for the roof. The pictures explain the process more than words, but the panel he made while I was taking photographs took 12 minutes to make, and he needed 170 for the roof. His estimate to complete the house, with floor, walls and roof was 2 weeks from the time he started putting the posts in. No nails, all tied with cane strips, and notched and wedged to fit. The roof will last 7 years before needing replacement. The walls should last 10 years if they are protected by the roof overhang.



Interior of the school house



The first thing Steve and I noticed is that it was considerably cooler there than Honiara, in the sun it was much the same, about 30 – 32C, but at night it dropped to 24C and I actually felt cold during the night. All we could put it down to was the amount of vegetation surrounding and through the settlement, there is very little waste ground, producing food is the main purpose.



Interior of the Kai house, food preparation area

I saw several owls during the night, Steve and I were out on the verandah till 1am talking and in general having a good BS session. I’ve had pics of the Solomon Island Giant Frogs in here before, and mentioned how every fact sheet describes them as rare and endangered. We counted 67 in the short length of the track to the toilet block last night, then spent a few hours with the torch on the verandah spotlighting them through the gardens below. If that is endangered I think someone needs to go do a recount. The locals gather rice bags of them and use them for shark fishing.



Kai house, cooking house to the left

Steve finally realised I haven’t put my 6 monthly report in yet, after 9 months, so I promised faithfully I would have it to him by November. The problem is that I haven’t actually done anything yet, other than have arguments with Keithie since I’ve been here. Still, she has described me as “ a difficult man to deal with”, which means I don’t do everything she wants done.

I can see your head nodding in agreement there Libby.

We arrived back to Honiara mid afternoon, to find crowds of people on the beach front at Rove, then we found out there had been an earthquake a few hours earlier in Vanuatu, and a tsunami warning had be put out for the Solomons. Quite why everyone was down at the beach had me worried about the sanity that prevails here. It isn’t as if no-one hasn’t seen a tsunami and the effects here, we had one at the start of the year, and a major one in 2007 that wiped out most of the northern and western side of Guadacanal. But there they were, camera phones at the ready to take pics of the waves coming in. On the shoreline.

I’m reasonably sunburnt, tired, my butt is sore and bruised from being bounced up and down on the aluminium seats, I’ll let the pictures tell most of the story, and fill in with more once I’ve caught up with some sleep.