Thursday 5th November

I’m really annoyed. I know Damian will be at home setting off his fireworks and in general having a great time. Spit spit spit. Just don’t set fire to the house, or get Jesse or Kahu burnt. Bloody pyromaniac. I’m just jealous.

We hate working out of the BJS office, it’s like being in a goldfish bowl, just because we’re there everyone thinks that it’s perfectly fine to just interrupt and expect us to drop what we’re doing and do what they think is more important. Then come back later and ask why the stuff they interrupted us doing isn’t finished.

I know I said that the electricity and phone would be on by the end of last week. Silly me, I meant maybe possibly perhaps by the end of the year. Welcome to the Solomon Islands. We could get it done tomorrow, if we slipped $500 to the guy at SIEA for the meter, and $500 to a guy in Telekom.

But Keithie would want a receipt, and I doubt they’d be giving us one.

We got the cheque for the Childrens Park contract today, $2,500 per month which is good, although I’d like to burn the boat. HK Logistics who are sponsoring the Park have offered to fill the boat with concrete, which I’m all in favour of, let the kids play on the top and outside, and stop people using the hollow inside as a toilet and rubbish dump.

We got a small job for the Point Cruz Yacht club, supply plants and Garden mix for the garden at the car park area, $2,000 worth, I’m getting really annoyed with the con artist attitude from the whites here. Just because SEB is a wholly Island workforce, they continuously try to get our charges lowered, or get more than what they are prepared to pay for. It isn’t as if we charge commercial rates either, SEB is a registered Non-Profit NGO, with tax exempt status, so our prices have to reflect that. And still they try to get something for nothing.

As Tiffany said with the PC Yacht Club, the last time SEB dealt with them SEB got screwed and the people we deal with are just con artists. They got a surprise this time though, same as Heritage last week. Cash up front, or the stop credit notice goes into the Solomon Star, the Island Sun and the National Express. David was most impressed at how effective it can be just showing the typed up notice and saying they have till 2pm to pay, in cash, no cheques etc, or this goes in the paper.

I told Tiffany that in future all our accounts have a copy of a post dated stop credit notice enclosed with the invoice, just to get the bastards to pay on time.

Tiffany was shocked that I would do it, but I’m really past caring about what the bloody ex-pat colonials think. Especially the Australian ones. And I’m sick of the local people who are working getting ripped off all the time.

And I needed to let off a bit of frustration as well. More than a bit, a lot.

Things are moving slowly at Ranandi, we’re in a holding pattern over funding, income, etc, so long as we can get to the end of the year, and we can keep the workforce together we should be in a good position for a fresh start.

I went to the Botanic Gardens today, to catch up with John from Woodford School. He was a bit steamed, they had spent 3 hours picking up rubbish, raking the lawn area, going through all the tracks picking up bottles, cans, rubbish before they could start the Cross Country events. I did think that Forestry might have made an attempt, but not even that. The lawn area is a mess, uncut, cars have been driving over paths, so it is all wheel ruts and mud, tyre tracks over the lawn from 4x4’s, the stream is full of cans, bottles plastics. I didn’t stay, it was just too bloody depressing to think of all the work the crew have done all let go.

Jepthah is ok, well, as ok as you would be after falling off a roof, it turned out his ribs weren’t broken, the x-ray they took wasn’t all that good so the doctor just made an assumption based on the lumps, contusions, scrapes and general battered state he was in. he should be back at work next week. I told him I was going to deduct his wages for the damage to the wheelbarrow where he fell on it. I know I shouldn’t do things like that, but I can’t help it sometimes. His face was priceless, round eyes, his mouth opened and closed like a goldfish a few times. If I hadn’t started laughing I may have carried it on a bit longer.

I picked Tessie up from school today, Tiff was in the office, and I was out at the Gardens so I got her on my way back. Got a lot of surprised looks carrying her down the road to BJS, you don’t see many palangi with children that are obviously locals here. And when she was chattering away in pijin and I’m talking back we got a lot of very confused looks. And I think she is a cute little kid anyway, so it wasn’t any problem.

I’ve got 8 people so far for the final Level 2 course for the year, starting Monday in the open air classroom at Ranandi, it’s going to be interesting.

The rains aren’t far away. All this week the clouds have been building up in the afternoons, all we’ve had so far is thunder and lightning, with a few 1 or 2 minute downpours. The thunder is brilliant, if you have read the earlier posts from when I first arrived, add 50% to that. I arrived here towards the end of the rains, from this side of them it is even better. You can feel the air pressing down on you, it’s like trying to walk through thick syrup, then about 3pm there will be an absolutely deafening roll and clap of thunder, and the lightning starts. It continues for a few hours, it’s 8pm now, and still there is lightning flashing outside. No rain though, but we all know it is coming.

I wrote up a concept plan for the road frontage from BSP to the Post Office, put it with the proposed contracts, and Tiffany delivered them to BSP, Telekom, British High Commission and Sol Post. Hopefully they’ll go for it, it is one of the first areas done during the troubles, and it looks as though they just threw plants in to hide the damage, with no thought of unity or similarity to what was there or came after.

I want to gut all the garden beds there, and start fresh, hibiscus and palms, to tie it in with the Supreme Court and the roundabouts.

Speaking of palms, I am getting so frustrated with trying to get the crew to collect the palm seed bunches and bring them back to the Nursery, instead of dumping them in the rubbish. I’ve been trying for months to get this idea across, and I still get, “hemi palms hemi grow lo bush, iumifala gogo digem fo planting, no wariwari boutem seed”

I DON’T want them dug out of the bloody bush all the time, I want them to start growing more, not digging up existing ones and moving them. I’ll either get the idea across or die in the attempt I think.

It’s taken me 2 weeks to get all the paperwork from Andrew and Emory for the NZ Aid STTA Scholarship Applications. And I’m still waiting on Andrew to bring his passport in so I can p/copy it. He lost it at home, and it’s taken him a week to find it, which he did Wednesday night, so he came into work this morning all smiles and happy because he’s found it. But he didn’t bring it in so I could p/copy it and get his application in before I run out of time. But he found it, so I guess that’s a hopeful sign I’ll get it tomorrow.

Emory doesn’t have a birth certificate, and the chances of getting one before he dies of old age are on par with me holding onto money. I’ve used his drivers licence, although it doesn’t have a section for age or date of birth. He thinks he’s 27, possibly 28, or he could be 25, he knows he has 2 older brothers, one younger sister, and 2 younger brothers. So we took a guess and got a rough age for his younger siblings, and put him a year or so older. I have no idea how we are going to get a passport for him if I ever get all the paperwork done, completed, handed into the NZ High Commission, then wait for it to be approved, then enrol him in Otago Polytech, before the end of November. We’ll have till February to sort that out though, it may give enough time.

Time is a really elastic thing here. Einstein never came here, or else relativity would never have been described as it is. “Urgent” depends on who, where and when, “now” is a fairly open ended argument, it could be today, tomorrow or some unspecified time in the near future, “soon” can mean possibly in this lifetime, but don’t go making plans, any other time based definition is best not explored. I’ve got fairly well used to it, but I’ve seen new arrivals here almost broken by it.

VSA have a new volunteer in town, tax accountant, working for another Aid Agency. Steve gives him 3 months till he cracks.

The Solomon Dollar is continuing the steady decline, it’s tied to the US$, latest currency exchange is

US$1 = SBD$8.32
AUD$1 = SBD$7.07
NZ$1 =SBD$6.08
€1 =SBD$11.37

If it keeps going the way it is, I won’t be able to afford to leave