Sunday 13th December

I was hoping for a shower Friday night, and not outside in the rain, but once again circumstances were against me. The landowners where SIWA have the water supply dam decided that as the $4,000 they got the other week wasn’t enough, remember they wanted an $18 million advance last month, so they pulled the power again and Honiara has been without water for the weekend once more. It’s now been 3 weeks with intermittent water supply, utterly insane.

Coming up to Christmas the wharves are busy, with people going back home for the Christmas period, school kids returning home after boarding in Honiara for the school year, families etc all with cartons and boxes of food, beer, building supplies for their village. I was down the wharves on Friday with the camera, so you can get an idea of what it is like, The next couple of weeks is going to be busier as the holiday period draws closer, and everyone wants to get home.






I’m not too sure about some of the boats, when you hear about “tramp steamers” this is exactly what we have here. If it wasn’t for the rust holding hands I think some of them wouldn’t be afloat.

I’ve finally managed to make a chilli sauce that I’ll admit to be bloody hot. I was down the market this morning and bought an entire stalls worth of chillies, $15 worth, I ended up with 200 or so red and green birdseye chillies, some capsicums (bell peppers) my usual bananas, pineapple and pawpaw and a watermelon.

Picked all the chillies off the stalks, into the pot with a chopped lump of ginger root, a clump of crushed garlic, ¼ of the pineapple, tin of tomatoes, a couple of tablespoons of brown sugar, and 2 cups of vinegar. Left it to boil for a while, I’m going to get a blender tomorrow, extravagant as I am about buying stuff, and blend it all smooth. Sampling it today and it is delightfully sweetish hot, with that slow burning feeling, rather than ripping the skin off your tongue type that ruins the taste of everything. This one sneaks up from behind and you suddenly find yourself with sweat pouring out of every part of you. Anyone wants the recipe leave a comment.

The Post Office job starts tomorrow, so we’ll be busy for a couple of weeks going up to Christmas, plus all the usual work to be cleaned up so the town looks reasonable for Christmas. I was looking at the inside of the Post Office area on Friday, trying to think of how, what to put into there. I can’t use tall stuff, the ATM is at one end of the building, so security issues creep in. I’ll have to have a long discussion with Kennedy again, I keep imagining sculptures of canoes/people carrying parcels etc, and planting white flowering hibiscus and bouganvillea to represent the sea breaking on the canoe prow, but who knows. Big sculptures. I think I get a bit carried away with wanting art works through the town, but Heritage did use my idea and the statues Frank Haiku did for them are exactly what I proposed.

Tiff and I will have to go and have further discussions about the budget again, for the inside area, at least we know that they want something definitely Solomon Islands outside, to match what Kennedy is doing inside. I keep thinking of Dublin and the Viking Long Boat opposite the Four Courts, and other towns in Ireland, that have sculptures scattered around in public, ok, we have a slightly different public perception here at the moment, but I keep hoping that once we get it started things may improve. Eternal bloody optimist.

We had Carols in the Park on Saturday, 33*C in the afternoon. I caught up with Santa, and asked him if he wasn’t a bit hot in his outfit, and got the reply, “I’m bloody stuffed mate” Australian RAMSI Commander, he was in the RAMSI Kids train, photos below. The bands that came on into the night were good, a lot of reggae, and also the more normal MOR Christmas songs.














I’ve been hoping for rain all day today, humid, hot and barely any wind, and no water. If it starts to rain later I’m grabbing the soap and shampoo and going outside.

I keep missing people online, my apologies, until things quieten down at work I’m going to be apologising all the time for the next week or so. I have another proposal to write up this week, to the US Consul in Port Moresby for a grant for educational resources. I’d like text books, there aren’t any in Honiara, and we still get school kids coming to us to borrow my few text books that I bought with me for their Horticulture studies at school. It isn’t uncommon to have 6 or more students sitting around the Nursery copying pages out of the books, once we get power on out there I’ll photocopy it all again.