9th March

9th March

Monday started off almost dry, then from midday on it decided to let all the water down at once. As is usual, I was out in it shopping, then Tiff and I had another meeting at the Japanese Consul to collect all the paperwork for the Grass Roots Funding, we were both soaked through just walking up Commonwealth Ave. I may invest in an umbrella one day.

We’ve got $570,000 Solomon funding to build the office/classroom, which may be just enough, if not, we can play with some of the other funding we have for development and construction. It’s only taken a year to get to this stage, no wonder I get so depressed at times here. I’ll need another year just to make sure everything is settled and working, and everything will continue. It’ll be a good assignment for a Nurseryman to follow up on after I leave. I’d like to stay with it longer, but I know once it is all set up, and running, I’ll be bored with it, and want to move on anyway. So a year putting all the systems in place, fixing all the little problems will be enough. After all the frustrations of the past year, I’m having trouble accepting it is actually happening now.

Tuesday

Another of those days when you have to laugh, or at least have a bit of fun. I mentioned we are putting the wall into the container, well, when I say we, I mean that I left David and Emory with a rough sketch, all the timber, I helped initially getting the timber cut to size, but the rest has been up to them. David came into the office yesterday asking me to go out to Ranandi and help them put the wall covering on, 10mm plywood, a few cutouts etc to go around the door, air con and window, but nothing major. I told him no, he didn’t need me there, he could just go ahead and do it. He did look a bit disgruntled, as if I was at fault for not going out to hold his hand.

Anyway, When we went out there this morning and I had a look, he’d done a good job of it all, even got the louvre windows in, the door frame fixed tight, and the ply cut and fitted. As I said to him, he’s been so long having white people tell him what to do, he’s stopped thinking for himself, and has got to the stage where he can’t do anything. He looked at me, then the look on his face as he realised what I’d said was brilliant. I left him to do the internal covering, and sort out the lights, it may not be as perfect as you’d get outside here, but I know he’ll do as good a job as he can now.

The other bit was when Tiff and I were working out a work plan for the nursery construction, and she kept asking me how long something would take, so she could enter it into the flow chart. I think it was the irrigation system, to start with, I asked how many people I’d have helping, and said 2 weeks, then she asked me how long if I was on my own doing it, and I said about 3 days. I had to explain the difference between me doing it without having to show/explain, and teach, and having 3 or 4 people who have never done irrigation systems before, and the need to make sure they know first, so that if it needs repair, as it will, they can do it without having to find some palangi to come and be the supervisor. I know that sounds a bit condescending, until you work here and see the really basic skills knowledge that exists, the need to show, explain, and show and explain again becomes natural with anything.

I’m always thankful I ran the TOPS courses in New Zealand before coming here, they gave me the patience to look beyond what I think people can do, and look at what they actually do, and the skill levels and back ground knowledge first. Then we start doing the basic stuff first, and build up the knowledge base. Same as with the TOPS Programmes, giving 18 yr olds a hammer and a box of nails and letting them hammer nails into scrap wood half the day till they could hit a nail competently, and swing the hammer, not push it onto the nail head. Using a handsaw, reading a tape measure, all stuff people outside here take for granted, or learnt so long ago they have forgotten they never knew how.

Tying knots in rope is another lesson in “more is better”. I’ve mentioned several times about having to tow start the little truck, I got so frustrated with having to cut the rope each time, due to the Solomon Island Knot they use, that I banned them from tying knots, until they could do a simple bowline, and a half hitch. I still have a way to go with that one, but a few of them have learnt so far. David keeps having little digs at me occasionally about “making” them use the whitemans way instead of the Island way, I never buy into the argument, just mention that it isn’t anyones way, it’s just another method that is a bit simpler, and works easier, and most of the stuff we are doing has been imported from overseas, so maybe the methods used where the idea comes from should work here as well. Apart from theories about time, date and gravity.

I wondered what had happened to my house water yesterday when I got home, thought for a while it was SIWA as usual, then Joel came over and said he’d had the plumber back and changed the lines back to how they were originally. So my house line had been put at the bottom of the hill again, from the gravity tank, then fed back up the hill to my house, which is above the head level. He couldn’t work out why I had no water again. It wasn’t a major thing to change, just a matter of disconnecting a couple of connections, swapping the feed lines over, but the lack of understanding is hard to fathom at times.

The little gecko is back, same one that lost its tail, with a new tail growing. It looks as though hind legs don’t regrow, it still has a deformed rear leg, which is how I recognised it, and the tail is a slightly different colour to the body still. If I can get it back onto my laptop I’ll get another pic of it.

Something else I need to do, is get out and take more pictures, as I’ve mentioned previously, I know when I’m getting depressed with things as soon as I stop taking pictures. That grey fog of despair that clouds your mind and stops you seeing what is there.

The weather is clearing slowly. It should be good for the weekend, well, the mornings and early afternoon anyway. We’re still in the wet season, so the afternoon early evening rain still arrives at 4.30 every day. Along with the sudden downpours at odd times.

If anyone followed the links I posted the other day to Willis Eschenbachs discussion papers, the “Thermostat Hypothesis” paper is the best description I’ve read of weather here.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/14/the-thermostat-hypothesis/
the link once more.

The photos I posted a while back of the ladies with the street stall and the shell necklaces/carving/baskets, I’ve decided to get my big necklace made finally. Imelda left SEB while I was away, for a better job, well, one that had more hours a week than we could offer at the time, so I’ve lost contact for a bit. The ladies were there yesterday which led to a long discussion about what I wanted, the pattern I want in the centre edging, a frigate bird, not the usual religious crosses and bible quotes, which will make it a bit larger than usual, and of course the price went up to compensate for the extra time and design. Still, it’s going to be worth it, and with the others will make a really good addition.

We have a meeting with MID again tomorrow, with all the drawings and designs, for Commonwealth Ave, a meeting out at Dalgro to organise the pavers, and to make sure they can add the colouring agent for the pavers. I think Tiff has a few other things organised as well, we have Government House design and schedule to present on the 31st, I have to go back to SI Quarantine as well this week for discussions about the Quarantine Facility being incorporated into the Nursery, if I get the chance I’ll call into Telekom and find out why I can’t call the USA from here.

Hopefully everything will be moving forward now, all the funding is approved, apart from the lease at Ranandi, but we’ve got to start ordering now to have everything arriving when we’ll need it. Most of the stuff is coming from Brisbane, and the next container is the end of April, then July after that. Allowing for a couple of weeks with shipping and customs, we need to have everything ordered and in the container soon, otherwise it will be September before we have anything to start with.