We cleaned up the rubbish tip that City Centre becomes on Friday. It had got to the stage where the City Centre Management finally realised Council weren’t going to do anything, and we now have another contract agreed to maintain the area. We had the entire crew in there Friday, 4 truck loads of rubbish so far, and about 3 loads of tree prunings to be collected Monday.
It had a bit of street theatre involved. When we arrived it had all the usual people sitting around there, betel nut sellers, people just passing the time of day, and David started putting up the road cones and telling everyone to move away because we were going to be cutting tree branches etc. One lady took great umbrage at this and started arguing back, so David started one of his never ending monologues about all uifala kam here dis place makem throwem rabish every place likem pigpig. Iufala live in village like pigpig ia? Stop kam dis place live like pigpig, go live in bush likem pigpig, nomoa kam here mifala village and makem rabish everywhere distaem ia?
And so on for about 30 minutes. He had quite a crowd gathered by the time he’d finished. I’m not sure how much impact he had, we’ll find out Monday no doubt when we go back to prune the trees, and see how much more rubbish has been dropped there this weekend.
It probably cost us more than the $1500 per month City Centre are paying for it, but hopefully once we get it all cleaned up, and have someone in there a few times a week it may start to come more presentable. This is right beside Mendana Ave, beside City Centre, which has shops, the NZ High Commission, a few other Government Depts and is right at the centre of the Honiara Business area in Point Cruz. I’m sure there are recent pics in Google Earth, once we get the internet working properly at Ranadi I’ll upload a lot more into G-Earth.
We’ve had Premier Ma from Taiwan here, as I mentioned earlier. The editorial in the Solomon Star on Monday has drawn a lot of flak from various MP’s, all desperately giving examples of what they have spent the RCDF or Cattle Fund on. It all sounds good, until you look at the figures involved. I’m not convinced that paying the salaries of 5 Health Centre staff would use up $200,000 per year, given that the salaries are only in the $15,000 per year bracket, it seems to my figures there is a lot of money left over. As for the Cattle Fund, from letters and reports in the Solomon Star, there are a lot of new 4wd, motorbikes, solar panels, being noticed around the provinces, but no fences, yards, fields, paddocks. Oh, and no cattle either. Never mind, it was only $18 million. Only pocket change here for the politicians. Barely $360,000 for each MP.
From John Roughans column in the Star, the average change of MPs every election is 44%, so nearly half of the sitting MPs are not returned. As he writes, it is as though they just want to get into Parliament for a term to get the money, and the RCDF (Rural Constituency Development Fund) is like a never ending flow of money. It is meant to be used for Constituency development, and I have to admit, there have been a few MPs who do use it to improve their constituencies, but the majority use it to buy votes at the next election, and to keep their wantok happy.
When you consider that nearly of each Parliament is not returned, and you have 25 new MPs each election, it is a wonder that anything gets done, or perhaps it is more understandable why the Solomons is in such a shambles. I’m not meant to have political comments in here, it’s hard to live here and see the totally dysfunctional Government and Council Departments and not have some “views” about it all. I get, as is evident from some of my previous posts, frustrated trying to deal with people who have personal agendas that take precedence over actually getting something done. If they can score a point, they will obstruct, deny, or just flatly ignore a proposal that would benefit everyone.
I was overly optimistic about getting the little truck finished for the weekend. It turned into a brilliant clear sky, hot sweltering couple of days, and with Telekom upgrading the mobile service, from almost non-existent, to intermittent service, I haven’t been able to contact David to find out what is happening with it. Adrian had mentioned on Thursday about going to Bonegi for a days diving, but with no way of contacting him, it became a matter of waiting to see if he turned up, which he didn’t. It gave me another excuse to wash the house out again, I had to be at home Saturday morning to see if the Ant Spray people were coming, again, which never happened either.
It’s now been a month since I had water through the lines, apart from a couple of occasions where it came on for a couple of hours. I took the meter reading yesterday, since 26/02 to 28/03, it hasn’t changed. I have to keep reminding myself I live in the capitol city of the Solomons, and not in a rural village, after the trip Steve and I did to Komonimboko last year, I’d prefer living there to the endless frustration living in Honiara causes. Well almost, if there was internet available. PFNet are gradually getting out to all the provinces, with their email connection, I’m not sure how it works, they advertise it as an email connection only, so it may be something to do with bandwidth and it isn’t enough for someone like me that browses everywhere. I’d be happy with that though.
Tiffany borrowed my Zen and the Art of Making a Living book last week. After 8 years of working with SEB she’s decided this year is going to be make or break, and she just needs that little nudge to get her out of the comfort zone and into doing something else again. I feel pretty much the same, despite everything coming together finally, I know it’s going to be a constant argument over everything we want to do. And at the end, the ideal of being an independent organisation will not happen without a lot of arguments and “words”.
Tiff has 21 weeks holiday pay owing, she’s not had a holiday since she started with SEB, and since Cyclone Ului passed over Bellona she’s anxious to get home and see her family. The argument is now over the $50 difference between her flying there and coming back on the ferry, instead of taking the ferry each way. As she’s only going for a week, and the ferry runs once a month at present, I’m having trouble understanding why there is an argument. I got her to email back and mention the outstanding holiday entitlement, if it comes to push and shove, I’ll get her to take all 21 weeks owing. And not come back.
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