Friday 16th - Sunday 18th April

Friday 16th April

I’m pleased the week is over, only the one accident with Andrew. It looks like he’ll be off for a month or more, which is a disaster. He’s the only one I could trust with the tools and a motor so far, everyone else is inclined to take everything apart just to have a look without thinking about what the problem might be.

I need to spend more time out with the crew on the big jobs. The garden clean up we did, which I know if I’d had 9 people for in New Zealand, Ireland, Australia, we could have had done in a day, has now stretched to 2 days, and is going to be another half day Monday. I’ve been trying to work out how David thinks or looks at a job, discussing it with Zoe earlier today it is as she said, he thinks in a linear fashion, first this, then this, then the next step. So when it becomes a job like this one was with 4 different parts to it, cutting the grass and weeds, trimming the palms, weeding and tidying up the helliconia beds, removing a couple of trees, David started with the grass cutting, and had 4 guys sitting around for most of the day waiting till the next bit, instead of getting them to start trimming the palms. He can’t seem to be able to carry 3 or 4 different things at once and supervise the workcrew doing several things, it is one thing at a time.

Looking back through this, and the past year, I can see it now, I’m probably too close to it as it is happening and get frustrated and I don’t look at what is happening. The jobs I’ve done with the crew that have had several different things involved have all had 2 or 3 of them doing separate bits, and it all comes together so long as I manage to watch them all. It’s not easy at times, but it is always fun, and I don’t push the pace, I think I spend 1/3 of the time showing, teaching or explaining as we go. I need to get out of the office and back to that. Now that everything is settling down with all the funding proposals done, accepted and the money waiting for us to start actually building, I can stop being stuck inside finally.

I’m having some funny email exchanges with Wet Earth in Brisbane over the irrigation system, along the lines, “What pvc fittings do you have in Honiara?” which gets the reply “None”, followed by, “Did you realise you have ordered more fittings than required?” answered with “ Yes, I have ordered twice as many fittings as needed, because I know damn well that the first ones will be damaged, lost, stolen or put in wrong, and I don’t want to wait 3 months for a replacement”

It’s all slowly coming together, a few minor changes, different sprinkler heads, but nothing over budget. I’ll have to do another drawing for Keithie, so she can see the layout, and where I’ve included a retail section at the front of the site. Bruce keeps sending me photos of Kolomonbango Nursery here, which is really good, considering that Tiff and I had been giving a bit of advice last year to them when they were setting it up. I sent back photos of Lyndale Nurseries, the Nursery at Kihikihi, Tandarra in Hamilton, and a few from Ireland that I’d worked at with the comment that this is what ours will look like. We do have more money than Kolomonboko had, I’d like to put in a good nursery that looks the part, we’re using it as a training centre, and I want everyone that comes through to be able to go to Australia, or New Zealand, and walk straight into a similar Nursery and know what to do.

All the stuff ordered so far is on its way, weedmat, planter bags, propagation trays, tubes, I still need a few bits and pieces but there is enough there to get us started. We should be starting on the fence across the field soon, the hold up is still Lands Dept arguing about the lease with Hasting Deering.

Tiff has had a couple of conversations with MID about the Bellona work, it may take a year or so, but it is looking highly likely MID Provincial will let us run the programmes in Bellona to start with, then slowly move into the other provinces as the money is allocated. I think Tiff is more concerned with Bellona, if we get that, she will move back home and be a lot happier with her own business there.

Saturday 17th April

Ok, you have to make your own fun, enjoyment etc here. Chris, Atkin and Mark were up at it early this morning, they have 20 desks to deliver Monday, believe me they are working at it.

I’ve been watching them most of the morning, I finally cracked about midday, and cooked a huge pot of kumara/sardine curry and rice for them. Plus a bottle of my chilli/pineapple/mango sauce. Added in a dozen pita bread as well, and told them to eat it all, and bring the plates and wok back later

I was sitting on the back steps listening to the comments, my sauce gets comments from everyone. Mostly along the lines of, Feck, that is HOT!!!!!!!!!!!! Gimme more

I’ve got an article written up for the Solomon Star about them I’ll send in on Monday, with photos, I know there are times when I really get depressed with life here, the total corruption of everything, and then I run into something like these 3 guys with all the enthusiasm, and I’m back with hope for everything here

Tiff and I had another of our long rambling conversations yesterday, she wanted to know why all of the volunteers she has met over the years have said that as far as belief goes they are Buddhist or similar in belief, as compared with the Ba’Hai that most of the expats here claim to be. I said, well, compare my attitude with what I say and do, with what those that are Ba’Hai, and tell me which you prefer.


I’m not someone that could ever claim to be a Buddhist, or someone that is held up as an example, but I try to follow the beliefs. I like the examples of Zen Buddhist thought in Zen Flesh Zen Bones, the same philosophy is in the writings of the Sufi poets.

I add in there, improve where you can, but it is hard to decide is what I give an improvement?

I’ve got Janis Joplin playing at the moment, every time I play anything from her, I feel the anger, the frustration, the total wastefulness of the times. Such a loss of someone that could sing with all the passion. I got really angry? Upset? When she died, and the main comment was, “no one ever told her she was beautiful” I’m no oil painting either, Janis deserved better than she got



Sunday 18th April

I was running a fever last night, by this morning I was vomiting, I couldn’t hold down a cup of coffee, which for me is serious. I’m feeling more alive now, it’s been a long day of drinking fruit juice, then waiting to see how long it stays down, by this afternoon I was brave enough to try scrambled eggs, but they took a while to eat. It’s 11.45pm, and I think I’ll live.

Tiff called around with the girls, but I was spending more time throwing up than being a good host, so I’ll catch up tomorrow. We were going to go over everything she will be doing in Brisbane, but everytime I stood up, or sat up, I’d be away vomiting again. Not the best of days here.

I’ve no idea what caused it, it could have been food, but there is nothing different about what I’ve been cooking, Tiff thinks it is malaria, which means I’ve got doxycycline resistant mosquitos around. Although Doxycycline like all the other anti malarials, isn’t 100% effective, it’s the most effective for here though. Malarone was good, but since the Chinese shops started selling it by itself and not combined there are a lot of resistant mosquitos around now. I’d love a few drums of DDT, a couple of months of fortnightly spraying and you could come close to wiping malaria out here.

I’ve mentioned a few times about the poaching of beche-de-mer, Customs caught an exporter with a container load of dried beche-de-mer hidden in sacks of shark fin and trochus shells. I hope they get a good fine, or prison. Not that it will stop the poaching, there’s too much money changing hands, and no one explaining to the locals that selling your reef fish means the reef will die.

Plus there have been a few more “fishermen” caught using explosives to catch fish with. I have no doubt that when the reef starts to shatter, break up, all the fish are gone, it will be “global warming” that has done it. I’m going to try and get another couple of articles into the Sol Star soon, about protecting the reef, and peoples livelihoods, plagiarising shamelessly from Willis Eschenbachs articles in WUWT.


I finally got into Tiffs computer on Friday, it always run slow, and takes forever to run programmes like MYOB, even the trial version we have. 40Gb hard drive, win XP, Shirleyta filled it with 10Gb of music, 15Gb of photos, and it has a mighty 240mb of Ram. No wonder it is slow. We’re going to try and get a 2Gb Ram stick for it Monday. Or Tiff might pick one up in Brisbane, they are close to $2,000 here. We had 2 new computers donated a couple of years ago, but they got kept at BJS office, and we got the 2 cast offs from BJS. I’m not going into it any further.