Wednesday 18th August

We spent the day at GPOL, Guadacanal Province Oil Palm factory collecting the deseeded clumps to use for mulch and ground cover. Big factory, for here. I would have liked to go through it and have a look, but that isn’t on the agenda unfortunately. I got a few pics of the loading and first stage processing from where we were waiting for the truck to fill though.





All the workers live in the village built for them next to the factory, and the nursery and field workers live further out. I knew we had palm oil plantations on the plains, but until you drive through you don’t realise how large an area they cover.




It was once all productive food crops, till a few years back, and the 1998 civil war didn’t help. The cattle farms that were there had all the cattle eaten during the crisis, and never replaced, and the oil palm companies moved in.

I got caught finally today, and one of the crew stole my wallet, with all my cards, drivers licence etc, and about $56 in cash. I didn’t realise till I stopped at the shop on my way home and couldn’t find my wallet, went back to work thinking , well, hoping, I’d left it in the office, but nope. It would have been taken while we were waiting at GPOL or the Memorial gardens, I know who we had with us today, not that I’m going to get my wallet back, or anything, but it really pissed me off.

Edit to add. Wallet turned up, minus the money, but all the cards and ID stuff still there.