Thursday 12th November

I haven’t killed anyone this week, which is more a miracle than good management. Wednesday I did the absolutely worst thing I’ve done here, and blew up at David, over something that wasn’t his fault. It was one of those days that Wednesdays turn into when we’re trying to get everything done as it’s the last day for the week for the crew. We had people on all the roundabouts, the Median strip crew were trying to finish the grass cutting, there were two loads of soil/compost mix to be delivered, one to Point Cruz Yacht Club, one to Tonys, City Centre Garden was a mess and we had 2 people in there all day picking up rubbish and trimming shrubs, and Keithie grabbed David and got him and two of the crew to sort out some Palms, Rowea, and Duranta and take them to her place and set them up on her lawn for a lawn party she was having Wednesday night, without telling Tiffany.

So when the phone rang from Point Cruz Yacht Club at 2pm wanting to know where the soil was, as they had 4 of their gardeners sitting around for the last 4 hours waiting after I’d told them it would be there at 10am, I was a bit annoyed. Then Tiff came back and said that the people who should have been at City Centre weren’t there and it was only half done, which is about when David walked in and told us he’d be a little while yet as he was still getting Keithies plants.

I sort of lost the plot completely about then, told him that paying customers come first, we don’t leave people that are waiting on us in the dark about what is happening, and as we’re not getting paid to run around after Keithie, she can wait. David is far to polite, and he tends to do what Keithie wants, without checking with Tiff, and it is Keithies fault as well, she always goes to David because she knows he won’t refuse or put off doing what she wants.

If we hadn’t just had Keithie telling Tiff and I the work crew are over paid, under worked, and most of them need to be laid off I probably could have handled it better. As it was, we didn’t finish till after 6pm Wednesday, and there’s no show of the crew being paid for the extra hours as Keithie won’t believe it took us that long thanks to her pulling the truck, and 3 of the crew away to tidy her lawn up for a party.

Time for good news. MID (Ministry Infrastructure and Development) have asked for a design concept for the median strip down Commonwealth Ave, they are working on upgrading it with new kerbing, pictures attached. I’ve been a couple of days just watching what happens along the street, and I’ve got the plan worked out. Rough sketches are done, I’m working on scale plans now, it isn’t what Keithie would want, very plain, easy to maintain, seating, palms and hibiscus, helliconia and paving. There are existing Delonix regina along the street now, so we keep those for shade trees, with seating under them, a bit of paving so people aren’t walking through the gardens, and a palm inbetween each Delonix with hibiscus in a circle, and helliconia in the shade between the seating.



There are 3 island median strips up Commonwealth Ave, one 30 metre one, the others are smaller, but I’ll use the same design all the way up, and similar for the open side of the street opposite the shops and offices. What has happened in the past has been each little garden has been done as and when it became available, and whatever plants were available went into it, which explains the mess outside Telekom to the Post Office. Hibiscus/gardenias/helliconia/ginger/alamanda/ frangipani all in the same bed. Oh, plus a couple of opuntia cactus trying to spread everywhere.

My intention is to gut the entire strip right out, and replant with hibiscus and palms, so we get a single uniform approach and effect all the way through Honiara.


Caught up with the American kids here on a youth exchange programme today. They are working with the Council, and I’m really annoyed with Council over what Council have done with them. Not so much the job they are doing, but how little thought or help Council have given to the whole scheme.




They are replacing the walkway over the bridge to Chinatown with a lot of the teenagers in town helping, which is really good, but the kids have had to go out and beg and borrow tools, and equipment to do it with. Les at Council Works has been really good with them, tools, back hoe, lifter etc, but they should not have had to go begging around town for basic stuff like hammers, saws, nails. They want to landscape around the bridge heads, so I’ll sort out some plants for them and we’ll work up some ideas. They are only here for 2 weeks, and finding Solomon Time a bit hard to get used to, but they are still smiling and having a good time. 2 from Wisconsin, 1 from California, 1 from Missouri.

Tiff and I are resigned to the fact that nothing is ever going to change, it will always be a constant battle between trying to get more work, and try to get SEB into more of a business commercial standing. I can see all sorts of problems next year with the nursery, I want it to be commercial, and have a public sales area. There isn’t a garden nursery anywhere in the Solomons, and certainly not one anywhere near as big as the one we are building. I’ll have close to 2,500 sq metres of ground to play with, plus an office/classroom/propagating and bagging area, soil and composting area.

Tiff and I went to the ROC Trial Farm on Monday to have a browse. They grow several varieties of rice, trialling for best variety for here, several species of pawpaw, poultry breeds, guavas. It was the rice husks we were after though for composting into propagating mix. We continuosly run short of wood chip, and now we have people buying our mix as well, supply is getting to be a major problem. It looks good, we should be able to get the husks and a fair bit of the chaff as well for composting. Chicken manure is never going to be a problem, unless someone else gets the same idea, then we’ll put our compost prices up and pay the chicken farms for it, and then they won’t give it away to anyone else.

MID payment was delayed again this month, after Friday of this week all the Government Departments have been told not to make any payments till late January. We had 3 invoices for Corrections that David at Rove Prison pushed through for us, that will be ready for pick up tomorrow, all we can do is hope MID pay out tomorrow. I had to pay the crew wages again this week, $9,046, thank God I don’t spend a lot or live a high life style here. Hopefully I’ll get it back before February, depending on how soon MID pay up, and whatever other money we can get in. Although we are looking in better shape financially than we were when I arrived, we were losing $35,000 a month then, now we are close to break even point, and with better pricing going onto the contracts now we should be showing a profit by March next year when all the contracts renew. It hasn’t been easy.

Monday 9th November

I’ve decided that all I’ve been doing is going around and around on the samesame treadmill since February with work. We’ve cut $35,000 off the monthly wage bill, by stopping the community work, increased our contract paid work, cut the staff to 17 total, 5 of whom are non-direct income producing, 2 in the Nursery producing plants, 2 security, and Tiffany in the office. Of the 12 on the outside work crew, 4 of them are tied to the MID Median Strip Contract, the other 8 have 5 roundabouts, all the gardens along Mendana Ave in town, the Childrens Playground, Rove Police Memorial, the Memorial Gardens, one off work as with the Point Cruz Yacht Club, Pacific Casino frontage, and a few others that I can’t be bothered thinking about.

And now we are back on a 3 day work week because the crew don’t work as hard as 2 gardeners in a residential situation with an established and tidy area. And we can do all of the work in 3 days plus whatever else comes up.

I told Tiffany and David it’s time to move on, it’s taken me 9 months to get some realistic pricing in place for the contracts, and now we have less time to get it all done in despite a 40% increase in workload.

We pick up 100 bags of rubbish a day from the gardens, including human excrement, disposable nappies, bits of paper used as toilet paper, vomit, all of the crew regularly get blood infections, or illnesses, David is now away for a week with Yaws, his feet are a mass of open swollen pustules, caused from infected scratches on his legs.

I’m having another word with Steve as soon as he gets back from Metira later this week, if my advice is going to be ignored, or worse, VSA get emails complaining about my lack of respect and failure to obey commands, I’m just wasting my time, VSA time, and it’s all been a bloody ego trip for someone.

I’m not worried about the emails to VSA, everything I’ve sent, asked or suggested is recorded, so the paper trail is there.

On a brighter note, the weather has cooled down today, no rain though, but it isn’t the energy draining heat we had yesterday. Had a question/query from Zoe about the pic of the work crew in yesterdays post, and do they wear overalls etc in the heat? Yes, trying to get them into something cooler doesn’t work, the o’alls have SEB stencilled on, and the crew make sure everyone knows they are working, and keeping the town as clean as we can. I’d like to find thinner and cooler o’alls for them, the present ones came from Australia, and are the fairly heavy cotton ones, fine for a factory in Melbourne, but not so good in the heat here. Still, they were free, donated by a company in Melbourne through the efforts of the previous Aid Advisor. I’ve got that on my list of things to do in Auckland when I get a break if ever.

I know I’m getting too overly involved with the crew, and the situation, it happens and sometimes there are things that no matter how much you wish, will never change. Time for another long advisory note to go, with the resultant eruption, and no positive outcome envisaged.

Sunday 8th November

I can’t wait for the rains. Today would have to have been the hottest I have felt it here since I arrived. I woke about 4am sweating on top of the bed, ceiling fan just pushing dry hot air over me, and it never got cooler all day.

I’m afraid I’m settling into a routine on Sundays, Kukum Fish Market about 9am, chat to the stall holders, ask hao mus hemifala, wander along the stalls, I usually buy pretty much the same things, pineapple, bananas, bok choy, stuff that looks like spinach, pawpaw, cucumber, kumara, and I notice I’m finding the same stall holders each week, even if they move up or down the street. The slight discount doesn’t sound much, a dollar or two off stuff, but it’s more the feeling of belonging instead of the full price I see some of the other palangi paying. Being of a decidely non-RAMSI appearance probably helps as well, I’m certainly not close cropped hair and clean pressed clothes with a Pajero 4x4 parked beside the road.

I almost went to the beach, but the thought of driving for 45 minutes, paying out $20 and putting up with the conversation from the other palangi on the beach changed my mind. Plus knowing the sea would be almost as warm as the air, the sun is behind the beach now, and the palms and trees along the beaches cast shadows over the sand all day. I’m going to be going back to NZ on holiday looking paler than when I left.

I’ve still got the geckos inside, well, most of them, haven’t seen the big ones yet, but 3 of the small ones are still wandering over the ceiling and walls. Hopefully the termite spray hasn’t killed them off, I’ll be finding dead bodies under the fridge and stove no doubt sometime.

A bit more on time definitions. Zoe (thank you) summed it up with “tomorrow” means “not today” it does not necessarily mean the next day. I’m going to write a few up and send to VSA for a page filler for the VSA Magazine, although I’m sure it has been done before.

A few pictures, I know I’ve been really slack with pictures lately, of the crew cleaning up along the road frontage by Iron Bottom Sound Hotel. And my bestest friend Adrian, the man I’ll probably either hang for killing, or be awarded a medal for doing it. He decided Jacks betel nut stained teeth were a disgrace, well, ok, most of everyones teeth here are, so Adrian turned up with a new toothbrush, bi-carb and vinegar, and got Jack to scrub his teeth with the bi-carb, then rinse with vinegar. I was close to starting the chainsaw up and cutting Adrian into small pieces.

Saturday 7th November

It’s 3.30am, we’ve got rain, thunder, lightning, all together finally. The thunder started waking me about midnight, low growls and rumbles in the distance, a bit like a pallet lifter going over a wooden floor, then getting closer till about an hour ago it felt like the house was being hit by a shockwave. The thunder has moved on into the distance again but the rain is now persisting down. And it’s cooler and the air hasn’t got that heavy damp, cloying feeling to it.

Soon it will be the dry days that are the rarity, the usual rainfall on this side of Guadacanal is 12 feet (3.5m) per year, we’ve had maybe 2 foot of it since the dry started, so another 10 foot to come before the end of March. Along with the flooding, the washouts, bridges lost, and maybe an earthquake or two just for fun.

Being Saturday, and I’m still here I guess the world didn’t end yesterday like the idiot w******s running around crying at the 350 World day were claiming. It was all big posters through Honiara the last week, 5 Days to save the World, 4 days/3 Days. HG Wells would have been impressed, all he managed was to frighten the Americans with a radio broadcast, Al Save the Polar Bears Gore has got the entire world running around like Chicken Little. I saw another report, (do they ever put out anything other than reports) now saying that 550 ppm CO2 is inevitable, and mankind and the planet are doomed. All based on computer projections that rely on whatever is feed in. Until one of their hypothesis is proven, and there’s only 4 really, all I can say is it is a load of total bloody garbage. Doing the right things for the wrong reasons still doesn’t make the reasons right. Yes we do need to cut down on the pollution, the waste of resources, but beggaring the western world and sending everyone back to some eco-sustainable living in the woods conversing with the furry little animals isn’t the way to do it.

All the schoolkids here are totally brainwashed about AGW, every tree that falls is one more proof of global warming, the slowly declining fish stocks, the rain, the potholes in the roads, I’m just waiting for the rubbish in the streets to be blamed on AGW as well.

Having Korea, Japan and China run through the seas around the Solomons with giant seine nets scooping up every fish available, stripping the coral reefs of everything and selling it illegally to the Koreans, using dynamite and cyanide to catch fish with, none of those things contribute, it’s all AGW.

I really have to stop writing this at this time in the morning, the part of my brain that usually censors everything is away on holiday or still asleep.

My house is all totally cleaned up again, well, ok, maybe not again, finally, first time since I got here then for the pedants out there. One of the neighbours trees has had a few branches draped over my roof, and the termites decided to travel up the tree and use it as a bridge to my house. They build quite large tunnels on the outside of the tree trunks as super highways, so I had the guys with the spray, the bushknives, saws around yesterday, spraying inside and outside the house, cutting branches, trees down and ripping half the guttering off the side as the branches fell.

I’ll have the guttering repaired hopefully next week, the spray smell is still lingering, and I can’t put anything back into the cupboards for 24 hours minimum, till the fumes dissipate. Everything is stacked neatly? Well, stacked in a heap, in the centre of the floor at the moment, food, cutlery, pots wok, dishes, till later today. It’s good though, I found I had more curry powder than I thought, and a bag of sugar I never remembered surfaced, and the cassava root that was hiding in the corner of the cupboard where I couldn’t see it trying to sprout is now gone.

And I counted 15 dead cockroaches so far in a quick look around, no doubt I’ll get more as the weekend progresses. I hope the spray didn’t affect the geckos, but I can’t see any at the moment, hopeful anyway.

I’ve been thinking about Davids attitude at times with everything. He told me a while back about what has been happening with advisors here, ok, they have been Australians till now, but he said they come, change everything, then when they go it goes back to how it was before. It’s been in the back of my mind since then, and I’ve been quietly and slowly coming to the realisation that while he may be a good motivator for the work crew, he’s not really interested in changing anything. Which makes it harder for me to find that balanced path between what Keithie wants, what I know is possible, and what the work crew can do.

I can see what Keithie wants, and I agree with her about it, I don’t agree with her methods, so I’m trying to get things done in a way that works here. If David is going to be pleasantly obstinate and obstructive, I’m going to stop being the buffer between them and Keithie, and things will not be pleasant. I’m trying to put permanent methods in place that will work, and give Keithie the results she wants, and also improve the work crews abilities, it’s a bit of an uphill battle, but God loves a trier. Well ok, He hasn’t shown me much sympathy yet, but I’ll get His attention one day.

It may come to telling David either accept some change, or if not, then perhaps he should consider going back to SICHE and finishing his Seamans Certification. Having Tiffany and David as CEO and Supervisor is probably not the best thing here, although Rennel/Bellona is more Polynesian that the rest of the Solomons, that patriarchal attitude is there, so being Tiffs husband would make taking orders/instructions from her that little bit awkward for him. Add in his “I don’t want to get involved in management decisions” attitude, and his reaction when he finds out what Tiff and I have been dealing with for months that he hasn’t wanted to know about, it is going to be an interesting time. Not that everything so far hasn’t been.

I finally got all of Andrews paperwork, now I have less than 20 working days to get Aid Funding approved for them to go to NZ for the Polytech Course, and get them enrolled by the end of November. No-one here seems to realise that things sometimes run at someone else’s pace, it is always smiles and a “oh sori, no wariwari, mifala bring tomoro” and then I get stressed out trying to get it all done so they can get the benefits.

And of course if I don’t get it done, it will be “oh hemi whitefala, hemi makem bigfala promis but hemi no deliver nomoa”, and not a thought that perhaps if they had bought all the paperwork in 3 weeks ago as requested it might have been different?

Thursday 5th November

I’m really annoyed. I know Damian will be at home setting off his fireworks and in general having a great time. Spit spit spit. Just don’t set fire to the house, or get Jesse or Kahu burnt. Bloody pyromaniac. I’m just jealous.

We hate working out of the BJS office, it’s like being in a goldfish bowl, just because we’re there everyone thinks that it’s perfectly fine to just interrupt and expect us to drop what we’re doing and do what they think is more important. Then come back later and ask why the stuff they interrupted us doing isn’t finished.

I know I said that the electricity and phone would be on by the end of last week. Silly me, I meant maybe possibly perhaps by the end of the year. Welcome to the Solomon Islands. We could get it done tomorrow, if we slipped $500 to the guy at SIEA for the meter, and $500 to a guy in Telekom.

But Keithie would want a receipt, and I doubt they’d be giving us one.

We got the cheque for the Childrens Park contract today, $2,500 per month which is good, although I’d like to burn the boat. HK Logistics who are sponsoring the Park have offered to fill the boat with concrete, which I’m all in favour of, let the kids play on the top and outside, and stop people using the hollow inside as a toilet and rubbish dump.

We got a small job for the Point Cruz Yacht club, supply plants and Garden mix for the garden at the car park area, $2,000 worth, I’m getting really annoyed with the con artist attitude from the whites here. Just because SEB is a wholly Island workforce, they continuously try to get our charges lowered, or get more than what they are prepared to pay for. It isn’t as if we charge commercial rates either, SEB is a registered Non-Profit NGO, with tax exempt status, so our prices have to reflect that. And still they try to get something for nothing.

As Tiffany said with the PC Yacht Club, the last time SEB dealt with them SEB got screwed and the people we deal with are just con artists. They got a surprise this time though, same as Heritage last week. Cash up front, or the stop credit notice goes into the Solomon Star, the Island Sun and the National Express. David was most impressed at how effective it can be just showing the typed up notice and saying they have till 2pm to pay, in cash, no cheques etc, or this goes in the paper.

I told Tiffany that in future all our accounts have a copy of a post dated stop credit notice enclosed with the invoice, just to get the bastards to pay on time.

Tiffany was shocked that I would do it, but I’m really past caring about what the bloody ex-pat colonials think. Especially the Australian ones. And I’m sick of the local people who are working getting ripped off all the time.

And I needed to let off a bit of frustration as well. More than a bit, a lot.

Things are moving slowly at Ranandi, we’re in a holding pattern over funding, income, etc, so long as we can get to the end of the year, and we can keep the workforce together we should be in a good position for a fresh start.

I went to the Botanic Gardens today, to catch up with John from Woodford School. He was a bit steamed, they had spent 3 hours picking up rubbish, raking the lawn area, going through all the tracks picking up bottles, cans, rubbish before they could start the Cross Country events. I did think that Forestry might have made an attempt, but not even that. The lawn area is a mess, uncut, cars have been driving over paths, so it is all wheel ruts and mud, tyre tracks over the lawn from 4x4’s, the stream is full of cans, bottles plastics. I didn’t stay, it was just too bloody depressing to think of all the work the crew have done all let go.

Jepthah is ok, well, as ok as you would be after falling off a roof, it turned out his ribs weren’t broken, the x-ray they took wasn’t all that good so the doctor just made an assumption based on the lumps, contusions, scrapes and general battered state he was in. he should be back at work next week. I told him I was going to deduct his wages for the damage to the wheelbarrow where he fell on it. I know I shouldn’t do things like that, but I can’t help it sometimes. His face was priceless, round eyes, his mouth opened and closed like a goldfish a few times. If I hadn’t started laughing I may have carried it on a bit longer.

I picked Tessie up from school today, Tiff was in the office, and I was out at the Gardens so I got her on my way back. Got a lot of surprised looks carrying her down the road to BJS, you don’t see many palangi with children that are obviously locals here. And when she was chattering away in pijin and I’m talking back we got a lot of very confused looks. And I think she is a cute little kid anyway, so it wasn’t any problem.

I’ve got 8 people so far for the final Level 2 course for the year, starting Monday in the open air classroom at Ranandi, it’s going to be interesting.

The rains aren’t far away. All this week the clouds have been building up in the afternoons, all we’ve had so far is thunder and lightning, with a few 1 or 2 minute downpours. The thunder is brilliant, if you have read the earlier posts from when I first arrived, add 50% to that. I arrived here towards the end of the rains, from this side of them it is even better. You can feel the air pressing down on you, it’s like trying to walk through thick syrup, then about 3pm there will be an absolutely deafening roll and clap of thunder, and the lightning starts. It continues for a few hours, it’s 8pm now, and still there is lightning flashing outside. No rain though, but we all know it is coming.

I wrote up a concept plan for the road frontage from BSP to the Post Office, put it with the proposed contracts, and Tiffany delivered them to BSP, Telekom, British High Commission and Sol Post. Hopefully they’ll go for it, it is one of the first areas done during the troubles, and it looks as though they just threw plants in to hide the damage, with no thought of unity or similarity to what was there or came after.

I want to gut all the garden beds there, and start fresh, hibiscus and palms, to tie it in with the Supreme Court and the roundabouts.

Speaking of palms, I am getting so frustrated with trying to get the crew to collect the palm seed bunches and bring them back to the Nursery, instead of dumping them in the rubbish. I’ve been trying for months to get this idea across, and I still get, “hemi palms hemi grow lo bush, iumifala gogo digem fo planting, no wariwari boutem seed”

I DON’T want them dug out of the bloody bush all the time, I want them to start growing more, not digging up existing ones and moving them. I’ll either get the idea across or die in the attempt I think.

It’s taken me 2 weeks to get all the paperwork from Andrew and Emory for the NZ Aid STTA Scholarship Applications. And I’m still waiting on Andrew to bring his passport in so I can p/copy it. He lost it at home, and it’s taken him a week to find it, which he did Wednesday night, so he came into work this morning all smiles and happy because he’s found it. But he didn’t bring it in so I could p/copy it and get his application in before I run out of time. But he found it, so I guess that’s a hopeful sign I’ll get it tomorrow.

Emory doesn’t have a birth certificate, and the chances of getting one before he dies of old age are on par with me holding onto money. I’ve used his drivers licence, although it doesn’t have a section for age or date of birth. He thinks he’s 27, possibly 28, or he could be 25, he knows he has 2 older brothers, one younger sister, and 2 younger brothers. So we took a guess and got a rough age for his younger siblings, and put him a year or so older. I have no idea how we are going to get a passport for him if I ever get all the paperwork done, completed, handed into the NZ High Commission, then wait for it to be approved, then enrol him in Otago Polytech, before the end of November. We’ll have till February to sort that out though, it may give enough time.

Time is a really elastic thing here. Einstein never came here, or else relativity would never have been described as it is. “Urgent” depends on who, where and when, “now” is a fairly open ended argument, it could be today, tomorrow or some unspecified time in the near future, “soon” can mean possibly in this lifetime, but don’t go making plans, any other time based definition is best not explored. I’ve got fairly well used to it, but I’ve seen new arrivals here almost broken by it.

VSA have a new volunteer in town, tax accountant, working for another Aid Agency. Steve gives him 3 months till he cracks.

The Solomon Dollar is continuing the steady decline, it’s tied to the US$, latest currency exchange is

US$1 = SBD$8.32
AUD$1 = SBD$7.07
NZ$1 =SBD$6.08
€1 =SBD$11.37

If it keeps going the way it is, I won’t be able to afford to leave

2nd November

I really wish there was an easier way of doing things, or getting things done here, that didn’t involve head to head clashes all the time. Last week as I mentioned above was chaotic, we were juggling the work crew around jobs, 2 new contracts signed, and having to be done, Pacific Casino took 3 of the girls a day and a half to clean up, 15 bags of plastics and paper alone, with 20 bags of weedings, trrimmings, before I could get a weedeater into there to cut the grass back. The Childrens Park and Rove Memorial Park took all of the crew on Friday, I hate sending them there. The wooden boat that in the daytime the children play on, turns into a toilet/brothel at night time. Again they were cleaning out used condoms, excrement, tins, plastics, for what I keep being told are extremely high wages for people who are only gardeners.
I don’t consider $6.75 Solomon per hour to be an extremely high wage, for picking up and cleaning what they do I’d be wanting a considerable amount more. $6.75 SBD is the equivalent of US $0.56c, if there is anyone reading this that tells me that they would pick up human shit and used condoms with cotton gloves because we can’t get shovels into the space, for that amount per hour, please let me know. I’ll hire you so that my ladies don’t have to do it.

And people wonder why I get a bit touchy when the crew are criticised for being lazy, not working hard enough, and being overpaid.

Bruce and Gwen over on Metira are doing ok. Steve said Bruce has lost 10 kg since they have been there, which is a worry, he was built like a match with the wood shaved off to start with, and when they came over a month or so ago he looked painfully thin. Steve feels they haven’t adapted to the lifestyle very well, their work is always up to date, well done, but unlike me, they have had a considerable amount of difficulty adjusting to the food available here.

I had been hoping that the lifestyle, food, tropical living would help me drop a bit of the excess weight, but I’m finding everything here agrees only too well with me, and I’m still struggling to get my weight down. If you take out the nonfood items, soap, detergent, etc, I spend SBD$150 a week on food, at most, equivalent to US$12.50c. It would be nice if I had outside income, you could live well here on a couple of hundred US/AUD/NZ /€ a week coming in.

We’ve had the electrician out to Ranandi today, wiring up the office container, he was the first SI contractor I’ve met who arrived when he said he would, finished the job when he said he would, and hasn’t ripped us off. Now we have to wait for SIEA to install the meter box so the internal wiring can be hooked up, Telekom to put the phone line in, which is only 4 days behind when they said so far, and Tiff and I will be back with the crew.


As I said at the top, I really wish there was a better way of doing things instead of butting heads all the time. Well, butting heads is probably a bit mild, 2 goods trains on a single track heading for each other is a better simile.

I may think about another Dale Carnegie Course.

Ok, thought about it, nope.

The Botanical Gardens are a mess, David has a crew out there dismantling the Nursery shelter, the river is full of plastics, rubbish, SolBrew cans, the lawn area is half cut, and the cut area is now catching back up with the uncut area, there is plastic rubbish from the little plastic cups from the flavoured ices, kwaso bottles, cans, plastic bags all across the lawn, along the tracks. It all seems so bloody pointless, all the work the crew have done over the years getting it back in shape just let go.

I had the rare feeling of feeling sorry for Clement from Forestry when I saw it like that, Woodford School cross-country race is this Thursday, and I felt like offering to send the crew in to clean it up, I’d be charging Forestry for it, but just to get it in shape for the cross country, then thought “Sod them” After all the crap, abuse, threats for the past nine months, they wanted it, they can have it, with all the costs involved.

I know Woodford will have something to say in the Solomon Star if it isn’t up to standard, so I’m being very sinful and indulging in a bath of spite.

We had our first accident today. Jephtah fell off the roof of the Nursery shelter, a few broken/cracked ribs, several large lumps on his head, a few bits of skin missing, but other than that he was still smiling. I didn’t help by turning up and asking who pushed him, which had everyone rolling in laughter, including Jepthah, not the best thing for him, but everyone else thought it was good. It’s a rather basic sense of humour here, I fit right in with it.

He bounced off the wheelbarrow, a few bits of 4 x 2, then hit the ground. I didn’t help again by commenting that “Jephtah, hemi barava gudlukluk fala, hemi have ground stap hemi fall furtha” “he was very lucky to have the ground stop his fall, he could have fallen further otherwise. Ok, not much of a joke, but it worked.

Back into the swings again for the week, at least Tiff and I now feel we are getting somewhere, even if the methods we have to use aren’t all that conducive to cordial relationships, we know that SEB is slowly becoming financially viable.

Hi to my cousin John having a break in London, Libby, Al, Kelly, Hayden and Leigh, Damian, Jesse, Tarsha, Kahu

Sunday 1st November

It’s been one of those weeks when I really feel as though I could possibly kill someone. Not any of the work crew, they’ve been working their butts off all week, extra work, longer hours somedays, and still laughing and smiling.

Tiff and I are in the office in town, a long way from the site at Ranandi, consequently, if we forget a file or folder in the morning it is drive back to there, get involved with what is happening there, then back to town and try catch up with the time missing.

Add in that with the extra hours the crew is working and our wages bill has naturally gone up, and we are back with the same argument about cutting staff and wages.

Tiff was in tears Wednesday over it all, I wrote up a monthly report that I took 2 days to think about afterwards before sending. CC’d it to Steve, and sat back waiting for the explosion. It arrived Friday, none of what I feel are the important things, like David and Tiffany considering leaving, the underquoting of contracts which we aren’t involved with, the constant $4,500 a month we lose on the roundabouts due to the price quoted. All of that was ignored, but we are once again told to cut the staff to half at least, and do more work in less time, without any equipment.

I’ve been so angry at nights I have not written anything in here, it would have been a diatribe of bitches, abuse whatever.

Spent this afternoon with Steve, talking over options, again. He’s ok with it all, sometimes things just don’t plain work out, he has places for me to go, but I told him that until Tiffany and David are sorted I can’t really just walk out on them, nor the crew. While I’m there I’m a buffer between them and the shite, it may not be pretty.

I’ll get back to all this hopefully this week, I’ve been so frustrated with things all week that I’ve been doing distraction stuff, and not thinking about work or related stuff at night.

Hi Gytha, Zoe,