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.
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Wednesday 14th April/ Thursday 15th
For the last couple of weeks there has been a lot of activity next door, with a large stack of timber and 3 young guys furiously cutting, drilling, hammering from fairly early morning till night fall. I went over on Tuesday afternoon to find out.
Two of them are from Don Bosco Training School, the other is from a similar school in West Guadacanal, and they have a contract to build 40 school desks for St Nicholas School. Everything supplied, they get $100 per completed desk, they figure 4 weeks from start to finish, so about $330 per week each if there are no hold-ups. On an hourly cost basis they aren’t doing all that great, but the alternative is to be doing nothing and earning nothing, so it is hard to say it isn’t economical. Anyway, here’s a few photos of the 3 of them, Chris, Atkin and Frank.
Tiff keeps coming into work in the mornings, I keep sending her home. As I said to her this morning, I’ve seen dead people look better than she does at the moment. Her skin has a greyish pallor under the natural brown, and she hasn’t any energy left. But she keeps on coming in. She should be back to normal by Monday, it takes about a week for the pills to clear the malaria out of her system, after which she has about a month of immunity, then she’ll be down with another dose. White River is a fertile swamp for malaria mosquitos, there are a few small streams that run through the settlement, swampy areas around every house, no one has mosquito nets to sleep under, the houses are predominately thatch, some have windows, but no screens, the rest have openings without screens. It would take about 3 months of DDT sprayed every couple of weeks, and we’d be clear of malaria, but lets not get into that argument again.
Tessie has a good case of scabies, all over her feet, hands, arms and legs. A few patches on her body, fortunately it is clearing up, but she is getting to dislike going to the Health Clinic for shots and pills every day. I would hate to see the child mortality figures for here, I know the report last year about #9 showed an 80% child mortality figure for children going into #9, but most of that figure is because of the delay in people taking ill children to the clinics. Or simply not having a Health Clinic in their village or area.
Any children that get past 5 or 6 years old here are going to be fairly indestructible, they would have been exposed to a huge range of diseases, infections, accidents. Tb, malaria, Yaws, a huge variety of intestinal and other worms, skin infections, malnutrition, all add up to fairly common gauntlet of illnesses that are all too common here. So people have large families, which is normal in a high mortality lifestyle. Until we can improve peoples lifestyle here, it’s a losing battle. I could go on and on, but I think we all know the answers, the solutions are harder to implement.
We’ve lost Andrew for a while. He decided to check out how sharp the bushknife was, and instead of cutting the tree branch, he slit his thumb open, cutting into the bone as well so he will be off work for a while. Usual story, up a tree, cutting branches and made one mistake. Thankfully it was a bushknife, not the chainsaw.
More to the saga of the little truck. I know everyone is wondering if it will ever be back on the road. I mentioned that we had finally found the battery that went missing, which was faulty, and we were taking it back to Discount Autos for a replacement. Somewhere in Honiara is a BJS vehicle with our battery in, and we were given a faulty BJS battery in exchange. Discount Autos have their own labelling system, Motor Corp, the other battery supplier has theirs. So we are now looking for a battery with a red and white label, SFM58, instead of the blue and white 58ERB that is on the one the mechanic gave us. Luckily the invoice shows the battery designation, which helped this afternoon while I was having a “discussion” with the BJS mechanic. And we know BJS deal with Motor Corp, we deal with Discount Auto. I haven’t told Tony yet, it is just getting too embarrassing catching his mechanic out all the time with the stuff he does. It is like the brake fluid episode from a couple of weeks back, when they kept pouring brake fluid into the master cylinder in the front of the truck, and no one wondered where 5 litres of brake fluid at $145 a litre was going. Until someone looked back and realised they hadn’t reconnected the brake hoses to the rear wheels. Tony agreed that it was a bit steep for us to be paying for it after a bit of a discussion and some “talks”.
As an aside to all this, I finally met Roy Hall, the manager of Discount Autos. He’s another Kiwi, so we had the usual, where are you from conv, Auckland, oh, same same, whereabouts, oh Otahuhu, oh, really same same, I lived in Lippiat road, and that is when it got really weird, Roy is a couple of years older than me, he was looking at me when I said Lippiat road, he grew up in #7, the house opposite me, we used to play together till Mum and Dad moved to the farm at the end of Princes Street. So we had a bit of a remember this and who etc for a while. We went to the same schools, same teachers, worked in a lot of the same places around Otahuhu. When you consider the distance between Honiara and anywhere, it’s a small world when you can meet a neighbour from 60 years ago here.
Tiff and I are going into #9 tomorrow to check on Andrew, with a food carton for him so he doesn’t starve. Luckily it was his left thumb, so he’ll be able to use a can opener still. We’ll get a few tins of tuna, crackers, fruit juice, stuff that won’t go off quickly.
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Monday 12th April
Tiff arrived at work looking the worse for wear. We’re still chasing her visa for Brisbane, I can’t see it happening now, well certainly not this Wednesday. Add in that she has another bout of malaria, and it isn’t looking possible. I know all the pros and cons of DDT, but given that cats have wiped out 23 different species of mammals, reptiles and birds on Guadacanal in the last 50 years, I’d be more than happy to wipe out the bloody mosquitos with a few doses of DDT. Plus kill every cat on all the islands here as well.
The Ant Spray men came around Monday morning and left a heap of what looks like shot grit for sandblasting under the corner of my house, and a sign stapled to the house about it being Wild Dog Poison, and to ring them once I see any dead dogs. It doesn’t look like something that animals would eat, but I guess I’m wrong, there are 3 dead dogs within sight of the kitchen window, and one up on the top of the rise by the rubbish bins. As I said I’m of mixed emotions about it, but I’d rather have my steps and ground area without fleas, and no smell on the steps from the dogs. What we could do with is a huge effort to have every male dog in Honiara castrated, just to stop the ceaseless breeding that happens. One of the bitches that I presume has now died, has had 3 litters of pups in the past year, all of which have died from starvation, neglect, or being hit by cars. They aren’t treated as pets as you think of in NZ/Australia/USA etc, just another animal to be maltreated.
It’s mango season again, the second crop, so the ground is littered with fruit that the fruit bats have taken a bite out of and dropped onto the ground. We now have fermenting mangoes everywhere, and the same as last year, it can get a bit overpowering with the heat and humidity. It’s almost like a distillery, but add in a heavy vegetation decomposing smell as well.
I didn’t know about the earthquake till I found something online today, well, I knew we’d had one, I got shaken out of bed by it, but where, how big and how long weren’t questions I had answers for. About 210 km south east of Guadacanal, I don’t know if it made a wave onto the Weather Coast, we won’t know for a day or so until news gets back from there. Samesame with any damage reports, it can take a while for information to travel here. It was originally rated 7.1, then downgraded to 6.8 later.
I’m still waiting for the big one that will hit Honiara one day again. As I’ve mentioned, the hills behind Honiara are coral reef, and it wasn’t from sea levels dropping that they got there. Well maybe, but the sea would have had to have dropped more than a few hundred metres to give the effect.
SIWA are back in the newspaper, this time over lack of water to #9, the main hospital. You keep hoping that you never need to go there, or if you do, it is for something really minor like a broken arm or leg, and you can walk away as soon as possible. There has been a huge amount of Donor money given this year to upgrade #9, but as it went to the politicians, not the Hospital Admin, it is moot as to how much will be spent on upgrading, and how much will go for 4wd vehicles for the wantok. It really is depressing seeing all the money that gets stolen here, or perhaps diverted is a more politically correct term. And everyone treats it as something normal, as long as the MPs spread money around their wantok, everything is settled, and we are left with no health facilities, no water/sewage/electricity systems, a dysfunctional city that even Patrician Vetenari would have trouble managing.
Still we’re getting more and more organised with the nursery, a few setbacks now and then, but overall, it is going ahead on Solomon time even if the pace isn’t my ideal rate of progress.
Tuesday 13th April
We have the lease agreed, 15 years, with renewal after. Time to really start spending money now. Tiff and I will be organising road access, water and power as soon as she returns to work next week. We’ve put off her trip to Brisbane till she recovers from her latest bout of malaria, there isn’t a lot of her, and it really knocks her around.
I’m going to have to have some words about my employment contract, someone keeps insisting I’m here to run classes only, everything else I do is peripheral and once we are settled I’ll be teaching all the time. My TOR states that I’m to oversee the “Local” teacher, and ascertain if they need further training, not run it all. Which would be a stupid thing to be doing anyway, what happens when my contract expires? The teaching portion of my contract is less than 10%, the rest is establishing the nursery, landscaping designs for Honiara, Auki, Gizo, etc. Creating a skilled and trained workforce of people with good gardening and nursery skills.
I know I’m fighting an uphill battle over getting local people employed in positions that were once the preserve of the colonialists, but its been 30 years since independence, time to move on and grow up.
I met the lady that has been employed to watch Tiff, ok, that may be a jaundiced view, but after some of the comments I’m positive it is just a post colonial attitude.
We’re finally getting MYOB installed on the computer, but it isn’t for Tiff to use, as she’s just a local and probably doesn’t understand it. Am I angry? I’m past angry, Tiff has been using MYOB for a damn sight longer than I’ve been here, we’ve been trying to get a full version loaded for a year so she can do all the accounts and keep each funding agency separated, and now we get told she probably won’t understand it?
Ok, moving on, if I dwell on that too long I’ll be writing stuff I’ll have to delete before posting.
I had a laugh this morning, I’ve been taking 2 litre bottles of water in each day for the crew, most of them don’t have water tanks, and I’ve got more water than I’ll use between rainfalls. One bottle ended up with a live mosquito larva in it, which had Hudson, Misi, David horrified. I spent ages trying to convince them that it proved how good the water was, if the water was bad the larva wouldn’t have been alive, so it means the water is really good. I had David scratching his head over that for a while. Anyway, that bottle got poured out, but all the other bottles, all filled from the same water tank were all drank by the time we went home. I’ll put a strainer over the bottles in future, and not tell anyone.
Nearly everything in Brisbane has been ordered and paid for, WetEarth are going to be late with the irrigation stuff, that’s my fault for not having all the details and drawings scanned to send them in time. We can live with the delay, it gives us time to get the fences up, the beds laid out and the trenches and water tanks installed before all the pipework arrives.
The building is going to be a kitset thing from Australia, it comes preassembled in modules, all the wiring/plumbing etc installed, just a matter of putting up a steel frame and connecting the modules. Classroom and office, toilets etc. It has to be lifted a few feet off the ground for the plumbing, and to give the height for the water tanks, which will give some air movement as well and help cool it down.
We’ve got the big garden remake on Thursday, everyone will be glad to finish it I’m picking. There’s a huge amount of work to get done, palms to be pruned, a couple of trees to be taken out, and about ¼ acre of metre high grass to be cut, plus pathways to be restored, gardens to be weeded. Once we all get started it should go fairly quickly though.
The Ant Spray men came around Monday morning and left a heap of what looks like shot grit for sandblasting under the corner of my house, and a sign stapled to the house about it being Wild Dog Poison, and to ring them once I see any dead dogs. It doesn’t look like something that animals would eat, but I guess I’m wrong, there are 3 dead dogs within sight of the kitchen window, and one up on the top of the rise by the rubbish bins. As I said I’m of mixed emotions about it, but I’d rather have my steps and ground area without fleas, and no smell on the steps from the dogs. What we could do with is a huge effort to have every male dog in Honiara castrated, just to stop the ceaseless breeding that happens. One of the bitches that I presume has now died, has had 3 litters of pups in the past year, all of which have died from starvation, neglect, or being hit by cars. They aren’t treated as pets as you think of in NZ/Australia/USA etc, just another animal to be maltreated.
It’s mango season again, the second crop, so the ground is littered with fruit that the fruit bats have taken a bite out of and dropped onto the ground. We now have fermenting mangoes everywhere, and the same as last year, it can get a bit overpowering with the heat and humidity. It’s almost like a distillery, but add in a heavy vegetation decomposing smell as well.
I didn’t know about the earthquake till I found something online today, well, I knew we’d had one, I got shaken out of bed by it, but where, how big and how long weren’t questions I had answers for. About 210 km south east of Guadacanal, I don’t know if it made a wave onto the Weather Coast, we won’t know for a day or so until news gets back from there. Samesame with any damage reports, it can take a while for information to travel here. It was originally rated 7.1, then downgraded to 6.8 later.
I’m still waiting for the big one that will hit Honiara one day again. As I’ve mentioned, the hills behind Honiara are coral reef, and it wasn’t from sea levels dropping that they got there. Well maybe, but the sea would have had to have dropped more than a few hundred metres to give the effect.
SIWA are back in the newspaper, this time over lack of water to #9, the main hospital. You keep hoping that you never need to go there, or if you do, it is for something really minor like a broken arm or leg, and you can walk away as soon as possible. There has been a huge amount of Donor money given this year to upgrade #9, but as it went to the politicians, not the Hospital Admin, it is moot as to how much will be spent on upgrading, and how much will go for 4wd vehicles for the wantok. It really is depressing seeing all the money that gets stolen here, or perhaps diverted is a more politically correct term. And everyone treats it as something normal, as long as the MPs spread money around their wantok, everything is settled, and we are left with no health facilities, no water/sewage/electricity systems, a dysfunctional city that even Patrician Vetenari would have trouble managing.
Still we’re getting more and more organised with the nursery, a few setbacks now and then, but overall, it is going ahead on Solomon time even if the pace isn’t my ideal rate of progress.
Tuesday 13th April
We have the lease agreed, 15 years, with renewal after. Time to really start spending money now. Tiff and I will be organising road access, water and power as soon as she returns to work next week. We’ve put off her trip to Brisbane till she recovers from her latest bout of malaria, there isn’t a lot of her, and it really knocks her around.
I’m going to have to have some words about my employment contract, someone keeps insisting I’m here to run classes only, everything else I do is peripheral and once we are settled I’ll be teaching all the time. My TOR states that I’m to oversee the “Local” teacher, and ascertain if they need further training, not run it all. Which would be a stupid thing to be doing anyway, what happens when my contract expires? The teaching portion of my contract is less than 10%, the rest is establishing the nursery, landscaping designs for Honiara, Auki, Gizo, etc. Creating a skilled and trained workforce of people with good gardening and nursery skills.
I know I’m fighting an uphill battle over getting local people employed in positions that were once the preserve of the colonialists, but its been 30 years since independence, time to move on and grow up.
I met the lady that has been employed to watch Tiff, ok, that may be a jaundiced view, but after some of the comments I’m positive it is just a post colonial attitude.
We’re finally getting MYOB installed on the computer, but it isn’t for Tiff to use, as she’s just a local and probably doesn’t understand it. Am I angry? I’m past angry, Tiff has been using MYOB for a damn sight longer than I’ve been here, we’ve been trying to get a full version loaded for a year so she can do all the accounts and keep each funding agency separated, and now we get told she probably won’t understand it?
Ok, moving on, if I dwell on that too long I’ll be writing stuff I’ll have to delete before posting.
I had a laugh this morning, I’ve been taking 2 litre bottles of water in each day for the crew, most of them don’t have water tanks, and I’ve got more water than I’ll use between rainfalls. One bottle ended up with a live mosquito larva in it, which had Hudson, Misi, David horrified. I spent ages trying to convince them that it proved how good the water was, if the water was bad the larva wouldn’t have been alive, so it means the water is really good. I had David scratching his head over that for a while. Anyway, that bottle got poured out, but all the other bottles, all filled from the same water tank were all drank by the time we went home. I’ll put a strainer over the bottles in future, and not tell anyone.
Nearly everything in Brisbane has been ordered and paid for, WetEarth are going to be late with the irrigation stuff, that’s my fault for not having all the details and drawings scanned to send them in time. We can live with the delay, it gives us time to get the fences up, the beds laid out and the trenches and water tanks installed before all the pipework arrives.
The building is going to be a kitset thing from Australia, it comes preassembled in modules, all the wiring/plumbing etc installed, just a matter of putting up a steel frame and connecting the modules. Classroom and office, toilets etc. It has to be lifted a few feet off the ground for the plumbing, and to give the height for the water tanks, which will give some air movement as well and help cool it down.
We’ve got the big garden remake on Thursday, everyone will be glad to finish it I’m picking. There’s a huge amount of work to get done, palms to be pruned, a couple of trees to be taken out, and about ¼ acre of metre high grass to be cut, plus pathways to be restored, gardens to be weeded. Once we all get started it should go fairly quickly though.
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Saturday 10th April/Sunday 11th April
So much for getting all excited about having the little truck back. I went to start it Friday morning and as usual it refused to even think about making a sound. Flattened the battery turning the motor over, again as usual. I didn’t tell Tony, it is getting too embarrassing for both of us. It sits in the BJS workshop for a month or more at a time, his mechanic says it’s all go, and it dies within hours. I’m waiting to find out what it is this time. Tiff was in the BJS office this morning and Tony asked her how the truck was going, so she just said it isn’t, it’s died, so it is back into the garage again Monday. I think Tony is having doubts about his mechanics ability. After 9 months of work, it still isn’t going.
It’s another waterless weekend, not that it is unusual, but I got used to having water from the taps last week, it stopped this morning about 6am. Back to buckets of water for everything.
I need to get down to the market tomorrow, and buy more fruit, I’ve been living on rice for the past month, and it is really starting to show on my waistline again, far too much carbohydrate, and not enough protein. Plus not doing a great deal again doesn’t help.
Jason at Hasting Deering said everything is nearly all signed over for us to lease the back section, so that is one good thing. I can actually start to do things instead of coming up with ideas and plans to put into action.
Tiff and I were at MID Provincial offices Friday, we can get into Bellona through one of Tiffs wantok who attended the MID Workshop at Bellona, set them up as the supervisor there, and we run it from Honiara. MID are happy with that, we have a good track record of results and a good financial accountability, which is always a problem here when money is being handed out for Govt work. The money seems to get spent, but the work never gets done.
There are more editorials in the Solomon Star about the Aid Money, and various donor countries just giving money to the MPs, and how the money never gets used for the original purpose. Already people are writing in about sitting MPs handing out cash to the villagers to vote for them in the July-August election, and Parliament hasn’t risen yet. I’ve lost count of how many different factions have been formed to contest for each seat, plus those that are intending to stand as independents, and go with who ever bribes the most. You can’t say it is corrupt, because it is so blatant, and everyone expects it to happen now. Every village expects their MP to just grab as much money as possible, and distribute it around, without any questions about what the money is for, where it could be better spent, or even coming up with projects to install.
The cattle fund from Taiwan is falling apart again, just 2 weeks after Taiwan gave another $10 million dollars towards it. I think the original $8 million that went missing has been written off, all there is to show for it are some flashy 4wd twincabs, a couple of motorbikes, and not very much else. No fencing, farms, land agreements, village training, oh, and no cattle either. I can’t see it working here until someone sets up a proper training centre, there is no history of farming as we know it in the western world, it has always been subsistence garden farming, or hunter/gatherer type existence, which explains the lack of a conservation ethic when it comes to everything. As I said the other day, if I don’t take it, someone else will, is the lifestyle and belief system.
And as far as the cattle go, I have a sort of bet with Tiff that if and when the cattle do arrive, it will be less than a year before they have all been killed and eaten, and then the whole thing will start again. They tried on Temotu a few years back, with 3 cows and a bull. The bull got speared the second week by one of the tribes poaching on another villages land, the 3 cows were all eventually killed in payback or restitution settlements. All in less than a year.
The good news is that Taiwan are definitely going to open a nickel mine on Ysabel, although I had to laugh at the article in the Sol Star, where the reporter asked if Taiwan was going to build a nuclear reactor to provide the power for the mine. They didn’t quite make the AGW connection, but I have no doubt it was going to come up, same reporter that I’m arguing with over AGW, he’s the business reporter for the Sol Star as well.
Gold Ridge Mine is now in production, first actual gold production is expected by the end of the year, once they get through the overburden. It’s all alluvial, but the depth of the work area is over 1,000’ deep with gold in layers through the depth. Phoenix International are close to starting up as well, they have an assay of 50 million ounces on their claim. It may go higher once they begin production. Add in the nickel on Ysabel, the diamonds and gemstones on Malaita, and the copper on Bouganville, with the other provinces not explored yet, and this could be a rich area eventually. There is the land ownership issue to be negotiated first though, all land is owned by the villages, other than Honiara City, so you are dealing with a lot of factions within each tribe, and due to the rash decisions that have been made in the past by some tribes and their leaders, everyone here is now suspicious of letting anyone on their land.
We’ve had a quiet few weeks in Honiara lately, Easter, a lot of frippery for Premier Ma from Taiwan, it has kept the murder rate down for a while, only 2 in the last fortnight. The usual causes, drunken people arguing while holding bushknives. And drinking kwaso. It is always a bad combination.
The Ant Spray men finally arrived this morning too. There’s a lintel over one window that needs to be replaced, the termites have chewed it to tissue paper from inside, and a skirting board inside under the same window. I’m hoping it is only the lintel and skirting board, but there is probably more damage inside once they take the damaged pieces off. And they are coming back Monday to poison the dogs around the area. Which I’m of mixed emotions about. It is probably the best thing for the dogs, they are strays, scrounging for food, and as I’ve said before, they are all walking encyclopedias of canine diseases. I’ve stopped them from sleeping under my house in the daytime, well, mostly, a couple still get onto the steps while I’m at work, and I get the fleas jump to greet me while I’m unlocking the door. Plus the strong dog smell that seems to have penetrated the wooden steps no matter how much bleach and disinfectant I use on them. Same with the water tank outside, the dogs sleep around it on the concrete, and when it is dry as the past few weeks have been, filling the buckets with water means getting the fleas off before I come back inside. I scattered chilli powder under the house a while back, which worked and has kept the dogs from making sleeping pits in the dirt there.
Sunday 11th April
Tiff is away to Brisbane on the 14th if we can get her visa through in time, for a week. I’ve got a few places for her to go to, including Brisbane TAFE Bookshop. I need text books for the Hort 1 & 2 Courses. I’m not going to run them out of my head again like last year.
We just had another little tremor hit the house, the strongest one I’ve felt since I’ve been here. I stood up, and just as promptly fell down. It had a few things in the house moving across the floor for about 15 – 30 secs, it may have been less time, or more, I wasn’t really timing it. I was more trying to work out what to grab on my way out if it didn’t stop very soon. Or should I ride the house down as the support poles buckle, and then just walk casually out the door? Either way, it gives that little bit of added excitement to the life here.
If anyone had a look at the link I posted a while back to Willis Eschenbachs “Thermostat Hypothesis”, today was a good example of it in action. It has been hot, and getting more and more humid the last few days, by 1pm today there were towering thunderheads over Honiara, and the thunder started, then the rain dropped. We must have lost 10*C of heat in less than 10 minutes once the rain hit, it’s 9.30pm now, and it is still cool. I’m inclined to believe Willis’ hypothesis than anything coming from the IPCC. He writes some good articles, based on observation, not computer models, and they make more sense than the garbage the IPCC publish. www.wattsupwiththat.com is the main page for most of it, Climate Audit is good, and The Air Vent as well.
I read James Delingpole a fair bit, more for the laughs from the comments, and poor Geoffery Lean, the “Environmental Spokeperson” for the Telegraph. If he’d stop just copying the IPCC reports and announcements and actually start doing journalism, the comments might not be so bad after each of his columns. He gets savaged unmercifully, not without cause, but even so, to be so wrong continuously and continue writing the same garbage?
I’ve been banned from the Guardian, Monbiots column, but I still read it occasionally to see what tripe he writes each week, and the fawning synchophants that populate the comments.
We’ve a couple of busy days till Wednesday, clearing up stuff before Tiff goes, Governor Generals Residence, Post Office once I can get hold of Kennedy, chase Frank Haiku and get the rest of the Mendana Ave Flower tubs painted. I’m hoping we can get something sorted soon with the lease, the sooner that is done, the sooner I can get an order to Lyndale for plants.
Solomon Quarantine decided not to let us have our own PEQ facility, so we have to use the official one. I’m now worried about how many plants will “die” and be miraculously restored to life in someone elses garden. I know I shouldn’t think like that, but given the dishonesty in every other government department, I’m sure the quarantine people help themselves to new plants all the time. I doubt that PVR would be recognised here, so there is no protection for any importer who finds their plants being grown by someone else.
It’s another waterless weekend, not that it is unusual, but I got used to having water from the taps last week, it stopped this morning about 6am. Back to buckets of water for everything.
I need to get down to the market tomorrow, and buy more fruit, I’ve been living on rice for the past month, and it is really starting to show on my waistline again, far too much carbohydrate, and not enough protein. Plus not doing a great deal again doesn’t help.
Jason at Hasting Deering said everything is nearly all signed over for us to lease the back section, so that is one good thing. I can actually start to do things instead of coming up with ideas and plans to put into action.
Tiff and I were at MID Provincial offices Friday, we can get into Bellona through one of Tiffs wantok who attended the MID Workshop at Bellona, set them up as the supervisor there, and we run it from Honiara. MID are happy with that, we have a good track record of results and a good financial accountability, which is always a problem here when money is being handed out for Govt work. The money seems to get spent, but the work never gets done.
There are more editorials in the Solomon Star about the Aid Money, and various donor countries just giving money to the MPs, and how the money never gets used for the original purpose. Already people are writing in about sitting MPs handing out cash to the villagers to vote for them in the July-August election, and Parliament hasn’t risen yet. I’ve lost count of how many different factions have been formed to contest for each seat, plus those that are intending to stand as independents, and go with who ever bribes the most. You can’t say it is corrupt, because it is so blatant, and everyone expects it to happen now. Every village expects their MP to just grab as much money as possible, and distribute it around, without any questions about what the money is for, where it could be better spent, or even coming up with projects to install.
The cattle fund from Taiwan is falling apart again, just 2 weeks after Taiwan gave another $10 million dollars towards it. I think the original $8 million that went missing has been written off, all there is to show for it are some flashy 4wd twincabs, a couple of motorbikes, and not very much else. No fencing, farms, land agreements, village training, oh, and no cattle either. I can’t see it working here until someone sets up a proper training centre, there is no history of farming as we know it in the western world, it has always been subsistence garden farming, or hunter/gatherer type existence, which explains the lack of a conservation ethic when it comes to everything. As I said the other day, if I don’t take it, someone else will, is the lifestyle and belief system.
And as far as the cattle go, I have a sort of bet with Tiff that if and when the cattle do arrive, it will be less than a year before they have all been killed and eaten, and then the whole thing will start again. They tried on Temotu a few years back, with 3 cows and a bull. The bull got speared the second week by one of the tribes poaching on another villages land, the 3 cows were all eventually killed in payback or restitution settlements. All in less than a year.
The good news is that Taiwan are definitely going to open a nickel mine on Ysabel, although I had to laugh at the article in the Sol Star, where the reporter asked if Taiwan was going to build a nuclear reactor to provide the power for the mine. They didn’t quite make the AGW connection, but I have no doubt it was going to come up, same reporter that I’m arguing with over AGW, he’s the business reporter for the Sol Star as well.
Gold Ridge Mine is now in production, first actual gold production is expected by the end of the year, once they get through the overburden. It’s all alluvial, but the depth of the work area is over 1,000’ deep with gold in layers through the depth. Phoenix International are close to starting up as well, they have an assay of 50 million ounces on their claim. It may go higher once they begin production. Add in the nickel on Ysabel, the diamonds and gemstones on Malaita, and the copper on Bouganville, with the other provinces not explored yet, and this could be a rich area eventually. There is the land ownership issue to be negotiated first though, all land is owned by the villages, other than Honiara City, so you are dealing with a lot of factions within each tribe, and due to the rash decisions that have been made in the past by some tribes and their leaders, everyone here is now suspicious of letting anyone on their land.
We’ve had a quiet few weeks in Honiara lately, Easter, a lot of frippery for Premier Ma from Taiwan, it has kept the murder rate down for a while, only 2 in the last fortnight. The usual causes, drunken people arguing while holding bushknives. And drinking kwaso. It is always a bad combination.
The Ant Spray men finally arrived this morning too. There’s a lintel over one window that needs to be replaced, the termites have chewed it to tissue paper from inside, and a skirting board inside under the same window. I’m hoping it is only the lintel and skirting board, but there is probably more damage inside once they take the damaged pieces off. And they are coming back Monday to poison the dogs around the area. Which I’m of mixed emotions about. It is probably the best thing for the dogs, they are strays, scrounging for food, and as I’ve said before, they are all walking encyclopedias of canine diseases. I’ve stopped them from sleeping under my house in the daytime, well, mostly, a couple still get onto the steps while I’m at work, and I get the fleas jump to greet me while I’m unlocking the door. Plus the strong dog smell that seems to have penetrated the wooden steps no matter how much bleach and disinfectant I use on them. Same with the water tank outside, the dogs sleep around it on the concrete, and when it is dry as the past few weeks have been, filling the buckets with water means getting the fleas off before I come back inside. I scattered chilli powder under the house a while back, which worked and has kept the dogs from making sleeping pits in the dirt there.
Sunday 11th April
Tiff is away to Brisbane on the 14th if we can get her visa through in time, for a week. I’ve got a few places for her to go to, including Brisbane TAFE Bookshop. I need text books for the Hort 1 & 2 Courses. I’m not going to run them out of my head again like last year.
We just had another little tremor hit the house, the strongest one I’ve felt since I’ve been here. I stood up, and just as promptly fell down. It had a few things in the house moving across the floor for about 15 – 30 secs, it may have been less time, or more, I wasn’t really timing it. I was more trying to work out what to grab on my way out if it didn’t stop very soon. Or should I ride the house down as the support poles buckle, and then just walk casually out the door? Either way, it gives that little bit of added excitement to the life here.
If anyone had a look at the link I posted a while back to Willis Eschenbachs “Thermostat Hypothesis”, today was a good example of it in action. It has been hot, and getting more and more humid the last few days, by 1pm today there were towering thunderheads over Honiara, and the thunder started, then the rain dropped. We must have lost 10*C of heat in less than 10 minutes once the rain hit, it’s 9.30pm now, and it is still cool. I’m inclined to believe Willis’ hypothesis than anything coming from the IPCC. He writes some good articles, based on observation, not computer models, and they make more sense than the garbage the IPCC publish. www.wattsupwiththat.com is the main page for most of it, Climate Audit is good, and The Air Vent as well.
I read James Delingpole a fair bit, more for the laughs from the comments, and poor Geoffery Lean, the “Environmental Spokeperson” for the Telegraph. If he’d stop just copying the IPCC reports and announcements and actually start doing journalism, the comments might not be so bad after each of his columns. He gets savaged unmercifully, not without cause, but even so, to be so wrong continuously and continue writing the same garbage?
I’ve been banned from the Guardian, Monbiots column, but I still read it occasionally to see what tripe he writes each week, and the fawning synchophants that populate the comments.
We’ve a couple of busy days till Wednesday, clearing up stuff before Tiff goes, Governor Generals Residence, Post Office once I can get hold of Kennedy, chase Frank Haiku and get the rest of the Mendana Ave Flower tubs painted. I’m hoping we can get something sorted soon with the lease, the sooner that is done, the sooner I can get an order to Lyndale for plants.
Solomon Quarantine decided not to let us have our own PEQ facility, so we have to use the official one. I’m now worried about how many plants will “die” and be miraculously restored to life in someone elses garden. I know I shouldn’t think like that, but given the dishonesty in every other government department, I’m sure the quarantine people help themselves to new plants all the time. I doubt that PVR would be recognised here, so there is no protection for any importer who finds their plants being grown by someone else.
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Wednesday 7th April - Thursday 8th April
Tiff is back, with the girls, David managed to successfully miss the plane and is still on Bellona diving and fishing. I’ve ended up with 3 large crayfish for dinner, and a sudden need to visit Bellona.
MID (Ministry of Infrastructure and Development) were on Bellona, running a 2 week workshop to train people to do the roading contract on Bellona, and Tiffany met the main people from MID on Sunday. We’ve been asked to put in a proposal for SEB to manage the roadside clearing and maintenance, and train the people on Bellona. Tiff and I were talking it over yesterday afternoon, as we both agreed, a 2 week workshop isn’t going to work, there is no business set up on Bellona similar to SEB, the only maintenance people on Bellona service the airport, and they are the people whose land was taken for the airport. They live around the perimeter and have a contract to keep the grass etc cut. It is run through the ex-MP for Bellona, and as is normal with anything to do with money and MPs, there is a large discrepancy between money allocated, and services rendered. It is not uncommon for flights to be cancelled due to the length of grass on the landing strip. Each family has about 60’ of grass to keep cut, they get $600 per fortnight for it, the allocation is $1,000 per fortnight each area, no equipment in sight other than the curved bushknives.
Tiff is convinced we can go there, set it up, train enough locals to do the work, and we run the accounts and payments. Initial expenses would be for grass cutters and handtools, and for a couple of us to be there for a month or so setting up and training. After than, about a once per month trip to Bellona for a few days to check on the work being done.
We have till the 14th May to have the proposal in, which gives us time to get it sorted.
I’m striking it lucky with everything I’m ordering from Brisbane, Tropigro, Garden City Plastics, and WetEarth have everything we need, and the prices are a long way below what Island Enterprises and Bowmans were charging us here, even with freight added in. I’ve got all the propagation supplies ordered, planter bags, weedmat, tubes, trays, irrigation fittings and timers. If it all makes the container at the end of April, we’ll have everything needed by May, and hopefully by then the land issue will be sorted and we can make a start.
I’ve run out of motivation for the Governor Generals Residence at the moment, most of the drawings are done, after last years fiasco with Heritage Hotels, unless I know it is going to go ahead I find it hard to spend more of my own time on doing stuff that may not be used. We have a meeting with Nigel at Government House probably Monday, to discuss the budget. At present the Governor General and family are staying in Heritage Park Hotel, while the Residence is renovated, but I have no idea what timeframe the grounds are being upgraded to. Plus we don’t have a lot of plants at the moment for any major work.
Thursday 8th April
I have to say thank you to Telekom, I got more work done today than usual, thanks to the almost nonexistent internet connection. I’d have got more done if I’d been able to send email when I needed to, instead of whenever the connection came on. Oh well, it isn’t as if it is an unexpected thing.
I have to go over the irrigation system again, Wet Earth in Brisbane have everything we need, but their recommendation is to go for higher pressure pipe than I’ve written in, I’m not totally convinced though. It isn’t so much a high pressure system, as more a high volume, low pressure one. I’ll email back tomorrow and send them the original drawings and plan, they might have a better design we can use.
Went and priced a section and garden cleanup job today, long time expat Americans living here. It’s all a bit overgrown, I figure a good day for all the crew, 4 guys with weedeaters, 3 –4 of the ladies weeding and clearing, a lot of palms that need the lower fronds cut, and some that are almost lifting the roofing iron off, 2 trees to be taken right out, and a lot of remedial path making. They are going to put lunch on for the crew as well, rice and Taiyo tuna, and cold drink. It’ll be a hard earned $1600 though, the overgrown bit at the back is about 3’ high with weeds and grass. I can see the weedeaters getting caught with the long grass. Plus a few snakes in there as well no doubt so the guys will be watching where they step.
A friend of the owners is staying for a week, Pat, another American, she was a Peace Corp Volunteer in Sierra Leone for 2 years, so we had fun swapping stories. She lives in Western Province, above Gizo on the hill, and has been trying for 15 years to establish trees and plants along the road up to the house, but the locals cut them all for firewood as soon as she plants them. Or pick the fruit as soon as it looks almost ripe, instead of letting it ripen.
I’m going to have a few words with David when he finally decides to come back from Bellona. He knows full well how I feel about everyone killing the parrot fish on the reef, and all the other coral fish, I found something else to talk about as well. One of the crayfish he sent back was a female with a full egg pouch, so I’ll be onto him about that as well. I know already the argument he’ll use, “If I didn’t take it someone else would”. As I keep telling him, once everyone realises not to keep taking the fish that their reef islands and atolls depend on, they might be able to live there a lot longer, instead of watching everything die. And just sitting around saying “Global Warming” as if that excuses them from any and all responsibility.
David sent back about 12 large parrotfish as well, and Tiff said he knew I’d be waiting for him to come back to have another talk. I really feel a baseball bat would come in handy with some conversations here. There is no conception of the idea of conservation, it is always, “If I don’t take/eat/kill/collect it now, someone else will”, it is a very much live now, tomorrow is too far away to think about society. Coming from NZ, with all the fishing regulations about sizes, quantities that work to conserve resources, and seeing the decimation of everything here and the lack of forward thinking, tends to get me a bit excited about things at times. And of course the Ministry for the Environment has got 5 people working full time on Climate Change, and no one working on actual environment or conservation issues.
Tiff got hold of MID today, about the road restoration work on Bellona, it looks as if we’ll be able to quote for the roadside maintenance and go there and set it all up if we get the contract. It’s only 5km, all the roads on Bellona only total 9km anyway, so this is the first stage, they are talking of the last bit for next year if the first stage goes well. We do 20km of road verge and median strip in Honiara now, from Honiara to King GeorgeVI, so 5km is like a days work for the crew we have, it may be worth while taking a couple of them to Bellona to show the people we employ there how it is done.
I’ve got the little truck back at last, ok, the brakes still grab, but it is mobile, and I’m not going to get too worried about the brakes, at least they stop in a straight line finally. Now it’s due for certification again next week, after 9 months of being off the road for repairs. I don’t know if I’ll laugh or cry if it gets rejected.
The postal address here for anyone thinking of sending stuff, thanks for the offer Zoe and Pete, is c/ VSA NZ, PO Box 1714, Honiara, Solomon Islands. If anything weighs too much, send sea freight, I’m not going anywhere, and like everything here, there’s no rush.
The weather continues, hot, humid, almost raining, then changes its mind and all we get is the thunder, but no rain. Even the 4.30 usual showers have been absent this year, due to the el nino weather system stuck in the Pacific. I know I’m going to freeze whenever I go back to NZ, I’m so used to wearing shorts, t-shirt at work, sarong at home, the thought of temperatures below 30*C isn’t good. And going for a swim doesn’t really cool you down, I got down about 30’ last Sunday at the beach, and the water barely changed temp till the last few feet, and even then only by a small fraction. Sea temp here is about 27*C all year, out further on the wrecks it would be cooler deeper down, but on top of the inshore reef it is always warm.
I’m still having heart attacks with the prices here for stuff, I bought 2 wheelbarrows, and 4 plastic garden rakes for the crew today, don’t ask what happened to the other wheelbarrows. Wheelbarrows, and not the super dooper contractors ones, just your standard wooden framed tin bucket, are $1200 each, garden rakes without a handle are $73, and handles are $25 each. I could have got really good steel framed wheelbarrows, but at $2,080 each, I decided not.
MID (Ministry of Infrastructure and Development) were on Bellona, running a 2 week workshop to train people to do the roading contract on Bellona, and Tiffany met the main people from MID on Sunday. We’ve been asked to put in a proposal for SEB to manage the roadside clearing and maintenance, and train the people on Bellona. Tiff and I were talking it over yesterday afternoon, as we both agreed, a 2 week workshop isn’t going to work, there is no business set up on Bellona similar to SEB, the only maintenance people on Bellona service the airport, and they are the people whose land was taken for the airport. They live around the perimeter and have a contract to keep the grass etc cut. It is run through the ex-MP for Bellona, and as is normal with anything to do with money and MPs, there is a large discrepancy between money allocated, and services rendered. It is not uncommon for flights to be cancelled due to the length of grass on the landing strip. Each family has about 60’ of grass to keep cut, they get $600 per fortnight for it, the allocation is $1,000 per fortnight each area, no equipment in sight other than the curved bushknives.
Tiff is convinced we can go there, set it up, train enough locals to do the work, and we run the accounts and payments. Initial expenses would be for grass cutters and handtools, and for a couple of us to be there for a month or so setting up and training. After than, about a once per month trip to Bellona for a few days to check on the work being done.
We have till the 14th May to have the proposal in, which gives us time to get it sorted.
I’m striking it lucky with everything I’m ordering from Brisbane, Tropigro, Garden City Plastics, and WetEarth have everything we need, and the prices are a long way below what Island Enterprises and Bowmans were charging us here, even with freight added in. I’ve got all the propagation supplies ordered, planter bags, weedmat, tubes, trays, irrigation fittings and timers. If it all makes the container at the end of April, we’ll have everything needed by May, and hopefully by then the land issue will be sorted and we can make a start.
I’ve run out of motivation for the Governor Generals Residence at the moment, most of the drawings are done, after last years fiasco with Heritage Hotels, unless I know it is going to go ahead I find it hard to spend more of my own time on doing stuff that may not be used. We have a meeting with Nigel at Government House probably Monday, to discuss the budget. At present the Governor General and family are staying in Heritage Park Hotel, while the Residence is renovated, but I have no idea what timeframe the grounds are being upgraded to. Plus we don’t have a lot of plants at the moment for any major work.
Thursday 8th April
I have to say thank you to Telekom, I got more work done today than usual, thanks to the almost nonexistent internet connection. I’d have got more done if I’d been able to send email when I needed to, instead of whenever the connection came on. Oh well, it isn’t as if it is an unexpected thing.
I have to go over the irrigation system again, Wet Earth in Brisbane have everything we need, but their recommendation is to go for higher pressure pipe than I’ve written in, I’m not totally convinced though. It isn’t so much a high pressure system, as more a high volume, low pressure one. I’ll email back tomorrow and send them the original drawings and plan, they might have a better design we can use.
Went and priced a section and garden cleanup job today, long time expat Americans living here. It’s all a bit overgrown, I figure a good day for all the crew, 4 guys with weedeaters, 3 –4 of the ladies weeding and clearing, a lot of palms that need the lower fronds cut, and some that are almost lifting the roofing iron off, 2 trees to be taken right out, and a lot of remedial path making. They are going to put lunch on for the crew as well, rice and Taiyo tuna, and cold drink. It’ll be a hard earned $1600 though, the overgrown bit at the back is about 3’ high with weeds and grass. I can see the weedeaters getting caught with the long grass. Plus a few snakes in there as well no doubt so the guys will be watching where they step.
A friend of the owners is staying for a week, Pat, another American, she was a Peace Corp Volunteer in Sierra Leone for 2 years, so we had fun swapping stories. She lives in Western Province, above Gizo on the hill, and has been trying for 15 years to establish trees and plants along the road up to the house, but the locals cut them all for firewood as soon as she plants them. Or pick the fruit as soon as it looks almost ripe, instead of letting it ripen.
I’m going to have a few words with David when he finally decides to come back from Bellona. He knows full well how I feel about everyone killing the parrot fish on the reef, and all the other coral fish, I found something else to talk about as well. One of the crayfish he sent back was a female with a full egg pouch, so I’ll be onto him about that as well. I know already the argument he’ll use, “If I didn’t take it someone else would”. As I keep telling him, once everyone realises not to keep taking the fish that their reef islands and atolls depend on, they might be able to live there a lot longer, instead of watching everything die. And just sitting around saying “Global Warming” as if that excuses them from any and all responsibility.
David sent back about 12 large parrotfish as well, and Tiff said he knew I’d be waiting for him to come back to have another talk. I really feel a baseball bat would come in handy with some conversations here. There is no conception of the idea of conservation, it is always, “If I don’t take/eat/kill/collect it now, someone else will”, it is a very much live now, tomorrow is too far away to think about society. Coming from NZ, with all the fishing regulations about sizes, quantities that work to conserve resources, and seeing the decimation of everything here and the lack of forward thinking, tends to get me a bit excited about things at times. And of course the Ministry for the Environment has got 5 people working full time on Climate Change, and no one working on actual environment or conservation issues.
Tiff got hold of MID today, about the road restoration work on Bellona, it looks as if we’ll be able to quote for the roadside maintenance and go there and set it all up if we get the contract. It’s only 5km, all the roads on Bellona only total 9km anyway, so this is the first stage, they are talking of the last bit for next year if the first stage goes well. We do 20km of road verge and median strip in Honiara now, from Honiara to King GeorgeVI, so 5km is like a days work for the crew we have, it may be worth while taking a couple of them to Bellona to show the people we employ there how it is done.
I’ve got the little truck back at last, ok, the brakes still grab, but it is mobile, and I’m not going to get too worried about the brakes, at least they stop in a straight line finally. Now it’s due for certification again next week, after 9 months of being off the road for repairs. I don’t know if I’ll laugh or cry if it gets rejected.
The postal address here for anyone thinking of sending stuff, thanks for the offer Zoe and Pete, is c/ VSA NZ, PO Box 1714, Honiara, Solomon Islands. If anything weighs too much, send sea freight, I’m not going anywhere, and like everything here, there’s no rush.
The weather continues, hot, humid, almost raining, then changes its mind and all we get is the thunder, but no rain. Even the 4.30 usual showers have been absent this year, due to the el nino weather system stuck in the Pacific. I know I’m going to freeze whenever I go back to NZ, I’m so used to wearing shorts, t-shirt at work, sarong at home, the thought of temperatures below 30*C isn’t good. And going for a swim doesn’t really cool you down, I got down about 30’ last Sunday at the beach, and the water barely changed temp till the last few feet, and even then only by a small fraction. Sea temp here is about 27*C all year, out further on the wrecks it would be cooler deeper down, but on top of the inshore reef it is always warm.
I’m still having heart attacks with the prices here for stuff, I bought 2 wheelbarrows, and 4 plastic garden rakes for the crew today, don’t ask what happened to the other wheelbarrows. Wheelbarrows, and not the super dooper contractors ones, just your standard wooden framed tin bucket, are $1200 each, garden rakes without a handle are $73, and handles are $25 each. I could have got really good steel framed wheelbarrows, but at $2,080 each, I decided not.
Monday, April 5, 2010
Monday 5th April
Anything I’ve said about Telekom in the past, and I know I have said some nasty things about them, does not come close to how I feel about them at the moment. A week ago they had a sporadic mobile service running over the weekend while they upgraded to 3G, then during the week they replaced all the Breeze topup cards with their own Telekom Cash cards, and a new number to call to enter the credit. The only thing they missed out on doing was to connect the number, which leaves me with $100 worth of topup card, and “The number you have dialled is not in service” message when I try to credit my phone.
A good national motto for the Solomons would be “It’s not quite right”
I had to go back to the market on Sunday, I stocked up on Friday with fruit and veg, but then had a huge splurge Friday night and Saturday with fresh fruit, green stuff, broccoli, spring onions, chillis and stir fry, so by Sunday the fridge was looking a bit bare. I could have walked down this week, my knee has come right from slipping over the other weekend, but having the truck makes it so much easier. The freezer is full of spring rolls, I’ve got a container of fruit salad (banana, pawpaw, pineapple and lime juice) for breakfast, and still some bananas and a pawpaw left.
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Today I finally got to the beach for a few hours, the bridge is still out, as you can see by the photo, and will be for a few months yet I think. Everyone cuts through the river now, which is fine so long as it isn’t flooding. Got to the beach about 10, paddled around for a while, read a book, went for another paddle, read, swim, then came back about 2pm. Slightly sunburnt, but more brownish than red finally. There’s not a lot to see on the reef, it’s been fairly well fished out over the years, mostly small fish under a few inches, and some small parrot fish. A lot of Nemos cousins, and a lot of dead coral.
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We’re going back out tonight watering, hopefully Emory and Vincent will be there, otherwise I won’t get too excited and hope for rain instead.
Later. We got rain instead which is better, so we aren’t driving around Honiara half the night.
The Bulk Shop has moved, from the tiny little corner shop they had, across the road to the old ITA Hardware store. A lot bigger and a better layout. And they had flour, gluten, brown sugar, spices, and real olive oil, not olive flavoured vegetable/canola oil. Ok, it was $60 a 750ml bottle, but I had an attack of the “want its” and had it in the basket before my brain kicked in and tried to say no. They stock New Zealand Mainland Cheese as well, $35 for a 500gm block, Tasty, Mild and Edam. I’ll wait for that, although I find that dairy food gives me sinus now, even milk, butter etc. So even though I would love a cheese toasted with everything I’ll give it a miss.
I spent Saturday afternoon bread baking, and making eggroll pastry for spring rolls. Then had the ultimate in decadence, a Basil and garlic loaf, sliced thickly, with tomato slices, lettuce leaves, olive oil, sea salt and crushed black pepper sandwiches. Well, for here, it is utterly decadent, how my life has changed.
It’s all relative I guess, if you have never left the Solomons, you wouldn’t know about any other food, there aren’t any books to show any different, very few locals have a television, let alone power to run one, everything they know comes from family, or what they read in the newspapers.
I’m having an email exchange at the moment with the Solomon Star Environment Report, Moffat Mamu. I wrote in last week about an article he had in on Monday, we haven’t come to blows yet, he is actually reading the links I send him, and coming back with questions, so hopefully he may get off the IPCC propaganda, and actually start writing environment articles, instead if blaming everything on AGW/CG. So long as AGW/CG is the scapegoat, no one will do anything, preferring to sit and wait for the billions of dollars to come in aid, which I seriously doubt is going to happen. We can start cleaning up here once people realise they are the problem, not the solution, co-existence with the land and sea is what we have to strive for, not continue to pollute both, and expect money to fix it.
A bit of an aside to all that, Moffat apparently won the Pacifica Environment Award for an article he wrote last year, about how AGW and CO2 were destroying his homeland. So I’m going to have an uphill struggle trying to get him to look a bit further than just accepting the garbage the IPCC put out.
A good national motto for the Solomons would be “It’s not quite right”
I had to go back to the market on Sunday, I stocked up on Friday with fruit and veg, but then had a huge splurge Friday night and Saturday with fresh fruit, green stuff, broccoli, spring onions, chillis and stir fry, so by Sunday the fridge was looking a bit bare. I could have walked down this week, my knee has come right from slipping over the other weekend, but having the truck makes it so much easier. The freezer is full of spring rolls, I’ve got a container of fruit salad (banana, pawpaw, pineapple and lime juice) for breakfast, and still some bananas and a pawpaw left.
.jpg)
Today I finally got to the beach for a few hours, the bridge is still out, as you can see by the photo, and will be for a few months yet I think. Everyone cuts through the river now, which is fine so long as it isn’t flooding. Got to the beach about 10, paddled around for a while, read a book, went for another paddle, read, swim, then came back about 2pm. Slightly sunburnt, but more brownish than red finally. There’s not a lot to see on the reef, it’s been fairly well fished out over the years, mostly small fish under a few inches, and some small parrot fish. A lot of Nemos cousins, and a lot of dead coral.
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
We’re going back out tonight watering, hopefully Emory and Vincent will be there, otherwise I won’t get too excited and hope for rain instead.
Later. We got rain instead which is better, so we aren’t driving around Honiara half the night.
The Bulk Shop has moved, from the tiny little corner shop they had, across the road to the old ITA Hardware store. A lot bigger and a better layout. And they had flour, gluten, brown sugar, spices, and real olive oil, not olive flavoured vegetable/canola oil. Ok, it was $60 a 750ml bottle, but I had an attack of the “want its” and had it in the basket before my brain kicked in and tried to say no. They stock New Zealand Mainland Cheese as well, $35 for a 500gm block, Tasty, Mild and Edam. I’ll wait for that, although I find that dairy food gives me sinus now, even milk, butter etc. So even though I would love a cheese toasted with everything I’ll give it a miss.
I spent Saturday afternoon bread baking, and making eggroll pastry for spring rolls. Then had the ultimate in decadence, a Basil and garlic loaf, sliced thickly, with tomato slices, lettuce leaves, olive oil, sea salt and crushed black pepper sandwiches. Well, for here, it is utterly decadent, how my life has changed.
It’s all relative I guess, if you have never left the Solomons, you wouldn’t know about any other food, there aren’t any books to show any different, very few locals have a television, let alone power to run one, everything they know comes from family, or what they read in the newspapers.
I’m having an email exchange at the moment with the Solomon Star Environment Report, Moffat Mamu. I wrote in last week about an article he had in on Monday, we haven’t come to blows yet, he is actually reading the links I send him, and coming back with questions, so hopefully he may get off the IPCC propaganda, and actually start writing environment articles, instead if blaming everything on AGW/CG. So long as AGW/CG is the scapegoat, no one will do anything, preferring to sit and wait for the billions of dollars to come in aid, which I seriously doubt is going to happen. We can start cleaning up here once people realise they are the problem, not the solution, co-existence with the land and sea is what we have to strive for, not continue to pollute both, and expect money to fix it.
A bit of an aside to all that, Moffat apparently won the Pacifica Environment Award for an article he wrote last year, about how AGW and CO2 were destroying his homeland. So I’m going to have an uphill struggle trying to get him to look a bit further than just accepting the garbage the IPCC put out.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Wednesday 31st March
Oh well, it will be another week till the little truck is maybe repaired. The brake master cylinder is being sent to Brisbane to be reconditioned, with Easter it will be the second week in April till it is back. Back to walking everywhere , or more, still walking everywhere. With the temperatures this week, walking becomes rather interesting.
I walked back from town tonight, about 4pm, I’m acclimatised to it now, in that I didn’t break out in the drenching sweat I used to a year ago, but it was still hot. When you can drink 2 litre bottles of coke and still feel thirsty, and it doesn’t make it through your system either, it’s time to take a break and find somewhere shady to sit. I’m back to the 3 – 4 litres of cold coffee a day again, like this time last year, I don’t seem to be sweating it out, but it’s not making it through the system.
Picked up my necklace tonight, I’m a bit annoyed, Julie was going to make my design with the frigate bird pattern, then for some reason stayed traditional and put crosses in it instead, ok, she took a few hundred off the price, and gave me another necklace and bracelet as well with it. At the rate I’m collecting shell money, I’ll be able to afford an ugly pig soon. If anyone is interested in knowing, well, I’ll tell anyway, bride price is worked out on the age of the girl, then other stuff gets added in. Can she wash, cook, garden, how much would it cost her parents to replace her and pay someone to do the same work etc. Basic bride price seems to start around $20,000, with about $10,000 in shell money, and up to $30,000 in red money ($100 notes) for the wantok. Some of the other provinces have different systems, Malaita is the main one for shell money, Temotu has red feather money, long woven lengths of bird feathers. Rennell Bellona are more Polynesian, it was more of a barter system, or general sharing of resources, from what Tiffany and David have said. There are a lot of “Bush Marriages”, where the couple just move in together, it can lead to some trouble with the wantok, but if you’re one of the many with no land, no employment, it’s the only alternative.
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I finished the article for the Solomon Star, if it is published in tomorrows paper I’ll post the link in here.
Tiffany and David haven’t left yet. The boat was meant to sail Tuesday afternoon, that got postponed till Wednesday, now it’s meant to go Thursday afternoon. At this rate they will be lucky to get any time away at Bellona. They are due back next Wednesday, then Tiff goes to Brisbane for a week to do some shopping for the Nursery equipment, well, more to say hello to the people I’ve got everything ordered through. Hopefully she’ll have a week with one day or so with Nursery stuff to do, the rest of the time she can catch up with her wantok that are there.
With the elections still a few months away, all the expat community, including the RAMSI people with partners here are being advised to either take a month away where-ever, or move to a central secure area during the election. Being at the bottom of the social order as a volunteer, I get a whistle, and the promise that if anything happens, I’ll be cremated and the ashes sent back to New Zealand. If it does start to look a bit dangerous, I’ll probably move up to Steves and camp out there for a week or so behind the fence with all his wantok.
I don’t think it will be like 2006, but it can be a very volatile place, there is a lot of frustration with the lack of progress despite all the aid money coming in. It comes in, but never seems to get used for whatever it is meant for. Or else diverted to other uses.
The school holidays start next week, which means next terms school fees are due. If you are a palangi and anyone comes up and starts talking to you in the street now, you can guarantee that the conversation will eventually turn into “Can you give me $700 for my sons/daughters school fees?” Or, “Would you like to buy carvings/shell money/paintings so I can pay school fees?” My usual answer is “Mifala lookem like RAMSI? Mifala Aid advaesa, not RAMSI, sore, no seleni nomoa fo givem away” Eventually they realise I’m not going to help and they give up, but some are more persistent. I haven’t had any come to the house at night lately, the security guys are keeping them out of the Ba’hai area for now.
Steve got hassled the other morning near Chinatown. He walks in the mornings, to get his blood pressure and weight down, and he has lost a lot of weight too. Anyway, he was near the bridge, and a group of teenagers, all dreadlocks and attitude surrounded him with the usual “Give us money whitefala” stuff. Steve was bought up in Palau, and speaks pijin better than most islanders do, so he had all the replies and stuff, and eventually got away without any major trouble. There was a police truck came past, they stopped, asked Steve if there had been any trouble, and should they go and give the kids the bash to sort them out? About 6 large Policemen, a couple of Australian, Papua, and local guys. Steve said not to bother, he has to walk through there every day, so why get too well known.
Other than the couple of times I’ve been in Central Market, I’ve not been hassled, the scruffy long haired appearance may help with that, I don’t look remotely like a RAMSI person, and a bit of pijin toktok helps.
Have a Happy Easter, take care, Hi to Pete and Katja, send pics of the new bus please Pete, Gytha, Rhonda, Mum, Rose, Damian Jesse, Kahu, Tarsha, Hayden and Leigh, John and Sylvia, Lou and Scott and Zambezi, Kelly Alex, Atia Dascha, Jerome, Fionn, Libby, Al, Dave, Chip, Chris, Mike, Joe Pastry,and everyone else .
I walked back from town tonight, about 4pm, I’m acclimatised to it now, in that I didn’t break out in the drenching sweat I used to a year ago, but it was still hot. When you can drink 2 litre bottles of coke and still feel thirsty, and it doesn’t make it through your system either, it’s time to take a break and find somewhere shady to sit. I’m back to the 3 – 4 litres of cold coffee a day again, like this time last year, I don’t seem to be sweating it out, but it’s not making it through the system.
Picked up my necklace tonight, I’m a bit annoyed, Julie was going to make my design with the frigate bird pattern, then for some reason stayed traditional and put crosses in it instead, ok, she took a few hundred off the price, and gave me another necklace and bracelet as well with it. At the rate I’m collecting shell money, I’ll be able to afford an ugly pig soon. If anyone is interested in knowing, well, I’ll tell anyway, bride price is worked out on the age of the girl, then other stuff gets added in. Can she wash, cook, garden, how much would it cost her parents to replace her and pay someone to do the same work etc. Basic bride price seems to start around $20,000, with about $10,000 in shell money, and up to $30,000 in red money ($100 notes) for the wantok. Some of the other provinces have different systems, Malaita is the main one for shell money, Temotu has red feather money, long woven lengths of bird feathers. Rennell Bellona are more Polynesian, it was more of a barter system, or general sharing of resources, from what Tiffany and David have said. There are a lot of “Bush Marriages”, where the couple just move in together, it can lead to some trouble with the wantok, but if you’re one of the many with no land, no employment, it’s the only alternative.
.jpg)
I finished the article for the Solomon Star, if it is published in tomorrows paper I’ll post the link in here.
Tiffany and David haven’t left yet. The boat was meant to sail Tuesday afternoon, that got postponed till Wednesday, now it’s meant to go Thursday afternoon. At this rate they will be lucky to get any time away at Bellona. They are due back next Wednesday, then Tiff goes to Brisbane for a week to do some shopping for the Nursery equipment, well, more to say hello to the people I’ve got everything ordered through. Hopefully she’ll have a week with one day or so with Nursery stuff to do, the rest of the time she can catch up with her wantok that are there.
With the elections still a few months away, all the expat community, including the RAMSI people with partners here are being advised to either take a month away where-ever, or move to a central secure area during the election. Being at the bottom of the social order as a volunteer, I get a whistle, and the promise that if anything happens, I’ll be cremated and the ashes sent back to New Zealand. If it does start to look a bit dangerous, I’ll probably move up to Steves and camp out there for a week or so behind the fence with all his wantok.
I don’t think it will be like 2006, but it can be a very volatile place, there is a lot of frustration with the lack of progress despite all the aid money coming in. It comes in, but never seems to get used for whatever it is meant for. Or else diverted to other uses.
The school holidays start next week, which means next terms school fees are due. If you are a palangi and anyone comes up and starts talking to you in the street now, you can guarantee that the conversation will eventually turn into “Can you give me $700 for my sons/daughters school fees?” Or, “Would you like to buy carvings/shell money/paintings so I can pay school fees?” My usual answer is “Mifala lookem like RAMSI? Mifala Aid advaesa, not RAMSI, sore, no seleni nomoa fo givem away” Eventually they realise I’m not going to help and they give up, but some are more persistent. I haven’t had any come to the house at night lately, the security guys are keeping them out of the Ba’hai area for now.
Steve got hassled the other morning near Chinatown. He walks in the mornings, to get his blood pressure and weight down, and he has lost a lot of weight too. Anyway, he was near the bridge, and a group of teenagers, all dreadlocks and attitude surrounded him with the usual “Give us money whitefala” stuff. Steve was bought up in Palau, and speaks pijin better than most islanders do, so he had all the replies and stuff, and eventually got away without any major trouble. There was a police truck came past, they stopped, asked Steve if there had been any trouble, and should they go and give the kids the bash to sort them out? About 6 large Policemen, a couple of Australian, Papua, and local guys. Steve said not to bother, he has to walk through there every day, so why get too well known.
Other than the couple of times I’ve been in Central Market, I’ve not been hassled, the scruffy long haired appearance may help with that, I don’t look remotely like a RAMSI person, and a bit of pijin toktok helps.
Have a Happy Easter, take care, Hi to Pete and Katja, send pics of the new bus please Pete, Gytha, Rhonda, Mum, Rose, Damian Jesse, Kahu, Tarsha, Hayden and Leigh, John and Sylvia, Lou and Scott and Zambezi, Kelly Alex, Atia Dascha, Jerome, Fionn, Libby, Al, Dave, Chip, Chris, Mike, Joe Pastry,and everyone else .
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