Thursday 29th April. (Actually 4am Friday morning)

I’m pleased tomorrow/today is Friday, it makes Monday that much closer.

My pet rat that won’t eat rat poison is fast becoming a nuisance. It hasn’t the grace to look startled when I catch it at 3am eating the bananas on the bench, it sits there, looks at me, then casually waddles over the bench top, drops to the floor and walks behind the fridge. After which it becomes a lot of banging, shifting furniture, opening and closing back doors, front doors, verandah doors, moving chairs, cushions, trying to chase the damn thing out of the house.

By then it’s 4am, I’m wide awake, and going to be in a slightly tired frame of mind for the rest of the day.

Tiff got back Wednesday. She had a fairly good time in Brisbane, despite having no money for the week due to a miscalculation. She never told me in her emails, I could have sent some WU if I’d known, but too late afterwards. She got to our suppliers in Brisbane, and bought back a thick folder of pamphlets, catalogues etc, full of stuff I’d love to have in the nursery but in practical terms it is too far above what we are doing to need yet.

Her laptop shrunk, from the big Toshiba we actually need, to an Acer with just enough to be useful, but not enough to be practical.

The elections, whenever they are, July/August is the closest guess so far, will be interesting. The $20 million RCDF (Rural Constituency Development Fund) annual allowance, has been fully paid out to the departing MPs, so they will have bribe money to pay their wantok for votes, instead of using it to fix roads, develop business, agriculture etc. The Solomon Star is printing editorials that are slightly irate in tone about it, and the letter section is disapproving to say the least. Still, it isn’t as though it is something new here.

There aren’t fixed political parties or groupings here, the Governments are a loose coalition of 10 – 20 various appellations, single members, 3 – 5 people with a slogan and name, all jostling for first place at the money trough. If they get elected it then becomes a matter of paying off the people that voted for them, and keeping the money flowing to get re-elected next time, without upsetting too many people who miss out on the slush funds.

There is still no movement on the Cattle Fund, I doubt it will ever go ahead, it looks good on paper, the practicalities of it seem doomed to failure with the lack of accounting, responsibility, knowledge.

Our office/classroom building is finally on paper and has been submitted to Planning for approval. No, we didn’t attaché a CASH cheque for an undisclosed sum to it, although that may not be a bad idea.

With the extra area we gain by squaring off the back of H-D, we gain a lot of space to consolidate the non-productive buildings, storage, office etc, and have more space for actual nursery production. And it simplifies the water lines as well. We can run the lines around the perimeter of the block, instead of across the traffic areas, it may mean a bit more pipework, but it simplifies the system. Here is the revision 4 drawing so far, I think it will be the final design, any ideas please send.



The little truck is back to its usual refusal to start in the mornings behaviour. We tow started it this morning, well, more Joel towed me to the top of the road, and I coasted down the hill for a bit before throwing it into gear and finally getting some noise from the engine. It starts with no trouble for the rest of the day after that, it may be a fuel problem again with the fuel pump, or electrical with the glow plugs, I’ve given up trying to work it out. If I could find a tin of QuickStart, or ether, or something to spray into the air cleaner first that might help.

It’s been considerably drier this year than last, looking back to what I wrote last year at this time, we have had less rain and heavy storms than then. Some due to the el Nino that lingers on, and some due to the slightly cooler temperature. Less evaporation, less clouds, less rain. Since reading Willis Eschenbachs Thermostat Hypothesis, I’ve been taking more notice of the daily cloud buildup, and it has been later and later in the day until the accumulated heat over a few days creates enough backlog to really lift the water up high enough to cool and fall. It’s going to be a long dry summer I think if the el Nino persists.

Thursday 22nd April

Adrian and I went back to Tsaghe Ridge today to have a look at the landscape job. To say I am disappointed in what has been done is an understatement. David has had 9 people there for 4 days, and has completed barely half the work. It’s no wonder I received an irate phone call on Wednesday asking when we were going to finish. The grass has been cut, the 2 garden beds of Helliconia have been weeded and mulched, but the palms have barely been touched. The ones that have been pruned, have been done in such a way that the whole shape is unbalanced, with fronds still horizontal on one side, or just 2 or 3 left, and the rest trimmed. The two trees we were meant to be removing, have been left as they were when Andrew cut his thumb, all in all, it looks untidy, unfinished, and unprofessional.

Adrian is going back on Monday with Hudson, Vincent, Jephtah and Misi to get it finished, there’s about 4 hours in it, including cleaning up if organised. I’m stuck now with the Government House project coming up soon, and I’m not willing to let David near any part of it. Tomorrow is going to be toktok day I think, I’ve been postponing it till I’d had a chance to get to Tsaghe and see for myself. I’m more than disappointed, past annoyed, and moving into angry. Adrian was way past me, he tends to fire up quickly, so I’ve got a promise from him that he is not going to get involved, other than run the work crew for us till we can get a satisfactory conclusion with David.

King George IV School rang today, they want someone from SEB to run a 4 week 5 x ½ days per week landscaping/gardening/soil/environment course for their 6th form students. I’ve put them off till Tiff gets back and we can organise it, I have no doubt it will be me going and running it, until we get the supervisor issue sorted I’m not willing to let things go as they are, while I’m away from the nursery.

Everything is all coming together, the nursery site, more work contracts and short one off jobs, equipment etc is ordered and in the delivery process, so we need the actual work processes to be working properly and efficiently to really get it all together now.

There is, or rather, was, a large Averrhoa carambola (5 corner, Star Fruit) tree between me and next door, that when I looked last weekend was absolutely laden with young fruit, it looked like more fruit than leaves. The branches were actually bowed down with the weight, and it shaded the sun from here in the late afternoon. Got home tonight, unpacking the laptop, when sunlight flooded into the room, and there was a large crack from next door. I popped out and the tree is now mostly a straight stalk, with a few branches left, but it looked too clean to have broken, then one of the daughters started dragging the branches away so I asked if the tree had broken, I got a huge wide grin, and “ I cuttem down!” as she waved her bushknife. I can’t get over the propensity for everyone here to cut things down, pruning, trimming etc, aren’t in their vocabulary, it is either standing or level, there are no inbetween measures.

If you are interested, the fruit from it are not anything I would recommend, I know people that think they are the most exquisite thing for a salad, but in my opinion if you want to know what they taste like here it is.

Take one good paraffin wax candle, not scented or coloured, just plain white, and with a vegetable peeler shave off about ½ cup of fine paraffin wax. Put aside in the fridge.

Fill a glass with the ice that forms in your freezer, or off the inside of the fridge when it is not working properly, and set in the fridge to thaw, you need it to thaw, but still be cold. Do not use tap or filtered water to make the ice, nor use water and chill it, it will not taste the same.

Mix the paraffin shavings with the cold water, and drink. You should end up with chewy bits of paraffin stuck in your teeth, and a terrible flat insipid taste from the thawed fridge ice. That is what the fruit of the Averrhoa carambola taste like.

I may be biased.

I’ve got so many things going on at the moment, I keep trying to focus on one part of what we are doing, and get it completed, but it doesn’t work out that way. I’m very much a big picture person, once it gets down to the fine details, I get lost in the detail, or bored with the process, which is where Tiff is brilliant. She has big picture ideas, but is really good with the detail work, I break it into sections, give her the section detail stuff to do and it is done so quickly and correct I’m always amazed with what she accomplishes. I get the ideas, like the Post Office, Government House, Commonwealth Ave, and can sketch in the broad view, Tiff can come along and fill in the detail and she knows all the right people for us to go to and sell the ideas to. No wonder I don’t want her to leave, or if she does, I’m going with her.

The King George IV School one sounds interesting, I’m not sure how my views on AGW will go, but if I can get them to start thinking instead of just believing what they are told, I’ll be happy with that. And get them to start thinking about pollution, preserving their environment, saving the reef structures. It’ll be good to get back teaching again, I know I’m just going to use it as an excuse to run away from the problems at work with David, but hopefully that will be resolved or under some sort of management before then.

Mum is still managing, Rose said she has 2 ballet tutus to finish, a ballet costume, a dress, a woollen sweater for me, a few more jigsaw puzzles to complete, once those are all done, then she might be ready to go. If she hasn’t started something else by then. Mum has always been kind of indestructible, I don’t know how I’d act if I had the same news. Just give up or try to get more things done in whatever time I had left.

I got another spider bite at work today, small wolf spider, now deceased. It stung like hell for a while, large blister type swelling that has now settled to an angry red circle, but fading. Another reason for me to have a strong dislike of spiders. On the subject of wildlife, there is a small rip in the insect screen on the window above the stove by the back door and steps. I’ve never worried too much about it, I’ve not had flies or mosquitos inside since I’ve been here so it didn’t look like being a problem. Till last night about 11pm, I went get a cold drink, and there was a large plump rat sitting on the window ledge looking at me as if I was meant to leave food out for it. By the time I found a knife it had decided I might not be friendly and was reasonably calmly climbing back out through the hole in the insect screen and down the back steps. I’ve got the louvres shut with rodent pellets in the window frame now for it to nibble on when it comes back, as I have no doubt it will. I’ll let Tony know and get the screen fixed. The louvres here are on the inside of the window frame, the frame is about 6” deep, with insect mesh then burglar bar frame outside that. So shutting the louvres makes a space in the frame.

Again about wildlife, while typing the above, I’ve had a small gecko climbing up and down my back, and in general being a right bloody nuisance. I’ve caught it 3 times now and put it down, but it keeps climbing back up the chair.

Sunday 25th April

Dawn Service here was good this morning. For those not of New Zealand or Australian backgrounds, 25th April is ANZAC Day (Australian New Zealand Army Corp), commemorating the landing of the Australian and New Zealand troops at Gallipoli in 1915. While New Zealand and Australian troops had served together before, in the Boer War in South Africa in the 1890’s, this was the first time the term ANZAC came to be used to describe the combined troops.

So every April 25th, Dawn Service is held to commemorate all the service men and women who have died, at Gallipoli, and also those killed or lost in other conflicts that both New Zealand and Australia have served together in.

The only places I’ve missed Dawn Service in has been Ireland, I think there is a service held in Dublin, or was, when the NZ High Commission were there. Melbourne has the best I’ve been to, ok, Sydney is close, NZ seems to have downgraded it a lot over the years of the Labour left wing nanny state, hopefully John Key might give it some more emphasis if pushed hard enough. The Cenotaph at the Museum Grounds in Auckland is always crowded, but we need the street parade as Melbourne does. Even if it was only along Karangahape Road, then across Grafton to the Memorial. And a fly past of whatever is left of the NZ Airforce. Probably 5 remote controlled Airfix models.

I’ve made a few cosmetic changes in here, I was probably pushing things a bit with starting this, but ok, I’ve been caught, so I’ve had to do a bit of editing.

Friday was a mixed bag as usual for here. I left David with a couple of the crew chipping branches at Ranadi, and Adrian drove me around collecting the wages, checking in on Andrew at #9, buying a few more tools to replace the ones that have “gone”, bush knives, pruning saws and tree loppers, and got back to Ranadi to find Jephtah putting the covers back onto the motor on the chipper. I’d started it before I left, and it was running, so there were the usual questions, followed by the usual sheepish looks and guilty expressions, David wasn’t there, so Jepthah had to try to explain that it had stopped and David had done his usual “outtem hem” and pulled the motor apart, or as much as he could. It’s a 7.5hp, twin cylinder, petrol motor, barely used, I think about 180 hours use in 2 years, that has never faulted on us yet. Anyway, after I said a few words, Adrian said a lot more, we left it for the time being till we caught up with David to find out what had gone wrong, and why etc?

David hadn’t returned by the time we left, I had to be at the Post Office for a meeting by 3.30, so we probably missed him by leaving early.

Adrian and I went out to Ranadi yesterday, put the battery into the chipper, turned the key and it started without any trouble. Fed a few branches through, we couldn’t find any problems with it. Adrian told me this morning at the Dawn Service that David had called around yesterday afternoon, and said he had a person coming out on Monday to fix the chipper, so Adrian had great pleasure in telling David there wasn’t a Bl***y thing wrong with it, and for him to stop pulling things apart all the time. Which I’ve got to agree with. They have stripped all the heads on the Philips screws using the sparkplug spanner star drive, lost most of the spring washers off the covers, so the screws now vibrate out and the covers fall off, the list goes on.

I think I’ve found out the problem? misconception is better, with David and the one off jobs. Adrian had some words with him about the length of time for the landscape job, David said that I’d quoted $1600, so what was the problem with 4 or 5 days? I’ll have to explain our daily costs/income to David again I think. We need $1400 per day income to cover our fixed outgoings, that will go up soon with the extra in rent for the expanded nursery, but at the moment, $1400 covers everything with no cream to go on top. So far the job that Adrian, Tiff and I all agree should have been done in one day, has cost us $6,600. And put us behind in our contracted work for MID, the Roundabouts etc. Add in the half day Adrian and the 4 crew will be doing Monday, just to finish what we contracted for, Adrian thinks I have the patience of a saint to cope with this all the time. It’s all stuff we need to have settled before we start with the actual nursery proper, I can’t see it going ahead with that sort of attitude from the supervisors, or failure to understand how much it costs us to run SEB on a daily basis. I feel like suspending David for 3 months without pay so we can recover the cost from his wages.

Andrew is doing well, we caught up with him at #9, the infection has been cleared, there are 3 strands of stainless wire holding the bone in his thumb together, he was going home for the weekend under strict instructions to keep it all dry and clean, then go back Wednesday for further x-rays to make sure the bone was knitting. If he can keep any infection out, he will keep his thumb, and be back at work in a couple of months. I told him his position at work was not in doubt, he had been worried that he was going to lose his job entirely over it. Even if they’d amputated his thumb, I’d have made sure he had a job at SEB for as long as he wanted anyway.

Another update on the wildlife here. 4.30am on a Sunday morning is not the time to be finding a shirt on the shelves in the bedroom and have a large rat jump out of the shelf. I have no idea where it ran to, I opened both outside doors, then spent some time going through the 3 rooms tipping everything up to chase it out, but never saw it again. I saw Tony at the Dawn Service, and he is going to have the guys come around Monday and lay traps and sticky rodent tape inside and out. Next to spiders, rats are second on my list. I have poison scattered around inside again, and done the cupboard cleaning and washing the floors, bench top scrubbing and oven cleaning stuff again. I may bring an air rifle back with me, BSA .22 Airsporter would be good, although quickly aiming a rifle is a bit awkward in a small room. Chip will disagree with me I know.

I finally got to Kukum Fish Market this morning, oh, the little truck is back too, and going, and wandered around looking at prices from everyone first. My usual people that have chillies have changed the marketing presentation, and are now doing picked chillies in 300ml bottles, which look really good, and at $5 are a better bargain than the branches they were selling. So being me, I opened one bottle, pulled a couple of chillies out and munched them, to the horrified look of the vendor. They were absolutely delightful, really hot chilli flavour, so I bought the bottle. By which time I had about 6 or 7 people gathered around looking at me as though I’d just stepped off the spacecraft. I didn’t carry on eating anymore, to be honest, they were bloody hot, 1 or 2 were more than enough to try, anymore and I would have been a basket case. It took about an hour for my mouth to stop burning.

Still, it was good fun, and I’m sure he will remember me next week.

I’ve got a litre of coconut oil in my water tank now to try and kill the mosquito larvae. Once that has had a bit of time to work, I’ll wait for a wet weekend with lots of rain and wash the tank out, then hopefully I’ll be back to reasonably clean water in the tank again. The coconut oil is to stop the larvae from breathing, it forms a skin over the surface of the water, and when the larvae come up to breathe, they can’t penetrate the oil layer.

For some reason I had water flowing most of the weekend, so the clothes, sheets, have all been washed, the floors have been scrubbed and disinfected, all the dishes have been really well cleaned, then tonight, just as I decide to start cooking, the water vanishes. Well, ok, it isn’t that big a worry, I have a full water tank, but the convenience of just standing at the sink and turning a tap on has ruined me for the rest of the week. As well as the long shower I had this morning.

I’ve got Peter Tosh playing at the moment, reggae with a hard edge is how I’ve always felt about him. Great music, the message needs a bit of conciliation at times, but ok, that is how he sees it. Doesn’t stop me agreeing with him and how he sees life.

Mum rang earlier. She was going to see Swan Lake, with Rose this afternoon there. So I guess she is still managing ok. She’s stopped taking the morphine/paracetamol and is back on her favourite aspirin again. I think she’d rather be lucid and in a bit of pain than how the morphine made her all fuzzy and wandering. She is considering donating her body to the Auckland Med School, as she said, the specialists at Auckland said she was too far gone with cancer for an operation or treatment, so she feels that maybe if they have her body to open up, they may find a way to operate on someone else in time. Or at a later stage like she is.

Mum never ceases to amaze me with stuff.

Given my aversion to people touching me, I’d go for a Viking style, open boat cast out to sea, either on fire or not, to drift wherever it takes my body. A bit like crossing the River Styx, Charon steering the boat to the land of the dead. I remember when I was really young, and reading all the Arthur Mees Encyclopedias that were around then, with all the different sections and the Greek and Roman mythology, and wondering how those legends started. What was the basis for them? Apollo, Zeus, Athena, Dianna I could understand, even the Norse gods, Frig, Lokki, Thor, but where does Charon arise from? Crossing the River Styx to the Land of the Dead is so far away from a seasonal/sky being, birth and rebirth gods are common to everyone, how did a boatman arise? Answers on the back of a postcard please.

I’ve been thinking, a boat full of pyrotechnics, set for a few hours delay, time to get way out to sea, I’m sure Damian would oblige me with that.

It’s 8.39 pm, I’ve been trying to phone out to Rose, but no go, and now the dogs that didn’t eat the poison have started the nightly howl session. It starts way back behind me, then gets progressively nearer and nearer, till the local ones join in, which is when I go outside and throw stones towards the noise, it is too dark to see anything. From the yelps and general silence I figure I may hit one or two each time.

Wednesday 21st April

I’m at a loss to explain David. I was under the impression that the landscape job was completed, when I asked him Tuesday night if it was all cleaned up, and all done, the answer was yes. Ok, 3 days over time, but finished.

This afternoon I get a phone call from an irate lady wanting to know when the crew are going to finish and clean up her yard. Including cutting the palms and finishing off mowing the grass down.

I’m going there tomorrow with Adrian, I have a Signage Publicity thing with the Childrens Park at 10.30, HKL are having their sponsorship sign unveiled, and with Tiff in Brisbane one of us has to be there. After that I’ll go to Tsaghe and see what is the problem, then after Adrian has driven me around enough to calm down, I’ll have to have a discussion with David.

He seems determined at times to undermine everything that Tiff and I do to get SEB functioning, I don’t know whether it is some Solomon Male Macho thing because his wife is the manager and is decidedly brilliant, and he struggles, but I know he isn’t that incapable of doing what is required, so I’m left with the opinion that he is just doing what he told me last year when I arrived, that all these whitefala advaesa come, change everyting, when they go, we go back to how we did it before. If that is the case, then David won’t be part of where Tiff wants SEB to be by the end of next year.

Adrian and I measured out properly the area we are going to take at Hasting-Deering today. I’ve mentioned before about Adrians lapses of memory, and forgetfulness, so I’m well aware of the problems now. The H-D block isn’t square, one side is 22 metres longer, with the resulting angle being the rear fence, which is our boundary. I’m all for gaining as much as possible, I’ve never worked for a nursery anywhere that had enough space, so we took the measurements from the front road fence, back to the 25 metre mark on the short side of the boundary, then measured out the same distance on the other side. We gain a triangular piece 120 metres by 22 metres to the apex at the short side. So I’m happy with that. It is on the entrance side of the block, which gives me more room for the admin and school side, as well more room for the retail space without compromising more nursery space.
I asked Jason to come and have a look and check that he was happy with the area, H-D have future plans for more factory space at some stage, but he was happy to see the block squared off how we marked it, ok, we’ll be paying for the extra land area, in rent, but as above, you always need space.

I have an appointment with the Head Gardener at Government House on Friday, taking David is still debateable, but I will, as well as Adrian. That way they both know what we are contracting for, the time frame they require for completion at GH, and Adrian and I can alternate managing it. I’m not letting David run any more contracts for a while. Government House will be a big job, I’ve put in for concrete edging down the driveway where the tarseal is breaking away, completely digging out and replacing most of the gardens, and a different layout for the courtyard garden. After that, we then have the grounds and produce gardens to renovate, or install.
It comes to a few hundred thousand, but not a lot spare for people with attitudes to stuff up. I may just hire a workcrew on contract, and leave David running the road and park stuff that isn’t that time/cost critical.

I’ll have to stop mentioning David anymore, this is liable to turn into a long screed of frustration and venting otherwise.

The weather, a nice safe subject if we stay away from AGW, continues sunny, hot and lacking rain. We’ve lost over half our plants so far from the lack of water, SIWA aren’t helping in that regard with water cuts, and lack of supply. I’ve been watching the clouds form each day, I intend getting a full day sequence of it when I remember. Today started off completely cloudless at 7am, by 9am the first cumulus were forming over Malaita, and Savo, and West Guadacanal. At 1pm the cumulus had started exploding upwards, with a large flat top spreading across the sky. Unfortunately, this hasn’t bought rain yet, although we could see it falling on the mountains at West Guadacanal, and on East Malaita. We watched one small cumulus over the Florida Islands reach breaking point, and shoot a long spire up to what looked about 25,000 feet, which must have sucked all the heat out of the base, it slowly lost the funnel, and then the top dissipated over an hour or so.

I’ve got a few pics, this is what the afternoon skies look like most days here.





ANZAC Day Sunday, Adrian and I are going to the Dawn Service, it’s held down by the waterfront at Rove, in front of the SI Police Headquarters. I’m wondering if they have any planes do a fly over as well. I used to go to the Dawn Service in Geelong, and at Torbay, both had either vintage tiger moths, or in Geelongs case, slightly more modern aircraft do a fly past, with one aircraft flying straight out to sea instead of returning. Hearing the Last Post at dawn is always an eerie feeling.

Tuesday 20th April

I’ve been stewing over how to approach David in a positive manner, or rather in a manner that doesn’t entail shouting, throwing things and in general being in a bad mood. The garden clean up has now taken 4 days, the crew are finally clearing out the rubbish, and I presume they finished today. All in line with Davids “one thing at a time” approach. He’s had 9 people there now for 4 days, with at least half of them each day sitting around waiting for the others to finish something before he organises them to do their bit.

I’ve been trying to come up an analogy I can use to demonstrate what he does, in a way he can relate to, the best I’ve thought of so far is this.

He is organising a fishing trip with 4 other friends, David is the person in charge, Bartholomew owns a boat and lives by the sea, Christopher has a motor and a wheelbarrow, but he lives on the other side of the village. Jeremiah has fishing rods, lines, hooks etc, and lives near the centre of the village, and Salleh will bring an ice chest, and he lives on the opposite side of the village to Christopher.

David will have everyone meet at Bartholomews’ house, after he has sat and read the paper, talked to everyone, they will all then go to Christophers house to bring the motor in the wheelbarrow to the boat. They will all then go to Jeremiahs house, collect the fishing rods, lines etc, and return to Bartholomews. After which they will then all go to Sallehs to collect the ice chest.

By which time it will be midday, and they will stop for a lunch break.

I’m not saying my way would be any better, quicker or efficient, but I would have had everyone bring what was needed to Bartholomews in the morning, and we would have been out in the boat well before mid-morning.

Unfortunately, that is how he organises the work crew, it is everyone does one job together, whether or not it is required, or even if all of those people are able to work together without getting in each others way.

Plus I’m still a tad annoyed about him pulling another grass cutter apart and losing springs, bolts and washers on the ground. And stripping out the allen key heads on the gear box on the extension arm, by using the sparkplug star drive, then just knocking the gear box off with a hammer, which smashed the bearing in the case, and stripped the gears totally.

I’m going to write a bit more in here, then try to compose an Employee Performance Review for him, without losing my temper while writing it.

Tiff is finally getting to Brisbane tomorrow, provided the Australian High Comission process her visa application before 2pm. It’s been such stuffed up process, not just the visa, but everything associated with it, that to be honest, she really couldn’t care less now. Still she is going, so just being away from everything here may be a good break for her. She hasn’t much to do in Brisbane, buy a new laptop, maybe visit the suppliers, or just go sightseeing and visit her wantok. I hope she does get a good break from it.

Andrew is going to lose half his thumb, left hand, the bone is infected, they are trying to stabilise the infection, but this is the Solomons. I think they are going to amputate it later this week before gangrene sets in. At the moment the surgeons are talking about just below the knuckle, so he will still have a short stub to use. By the time he gets back to work, the nursery will be well underway with construction, and I’ll keep him with me for the nursery maintenace side of everything, plus working with Jennifer and Rose in the nursery side as well.

My Mum keeps on proving the specialists wrong, she is still managing most things, with home help from the Hospice now. Rose is there most nights, and days if needed as well, thanks Rose. Mum is on mainly liquids, her oesophagus is slowly blocking with cancer, but she still sounds chirpy on the phone. The morphine tends to disorientate her a bit, so she takes paracetamol mainly.

Places I should be, places I’m not, it’s no wonder I’m getting a bit short tempered at times.

Friday 16th - Sunday 18th April

Friday 16th April

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Saturday 17th April

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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



Sunday 18th April

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

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

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

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

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


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

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.

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.