Saturday 7th August/Sunday 8th

According to the Solomon Star things have been a little heated in Auki, Tulagi and Lata, no one killed fortunately, but some rather ugly scenes happening. At Auki some supporters were upset at their candidate losing, so they stormed the hall where the votes were being counted, took the ballot boxes and burned them, on Tulagi a few windows were broken by stones, and a shop belonging to Mark Kemakeza the successful candidate was broken into and cleaned out, a school on Malaita looks like being closed for a while after a crowd damaged the water pump, and destroyed the food garden, because their candidate lost, and there have been reports of trouble on Lata (Temotu Province) for the same reason.

Out of 29 confirmed MPs so far, 13 are new faces, only 16 are returning, which is about the usual percentages for elections here. Half the sitting MPs are replaced each election, which does lead to a lack of continuity, although it does clear out some of the dead wood too.

It’s been quiet around Honiara so far, well, there’s been no trouble this side of town, and I was through Honiara this morning shopping, ok, early, but it appeared to be peaceful enough. Monday will be the day for any more disturbances, once all the votes have been counted and results announced, then a lull till the 14th when the Prime Minister is announced. Between Monday and the 14th all the MPs will be meeting to decide factions, groups, who they will support etc, and deciding on an acceptable Prime Minister, depending of course on which faction has the most support.

I’ve been feeling a bit under the weather the last few days, by Friday I felt totally washed out, and I was running a slight fever. I came home early Friday, slept from Friday afternoon till Saturday morning, still have a fever, paracetamol is helping, and still feel washed out. I’m having cold showers every few hours, tg I have water this weekend, and I’m hoping it passes off by Monday. I think this is the third time now for a fever, no cause I can think of, I had a blood test for Dengue Fever when I was back in Auckland, which was negative, the test last year for Malaria was positive, but as I was already taking Doxycycline there wasn’t much they could offer. And it certainly didn’t last as long as I’ve seen with others here. I’ll just get used to it, I’ve been healthy enough the whole time I’ve been here, tinned soup and stuff not withstanding, a few spider bites but no skin infections, or infected cuts.

There was a bit of a breakdown in communications while I was in New Zealand, and our irrigation system hadn’t been shipped. Finally sorted last week and it is now on its way, along with some shade cloth, so September will be a bit busy getting it installed. Hopefully it will arrive about the middle of September, I’d like to have the weedmat down and the propagation house and posts in for the shadecloth, so it will be simply lay out the irrigation and connect it up, and put the shadecloth up.

Trying to propagate plants without a water supply, potting mix, and crew at the moment is a bit of a farce. I’m meant to be redeveloping the Memorial Garden entrance, the design is done, all I’m waiting on now is for the plants to grow. We lost over half our stock with moving from the Botanic Gardens, due to lack of water, and shelter, it’s been a bit of a problem just keeping the existing stock alive.

A few more pics from Tuesday, things have been remarkably quiet ever since.

Thursday 5th August

Things are still quiet around town. We’re still down on staff numbers, it will probably be next week till most of them return from the outer islands after voting, and even then, I’m picking some will stay over a bit longer to catchup with wantok.

Vote counting in Honiara electorates started today, results should be announced tomorrow, so the weekend promises to be either interesting or just another weekend.

We’ve had really bad internet the last couple of days, Kim said internet was completely out on Wednesday, it wasn’t till I remembered an article on Watts Up With That about the expected Solar storm that I put things together. Although Kim said there was also a rumour about SI Telekom being blacklisted for spamming activities. I’m more of the opinion the solar storm had more to do with it. We’re on satellite link to Brisbane, so anything that disrupts the link plays havoc here.

I’m hoping to have the posts for the shade house in tomorrow, but doubt it with the size of the work crew, we haven’t enough people to spare this week.

Wednesday 4th August

It’s been a quiet day so far, a little bit of rain and cool conditions to keep everything calm. The police helicopter has been overhead a few times today, but around me things have been remarkable quiet for a public holiday.
I managed to get a few pics yesterday driving Tiff home, you’ll have to excuse the quality or lack of, it’s not easy taking pictures while driving a 5 tonne truck through Honiara in the traffic, leaning out the window and hoping the truck knows where to go. The biggest procession was Namson Trans’ supporters, he’s standing in West Honiara, it is probably the most hotly contested seat in Honiara. If any trouble starts, West Honiara and Central will be the hot spots with clashes amongst the differing supporters after the tally is announced.







The amount of noise on the roads last night was incredible, with all the various groups driving along Mendana out to Burns Creek and back till about 9pm, cheering shouting, music playing and horns blaring.

It’s been so quiet through the night, I’m beginning to wonder if all the security warnings were needed, but then again, still early days yet. Once the results start coming through and the PM is selected, then it could boil over.

Monday 2nd August

A few more pics of Franks statues

It was a deadly dull weekend, the only bit of excitement was taking David out to Tongs Motors on Saturday to pick up the old truck after they had finally got the suspension bushes and oil and fuel filters replaced. We still haven’t got the speedo working, I think the gear in the gearbox that drives it is either stripped or the shear pin is gone. Either way, Tongs said it would mean removing the gearbox to fix. I can’t see that myself, I’ll find a manual somewhere and have a look, but I’m sure it can be replaced in situ, without having to do a major removal.

Kukum market is still thriving, some prices are falling, some still high at this part of the season. What I call flowering brocolli, well it looks like brocolli leaves, with a small yellow cruciform flower, has dropped to $5 a bundle down from $10, bok choy is still $10 but bigger bundles, bananas from $6 to $15 a hand, depending on the size of the hand. Pineapples are still dear at $25 - $40 each, I’ll wait a few weeks till they drop to mid season prices around $15 - $25. There haven’t been any chillies available for a while, I’m pleased I stocked up when I did and filled jars with chilli and vinegar, and a bowl of dried as well.

I had a big spend up today, and ordered shade cloth, clips, for the shade house and layout area, and timber for the propagation house. The shade cloth came to AUD$1820 from Tropigro Brisbane, nice people to deal with even if their website needs some work. In Solomon $ it works out to $12,740.00, you eventually get blasé about the amounts here, I haven’t yet. It always sounds horrendously expensive till you realise just how little the SBD is actually worth. Even the plastic fold clips to fix the shade cloth to the wires come in at SBD$3.50 each, from AUD$0.50

There is a high Police and RAMSI presence around town this week, all alcohol sales have been banned for tomorrow and Wednesday, including the sly grog shops, which sounds as funny as it is. They’re illegal to start with, how telling them to stay shut is going to work I don’t know. The police are out in force to keep it quiet this time, after all the security warnings etc, it will probably be a fairly peaceful election, but you can never tell here. Much the same happened in 2006, and the police and RAMSI were caught totally unaware when everything blew up.

Half the work crew have vanished for the week, gone home to vote, so things are a bit more chaotic than normal, trying to keep the minimum amount done to keep the town looking reasonably tidy and clean.

We’re struggling to get enough chicken manure now, it is either feast or famine here, now we have sawdust coming out our butts, we can’t get manure to break it down. It was the other way round a month or so ago. Eventually we’ll get it right. Once I have one bin filled and rotting down I won’t worry so much, it will take us a while to use 100 cu m of mix.

Thursday 29th July

We’re finishing the week on a high, the compost area is completed, all the bays are ready for use, although it will take a few months for us to fill them all. We’re doing a big collection drive tomorrow, sawdust, chicken manure, moving the existing heap that needs turning down to the new bay.





We start on the shade house Monday, then the propagation house, and I’ll get some of the weedmat laid out as well. We need posts and shadecloth for the shade house and also for the lay out bed, I’ve got a price from Brisbane, just going to check with Island Enterprises tomorrow for their price before confirming the order.

The crew are going to build the propagation house, I want a thatch island style roof, it’s cooler than tin, and will look more natural for the nursery.

A little bit of excitement this morning. I went in early this morning to load the paling timber onto the truck so we would be ready to start, I’d got about half the timber loaded when I found a small, about 15 – 20 inch boa quietly sleeping in the container forklift hole, hidden by the stack of timber. It didn’t appear to be to perturbed by me, in fact it waited till I went and got my camera, took a couple of pics, before moving slowly off under the container. They are really beautiful snakes, slow moving, and the markings are absolutely gorgeous. I’ve seen a few variations in the colour so far, the one this morning is the first grey to black I’ve seen.


Other than all of the above it’s been a quiet sort of week. The election campaigns are heating up, truck loads of different supporters being driven around Honiara cheering and shouting. Without a play list you have no idea who they are, different coloured scarves and bandannas, but without the playlist, they could be anyone. A few of the crew have gone home to vote, there is no allowance for absentee voting here, you have to return to your home village, even if it means going 4 or 5 days by ship, then a couple of days in canoes or walking to get there. I think Temotu is the hardest province to get to, the Reef Islands are about 1 – 2 days sailing away from Lata, the main port, and it is usually banana boats or maybe a larger boat for travel out to there.


Elections are next week, no-one is expecting trouble till afterwards, when the votes are counted, and winners and losers announced. Then there is the 10 day bun fight over who will be Prime Minister, followed by the ministerial appointments based on how much everyone has contributed to the Prime Minister.

I’ll try to keep this updated as it happens from next week.

Wednesday 28th July

We’re really running behind whatever schedule we are on this week. I had another day yesterday carting the remaining statues from Frank Haikus’ studio, we got the last of the panels into the container about 3pm, not without a bit of a struggle. But all done. Some rope blocks and pulleys would have been a real help, but we have people instead here.












We spent today putting in the last of the posts, and started on the first wall, hopefully by lunchtime tomorrow it will look a bit more completed than at present for the school trip to see our new composting area. It looks quite impressive already, just with one side up, by the time we all get stuck in tomorrow it should be at the 3 or 4 sides stage.






We had a visit from a person who is trying to get recycling going here, and as we are starting to get a name finally in Honiara for what we do, he came to us with a proposition for us to start collecting and chipping the plastic bottles etc, which is something I’ve had in mind, but a long way down the track, let me finish something first before loading more on. I’m all for it, but we will need more area, as if I haven’t mentioned that before. All we have at present is sufficient for the nursery, and the composting, although I can see that growing like Topsy as well. My idea of compressing the compost into 20kg bales is taking root. If we can get a consistent supply of waste products, between sawdust, chicken manure, and brewery waste, we stand a good show of having a good mix. With a bit of green mulch spread through from the chipper. Getting the right amount of nitrogen into it to decompose the sawdust is going to be the biggest hurdle, I’m hoping the brewery waste will supplement the chicken manure, and if we can get brewery sludge as well as the spent mash the moisture content should be fine.

I’ll have to pay a visit to Ranadi Tip and see what is available there for a recycling centre for the plastics. Then we go back to the usual arguments with the City Council, who can’t seem to get their own organisation doing it, but don’t want anyone else doing it either. At times I think baseball bat diplomacy is something that there should be more of.

The Official Nursery Opening is for the first week of October, so the next couple of months are going to be a bit hectic. If only everything went to schedule I’d be feeling a lot happier about it all. Then again, I don’t get much enjoyment out of things that just plod along either, I like it when everything is a panic, and you can make decisions and just do it, without going backwards and forwards with committees for everything, and interminable discussions that only come up with what you were going to do days or weeks before.

I mentioned last year while I was working at Rove Prison about the earth snakes that were in the soil we got from Tetere. We found some today digging out the postholes, and I finally managed to get some pics of them. The guys were standing well back, I don’t know if they are poisonous or not, the general rule here seems to be that every snake is poisonous, but I figured something so small that eats ants eggs isn’t going to have much of a mouth to bite with, ok, I could be wrong, but what the heck. If anyone does know more about them please let me know.





They are small, about 100mm (4 inches) long, and extremely fast. I was having to catch them with one hand, throw them back on the heap of soil, take a pic, then grab them again for another pic to make up for the ones I missed. Out of a dozen shots, I got three that caught 2 of the snakes. The bright red one vanished into the soil or grass faster than I could find it. I’ve seen them in yellow, blue like in the pics, dark blue, bright red, black, brown, and green. Whether different species or just natural variation I have no idea. They would make great herpetologists specimens, if you like that sort of thing. Keeping up with ants eggs may be a bit awkward at times though.

Plus you would never see them unless you had a set up like an ants nest glass box.

Ah, ok, get an antbox, fill it with ants, and put a couple of earth snakes in, you’d never be worrying about the ants getting too numerous.

I’ve mentioned Zoe in here a few times, nice lady, in Michigan, she’s bought herself a small country house down a dirt track, that she is going to renovate. Ok, how do you write that so it is the house not the dirt track she is going to renovate? Huh? Well? She has started a blog about it, early days yet, I’ll keep on at her to remember to update whenever she can, but please call over there and say hello, and offer words of encouragement. I’m having trouble posting comments with FireFox, IE7 seems to work, FF blocks the captcha box, despite having it set to allow. If you have trouble posting comments try IE7 if you are using any other browser.

http://littlehouseonthedirtroad.blogspot.com/

Should find Zoe and her little house

Just reread this before saving, God I ramble all over the place don’t I? Oh well, life isn’t a straight line at the best of times for me. Well, apart from born to dead, but even then I seem to be taking a circuitous route.

Monday 26th July

Ok, I got nothing that we had planned done today, but I did get to finally see Frank Haikus new workshop and carvings. We used the new truck to shift them from his workshop to the wharf, they are for the new Solomon Island Chancery in Port Moresby. Beautiful carvings, as the pics show. All from Vasa, which is a very dense heavy smooth grained timber. Each of the posts weighs 1 tonne, according to the reading off the truck pressure gauge, and I was probably doing so many illegal things with it today that after the first thing, the rest didn’t matter.






Along the lines of having the arm fully extended, letting the hook out even more, then pulling the posts out to where I could actually lift them using the arm retraction to pull the posts with.

It did get a bit interesting, but everything was done slowly, so any accidents would have happened in slow motion, till the weight took over and things sped up. No damage to anyone, other than a bruised knee and ankle from trying to stop a post falling. As far as I was concerned, it wants to fall, let it, we can always pick it up, or make another. Legs etc are harder to replace. And a tonne of falling timber isn’t going to notice anyone in the way to start with.







As you can see in the pics, there is a shortage of lifting gear, no rope blocks, pulleys, block and tackle, but we have no shortage of people. And accidents are common.

We’ve got another day there tomorrow, about 16 carvings to ship out, plus panels. They all look really good, all the different provinces represented, samesame as I discussed with Frank last year with Heritage Park.

He has another carver working there making a traditional canoe for the Chancery as well, hand adze and saw is all, wooden pegs holding it together, as the pics show. I’ll try and get back next week when he starts doing the finishing carvings on it. All up, it takes about a month to hand make a canoe to this level, with the carvings, the usual local fishing ones about 1 – 2 weeks.


Which puts us a bit behind with the compost bins, but welcome to the Solomons. I have a contact in Solbrew finally, so we will be starting with the brewery waste very soon, I’m interested in seeing how effective it is for decomposing sawdust, and how long it takes. The info I have found on waste brewery sludge has time periods of 6 weeks to 12 weeks, depending on the water used, the brewing process, and what type of grain used for brewing. The nutrient levels are better than most other organic waste, other than chicken/pig and cattle manure, but given the quantities, I’m not going to get overly concerned about a couple of % points. And we have chicken manure on a regular basis to add more nitrogen anyway.

I’m keen to get it started, mainly to start cleaning up around Honiara, at present it is either dumped into Ranadi tip, or flushed out to sea, neither a good long term solution. Given that there is no fertiliser manufacture here, everything is imported, which makes the price of fertiliser prohibitive, if we can start producing a good composted fertiliser for the local farmers, everyone wins. And we might even make a profit, I’m trying to be King of the Golden River in Honiara. In passing reference to T. Pratchett and The Truth.

The new truck handles well, we had 5 tonne in it this afternoon, and it floats along Mendana, well, inbetween the potholes more, but that samesame sort of feeling. Good hydraulics and power assist everything makes a difference.

I’ve been mentioning the upcoming Elections lately. Here is another interesting note to add to the others.

Honiara has been without rice in any of the shops or warehouses for a week now, due to all the people standing for election buying up every last grain to use in campaigning. Not that it is called a bribe, or payment etc. With 508 people standing for 50 seats, and from todays Solomon Star one person alone bought and shipped 4 tonnes of rice to the constituency he is campaigning in, there hasn’t been much left to go around. I saw a truck of rice being delivered to one of the election offices this afternoon, in Honiara, so whoever is supporting that candidate is sure to get some.

It’s interesting though, we were tossing ideas around in the truck driving through town, and I decided I’ll call my party the Rice Party, and have a rice grain as my symbol, because from one small rice grain, we can grow more, and it symbolises my Parties desire to help the Solomons grow from one small seed, into a land of plenty. About then the guys in the truck couldn’t stop laughing. I was most hurt. I thought it sounded such a good slogan and election promise.

Every party has a symbol, mainly because of the 100’s of different languages here, including Pijin and English, so it helps the voters know who to vote for. Everything from Eagles, (mainly Malaitan), to fish, flowers, canoes, aeroplanes, bushknives, spears, flags. With 508 people standing, there are a lot of symbols going around.