after the first week of work...

Saturday 21 October

Phew, what a week! Is it time to go home yet? I’m completely exhausted, but taking comfort in the realisation that I’ve got some kind of virus or something, so things aren’t necessarily as immense as they have seemed in the last day or two…

A typical day at work this week has started with the walk to work via a ‘goat track’ short cut (named after the agile and nimble mountain variety I’m sure, as the track is steep and slippery in the constant wet and reminds me of parts of the walk up the volcano on Savo), then past numerous stalls selling betel nut, accompaniments, single cigarettes and the odd donut or coconut roll along the side of the road from the main road up to Ngossi. Then I meet up with the main road, where I can see the ocean, Savo Island, Florida Islands and Malaita on a clear day; and smell the heady aroma of vehicle exhaust, sewage and burning rubbish (no landfill here!). Lately it’s been raining fairly often in the morning, which keeps things cooler, but can make progress through the centre of town very slow as everyone tries to squeeze past on a single non-muddy piece of curb, avoiding muddy, betelnut stained puddles and crazy drivers on the road.

My trip to work takes me past the market, so I sometimes stop for some fruits or vegies (there’s not usually much left by the time I’m heading home). Then into what’s left of Chinatown, and to the SIDT building where the WWF Honiara HQ is. The building is wooden, and has a policy of no shoes on the wooden floors, which is a relief as my feet are still a little tender from last weekend and I’m more than happy to go barefoot when possible.

Our office is quite nice – we have ceiling fans, laptops, an operational printer, and intermittent broadband. The broken photocopier makes a fantastic feature and stand for miscellaneous files. The toilets are a bit of an adventure, and there’s a new canteen run by a youth group, which has rapidly expanded its repertoire from fish and chips (not quite as we Ozzies know them) to include greens/tuna/coconut milk, cooked bananas and sweet potato in coconut milk, and rice. They also sell cold young coconuts and fruit sometimes. Would put Jamie Oliver to shame if resources were compared, I’m sure. I’ve been trying to establish fridge usage rights by asking them to keep a can of softdrink cold for me sometimes, but I think putting a container of lunch fare or a fish from the market might be stretching the friendship…

In my office there’s the country manager, Stephen (or Kido); the communications person, Doreen; and the fisheries policy officer, Julia. We’re also recruiting for a replacement finance manager as the last one was encouraged to leave recently because he wasn’t doing his job satisfactorily (pretty impressive that they managed to get rid of him! Go team!). People just seem to beetle away on their own for the most part, and Doreen and Julia are both pretty new. I think Doreen’s been there for a few months, and Julia just for a month or so. I share an office with Julia and we’re starting to get a bit more chatty; she’s probably around my age or a few years younger, and has recently finished studying in Moresby. We’re going to give a presentation to second year teaching students next week on WWF’s activities, so that should be a learning experience for both of us. I’m hoping she’ll do most of the talking. It’s been a pretty draining week, trying to work out where to start, what project is what, etc. etc. Next week a representative from WWF South Pacific is coming for his annual visit so that should be exciting… hope I don’t seem like too much of a goose. He, Stephen and I will go to Gizo for a visit next weekend which will be a good chance to meet everyone there and check out accommodation etc.

After work, depending on how much I’ve got to carry, I usually walk or get a bus to the turn off to Ngossi (no busses go up the hill, unfortunately…). The busses are fun – mostly just Toyota type people movers with music blaring, a driver and a conductor sitting in the back. The fare is SBD$2 (around 50 cents) regardless of how far you’re going, but if you don’t have the right change it’s SBD$3. The conductor says the name of the next stop, and you signal your intention to disembark by hissing at him. It ends up being a fairly constant monologue as he says the name a few times, waits for any hisses, then lets the driver know whether anyone wants to get off and whether there’s any room to let others on. I’ve also befriended a reliable taxi driver (apparently some of them will try to rip you off or make sleezy comments). Very handy for when I’m really loaded down with shopping and don’t feel able to struggle up the hill. I’m also planning a strategic trip to a small shop nearby which is open later than most selling western goods (most close at 5), and which also has ICE-CREAM. I dropped in the other day when I had the taxi, but they were down to strawberry flavour so no joy there. I’m sure it will all have been melted and refrozen numerous times unless I go to the really swanky shopping centre right at the other end of town (haven’t made it there yet), but beggars can’t be choosers, and even on a volunteer wage I’m certainly not really among the beggars here.

Victoria, one of the people who runs the guest house on Savo Island, came to town on Friday. She mentioned that she might be coming to Honiara, so I left my phone number for her at the SI Visitor’s Bureau. I was feeling sick on Friday and stayed home in the morning, then was woken up by a phone call from her father letting me know that she’d meet me in town at 12. After a very confused start to the conversation I finally woke up and worked out what was going on. I met up with her and bought us some lunch at the stall owned by Steve’s (who taught us pidgin) mum (the photo called pc-mall is a shot of the numerous food stalls near point cruz where you can buy tuna and vegie rotis – very exotic – as well as the usual fish and chips, sweet potato, yam, banana, greens, egg rolls, and the odd curry), and she brought me a couple of megapod eggs from the island.

Today I ventured out into town to do some shopping in the morning, and struggled back with bags full from the market. I took a few photos on the way in and will try to get some of Chinatown and work next week. Other than that it’s been a day of taking it easy, and I’m also making the most of this house while I’ve got it; burning CDs onto my computer, watching crappy movies on DVD, and generally flaking around in comfort. Tomorrow I’m going to the beach with the other vollies, which should be nice.

'Podes' demystified

I was going to just post this as a comment, but it's too good to be hidden away and missed! Heino from the Gardens sent me this explanation of what the 'pod' in megapod refers to. Hope you don't mind me quoting you Heino, and thanks for the explanation! I'm glad I won't miss out on all of your interesting tid-bits just because I'm not in Canberra...

"I reckon megapods have big feet - which is the Greek/Latin meaning. Regarding the "pod" part of the word think of tripod or podiatrist.In ancient Greek "pod" is not a word by itself but is the root for various foot-related words. Incidentally, you may see megapodes, instead of megapods, as the plural. In ancient Greek you'd add "s" to pod to make the singular "foot" but you'd add "es" to pod to make the plural "feet". But in ancient Greek you couldn't end a word in "ds", so the "d" was dropped and the vowel lengthened to give "pous" as the singular. In the English word megapod we use the stem form but in the word octopus we've taken over the actual Greek word for foot. That also explains why some people maintain that the proper plural is octopodes, not octopuses - and certainly not octopi.

Anyway, back to birds. Your megapods dug egg-laying holes, so big feet would be useful as shovels. Various mound-building birds are also megapods. Again, large feet would be very useful in raking up leaf litter etc"

Savo Island

Sunday 15 October

Just got back from an amazing weekend on Savo Island – a little volcanic number about one and three quarter hours from Honiara on a little 30 hp fibreglass boat. The island is only a few km in diameter, and has a number of villages around the outside. It also boasts the Kamakeza hotel/rest house, which was first established some years ago, was destroyed during the ethnic tensions, and has now been rebuilt at a new site. A bit more expensive than our choice… we stayed at the Kula Village Stay – sort of set up to be an authentic village experience, with a separate leaf house for visitors (with beds with mattresses I should note, and more comfortable than at the Rest House in Honiara too), meals provided, a sort of pit toilet, and various activity options. The couple who run most of it, Noel and Victoria Kuku, are really lovely, and the whole village is very friendly and the kids are fabulously charming.

We arrived late Friday afternoon and took it pretty easy – a couple of people were feeling a bit poorly from dodgey food/different food/something, and everyone was pretty tired from the busy week. They must have thought we were very boring, as most people went to bed at 7 on Friday and not much later on Saturday. Gave me the chance to (uncharacteristically) be a party animal, relatively speaking. They wanted to sort out what our program was, so we all decided to go up the volcano on Saturday and go to church on Sunday. Leave at around 7 in the morning to get up the volcano before the weather gets too hot. No worries… and sat down to a feast of fried reef fish, rice, sweet potato and two minute noodles mixed with beans, tomatoes, onions, tinned fish, and plenty of curry powder.

We were woken at about 5:30 by Victoria’s dad knocking on doors (or walls) and asking who wants to go to the megapod fields. Not sure where that fit into all the previous night’s planning, but Fiona and I struggled out of bed and wandered off for a tour of the mysterious critters. I assume that the name refers to the size of the eggs (showing my ignorance of things Latin – maybe someone can enlighten me?), as the birds themselves are smaller than chickens. They are wild, and the spot we visited was a big enclosure, cut in half by a partial fence. The first half contained people digging up eggs. Holes are dug the night before, and the birds then go and dig a bit deeper (sometimes more than a metre) and lay an egg, then cover up the hole. While the people are in half the enclosure digging the eggs up again, the birds run away to the other half of the enclosure (they’re very shy, hence the fuzzy, long distance photos) and keep laying, up to three eggs a day. In the wild they dig the whole nest themselves, and apparently the eggs are still good for eating up to two weeks from being laid. The eggs are bigger (esp. longer) than chicken eggs, and have a bigger yolk. For all the digging and fence building I think the chicken probably still comes out ahead though. We took one back for brekkie, which was cocnutty bread (pretty good with shiteloads of vitamite/peanut butter), left over sweet potato, a little sample of fried megapod egg (pretty tasty as far as I could tell) and starfruit.


We eventually departed for the volcano at around 9, and seemed to wander along at a pretty relaxed pace for the first hour or so of flat walking. Stopped briefly by a stream, then crossed over for the ‘difficult’ bit, which consisted of scrambling up a slippery, slidey slope assisted by tree roots and any unfortunate bits of vegetation that came to hand. After the difficult bit there was a mere two hours of pretty-darn-steep and fairly slippery terrain to negotiate, before arriving at the crater in the middle of the day. It was pretty amazing – bare whitish rock with sulfuric colouring, boiling hot water and well heated ground. The experience was only slightly tainted by meeting three Sweedish doctors who were staying at the Kamekeza place and had managed to take the shorter route, which had been ruled out by Noel because of difficulties with land ownership and royalty payments. I think our hard work payed off though – we all managed to get back in one piece and resisted the temptation of walking on to another higher vantage point on the way back, where (we heard later) one of the Swedes slipped an hurt his arm. Lucky they were doctors. The walk through the forest was really speccy too – good views across valleys, lots of nice ferns (sorry, no piccies of these, Jim), some cool fungi, and constant entertainment from our entourage of kids, the spunky mute guide (sigh), and Noel. All chewing betel nut and/or smoking the whole way, and looking like they could turn around and do it all again by the end.

Were rewarded on return by a refreshing swim (I didn’t realise the others were eating first, jumped in the water, then realised on getting out that I should have moved further to avoid the preferred toilet location), cold shower, and meal of rice and megapod omelette with tomato, bean, onion, and, creatively, two minute noodles and curry powder. Drank litres of water, sat around feeling bloated, and was surprisingly hungry for dinner a couple of hours later. Rice, sweet potato, chunks of fried tuna (I think I ate about half a fish), more omelette, pumpkin tips in coconut milk, and greens with two minute noodles and curry. Was almost driven insane after a few nights of broken sleep by the generator running late into the night next to my room, running a screening of Tristan and Isolde I later discovered. I guess there have to be some perks for having your home invaded every weekend by weirdos.
Today we got up for the Sunday service at the local Anglican church. The singing was beautiful, but I can’t say I really appreciated all the standing, sitting and kneeling given that my legs were making a few comments about the previous day’s exertion. Very special though, really. The first hymn almost made me cry, and I embarrassed myself again (getting very good at this) by asking if they were singing in language and being told it was English…
I went for a big snorkel after brekkie (fried coconutty bread with more vitamite, greans with noodles, curry and tinned fish, greens with noodles, curry and tinned corned beef, coconutty rice) and saw some very cool huge blue starfish with lighter blue spots, a few biggish fish, a few littlish colourful ones too, some cool coral, etc. etc. (very technical, I know). The boat trip back was very wet but not too cold, and I managed not to think about how impossible it would really be to swim either way by half way across.
Now it’s my first night in the pure luxury of the house I’ll be minding for three weeks (very grateful to Kahlee and Steve for this!).

arrival!

Sunday 8 October

Well, we all arrived in the end, in one piece, with all our luggage, and no major tantrums. The food on the plane was even delicious (SI Air, not Qantas). Pretty incredible I reckon; I take it as a good omen for the year to come. The united women’s rest house is pretty cool; simple but clean and nice people around. Chatted a bit to Betsie and Rose (?), and got very embarrassed messing up PNG/SI pigeon.
The first night we went to a go finis party (don’t know if you actually say that in SI Pigeon) for a couple of other volunteers at Big Daddy’s house. Big Daddy (Emanuel) is a DJ on the local radio station. He’s part African, Kiribatian and Western Provincial (?), and he may take over the In Country Manager when Charlotte leaves in two weeks. He seems like a really nice person from first brief impressions.
An ex-AYAD (Ben) will act in the position until it's filled (by tender process which seems surprising).

The party was pretty impressive – people contributed money for drinks, and there was heaps of food BBQ’d up too (huge plastic carton full of rice, bread, greens in coconut, tuna, chicken, sausages, salad, fruit…). There were other volunteers (mostly of the Aussie variety as far as I met), a few people working for Govt and other mobs, lots of members of a local triathlon club, family of Big Daddy and others in the house, and others that I’m sure I missed altogether. And there were lots of display dances (from Kiribati, Samoa, and a few others) and some fire dancing. It was great to meet lots of interesting people, but a bit overwhelming in such a big group with lots of noise and activity. I hope noone takes offence for the many times I’m sure I repeatedly asked what peoples’ names were…

I was ready to drop by the time we came back (still a bit before pumpkin time), slept reasonably but actually got cold during the night and had to put my only warm top on! Apparently it’s not usually this mild (I hope not).

Today we went to Bonegi Beach, which is about 20 mins drive west from Honiara. A really nice spot – stoney beach with reef about 10 minutes out. Had a great time snorkelling, but got fairly badly burnt on my legs. Thanks to restrictive swimwear codes my knees are in the clear, so at least bending isn’t a problem. And maybe it will keep me warm tonight…