Two months on..

Well we have been in Honiara for over 2 months now and everyone is settled into a happy routine. The kids are happy at school and Kindy so Carl is now able to drop and run each morning. Tobias is happy to stay with Kathy if Carl requires it.

Carl has had 4 pidgin lesson but is a bit reticent to practice so I suspect progress will be slow. At school next term Poppy will have to start to learn a 2nd language - pidgin being an option - so there may be a bit of competition between father and daughter.

Carl of course is missing flying but hopefully over time an opprotunity will come up for him. This weekend half a dozen tuna boats were in Port will with spotter helicopter's on board so no shortage of machines around to get your fix from!!!

My work is endlessly unpredictable. Each week the Department seems to lurch from one crisis to the next. Last week a number of staff were suspended or sacked for a number of offences including, stealing $2million from the cashroom, lighting a fire in the office that destroyed documents and one wall, bringing prostitutes in the office over the weekend, and using a taxpayers refund cheque to buy beer!!! As we went into the weekend another case of missing cash was revealed in one of the provincial offices.

In addition to that I continue to find LARGE piles of unactioned work from the last 7 years. During the ethnic tensions large numbers of people in Honiara were chased back to their villages and government department processes basically fell over. Things are pretty much a shambles and is difficult to forge a path through it all that balances old work, current risks and future planning.

The morale challenges of poverty are ever present and it is difficult to work out what role you should or shouldn't play in it all. For example our security guards who are provided for us and paid for as part of RAMSI earn $88/week or $18NZ. Even with the simplest lifestyle they can't survive on it. Most people survive on rice as a staple diet but that wouldnt even buy a bag of rice for the week.

So are we enjoying ourselves??? Yes, yes, and yes. Of course the kids ask when we are going back to Taupo regularly but they are happy, well settled and both seem to be growing heaps in experiences at school. Poppy's reading, spelling and general school work is doing great. She's getting confident with computers as they have a computer suite the class visits each week.

Millie loves Kindy and has 2 lovely Solomon Island teachers. There are heaps of nice little girls in her class from all over the place.....

.....and everyday in Solomons is a great day to be at the beach as they photos from this morning show.