A lot of time and effort goes into shipping donated books to developing countries. But far too often the wrong books are chosen. Here are two that found their way to Bougainville and caught my eye this morning. Neither is a bad book in itself of course but both are meaningless here.
If you ask google for the pigeon English for helicopter you'll probably get 'magimix bilong Yesus', but take care: magimix will be replaced with whatever the local term for food blender may be: magimix, mixmaster, blender, vitamix...
But that variation is itself the clue that this is nonsense: the word used is'helicopter'. The idea that tok pisin offers endless opportunities for etymological comedy like this is pretty threadbare.
And this came about because although the puppies under the library have not sparked any interest at all, a helicopter flying over it got everyone outside, staring and pointing, in a flash!
Squealing and mewling from beneath the library needs investigating. And here's the cause, five more dogs which has to be the last thing Bouganville needs! An event like that in a New Zealand high school would be at least a talking point and more likely bring classes to a halt, but here it is barely noticed.
My back wheel has developed a wobble. My colleague says his teenage son loves fiddling with bikes and would be happy to fix the broken spokes. I instinctively said I'd pay him for his time, thinking that encouraging entrepreneurship and financial independence in a young man was just the thing to do.
How 'waitman' was that assumption? No, no, I am told, his son must on no account be taught the sordid value of money. If he helps, it's because helping is just a nice thing to do. Payment doesn't enter into it.
It's standing room only at the library this morning as parents of graduating students meet to discuss the Grand Graduation Ceremony that will take place in October.
Planning something this far in advance is simply unheard of and the cynic might say 'Just do the same as last year'!
The decision is that each parent will contribute k40 per student. Easy for some. Completely impossible for others.
The meeting has just ended so heads are bowed in prayer. That's the way every meeting starts and finishes round here.
The streets here are usually ankle deep in litter: empty cans, wrappers, packaging and so on. With a coating of mud and betelnut expectorant. Every so often the Seventh Day Adventist church has a litter blitz and dozens of people, dozens of women and children to be precise, spend the day picking it all up. And here is the result: a clean street. Within a week it will be back to normal I daresay.
We NZ volunteers joined in, wearing stout shoes and rubber gloves of course. The local children did it in bare feet and hands. Until I insisted she stop, one child cheerfully slurped the leftover contents of each can she picked up.
It's either feast or famine in the supermarket and at the moment things are pretty good. I just spent 120 kina (about NZ$50) on essentials like olives, marmalade and Weetbix and could feel the eyes of the other people in the checkout boring into me: 'Why is this crazy white man spending a week's wages on this weird stuff?'
An hourly rate of three or four kina is about standard for local staff so that really is a week's pay. Spent on processed food that won't even make a proper meal.
My brief here is to help create a system for collecting oral histories and adding them to the library collection. An interview I did this week was the saddest by far. We had agreed to talk about extended families and how Melanesian society is founded on family and clan responsibilities and obligations. We got onto one's interactions with in-laws, which are strictly controlled by a complex set of unwritten but widely accepted rules. One's in-laws of the opposite sex are off limits: one cannot talk to them, look at them, share food with them, be alone with them. If you spot them in the street, you turn away. Any contact, even inadvertent, is disrespectful and deeply shaming; it will require a public apology and compensation with food or money. Mere words of apology are inadequate.
How sad that happy and fulfilling relationships with one's partner's parents and siblings, and with one's children's partners, are not allowed.
