Treats

Word goes out that some expat groceries may be available and two days later I receive four - four! - packets of wonderful glorious processed salty plastic wrapped, river destroying New Zealand cheese. First dairy product for a month if you ignore an ice cream that almost certainly had no actual cream in it anyway.

So now the question: scoff it all in huge chunks and hang the consequences? Or pare it thinly and make it last for months? Which did the chaps in Stalag V do when the Red Cross sent a tin of peaches? The latter I expect, and yet...

Law and order

A presentation at the Haus Stori to high school students from representatives of the various law and justice agencies: court officials, prison officers, policemen, probation officers and so on. Quite a line-up of heavies delivering some stern warnings: don't smoke pot (like that's the biggest issue here?), stick to your studies,  honour your family. One of the speakers was the ombudsman who is supposed to keep the leaders in line and investigate allegations of corruption. In the job for two weeks she made the rookie error of asking for questions. 'What are you going to do about political corruption?', 'How can we stop our leaders building fancy houses and buying fancy cars?'.  That last one came from the school principal.

The mood grew tense, but it is a very good question: what CAN she do? The answer in the short term is probably very little.

Two sabbaths

Both Saturday and Sunday are days of prayer and rest in Bougainville, for Seventh Day Adventists and Catholics respectively. Working out which shops will be closed on which day takes a while. Either way the Sabbath is a big deal.

Even Digicel, the mobile phone operator that specialises in high cost sevice to developing countries, gets in on the act with junk text messages like this.

Sign of the times

There's plenty of semiotic ambiguity in this sign, nailed to a tree at Loloho beach. This beach belongs to kiwis? Which kiwis? How come? Since when? Non-kiwis are welcome? Unwelcome? Welcome so long as they behave in some kind of kiwi way? Uphold defined kiwi values? When kiwis come across beach ownership in, say, the Mediterranean they are scandalised, but here is a bit of territory marking of a very similar stripe. Does anyone, could anyone, know what the people in the village right by the beach think?

Is there an Aussie beach? Could there be a Chinese beach? And what about all the other beaches in Bougainville, which lack signs?

Seems to me that this little sign points, perhaps  unintentionally but still unmistakably, down the familiar settler society path of re-naming, marking, mapping, pegging, surveying, fencing, owning.

Why not erect a sign 'Loloho Beach'? Why not just leave well alone?

All friends now

A Mitsubishi A6M 'Zero' if I am not much mistaken, on the foreshore at Kieta

It's the cops

There are three NZ police officers in Arawa. In uniform, but with an 'Adviser' epaulette. They're great people - and I'm not just saying that because of their 42" screen and Sky subscription.

By your pupils you'll be taught

Talking to a group of senior students from the adjacent high school to see if they would like to contribute their stories to the oral history project. I spoke, they listened in silence. Any questions? Not one. What a waste of time that was I thought. But then afterwards eight (eight!) of them came up to me individually and said yes they'd love to help, what a great idea etc etc