ANOTHER PIGGIN' DAY IN PARADISE 15TH May 2008 Opportunities to sleep at night here are few and far between, for the following reasons:an abundance of dogs, who are relatively quiet during the day but at night they behave like wolves and howl and bark incessantly, usually right outside our bedroom window.John has a mug of water at the ready to chuck at them when things get desperate.Then there are the cockerels, which, I have always understood, are supposed to c...

HIJACK 4th May 2008 We were due to go to Karamui High School by air in a couple of weeks to do some work. The headteacher just visited us to tell us that our trip may have to be postponed. The plane due to go toKaramui last Thursday, had some thousands of pounds in election money on it and it was hijacked at gun point.Money was stolen and all planes grounded for the foreseeable future, until this villain is caught. This hijacker has some vendetta against the s...

MIPELA GO ANTAP LONG MAUNTAIN WANTAIM DOMANIC NA GIDEON 29th April 2008 We had a quiet day on Saturday getting over the near evacuation. We had resigned ourselves to the situation of being evacuated, even though we felt that the judgement was premature, and not based on hard facts. Hard facts are difficult to come by here, where the newspaper says one thing one day then refutes it the next, often the story in the National will be the exact opposite of the Post ...

COMPENSATION FEVER 25th April 2008 For the next 3 days chaos will reign.16 years ago there was a tribal fight near the school with considerable loss of life.In controlling it, the police burned down houses and since then the people have been fighting for compensation.They have recently won their claim and have been awarded 20M Kina, (five Kina = £1.00), divided between 900 families, (to put it in perspective, a teacher gets paid less than £2,000 a year!) The ...

GROUND BRUK NA ROAD BAGGERUP 20th April 2008 Just a comment about the sports day photos which I hope you have received.When you see the junior 100m - please note the beard of the winning runner.Just because he's in a junior class doesn't mean he isn't 35 yrs old! Note the tape denoting the track which got baggerup very quickly and the new style of high jump!It could be a world beater! Disconcertingly, there was a piece of tape strung across the demarcation line...