ORCHIDS AT DAWN 13th July 2008 As a result of the judging at the flower show, tribal warfare was a close thing, as no-one could agree on how to award prizes.Richard, a VSO volunteer who is a botanist and helped to organise the show, was part of the judging panel.Apparently the judges felt that if someone hadn't got a prize, they should get one anyway, regardless, and if one stallholder had already got one prize, s/he shouldn't be allowed another one, so a fraca...

PIST WEEK! 30th June 2008 It's not what you think - though it might just as well be! The problem started when, right up to the beginning of the fortnight which was designated as two weeks holiday for the students and one week for the teachers, no-one knew which week was which, as the non holiday week for teachers was to be PIST week - Provincial In Service Training.We'd planned to have a week's holiday during the one holiday week, but no-one, not even the educ...

GOD SAVE THE QUEEN 19th June 2008 We're in the dry season now.Wall to wall sunshine all day, every day and not overbearingly hot.Water is short, so many people go to the river to wash, do their laundry, get rid of their rubbish and I've even seen one woman washing her pig in the river(you see pigs being walked around on the end of a rope as you would see someone in UK taking their dog for a walk).Then they take bucketfuls home to drink and cook with - yuk?We're...

THE SOUNDS OF SILENCE - PARADISE 2 31st May 2008 Hope this will put the photos into context, one of these days we'll manage to put the two together! We weren't looking forward to our visit to Karamui.We'd heard such stories and secretly, I was a bit scared that some of the hijacker's mates might still be lurking in the bush!We were told that the mosquitos there were HUGE, it was unbearably hot and even one of the teachers said she was so scared about us going,...

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...