Melanesian plans

Hi all

I have recently departed the Marovo for a wi bit and have quite a Melanesian adventure planned for Christmas, New Years and most of January.  You won’t hear from me until early February, but this is what I am up to (subject to change at any moment of course).

My few days here in Honiara have been spent predictably at the pub and ironically at the New Zealand’s Deputy High Commissioners personal home.  This came about because a few of my friends are house sitting over the holidays.  The transition from leaf hut to multi story security complex with the lot was like getting punched in the face…but in a good way.  All the diplomats, RAMSY Officers and foreign contractors basically live in one suburb which is Honiara’s equivilent of Hollywood.  It is characterised by big concrete barricades with barbed wire decorations and seemingly endless amounts of security guards.  Great houses though….

1. Tomorrow, I am, with a couple of like-minded expat nomads, jumping on a single engined plane and flying to the extreme top of the Isabelle Province.  Then chartering a small boat to what seems like on a map, the outer reaches of nowhere.

If your interested. Accross from the neighboring Choisel Province is good old Boganville.

It is a conservation reserve dedicated to re-populating leather back turtles.  I am also hoping while I am there to wrestle a dugong, which I think I could take on my best day.  Can’t thing of a better place to be enjoying Chrissy whilst I am away from the folks, fam and friends.

2. After that, I am planing on welcoming the new year in style.  Callum, A good mate of mine, has the fortune/misfortune of having a birthday on New Years Day.  To celebrate his dirty 30, he has booked an entire island in the Florida islands. Should be fun!

3. Early January will be spent annoying my dear sister in Port Vila, Vanuatu.  I envision one or two days grace before the haymakers come out.  I am really looking forward to it nonetheless and interested if my Solomon pijin can survive the Vanuatu acid test.

4. To finish off my extended christmas break I will spend a bit of time with the old man.  Armed with spear guns, fishing gear, knives and pointy sticks, the two Windsor Cox men will be gallavanting around the Marovo trying to kill anything that moves (excluding people and my dog kipper of course).

So that’s me. Happy Christmas and New year reader(whoever you are).

LEANA VIA

Picnic at Pelevo

Yesterday I arranged a picnic for a few families that have helped me out this year.  We all went to my second favorite coral island in the Marovo called Pelevo.  It was a really great day and for once, someone brought a camera, so here a some pics.

The boat was overloaded Solomon style. I decided to bring my canoe Mungiki Vua as well.

This is Pelevo Island. It doesn’t have the deep water like the barrier islands, but it has a really nice sand beach and is surrounded by shallow coral gardens.

 

Building a fire.

Swimming out to catch some lunch.

 

Inspecting the catch. Some were smaller than others.

‘Why is this whiteman using a spoon?’

 

End of day wave.

Recent parent workshop

Last week, I was asked to present at a Marovo Parenting week long workshop.  The initial topic was ‘why rap music was ruining our children’.  Thankfully, I persuaded the workshop organiser to change it a bit to ‘the opportunities and costs of investing in technology in the Marovo’.  There was a massive turn out and whilst I was under-dressed as usual, it was good fun.  I think it was pretty well received, but if I had to do it again, I would probably revise some the answers I gave to a few questions after the presentation.  For example:

Parent: How now mi outem unchristian sometings time pikinini hem look look fo dem (How do I prevent my Children from looking up unchristian content)?

Me: Lo long term, hemi kolsap impossible (In the long-term, it is basically impossible)

Here is a few snaps.

 

Marovo Species of the Month: The Arsehole Snake

I went diving the other day and saw 6 to 10 sea snakes (I can’t be sure if I saw the same snake more than once).  This struck me as quite strange as I have never seen so many sea-snakes in the same place.  When I came back from my dive, I asked few local fisherman about a sea snake that his long, skinny, black striped and has a yellow head.  They identified them as ‘Noki Nugunugure Pere’ and said I should steer clear of them at the moment as it is mating season.  I assumed they were referring to how venomous sea snakes were, but that wasn’t quite it.  No, they told me in no uncertain pijin that ‘Suppose iu no look out, that fela snake hem save swim up and spoilim asshole belong iu’ (translantion – If  your’re not careful, that snake will swim up your arse and cause damage).

The Marovo people name things literally and also have a great sense of humor.  So the translation to Noki Nugunugure Pere in Marovo is ‘snake that goes up arsehole’.  I asked those same fishermen why does the snake do this, but they didn’t know and weren’t particularly interested in personally finding out.

 

So I did a bit of western research and found out that Noki Nugunugure Pere (Laticauda colubrina) is also known as banded sea kraits or colubrine.  As a species, they live mostly off coral reefs and small islands.  They are widely distributed widely around the coast of PNG, The Great Barrier Reef in Australia, Indonesia, the Philippines and of course the Marovo Lagoon in the Solomon Islands.  Despite wasting most of a day searching for reasons why they swim up peoples’ arseholes, I couldn’t find an explanation.  Still, here are three of my favourite facts about the arsehole snake.

1. They shed their skin as often as every 2 weeks

2. They have many special adaptations for diving including a saccular lung allowing them to dive to depths up to 60 m in search of food (eels).

3. They have venomous fangs and their venom contains powerful neurotoxins that affect the muscles of the diaphragm of its prey.