Follow up on Training

Today is a holiday in PNG- Repentance day. There doesn't seem to be anything in particular formally organised, although the Anglican church we've been going to appeared to be organsing a prayer meeting for today. (it was hard to understand what was going on, because people were talking in Tok Pisin, and it was in Rabaul)
There has been a holiday every month we've been here. They're all Mondayised so a long weekend is enjoyed by all. There is another one in three weeks time, in the middle of September. By that stage we'll need to have sorted out when we're returning, as we have to notify VSA at least a month in advance. We have two weeks holidays due and we thought about staying in Brisbane for a bit but we've decided that its best just to come home early. We have no inclination to travel around PNG- mainly safety but I've seen a bit of  it and its possible I might see some more. Our final day is around the 13th November, less the two weeks holiday brings us back to the end of October. Actual return date will be decided by VSA when they provide the tickets.
We've both needed to have Polio booster shots in the last few weeks, because there has been a minor Polio outbreak in PNG, after 17 years of being free of it. The booster shots are more for being able to get out of PNG and into other countries, than anything else. The nurse at the clinic said they had heard some people were turned away from getting on their flights in Port Moresby last week.
The whole thing is a pain because we discussed getting booster shots when we were getting our vaccinations before leaving. The doctor rang VSA and the advice was we didn't need them.
The boosters are only being done on Thursdays at Nonga, so a significant part of the day is taken up getting there, waiting for the shot and getting home. VSA has made all the arrangements, but at a significant cost, I suspect. HI HO!
Last week we started following up on the trainees, visiting them on their properties a discussing with them what there plans were. Due to the vehicle being tied up on other things for three days, we managed two visits on Friday.
Erickson is using some Church land near his home, that has been abandoned. Like most things in PNG there are some constraints, as well as some advantages with the land. The major drawback is access; its on a flat plateau at about 150 meters high, with the only access a series of steps cut into the bank. So getting water up, or supplies down is a mission. Its not costing him anything to use, although the soil has been used, I'd say for over 100 years, without much being put into it. It reminded me of Canterbury soils; grey and not much soil structure. Still a good place to learn a trade.
He's growing cabbages and Pah choi at the moment. I suggested he think about growing Capsicums and Tomato; high intensity/ high value.

Hand weeding is the order of day, nobody seems to have heard of a hand hoe here. Plots are in beds about 2 meters across and about 70 meters long. With a drainage channel/ walkway between.

View from the plot across to Rabaul. You can gauge the height from view across the sea.

Seedlings growing in a mosquito net covered nursery. Erickson has plans to covert an old shadehouse on the site so he can grow his plants in trays as recommended at the training.

Thomas, has use of his mothers land- its a big block at a guess 30-40 Ha but needs a lot of tidying and some work felling trees. He has plenty of water nearby, (two streams and a spring) but no means of pumping it up to his block. Power stops about 600 meters from his land and probably wouldn't have enough ummph to run a pump anyway, as its a 2 phase line about 3 kms off the main road, down a grass track. It looks as if the area has been an old plantation. A good example of lack of infrastucture limiting potential.

Thomas' house, with shadehouse in the background.Patch of Chinese cabbages in the fore front. Malichor on the phone.

Interesting coloured plants in the Chinese Cabbage; some very light green coloured plants through out the patch. I suspect nutrient deficiency, possibly calcium, some had signs of Boron deficiency in the roots.

 

Brown ring around the center of the stem is typical Boron deficency symptoms. I didn't check but it looks as if the center if the stem is becoming hollow. Plants can grow through the deficiency but the problem is that many growers see fertilizer as an expense rather than a necessity. Starting off growers, when they don't have much money, especially see it that way.

On Monday a couple of project management leaders arrived from Goroka to set up trials of English potato and bulb onions in Pomio, which is on the south coast. Difficult to get to though, no road access. Two flights in and out a week, or an overnight boat trip.
It was interesting talking to them. One had done a Masters at Lincoln in 2007-2009. Elizabeth went with them, probably due in some part to my gentle prompting, as she had never been there. Its in her area!
I have a number of property visits lined up in the coming weeks, apart from follow up visits to the trainees.

Felix is one of the guards for the logging company houses in this compound. He has sampled some of my Kiwi Kai, numerous ice-blocks and shared some of our fruit and nuts from the market. Patricia his wife and daughter Tessa have come to collect his pay which was a few days late being paid this month. They travel about 5 hours to get here and then try to return to their village before dark. They are enjoying the books I pass on and I tell Tessa to read everything she can to get her english (which is good) to a very high standard. She is clever with a sparkling personality and wants to be a primary school teacher. Patricia's sister made the mary-blouse I am wearing - a gift from their  family to me. I am seen as part of their family! They really enjoy looking at my tablet.
I was first-up for the Polio vaccination which was the merest pinprick in the thigh. However, it maybe that I scored the infant needle size and others towards the end of the line were not so fortunate!! Nonga hospital are amazing in all that they do with what supplies are available.
Donations of spectacles in NZ for Nonga Hospital Eye Clinic now stand at just under 100 pairs and we only started the appeal just over a week ago!!
We've had a few earthquakes but even a 5.1 is just a little shake.
We spent a very interesting couple of hours talking with a new friend from Sri Lanka. I had to look it up on google maps! She had lived in quite a mountainous area on a tea plantation. The nearest neighbors were another plantation on another mountain in the next valley. Another new friend made us a delicious meal of coconut sauce with what looks like fern shoots, peppers, cassava and Thai rice. Just scrumptious!  I especially appreciated the meal because it just needed re-heating and the power went off for over an hour around 5pm.

Training new farmers

The weather was rainy for most of the last week. Raining quite heavily in the early part of the week. When the sun comes out its hot- even the locals complain. One night the rain was so neavy on our roof, it kept waking me up. Talking to a lady on the PMV next morning, I commented about it and she said that wasn't heavy! The weather affected some of the training organised for the last three days of the week.
I struggled with Digicel (AKA Dodgicel) this week. A couple of weeks ago, I'd brought a router/ data package for the FPDA ,office as Elizabeth and Neli tend to use their phone and private data to send emails etc. The data package was supposed to last 4 weeks. On monday there was no data left (10GB) gone in 5 days. I tried to put some more credit on the router, by the end of the week the credit still hadn't come through and had disappeared. Luckily I have an invoice, so I'll be going to see my "friend" Smith, at the Dodgicel (sorry Digicel) office on Monday to get matters sorted.
In the office they are amazed that I'm going to follow things up.The average PNG' ian  probably wouldn't do anything about it, because it would be too "hard". Elizabeth recently "lost" $15 dollars worth of  electricity credit in a similar way. Because I'm seen as an "Expat", and the staff at various businesses take notice of expats, I can get something done. I see it as my contribution to dealing with the "low" level ripoffs that are evident everywhere in PNG. If people won't complain-nothing changes.

The trainee training took place as scheduled. In the classroom on Wednesday, Neli, with Christine helping, took sessions on budgeting and setting goals.
Thursday and Friday we set aside for "field " work, but things were washed out by the rain on thursday. So the training needed to be compressed a bit to fit it all in on friday.

Neli presenting the goal setting session, Christine supporting.

 
Christine helping "her" group talk to the whole group about their goals. 

 
Jerry, who is involved the watermelon project we've seen before, describing his goals.  
 What I saw was a difference between the girls and the boys. The boys had grand goals but with not much about how to get there. The girls had smaller goals but with some very well defined achievable steps to attain them.

Arriving at the site Friday morning I discovered that it was my "job" to organise the erection of a shadehouse at the demonstration area Elizabeth has set up;  no pre- warning. I suspect it was a "test". Once I had set out the corners and we had a bit of a conflab the trainees got the message and got on with it with very little supervision. It was a good exercise as it enabled me to see what sort of skills each of the trainees had. Even the "girls' got involved.

Pre-start session, demonstration area, Friday. this was when I discovered I was building the shadehouse.

 Corners marked out and the team going for it, digging holes.

 Getting the pole tops level. Poles were different lengths, so there was a bit of swapping poles and holes.

 Thomas generally in the thick of things, diverted into his bag for a cigarette.

Shadehouse construction nearly finished, with timber around the tops. I had to encourage them to put a lot more fixing nails in. One seemed to be enough!

First length of shadecloth.

 

Team in front of the completed shadehouse, all smiles because I'd promised them some bananas. 

 The fellow in blue top was a local youth leader Elizabeth had asked to come and help. Jerry in "front" as per usual. The four guys on the right (Jeremiah, Jerry, Thomas and Erickson) are already growing. Two people missing from the photo, not sure where they went. A great bunch on young people; keen as mustard!

Elizabeth demonstrating "pricking out" .

 Demonstration area already planted out.

Elizabeth demonstrating planting out. About half the trainees are already well versed with this as they have already grown their own crops.

Example of  pest damage you  wouldn't expect; leaf damage caused by the local (large) crickets.

I thought the training program only went for a year but I found out it goes for 5 years. So its a lot of input into the trainees. Elizabeth reckons that there would be no imported vegetable growing  (chinese and english cabbage, etc if it wasn't for the training programs conducted over the years, as most of the current growers have been through the program. In the past it didn't matter how old the trainees were but now, they only accept young people. The trainees have to train other people; the

idea is they go out into the villages near where they live and spread the word!

On a personal note we're both realised that the shear "work" of living and doing stuff here is having a tiring affect on us. Partly the heat but also the road into Kokopo, from here, has deteriorated quite significantly in a couple of places, since we've been here. So the PMV's bang and crash over the bumps. In the morning the PMV I catch, often goes around an industrial area near us, dropping off people. The roads are appalling! After a while you just get sick of it! Its quite an effort for Christine to do the groceries, things are often forgotten, or one supermarket hasn't got what you want, and its too much bother to go back to get what you need. 

Remember you can donate to VSA's work by using the link I've previously posted.

Christine:

I enjoyed going over the training material with Neli at the end of the previous week and the begining of last week. So Monday was wash day, tuesday coffee with Suzanne (sugar diabetes nurse) and others, then going over training material once again with Neli. Wednesday was training day- great fun and ended the day feeling energised!! Thursday 12:30-4pm getting to Nonga hospital in Rabaul for Polio jab along with the rest of VSA team (apart from Anton who had gone bush with the students). Friday was housework, market for F&V and 2 supermarkets in Kokopo. I got back to Seaview longing for a cup of tea to find the jug had malfunctioned. Johannes to the rescue with a new jug. 

Wednesday's training was at the Kokopo School. A govt school of approx 1200 pupils. Toilet paper but no soap, towel or water to wash hands in the ladies loo! We have it so easy in NZ.

Saturday morning was spent relaxing with friends on the decking at the beautiful Kokopo Beach Bungalow Resort in Kokopo and Sunday was a 3/4 hour wait for the PNV to Kokopo and a church service. We slept away a good part of the afternoon!

Suzanne (mentioned earlier) spoke of giving her spare spectacles to Nonga (government) hospital. There is a need for old glasses. Karen Gardyne just out of Kaiapoi NZ has agreed to accept donations of old spectacles and get them to Blenheim where they will be picked up and arrive in Kokopo in september.

Horticultural training

The coming week is going to be busy. FPDA undertake to put 12 trainees through a years training in ENB every year. They provide some basic equipment, seed, etc. the trainees need to have access to some land and are expected once the initial training is complete to get on with things. Most of the current vege growers in the area have started out through the training program.
This years trainees are starting their formal training this week, with a three day course. First day is classroom stuff; Christine is helping Neli, give the financial/ budgeting stuff. The next two days is basic "field" work, planting, sowing, soil preparation, etc, etc.
 Two of this years trainees are already growing. Jerry is helping a village develop a growing operation, starting with watermelons (you would have seen photos in previous blogs). Thomas is using some land owned by his mother. Has grown some Pak Choi, is harvesting corn at the moment and has some Wong Boks (chinese cabbage). Some of his cousins are disputing his right to use the land. There was a land dispute mediation last week, the outcome as yet unknown. But it shows that land use and tenure is an ongoing issue here even for the people who "own" the land. Particularly for Tolai's (tribe around Kokopo), as the land is owned and passed down through the women.
 One of the problems close to Kokopo is that land is now mostly taken up with housing, larger area's for growing are not very common. So people need to move further out (as per Jerry) to get bigger blocks of land. That brings transport and logistics problems as the roads aren't very good.
It will be interesting to see how Jerry and the villagers handle the challenges.

I visited Sonoma a Seventh Day Adventist training facility near Kokopo and a brassica grower, last week. Sonoma trains teachers, technical skills (carpentry, metal working, etc), pastors and farm workers. They have a large farm and grow most of what they eat and also supply a couple of the Kokopo supermarkets. The have a small nursery to raise their own plants.The farm manager was pretty "switched" on and running a good operation. I saw some wilting of half grown plants, which I put down to Boron deficiency.  DBM and other caterpillers were having a good feed. In spite of people telling me it wasn't available, I managed to find a supplier of Success, which the growers will be able to start using. So far it seems that most know about using agricultural chemicals from different groups to stop resistance building up.


The "gang" from left; Security guard needing to get back to Kokopo, "Malc", Elizabeths husband and driver for FPDA, Elizabeth, guy in yellow Farm manager SONOMA, person with cap is in charge of Agricultural training Sonoma. They are all looking a bit surprised, as I told them I was going to put their photo on the Internet and make them famous.

Cabbage seedlings with lots of holes in the leaves.

 View of the nursery, lettuce seedlings in the background.

 
Typical cabbage being eaten by various caterpillers and DBM. Most growers are still using Karate as the main, or part of their spray program. DBD is completely resistant to it. They are also doing the same for Cocoa borer- waste of time and money. Actually worse that a waste of time because "spraying" something on a crop, gives you the illusion of control, when you're not really controlling anything.

Typical wilting seen in the field on Pak Choi. My first thought; looks as if it could be Clubroot -but nothing on the roots. If you cut the stem open, its brown down the centre and a hollow is starting in the base of the plant, with slightly reddish tinge around the outside of the hollow; typical boron deficiency symptoms. The plant is wilting because the center of the root isn't moving water and  nutrients to the tops, because that part of the stem that moves stuff around, has essentially died. Some plants start to grow new roots from near the base of the plant. Some varieties seem more susceptible than others, to deficiency problems. DBM chewing holes in the outside leaves.

I'm still amazed at how quickly stuff grows here.
 I suspect things are going to start getting busier from now on.
Christine:
I saw a young mother give her very young child (12mths??) a can of soft drink. The child snatched the can and began to drink as if her life depended on it. She emptied the can. Apparently lots of mothers give their children soft drinks unaware of the damage they are doing to their child. They love to drink coke because the All Blacks drink it - at least PNGers think they drink it because of the advertising at games and on All Black shirts.
I spent time with Neli at FPDA going over budget/finance material for the students for this coming week. Neli is pretty switched on. About the only thing I was able to add was the need to think about separating money for household expenses from farming finance as a way of ensuring money is available for next seasons seed etc. I also suggested trying to save (however small the amount to begin with) for future goals. It may mean a couple of bank accounts or just separate cash pots buried in the ground somewhere!!  Family Obligations (funerals etc) are a big thing here so money given away needs careful planning.

Around Kokopo

Coming here, we thought were going the wilds of PNG. But in some ways its a bit like being in Kaiapoi, but with no transport and the roads in a much worse condition. There are some things we like about Kokopo, so I thought I would show you some photos of the town.
It was a back water until the eruption in 1994, which destroyed Rabaul. At that time the main street of Kokopo (right on the water front) had a picture theater, two shops and a post office and the police station.
That picture theater is now an agricultural goods supply business. Walking through the back (a warren of little rooms and stairs) brings back memories of the old Riverside church.


Right outside the market is the bus stop for all PMV's. The market is the social hub of the town. Right opposite here are a couple of large general merchandise shops, one sells supermarket food and clothes, etc, the other sells general hardware. The concrete pads in front of the shops are where trucks, PMV's and taxis pull in and the occasional street preacher sets up shop.

The local Provincial government office has some loudspeakers on the poles (you can see the poles sticking up) in front. Every morning there is Christian music, prayers and the occasional sermon/ exhortation, broadcast. You can hear the speakers for at least a block.

 

 Lunchtime in Kokopo; a favourite spot to spot for lunch, or an icecream; in the shade and somewhere to sit. Usually the whole fence is taken up with people sitting between 12 and 1.

Another favourite spot; under the trees in the shade. You can see a couple of people sitting on chairs, they are registering people's phone sims. Digicell the main phone provider, (a bit like Spark) has started insisting that all sims are registered, otherwise they will be cut off. Its a measure to help reduce crime. So you see lines of people waiting in the heat to register their sims. Everybody has their photo taken as part of the process.

 

The red tent roof you can see in the left of the picture, is another place taking registrations of sims. You can't see it but there is a big queue waiting. The building in the background with the veranda is the post office.

From lunchtime on Friday there are huge queues waiting at ATM machines, as people try to withdraw money. At BSP, the biggest bank, you could wait for an hour before getting to a machine and of course there's heaps of people watching over your shoulder, as you use your card. Luckily most supermarkets will let you withdraw cash as long as you buy more than 50 kina ($25) worth of stuff, so we don't use the ATM machines much.

There are security guards at the entrance to most big shops and also wandering around inside. In Lae we went to Bishops ( a bit like Fosters' chainsaws) sells chainsaws and mowers, boots and tools, etc. To get into the shop there were two doors. The first had to be closed, before the second into the shop would open. As people say here, security is the biggest and fastest growing business in PNG. The cops just can't, deal with all the petty thieving, scams, etc. If you are a PNG person you are watched carefully in many shops. In a big homeware type shop in Lae, there were about 10 security guards at the entrance/ exit and most peoples bags were searched, sometimes people were patted down as well. Pakeha's/ Asians are more or less ignored.


Not long after we arrived here I visited a village who are carving some space out of the bush to grow produce. Its not far from Kokopo, but takes about 11/2 hours to drive there, mainly due to the state of the roads. We went up there again last week to see what was happening. The crop (watermelons) are going well, with some small water melons obvious.

Looking up at the camp. Oldest melons on the right, showing some green. Youngest on the left, sown two weeks later.

Melc. the driver (left) and Jerry the leader (young trainee), talking about how the crop is going. Apart from time, the village has probably invested about 1000 kina  (mainly seed) in getting this far, which is a lot of money for villagers.

First watermelons appearing. One has got my name on it! the white stuff you can see on the ground is limestone, there are some large limestone outcrops in the area. At first I thought somebody had dumped concrete around the place.

 The villagers are busy clearing more bush and intend to have four large blocks cleared (about 20 ha) by October.

Labour to do things in the gardens is divided along gender lines. Men do the "heavy" work, clearing the bush and planting etc. Women do the maintenance work, like weeding. So three "mothers" had turned up do some weeding among the youngest melons, presumably the older ones had been done a couple of weeks ago.

On another note, the other day I was walking along the road to catch the PMV to work, when a young guy stopped me and asked; "I see you walking everyday, why are you walking, why don't you get a car?" When I explained to him that I wasn't rich enough to buy a car, he couldn't comprehend it. When I tried to explain things he just shook his head.
As far as most people in PNG are concerned, white people including Asians, are all "rich". For most of them getting a car is the height of their aspirations and so can't understand why the "rich" people are using PMV's. A couple of volunteers here do have vehicles but the costs of purchasing and running them are exorbitant; one expat.who needed to drive about 1/2 hour down from a village (using rough roads) spent about 9,000 kina ($4500) last year, on repairs to tyres, suspension, shock absorbers, etc. Broken/ cracked windscreens are common.
On-selling cars is difficult because most people don't have the money to buy. So they become a liability.

Christine:
The wife and two teenage children came to visit their father who is one of the regular guards for the next door property. They left their village at 7am to get here just after 12. The 4 hour journey involving 3 different PNV's takes some doing. Patricia (wife) said how tiring it was. They stayed for lunch. I supplied some Kiwi Kai (stuffed potatoes) cold water and ice-blocks. It was a fun time as we sat down with my tablet and they showed me where their village was and I showed them NZ. The tablet fascinated them and took them no time at all to figure how to work the maps etc. They left just after 2 hoping to get back to their village by dark - around 6pm. Felix lives here at the security guard compound until he has a few days off and can go back to the village and his family. The best possible education for the children is their primary goal, so much of what parents earn goes on fees. The return trip from their village would probably have cost in excess of  20kina or around $10 - a tidy sum given the very low wages! The daughter (bless her) has wanted to meet the old woman from NZ for a couple of months now. So, success at last!!