The steps to the beach

We live on a cliff here at Buka, which has a wonderful ocean view, unfortunately the beach is a bit inaccessible due to the long drop straight down. Fortunately our neighbours also wanted easier access to the beach and they constructed a concrete stairway to the beach, so now it is accessible.

This is the view from the start of the steps:

Another view, part-way down:

More steps:

Emily sitting on what looks like a stairway up to the sky:

Going down is the easy part – I think going back up the steep steps would kill your legs! Whenever I’ve gone down, I’ve gone back up the long way by walking along the beach and through a village to get to the road.

Cocoa pod borer

Did you know that there’s such a thing as a cocoa pod borer? No? It’s probably not really something that you’ve wondered about. Well yes, there is a cocoa pod borer and it has devastated the local cocoa crops here. People here used to produce a lot of cocoa as their cash crop, but since the borer came in, they switched to copra (coconut). However it is much harder work to produce copra, and recently the value of copra has gone down too.

The World Bank helped to fund the provision of a new type of cocoa plant that is more resistant to the cocoa pod borer. Villagers can buy young cocoa plants and start new cocoa gardens, but first they have to clear the ground of their old and pretty useless cocoa plants, so this was happening a lot recently.

Here are a couple of photos of rather sad-looking, felled cocoa plots.

These cocoa plots don’t look like that any more. They now have young cocoa plants growing in them. I should take photos when I’m there again to show you the difference. There was a while there when people had got their cocoa plants and they were in the village, needing to be taken up to the gardens, and they were carried up in the usual manner here, in the traditional backpacks. It looked rather funny to me, seeing the tips of the small trees peeping over people’s shoulders. I also got involved and carried two plants up once.

Tsikaut views

I often post photos of views on my blog, and usually they’re either taken at Buka or in the Teop area. But today we have some different views – ones that don’t normally feature on my blog, because I’m not at Tsikaut very often. Tsikaut is at the north of mainland Bougainville. I went there one Sunday for church when I was staying with some friends for a weekend at Sohano Island. Anyway, I hope you enjoy these views taken from Tsikaut.

Soccer

Soccer – what can we say about it? It’s a sport, and sports are good because they give people something to do and hopefully keep them out of trouble. During the January school holidays, there were a lot of soccer matches happening over at Teop Island and a lot of people went, either to play or to watch. I didn’t go very many times, but here are some photos from when I did go.

Funerals and mourning

Sadly, I’ve been to two funerals in the past 6 months here. One was in December, and the other was just recently, at the end of April. And there’s been another death just a week and a half ago, where I wasn’t able to attend the funeral. Man, it hurts when people leave us! Everyone is so unique and irreplaceable; there is no-one in the world just like anyone else.

Well funerals are quite different here in PNG. On the day of the death, you can go to the village and see the body in an open casket. When you arrive, you go to the coffin, see the dead person and cry loudly.

Funerals and deaths aren’t something that you can really say you ‘like’, but I like how people can pour out their grief at funerals here, and don’t have to try and keep their composure. When I go to funerals (or ‘Celebration of x’s life’ services) in Australia, I get upset when I hear the stories of the person’s life and I want to cry because they’re gone. It would be so nice to be allowed to freely release my grief, rather than keeping quiet.

Now that I’ve attended funerals in Bougainville and been able to mourn properly, I don’t know how I’ll cope when I have to attend a funeral in Australia again. (In fact, I don’t know how spouses or children keep their composure when giving the eulogy speech, or when being hugged by people after the service. The last service I was at in Australia, I hugged the spouse and quickly disappeared. If I had said anything, I would have just started crying.)

I don’t have any funeral specific photos to share with you. I don’t really like getting my camera out and looking touristy at funerals, although local people who own cameras don’t seem to have problems with it. But anyway, here’s a photo of an inland village, Teobuhin, which I went to for the first time in December for a funeral. You can see several cars, which wouldn’t normally be there. There was more than usual because of the funeral (we travelled there by car/truck).

Garden and backpack

A while ago, I went to the garden with one of our aunties and carried this large backpack of sweet potato, cassava and other vegetables. It was quite heavy, but not unmanageable. Some people weren’t too happy about how big it was and I don’t think they’ll let me carry a backpack that big again, although I would be okay with it.

Moon at sunset

Sometimes when the sun is rising or setting, it casts a lovely glow on the trees, which never usually looks quite as good when you take a photo of it. Well we had one of those nice views of sunlight on the trees as the sun was beginning to set and the moon was rising, so out came the camera and I got a few photos which I thought were not too bad.

The first photo includes a bit of the village in the foreground, while the second one is zoomed in on the coconut trees and you can see the moon a bit better.

Recently I saw the moon rise over the sea, and it was red, just like the sun when it rises over the sea. I had never seen that before. Unfortunately I didn't get a photo either and I'm not sure when the next opportunity might be, but I'll have to make sure I get a photo next time!