Tripping around Choisuel

Holy Mary Mother of god, That was UNREAL!!

I will be relying on my videos and pictures to tell the story, because words cant describe! As part of working in Education in Infrastructure in Solomon Islands we spend time visiting schools all over the country. And the country has alot of sea between it.. and not alot of roads.




So I traveled all the way around Choisuel Island in a Bananna boat, and it wasn't always smooth sailing!

We gathered the gang, an education officer with a fantastic white go-t, the lovely Frances, and her two wontok including her uncle and cousin. The biscuits were bought, some tuna (standard), noodles and rice, spam, H20 and we hit the sea. The weather was already playing up about 10 minutes into the trip, but we journey on. Annnnnnnnd on.. for about 3 hours, in heavy rain, banging seas and big yellow rain coats that didnt work even a little bit. But man I was smiling! Work.. THIS is work, I was delighted with myself! And then came the lightening storm. I'm trusting enough really and mother nature has never really picked on my too much but when you can see lightening crack onto water about a km from where you are, that 1 in a million chance of being struck by lightening become 1 in 5 people very quickly! We ducked low and kept going, you really do feel alive though when your that close to be that statistic. But don't worry Kitty Kat (my mother) I wont be seeking the adrenaline rush of that one again any time soon!

Soaking and craving suger we landed in a logging camp, one of many to add to my list, but my first at the time. I don't know how the locals do it, stay clean that is.. when you are walking around in red clay soil. Frances, a Choisuel local was spotless not even a splash on her leg after walking up a slippy hill in the rain with no road. And I, well.. I have got a lot to learn. And white was a bad choice will be my explanation of that one, with a herd of women helping me clean myself when we reached the bottom again! I love the work that we did especially at this school, advising principles and boards on the new school locations risks for disasters, basic plans on how to reduce their risk and general school planning. Simple things like planting trees to protect the exposed area from wind and to reduce the risk of landslide. You really don't know what you know, until its coming out of your mouth!

After a long 6 hours on the boat that day, we settled down for the night with some instant tea (ADDICTIVE)!! And a hot meanl of noodles and rice... again.... NOODLES and RICE (full stop). How spoilt we are really, I learnt that thats the main meal for boarding school students in the country. Which I cant say shocked me, but makes your head hurt a little to think of how hard that must be for student to concentrate on a diet like that!

The trip continued in much the same way getting up with the sun at about 6am some rick/noddles for breakfast and away in the boat for the day visiting on average 2 schools a day and travelling on the boat for about 6-8 hours. Here are some of the pictures of the schools that I visited and assessed throughout the trip. 

Some more amazing photos and videos from the trip below.. 

Stopping off to use the rest room on our way around the island we just pulled into an uninhabited paradise island and did our thing! 

As we returned from a 6 day trip on the boat back to Taro, I was happy to be in the smooth straight home. The sea had been really rough for a lot of our journey at time it felt like we would fall out of the boat coming over some of the waves. There was little shelter for most of the journey as we were in the open sea. The driver was so unbelievably skilful at nativating those big waves that bucked through the boat to eject you out of your seat. When your mail form of transport it the sea its so natural to the tribes from Choisuel. 

When we returned from our big trip around the island Frances and her family took me to the waterfall on another island. We travelled again by banana boat up a river this time to get to the waterfall. Frances sister in law and uncle are in the video below walking up the waterfall.  I on the other hand was at this point holding onto a twig of a branch trying to balance on an average enough bit of land beside the waterfall. And I think I must have spent too long focusing on health and safety in New Zealand because I was genuinely shocked that they were not wearing helmets doing this! I didn't dare to step foot on the rocks (wearing my specially designed trail runners (what a loser)) because I could picture the second step being a summersault down the river. 

On our way to the waterfall up the river

Flying First Class

One of the best parts about working in civil engineering is the travel, you get to go and see amazing things, amazing places and meet amazing people. Part of my role during my assignment in the Solomons is to assist as an infrastructure Advisor in implementing the Education Infrastructure plan for 2015. So of we went to implement at the end of May 2015.

I have been so lucky to have been able to travel with work and travelling has been an experience in itself. My trips have been Choisuel, Western, Seghe.

Flying to Choisuel

Myself and my co-worker made the flight from Honiara to Gizo, and then a shuttle flight from Gizo on to Choisuel. An the flight was really a pacific experience ! A false start on Sunday with a tropial cyclone hovering over our intended destination had us waiting in the airport for 6 hours before cutting our losses heading the following day. You really get into the island attitude, 6 hours was filled with pretty much reading the Solomon Star and chatting away to the security guard at the airport. A great character who was so delighted that we were going to visit his home village that he took our numbers and informed us the next day of our flight details!

When your actually on the flight, with all your western security and safety senses heightened- well you really just have to get over it and think if you can put your legs straight out in front of you on a plan and have a view of the cockpit.. thats a first class trip to me! I cant say I'd do a long haul 32 hours of it, but flying in Solomon Islands has been a real experience in itself. This is me on my way to another part of the country, heading to Seghe with another co-worker for much the same work.

When your finally in the air, I have really come to love internal flights, they are a little present to yourself when you would otherwise be driving or in the case of the Solomons taking a 24-36 hour boat. Waiting for our shuttle at Gizo, I watched the aircraft we were about to get onto be refueled. I thought of the little old airports I visited in Ireland- Sligo, Donegal even Kerry and except for the heat I could have been there! Check out this little clip I couldn't help taking of the emptied aircraft barrel rolling toward the seating area of the airport. And I know what your thinking... airplane fuel? Heat? gravel surface? Friction? Fire?... Explosion???

Outdoor War Musuem

Photos and Videos say it all! 

I'm not going to pretend to give a brief history of role the Solomon Islands had in WWII, for those of my friends who haven't a clue. Well it had a big affect on the way and there are lots of ships, planes, helmets, guns and everything else you can think (landlines) still visible on Guadalcanal. And there is a war museum, which is where I went on this fine day. 

The guy giving us the tour was so sound and we had great fun with him.  His father had decided to collect all of the old war remains about 70 years ago, with no cars etc is unbelievable. They are all still in excellent condition though after being carried from all corners of Guadalcanal to the museum/garden. 

The one thing I will say, and I don't say a lot in my blog in terms of actual advice on the Solomons.. as I am sure you gather by now its just a whole load of random jabber about some cool places I went. But here goes.. There ARE no signs for ANYTHING. You will get lost, and you will wonder am I driving to my a lovely village/ to my death (not that dramatic) when you actually find the war muesuem/garden, beach, hike etc in Honiara. Its very exciting! :) 

One of the coolest places to visit, I went there with my replacement engineer Fraser and the lovely Elizabeth! We had a lot of fun at the garden and were also quiet blown away by the history and real and tangible presence of the war.

Learnt lots of interesting facts about the war and I hope to wow people with these very soon, I just need the conversation to naturally turn to WWII.. I don't want to be a show off :P 

Its almost surreal when you think that you are now stand on a cannon that was used in the war, who was the last person to use it and could they ever imagine that the likes of myself would be standing on it so many years after like idiots pretending to shot the same cannon. 

Work Life

So, not just for the lovely people at Downer who have given me this opportunity but all the other's who are wondering what I am doing out here.




So here are some of the projects I am working on:

Building 20 Libraries across Honiara. 

One of the infrastructure projects from 2014 was building 20 libraries across Honiara the capital city. I am delivering this project for the Ministry of Education.

The library project will allow students to access books, so important to students learning and literacy rates in the country. I feel very excited at the possibility that the libraries will also be used by the communities and contribute to adult education as well. Its a NZ funded project and will bring so much to education in the Solomons.


Twenty libraries, not an easy to task to co-ordinate. Thankfully I am on the client side this time ;) , although I would love to get stuck into a project like this as the contractor as well.


The project has just started and I spend a considerable amount of time during my week working it. I spend a lot of time running around the city obtaining building permits, meetings with schools, agreement of location, pre-work on the site and contractor meetings.

Meeting the school principles and spending time in schools discussing the project has really given me an insight into the education system in the Solomons. The challenges the principles face as they try to expand with little available space, deal with class sizes of up to 60 and recover from natural disasters.


Its not easy, but I have met some really great characters throughout this project. Big smiley principles and head masters who are so grateful to be receiving the library, I nearly have to beg them to give me some constructive suggestions on how to manage safety in the school. Just like working in NZ, safety is No. 1 and working with significantly reduced safety standards and added as many as 500 students to the mix- scares the shit out of me to put in lightly. What I have learnt in Christchurch on the rebuild makes this project a welcome challenge, because I learnt enough there to feel ready to look after this one from the client side.


Very excited to hand over the first library to the school and also happy to know that the next Downer Volunteer will be taking on this project and keeping me updated on how it goes!

Working on the 2014 Flash Flood Repair projects:

Following on from the last Downer Volunteers who worked in the same role, I am working on the actual repair of flood affected schools in Honiara. The first of us (Simon) was here when the floods hit Honiara and was involved in the emergency response, the second volunteer (Keziah) did a lot of scoping out of damage of the school, and I believe Kelvin left at the point where packages of work were being awarded to contractors to complete the repair works. And now I am here (for the fun part) and the seeing the fruits of their labour, and being on site for managing the contractors on site and ensuring quality buildings.



Its a great opportunity to get to see Honiara and Guadalcanal! One of the main projects which has been a difficult one in terms of quality and has been about 30km outside of Honiara, past the Palm Olive plantations. While working out in this more remote location, I have got to see and hear first hand the main location of 'The ethnic tensions' in the early 2000's. But that's starting to get into stuff that I'm not going to write about in this blog. I will say though that it makes things very challenging for the country.

The school building we are working on has a very interesting set of challenges, the main one being a contractor who just starts to build. It was an interesting one and if you don't laugh you will cry moment when I realized they were just building, and the drawing were more valuable as fuel for the kettle fire for them. The first time I went out to see the contractors I grabbed the drawings before going to site, which was a 40km from the city ride and a 4km voyage which could break a less woman's neck from all the bumps and dives the truck took on the way to the school. I hopped out said hello to the lads and then stood back to make sense of where we were at. Like a bobble head I looked at the building and down to the drawings around 6 times before crinkling my forehead and putting them down to find out how they saw the building going! I wish I could say they knew best in this case, because I have on other sites found the builders to be very skilled and knowledge on local material and building methods, but when the bolt connecting the roof to the frame came out of its concrete casing using my finger tips. It was time to start the building again!


Not easy to get a bunch of Solomon builders to come into the light, and I am glad I had our director on site to deal with some of the cultural sensitivities that might have gone over my head. Our team have spent a lot of time on this site to get it to a place where the building wont fall down in a year, and its a resources that we cannot really afford but these are the challenges that face infrastructure in Solomon's. And you might as well work with the contractor to get it right because terminating contracts are in nobodies interest. So on we struggled.. and I spent time on site instructing the crew to rip down frames, prop up the roof, re-do the connections and cast the concrete again. Pretty much start from scratch using the materials they had already cut. I am hoping to show the finished project before we leave. It will be a great day to finish that school.

Driving in Honiara

To get a feel for the city and outside I have got some footage to show what its like.. 

Getting around Honiara city = TRAFFIC!

There is one main road through the center of Honiara with potholes that could make you loose a bumper/wheel/small child. As you come into the city the road goes from two lanes to one  over a bridge which causes a lot of congestion. 

Roadworks are also a huge cause of traffic (to fix the potholes!), If my traffic control friends in Christchurch saw the 'safety taper' here they might have a heart attack! Finally I understand guys! I have now been a victim of bad traffic management. Your not only save people from vehicle collisions, your preserving the mental health of a nation! You deserve a medal! :) The only consolation to bad traffic here is  ISLAND TIME! :) :) :) yaaa maaaaan.. Everybody just gets on with it, and if your late- Hey, 'don't worry... about a thing.. ' (sing it with me! :) cos every little thing... )

On the way to do my diving course, never felt closer to heaven! ;) 

These are the days you cant help but love life! 

Check out this view of Savo Island North East of Honiara

Malaita Madness

Some of the work I have been doing for the 2015 Infrastructure plans includes some travel to the provinces. Malaita is the most populated Island in the Solomon Islands, the capital Auki is about the same size as Strandhill in Sligo. The place is brilliant though , it looks like a country and western set. Dirt roads, saloon style buildings but I couldnt find second hand cow boy boots anywhere! 

On our way to one of the schools to do an assessment, we came across some road works. My colleague from Malaita explained that the local people are employed to maintain the road every 5km or so. What a task! Heavy tropical rain, no machinery, no materials except what is found locally, no 4 year degree in civil engineering. When you look at what they have got, they are really earning their money! I saw a woman dig a ditch using her hands as a shovel. I don't even know how to continue after that sentence.  

More to come.. 

Hiking in Honiara

One of the great things about Honiara is the great WWII walks  you can do around the place.

The walks are really hard to find, the details are always passed on by word of mouth or by trawling through some expat blogs on Pineapple Post- you never really know where your going until you get there. And your never really certain your not going to break a leg on the way but man, its worth it because they are amazing!

We set off on a Sunday morning at 9am to find Mt. Austin and after a couple of U turns and asking some locals along the way, we arrived in a village up the hill. Hopped out of the car and soon on our way down the hills with a whole family to guide us.

Having the trail runners really makes a difference (NOT!) you cant help but laugh about how useless you are compared to the locals when trekking through the bush! In flip flops they patiently guided (well really just me) down the slippery slops that could have been the end of you with one wrong step! I find laughing when you look like Bambi on ice, really helps and gives the guides the 'go ahead' to laugh away too!

Well this was our final destination.. And my god, I had to stop to take it all in. 

After climbing to under the waterfall with the gang and making like we were in a Peter Andre Music Video, Romain touching his abs- me an Ashleigh shaking it in the background! Our guides must have wondered what was wrong with us. After our short performance, we all fell (literally down the hill) and bombed into the water again to remove the muck from ourselves!

The kids that came along as our guides were totally amazing, just like all Solomon kids- its amazing to see them do back flips and climb up rock faces better then I walk normally! We don't make kids like that in Ireland and I'v seen some good rock climbers in NZ but this is just like their natural environment and they know how to use it!

The way back we traveled down the river and our guides brought us to a WWII cave where the Japanese soldiers hit out for 2 months. The cave was tiny! I was holding back from getting down into it but as I'm a 'fear of missing out' individual I made my way through the cave on my belly. Strategically handing my tourch to our guide so I couldn't see the cockroaches and whatever else would have set me to panic mode!



Now that I'm out of their, it was quiet the comedy show. Our guide followed by Romain, Ashleigh and Me and then the rest of the family on our bellies going through this cave. Every now 'spider' would be called for the next person. Which sent a fit of giggles through the cave, and an increased excitement get the hell out of there!

OTHER HIKES

Another hike which we had to stop in the end as the water was too high, Tenaru Falls. I'm glad we did in the end because there was a really heavy shower after we decided to turn back. Flash floods on the brain! 

Still an amazing walk up Teneru falls. 

Simbo Simbo

Simbo Simbo Simbo!! 

Having just arrived in the country for 2 weeks and meeting a lovely group of volunteers and expats working in Honiara, I jumped on their trip to Simbo Island. It was a very last minute trip- but one of the most amazing trips I have been on EVER! From the very start I couldn't believe how lucky I was to get to experience this little piece of paradise. 

You will be seeing a lot more videos from me instead of the classic blogger essay, you have got to know your strength and descriptive writing is not one of mine. But I do love the camera :P 

And first stop was the airport- Thank you Downer! Great job! :) 

After an hour and a half on banana boat we arrived in Simbo Island.. 

A picture of paradise, and it really was! Island life is very simple. You eat, work, laugh, play and sleep. We were thrown into Island life as soon as we got off the banana boat (ok- minus the work side of it), ALL of the island greeted us on the shore when we arrived and then a mass exit of the kids to the water to have some fun. Our pasty crew, put on the white war paint and went to join them soon after. We spend the evening splashing about it the water, throwing kids about and finding star fish as big as our own heads! 

The most amazing part of the experience was the pikonini (kids) on the Island from 6 in the morning to their parents hunted them home at night they hung around our house just dieing to play and so excited by the visitors to their island. Our trip wasn't to a guesthouse or motel/hotel it was to the home of a friend of a friend. There are no guesthouses on Simbo, so man did we feel special to get to stay there!

This is the crew waiting to jump on the boat for a hike up the volcano.

On the activity side we had the most amazing trip to the volcano at Simbo, hiking up to the top of the volanoe, passing lagoons and some springs coming out of the earth that we boiling hot. The top of the volcano smelt just like Rotorua in NZ, like smelly rotten eggs.. AHHH NATURE! :)  It was a geography nerds dream, but a pale persons nightmare. We took it all in a then headed for shade! I will let the pictures do the talking, but just incase it hasn't come out enough- the smells, the sounds, the eagle soaring overhead and crystal clear water... that what I'm trying to get across!

 Our guide Violet showed us the sections of the Island where steam was rising out of the ground, before our hike she had wrapped some potatoes and megapod eggs in banana leaves in a basket and we tucket into lunch. Never had free range eggs like them. Check out the yokes!  

Our Easter weekend in Simbo definitely felt like an Island celebration. The village had a band which they performed for us every night we were there. The pikonini who were very shy to start of with but were flying by the end of it. Reminded me very much of the Celili's we would have in the Halla Mor, in the Gaelteach in Ireland! 

Some of the teenage boys on the Island must have got some aftershave for the occasion and after an hour of so got the courage to ask their guests up for a dance. Their grandparents and parents, well pretty much the whole Island was their to dance the night away! We laughed our heads off and sweated buckets. Here is band performing for us during the day! 

We said good bye to Simbo village after experiencing so much of their little Island paradise, it felt quiet strange to leave. It felt like we were leaving a lost world untouched by the west. In some ways I hope it never gets found and I can hid there in tropical paradise with them too!