Yesterday we reached a big milestone in the project – the first construction materials arrived in Bougainville. The chiefs from the four villages, plus some helpers, arrived at the office early to help with the unloading and to arrange transport of the materials back to the villages.

The sun shone all day as we slowly overcame the various hurdles put in our way – the cranes on the ship stopped working, no fork-lifts were available – and by the end of the day all the materials had been unpacked, loaded onto trucks and were on their way. Construction will start next week, and it will be really great to see some physical results from all the hard work we’ve been doing in design and planning.

As we unloaded our materials, the rest of the wharf was swarming with various shop owners and merchants loading boxes of food and drink from containers into vehicles. The ship comes into Arawa about every two weeks and it is a big day in the town – all the imported food and drink for Arawa arrives by ship, and if it’s delayed the shops start running out of rice and flour. Some shops also bring in a limited amount of exciting food – cheese, fresh meat and cartons of milk. These are usually only available for a couple of days after the ship comes in and really help to add some variety to the staples of sweet potato, tinned fish and market greens.

The wharf at Kieta, 20 minutes drive from Arawa, is a fascinating place and gives a real indication of the economic activity that goes on in the province. Two large sheds dominate the wharf, storing copra and cocoa beans ready for export. Copra is the inside of a coconut, which is dried and then processed. As it dries it gives off a strong, cheesy smell – you can imagine what a whole warehouse of it smells like! Cocoa beans, which don’t seem to smell of anything, are taken to New Britain for processing into cocoa.