In all things there can be good and there can be ill. I've come to learn, after years of trying, that it is just as easy to look for the good as to find fault. We have an ol’ boy here that we are calling Hotel Charlie, HC… short for hard core… which he ain’t, by any imagination… toward anything constructive anyway. Perhaps a better name would be lemon head because if he were given lemonade he would only taste the lemons.I killed two cockroaches in my tent this evening. I hate cockroaches but they were less than a half inch long, I killed one in my hotel that was much larger. I just got done taking a shower with a cricket that was a good two inches long, he seemed to come up from the drain as he wasn’t in there before, I know because I threw his drowned twin out before I got in but he was wet and slow and didn’t bother me much. I did keep a close eye out to make sure. Crickets are awfully similar to cockroaches. I don’t much care to take showers with other men filling the air with their movements either. It seems hard to imagine yourself clean with that smell filling the air but I had a shower.
It was a beautiful morning; the sun was out of after a brief early morning shower and clear skies for a change in the second wettest place on earth. Today was a no requirement day so I wandered around our rock pit and took some pictures that I posted as proof of the orchids and the stark beauty of the Fly River, filled with its mine waste. I had a look in the guards’ hut. It was made of sticks held together with bits of roots, vines and bits of wire. They slept on bits of cardboard and had a fire in the middle of their hut where they cooked with no chimney or smoke hole. Lemon Head says that they get paid 100 kina a week. It cost them 700 kina to get here for their job and they have to buy their own rice to eat at the inflated company town rate. Lemon head saw exploitation, they seemed happy with their position when I talked to them. They showed me their hut with little for a floor and void of anything I would consider necessary for a camping trip much less a place where they planned on living for several months. They talked of the difference of our cultures and I took it to mean they were content with their simple hut. They laughed a lot. It seemed to me they thought it was funny that I would be interested in their little home. I walked on down a closed road until I came across another hut with a local family living in it. The father spoke good English; I met him on the way out. He was panning the river for gold. Outside that small hut, I saw a small naked child and heard another and their mother inside. I doubt the hut was any bigger than my tent.After work we drove to town on company diesel looking for a coffee pot of some sort. I broke ours while trying to fling the grounds out managing to fling the glass part (the most important part) into the rocks. The stores were closed as it was afternoon on a Saturday. We did stop and buy iced coffee in a can from a local market. I noticed rice was 3.80 Kina a bag for about what we would buy at home, so that rather blows Lemon Head’s story out of the water.
When we got back I wanted to take some pictures of camp. Scott and Masa joined later. Scott and I decided to have a look at some of the other housing tents where the local laborers lived. They had their own dining facility where they cooked their own food. No chairs, no tables but bits of wood nailed together for rude benches. No doubt rice and canned mackerel or corned beef was their main fare. Out back was a rude structure made of plastic tied over branches, the shower we were told, another for the toilets. It looked as though the rooms would hold maybe 20 people… the toilet… one… the shower one. We both felt more grateful for our tents after and I was grateful for the hot water in the shower, even with the bug and the smell and grateful for my tent with a fan and light and grateful for the electricity for my laptop to type my thoughts, grateful for being clean so the burn forehead can heal nicely, grateful for books to read, and grateful for still having hope.As I lie down to try to sleep, I will be grateful that cockroaches don’t generally bite and that my bed is warm and softer than cardboard. In all things, we can look for the good or the bad. To dwell on the bad, to lament over oxtail for lunch, when we could have nothing; to cry over the hard bed, when we could have only cardboard; to whine because it is hot or we aren’t getting paid enough to do this job is all so foolish. It is just as easy to look for the good in life as it is the bad and so much more worthwhile.
