Solomon Island food

The food people in the villages eat is quite simple but healthy. Most of the people cannot afford to buy food so they are still growing all their food themselves. So gardening is an essential thing to survive! You can find many gardens around the villages and bejond. Some have even to walk for 2 hours to reach their garden somewhere up in the mountains.
The staple food is mainly the root vegetables as sweet potato (kumara), casava (tapioca) and taro. Besides that they have pumkin, green beans, tomato, cucumber, onion, peper, cabbage, slippery cabbage, fern, taro leaves. And then differnet fruits and nuts like pineapple, banana, paw paw, coconut (so many of those!), nali nuts, cotten nuts ...
Fish is also very common because of the near ocean.

Oven, Lochlan, Dyson and me went to some garden to plant some beans. What you can see there is sweet potatoe and casava

some bean seeds which we planted

pineapple :) Unfortunaly we had not much of them because they were not in season :(

some kind of strange, grunchy "apple"

this lady brushes a freshly baked sweet potato

you break it open and the steam comes out! So yummi!

Kelina scraping the mangrove beans which they find in the mud. You scrape it, wash it and can use it later like a vegetable.

a feast meal: white rice, brown rice, sweet potato, taro pudding with coconut cream (the purple folded thing), and casava cake ( the yellow pieces; grated casava baked with coconut oil)

Served on banana leaves :)

Waifalonga Village

Our group of missionaries were divided in 4 teams to reach out to surrounding villages. My team went to the village of Waifalonga which is just about 10-15 min motor boat ride.

some school kids from Waifalonga just came over with their dug out canus

At Illanunu village just across the bay
beautiful simple village!

Australia meets Solomon Islands :)

Me with the many little children in Waifalonga

they built those stairs just for us!

Tomy my little friend

He is my coconut palm climber ;)

renovating th local adventist church

Here we had evangelistic meetings every evening! I had also the privilige to give some health talks about the importance and use of water internally and externally, hygine and the 8 health laws. It is really important to start with the basics to teach them how to live healthy!

some children with two big fish which the men cought in the ocean

That's the chief standing on the right side, he is still quite young but his father died some few years ago.

the "last supper". That was the last night we spent togehter at Waifalonga and the whole village was present having a special ceremony to say good bye. These were very moving moments. This oicture shows the meal we had together.

Atoifi Adventist Hospital

About 30 people from Australia arrived in Atoifi as a Fly 'n Build team to help primeraly to reroof the hospital. The old roof was partly rosted through! Atoifi Adventist Hospital is the only remaining mission hospital in the south pacific! It was a privilige to visit that place and to help! Once before this hospital was the number one hospital in the whole Solomon Islands but after years of neglect we saw also sad conditions. But the doctors and nurses do there very best to serve "God and Humanity" and that has been truely a blessing for the kwaio people in supplying medical help and with that finding a way for the entrance of the gospel!

Atoifi Hospital with the surrounding buildings. This is the most sofisticated village with even a road, buildings built by bricks and electricity twice a day!
Atoifi is sourrounded by numerous coconut palms. Makes always a refreshing drink :)

Atoifi Adventist Hospital, founded in 1966.

Our first Sabbath in the Solomon Islands

group shoot of the eastward team :)

the old and rusty roof

putting new sheets on

it was quite hot :)

A little boy with malaria

John one of the workers in the laboratory

a blood sample, ready to go under the microscope

Mission trip to the Solomon Islands: Part1: The Journey to Atoifi Adventist Hospital

The travel to Atoifi hospital was a quite interesting and adventurous one! Here some pictures :)
Just out of the coast near Brisbane
On the wayside outside of Honiara, capital of the Solomon Islands, buying our first coconuts :)
We wanted to go the same way pioneers went the Atoifi and so instead flying to Malaita Island we took a boat and more to get there. Here we boarded this old boat at night time. We were the only white people on it and that was quite adventurous!
We tried to get some sleep up on the deck of the boat
On the bottom right side you can see my "bed" for that night ;) The red thing not the tyre! I couldn't find that much sleep that night under the stars.
We can thank God that the sea was really calm that day!
still tired!
those two guys work on the boat
arriving in Auki, Malaita Island
people live right next to the ocean :)
Then we took a three hour trip by truck over across to the other side of the Island and got bogged in some muddy holes!
Some people enjoy a swim in the remote villages up in the mountains.

Almost there! Now it's only about 45 min by out board motor boat to Atoifi!
That was really enjoyable after such a bumpy road trip!
As a welcome we got attacked by some wild warriors ;)

This was such a warm and special welcome! Flowers and a coconut :)