Aelan Laef!

Suomeksi alempana! -------------- Showgraon is one of the neighborhoods of rural Luganville. From the school, it's about 20 minutes walk to Showgraon, straight across the plantation. The plantation is a vast area, filled with neat rows of coconut trees, the occasional truck paths and roads going through it and heeeeeaps of cows (buluk) who are rather scared of you and stare when you pass. I'm not allowed to walk in the plantation alone because it can be dangerous. No, it's not so much the threat of coconuts falling on your head (even if I do know a person who walked across the plantation wearing a helmet - hahahah!) or because of the crazy buluks attacking you. It's because the plantation is quite deserted - which makes it a "perfect" place for a crime like attacking/raping someone. Therefore -- boys can walk across it by themselves but girls - no. Of course, I didn't know anything about this, so there was a time when I'd go walk ther...

Suomeksi alempana!  ------------------------------------------------------------------------- I had trouble sleeping last night. Too many thoughts running through my mind, so fast I could barely follow. It was one of those times when I wished someone had invented a neat little gadget that would "capture, document and save" thoughts as they came. Ahoy, all you inventors out there!  Before going to bed, I was thinking about a verse from the Buddhist Dhammapada. The verse goes: "Let us live happily hating none though others hate. Let us live without hate among those who hate." It hit me. I haven't seen any form of hate since I left Australia. I haven't detected or witnessed any form of it here. Not the tiniest, most minuscule trace of it! I haven't met any young people who'd be full of angst and hate. I haven't met with the bitterness and regret that comes from prolonged years of hating, the marks of torturi...