It was a lazy afternoon here in the Solomon Islands with nothing much happening (except for a lorry carrying a lion dance group going by in the morning, quite an unusual sight here), so my wife and I went for a walk at the company’s sawmill site in Lungga. This is something that we usually do every Sunday but we missed out on it the previous Sunday since my wife spent too much time baking a baguette.

The sawmill site occupies a fairly a large piece of more-or-less private land so it’s a pleasant and mostly quiet place to have a stroll in, with plenty of greenery, a river and a beach. The main reason we come here though is to visit our dog Lohwong (Cantonese). He, together with his brother Hakchai, previously lived with us at our workshop compound in Ranadi, but he turned out to be a bit too aggressive and boisterous, actually biting a couple of camp workers and frequently chasing children and passersby, so he was banished to the more remote Lungga site a few months ago. It turned out for the best though since Hakchai, who has a bad leg due to a car accident when he was a puppy and is much lazier, has been happier now that his bigger brother isn’t around to bully him, and the huge Lungga area gives the more active Lohwong plenty of space to run in and explore.

Whenever we turn up at the sawmill site, Lohwong inevitably greets us by jumping at us repeatedly, which always gets our clothes dirty. Then it’s off down the road from the housing area to the sawmill itself. Lohwong likes to run ahead of us, chasing birds and investigating nearby bushes and making off-road sidetrips from time to time. When he gets too far ahead, he doubles back or waits for us with an impatient look on his face, as if saying, “Why are humans so slow?”

He really does like to run around a lot. I’ve never seen another dog as active as he is. Once, when we were walking down the road, a car carrying a group of the sawmill workers went by and shouted at him so he chased after the car for fun, with the people in the car encouraging him to run faster and faster. Eventually the car outraced him of course, but instead of waiting for us, he doubled all the way back, completely out of breath, to resume walking with us again. That was an amazing display of loyalty.

Past the sawmill and onwards down the road leads to the sea. There we discovered that one of the company’s barges was still parked at the wharf with logs to be unloaded for the sawmill. My wife went up the barge and Lohwong decided to follow her, as you can see.

Here’s a view of the whole barge at the beach, with one of the logs that’s been pounded into the ground to act as an anchor-post. I’ve tried to get Lohwong to swim in the sea many times but he wouldn’t go for it. He’d stand at the shoreline, see the approaching wave coming and then jump away just before it arrives. He probably thinks that water that can move is creepy or something.

We walked back to the housing area after that and took a turn in to the river that marks the boundary of the land the company owns. The water moves fairly slowly but the water level is unusually high due to its raining quite a lot the past few days, which also explains the muddy ground and Lohwong’s pawprints everywhere. We’ve heard that there are crocodiles in the river but we’ve never actually seen one.

Here’s a picture of Lohwong swimming in the river, if you can spot him. I tried to throw a stick into the river and have him retrieve it but he declined. Then, later, he appeared to notice something on the other side of the river and went in, but he only made it a short distance, making gulping noises as he swam, and then came back again. I don’t think he really likes swimming, though he does like to jump into shallow water and leap, leap, leap in it, splashing water everywhere.

So that’s how we spent New Year’s Day!