.....At the end of our stay with them, Sam’s wife cooks us a big PNG kaikai (dinner) - rooster, rice, pumpkin, sweet potatoes, pawpaw, all cooked in coconut cream, and soup with rooster, tomato, ibeka and yet more coconut cream, all washed down with very sweet coffee and all totally delicious. We supply them with a chocolate cake for pudding and fireworks for Independence Day. The cake dissappears very quickly.

Sam’s daughter Natlas is about to have her 2nd baby in a few weeks, but thinks nothing of spending all day cooking over the fire. I find out that lots of women come to Sam’s house to have their babies – no doctors or nurses, anesthetic or epidurals, just Sam and God. Sam then tells me that he’s a healer, but he’s running low on holy oil, do we have any spare? I’m not sure if Home Brand canola oil from Woolies counts.....

After we’ve finished as much as we can eat, we find Sam’s extended family have sneaked in and the dark room is full of people with grinning white teeth - they’ve come to finish off the food (I suspect the chocolate cake rumour has spread fast), and then sit and talk and play guitar. Eventually we leave them with their island music and singing, a good move after several small children burst into tears after Hans lights up the Independence Day fireworks.....

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