The big day approaches

I haven't posted for a while, everything has been too hectic. Here you can see Tim celebrating at the end of a strenuous pupil-free day on Monday, packing the last-but-one load into the container. There was still some empty space so we went off to explore Reverse Garbage and they gave us a great deal on some Moonlight Cinema beanbags, the enormous bag of foam padding that looks about to fall on Tim's head, and a few other things. Everything should stay pretty tight inside the container now.

Exporting is hard work and every day brings new complications, but we are now within sight of the end. All being well, the container will leave Addison Road on Friday to get started on its long voyage to Buka. The women of HWC and BWF are getting excited too, looking forward to unpacking everything and setting up the Women's Centre and cafe in Buka town (BWF) and the Resource Centre and Safe House in the Hako area (HWC).

Many thanks to all the people who have helped in various ways - I'll expand on this later. So many people have been generous with their time, money, goods and expertise. We have received donations of over $6000 towards the project, which is wonderful and should cover the costs. If you'd like to donate and haven't got round to it, please contact us - any money left over from shipping costs will be shared between HWC and BWF for their projects.

How many elephants fit in a shipping container ...

Well, it's been two weekends of heavy lifting and geometry as we tried to stack everything into the container in a properly scientific way. Very grateful thanks to all the volunteers for their brilliant efforts last weekend and today, Easter Monday. Below is a photo from last weekend (there's a lot more in there now!)

We have now stowed away just about everything we had collected and have found ourselves with a slightly unexpected problem: without the trailer we had intended to put in, but which turned out to be too tall for the container, we still have quite a lot of space. This is rather a problem, because during shipping you really don't want things to have room to move about inside the container.

SO, between now and the end of April are looking for any of the following to fill up the gaps:

• Bookshelves and shelving
• Big planter pots (to close off the outdoor area of the cafe to be operated by the Bougainville Women's Federation in the Women's Centre at the Buka town market)
• Stackable chairs (for use at the Hako Women's Collective Resource Centre, during meetings and training sessions)
• Office desks, tables and chairs
• Filing cabinets
• Office stationery and paper
• Fabric for sewing classes

If you have any of these to give, or anything else you think might be useful for the women's groups in Bougainville, please contact us. And tell your friends!

Saturday 12 April - packing the container!!

The weather's not looking promising but unless it becomes impossible we will be at 142 Addison Rd Marrickville from about 8 am tomorrow, Saturday 12 April.
We'll need to move a lot of boxes out of the shipping container and pack everything back in systematically. It's quite a big task and all help is welcome. If you can help, come along or ring Helen on 0401 085 412.