Thursday, 16th October.
Before leaving to study the C. wakonai I take some pictures at home.
The pig in his favorite spot.
A little girl of the household...
and with her mother.
My work-bench.
The Citrus wakonai in the centre of the village.
The same with another camera. The white balance is better.
Height approximately 3 m.
Flower just before opening.
Open flower.
Petals removed. The 20 stamens are unjoined. The filaments are cylindrical. The upper parts of the stamens are bent to form a Z-shape.
The pollen on sticky lines clearly shows the pentameric structure of stigma.
Leaves.
Trunk.
Together with Dominic, Chris's younger brother, we go to the school to meet the teacher.
He is next to the palm.
We walk downhill to the east to reach the second C. wakonai in the village.
Kenegabu Artson is now a teacher at the Galuwata Elementary School in Wakonai.
Kenegabu was the second guide who helped Malcolm Smith and Lionel Smith to find C. wakonai in September 2000.
He is the one on the left in this original photo.
He now has a ten-year-old son, and as I had this photo on my smartphone, he was very proud to show him what he looked like fourteen years earlier when he had a beard!
The stamens become white at the end of flowering.
A well-formed pistil. Note the bumpy surface of the ovary and the near absence of any style.
The length of the style is one of main causes of infertility. It is possible that the very short style creates an ability to hybridise easily.
Dominic holding a branch of Citrus wakonai.
While returning to the house I take some pictures in the village.
In the morning, we learned that the young people who went to look for fruits on the mountain have not found any.The plants were all in bloom.
Kenegabu explains that they cannot have gone to the right place in half a day, as it takes a whole day to get there. They went to a nearby hill that has some plants but not in the original habitat of wet rainforest. He would have offered to go to the mountains himself to look for fruits but, being a teacher, he is only free on weekends. Dominic proposes to go tomorrow. For a good quarter of an hour, Kenegabu explains to Dominic how to find the place where C. wakonai is located.
I'm going back to the village to haggle over the contract because there aren't any seeds. The village chief is absent, so I discuss it with the head of the census. 200K was for seeds and the study of the plant. I say that, as I have no seeds, I want to pay only 100K. He kindly accepts and takes the 100K.
My calculation is simple: I still have 100K; it costs 80K to go to East Cape and 7K for the PMV to get to Alotau.
This leaves me 13 K, approximately 4 €uro.
So I decided to go shopping for my hosts. The only shop in the area is located near the Vivigani-Bolubolu track. I cannot buy much but the trader I got on with on the boat gave me some discounts ... A small bottle of oil, rice and some other trifles.
The gesture is only symbolic. Everywhere else I've been, I've bought some useful things for my hosts - it is the first time I cannot do so.
I returned after dark, but this time I have not forgotten my headlamp.
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