Est. 2005 VOLUME XVI ISSUE 4, 23rd DECEMBER 2020, PRICE £1 Festival of Lights - 2020 - A Brilliant Display In the News: New Flight Arrangements after Covid Scare PQ Trading Visit Ascension Runway Christmas Messages And More Festival of Lights - 2020 - A Brilliant Display All Festival of Lights pictures: Ed Thorpe The St Helena Independent Volume XVI, Issue 4, Wednesday 23rd December 2020 2 Wideawake Runway Ready in 2022 Vince Thompson The Wideawake Runway repairs have not escaped the de- lays caused by the pandemic but the project is now gathering pace. If the pandemic permits it is hoped the new runway will be ready in the second half of 2022. Many of the project workers have been recruited from Turkey. About 150 have arrived and about 50 more will be arriving soon. Clarence Bay has been busy with ships at anchor and barges taking a succession of equipment and supplies needed for the project. The first ship to arrive with supplies carried 6,000 tonnes of equipment to be unloaded and hauled to Wideawake. A lay down area has been reserved near the runway to store all the off-loaded cargo. The work which in- volves breaking up and re-laying the runway is due to start in April. Before that eight or nine ships will start arriving at Clarence Bay to off-load aggregate for the runway’s base and sub-base. The first ship is due on 7th January. About half a million tonnes of aggregate from Nova Scotia will be off-loaded in Clarence Bay over a period of eight months. It will be a constant eight months of unloading aggregate as one ship a month arrives over the eight month period. Large dumper trucks will work in relays taking the aggregate from Clarence Bay to Wideawake. As the work progresses any wear and tear to the road surface from Georgetown to Wideawake will be repaired by the con- tractor. When the project is completed the road route from the pier to the airport will be completely relayed. As Ascension Island Administrator writes in his Christmas message, the Ascension Island Council as well as the com- munity at large will soon starting considering the options and planning how to get the usual Ascension activities started once more when the twice weekly airbridge flights start again in about eighteen months time. The Obsidian has now been closed for a long time and visitors to the island who think Ascension is the best place in the world for sports fishing need to be encouraged to come back. These are just two of the many considerations which will need to be worked through. JANUARY’S FLIGHT TO CHANGE TO REPATRIATION As a result of developments relating to the new coronavirus variant in the UK and taking into account advice from our Medical staff, the Incident Executive Group (IEG) has recommended that the January flight should be a repatriation flight rather than a Charter flight. This is consistent with the new COVID-19 travel rules in the UK at this time which stipulate essential travel only. This means that those travelling to the Island will be returning residents (whose primary residence is St Helena) and those returning for work or essential business. This will not include St Helenians returning for annual leave either from or via the UK. The new variant of the virus spreads more rapidly but there is no further information yet on severity. Medical advice is that quarantine remains the most effective way of dealing with the original, as well as the new variant, of the virus. Govt SHG 21 December 2020 Also see pages 5 and 6 The St Helena Independent Volume XVI, Issue 4, Wednesday 23rd December 2020 3 Tel: [+290] 22327 Email: [email protected] http: www.saint.fm We’ve all heard plenty of songs about snow, frost, snuggling “but we can’t give anyone house-room just now, for every Christ- up in front of the log fire to keep warm and all that nonsense mas Eve such a pack of Trolls come down upon us, that we about a white Christmas. Where have these singers and song- are forced to flee, and haven’t so much as a house over our writers been? Christmas is the time for blue skies, plenty of own heads, to say nothing of lending one to anyone else.” sunshine and being outdoors, but in the shade. I’ve never “Oh?” said the man, “if that’s all, you can very well lend me heard a Christmas song about cooling off in the sea, BBQs, your house; my bear can lie under the stove yonder, and I can parades and chilling out on the verandah. Do all singers and sleep in the side-room.” songwriters come from the frozen north? One part of the fro- zen north is Finnmark in northern Norway. Finnmark is 400 Well, he begged so hard, that at last he got leave to stay times bigger than St Helena but the population is only 16 times there; so the people of the house ran off, and before they larger. There is plenty of open land with snow in all but three went, everything was got ready for the Trolls; the tables were months of the year. laid, and there was rice porridge, and fish boiled in lye, and sausages, and all else that was good, just as for any other There is a Norwegian Christmas story coming up which starts grand feast. in the frozen wastes of north Norway. The nearest neighbour can be a few miles away and in between there can be strange So, when everything was ready, down came the Trolls. Some creatures lurking behind the fir trees or in caves. Sometimes were great, and some were small; some had long tails, and the strange creatures are Trolls. Scandinavia is well known some had no tails at all; some, too, had long, long noses; for its Trolls. They can be friendly or fierce, giants or dwarfish. and they ate and drank, and tasted everything. Just then one The Trolls in this story are greedy and ignorant. They are of the little Trolls caught sight of the white bear, who lay under neither giant or dwarf but in between. Lastly, Dovrefjell is a the stove; so he took a piece of sausage and stuck it on a mountain range in Norway, more than 1,000 miles south of fork, and went and poked it up against the bear’s nose, scream- Finnmark but still lots of snow and some Trolls. ing out: “Pussy, will you have some sausage?” The Cat on the Dovrefjell Then the white bear rose up and growled, and hunted the Asbjørnsen & Moe - Norwegian whole pack of them out of doors, both great and small. Once on a time there was a man up in Finnmark who had Next year Halvor was out in the wood, on the afternoon of caught a great white bear, which he was going to take to the Christmas Eve, cutting wood before the holidays, for he thought King of Denmark. Now, it so happened, that he came to the the Trolls would come again; and just as he was hard at work, Dovrefjell just about Christmas Eve, and there he turned into a he heard a voice in the wood calling out: “Halvor! Halvor!” cottage where a man lived, whose name was Halvor, and asked “Well,” said Halvor, “here I am.” “Have you got your big cat the man if he could get house-room there for his bear and with you still?” himself. “Yes, that I have,” said Halvor; “she’s lying at home under the stove, and what’s more, she has now got seven kittens, far “Heaven never help me, if what I say isn’t true!” said the man; bigger and fiercer than she is herself.” “Oh, then, we’ll never come to see you again,” bawled out the Thank You Troll away in the wood, and he kept his word; for since that The brothers and sisters, of the late Mr. Stedson time the Trolls have never eaten their Christmas feast with Harris in the Uk, falklands and St. Helena would Halvor on the Dovrefjell. like to say a very big thank you to all who sent cards, letters and messages following Stedson’s passing, we appreciated all your love and sup- port. Stedson is now a rest, we thank all who arranged the lovely Service on St. Helena, thank you all so very much. Stedson would have seen how much he was loved. Thank you Pat (brother) This Troll is greedy for money rather than food The St Helena Independent Volume XVI, Issue 4, Wednesday 23rd December 2020 4 The St Helena Independent Volume XVI, Issue 4, Wednesday 23rd December 2020 5 ST HELENA HOME QUARANTINE THE BENEFITS TO ALL Quarantine is our primary method of preventing the spread of COVID-19 on St Helena and is still the Island’s first line of defence in protecting its people. From the Titan Airways’ Charter Flight in January 2021, all arrivals to St Helena can home quarantine at a property that has been pre-approved by a Proper Officer. Home quarantine means that people are able to quarantine in their own home or in a home-based environment. This has proven to make quarantine less stressful and more comfortable for people. Home quarantine has been adopted throughout the world and, although there is no zero risk option for containing COVID-19, home quarantine is widely recognised as the preferred option for quarantine because of the benefits it brings, not only to those in quarantine, but for communities as a whole.