A Cushy Life

Have you ever been to a church conference? Maybe you drove or flew to your
destination. There was probably a hotel or conference center booked for
your group. Catered meals, or restaurants nearby.

This has been a unique stay for us here in Hamelengan. Matt hasn't had too
many opportunities to work with our co-translators, or many other men
actually. Everyone here has been working full-time trying to prepare for a
huge church conference that will be going on this week. People from a
number of villages (both Nukna, and also from the neighboring language,
Timbe) will be arriving today. I am in awe over how much work there has
been, and how hard everyone here has been working to prepare for this week.
First off, there are no hotels or restaurants here. Nope. Any extra
housing needs to be built. I think about 5 new houses have been built as
living quarters for the out-of-town delegates for this event. The men and
women have also been working hard these last few weeks clearing ground,
building other conference buildings (often with a bamboo frame, banana-leaf
walls and tarps for the roof), and carrying a ton of food. (and when I say
"ton", I think it literally is close to that!). In the center of the
village a "mess hall" has been built. It is a large structure that will
house the food, 5 fire pits for cooking, and a counter that runs all the way
around it. The women will work here, cooking food for all the people who
have come to the conference. Another large structure has been built right
next to the church, for the meetings.
Every night, people get together to practice the singing that they will do,
probably today, to greet everyone who is arriving. Kundus (drums) and
singing have been going on until midnight or even later every night.

And then there's the food. Yesterday we walked around and Matt took us in
to the place where they are storing everything the people have carried from
their gardens. Piles of yams, kaukau (sweet potato) and taro, several feet
high. There were yams there that looked like huge tree roots, and taros so
large that even one was heavy to lift. And these all came from gardens,
some several miles away, over steep, muddy trails! And the last two days,
most of the men from the village have been gone from sun-up to after dark
carrying pigs to the village. People in other villages have given or sold
pigs for the food, so these had to be carried in. The day before yesterday
all the men hiked 6 hours, one way, to bring back two pigs. They tie them,
hanging by their feet, to a bamboo pole and two men at a time would carry
the several hundred pound pig for a short distance before trading places
with other men. Everyone, from the teenage boys up helped out. It hasn't
helped that it has been raining a LOT here. The day the men were actually
going to start carrying pigs, it just rained and rained. We got a good 4
inches. And it hasn't been sunny at all to dry anything out. So not only
are the people carrying heavy food and pigs up and down steep mountains,
they have to do it on trails that are little rivers, or ankle deep in mud.

But now, the day of people arriving, I think most things are in readiness.
I know there are still things to do: firepits in the mess to build, a
bamboo aqueduct to be built from the nearest water faucet down into the mess
hall for washing/close water. I will be pretty shocked if there is actually
a church service this morning... people are probably going to be rushing
around, finishing things up, or are still pretty exhausted from the past
couple of days.

But being here really drives home once again, what cushy lives we all do
have (in the US). I mean, there are tons of logistics and such that go into
planning a church conference back home, but nothing like the back-breaking,
months-long physical labor that it takes to put on a 1-week meeting here!

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Eternity

A couple of mornings ago, Nathan woke up and declared that he was going to
count to one trillion that day. So without even getting out of bed, he
started in. He made it up to around 420 I think, before he took a break to
get up and dressed. He was so excited throughout the day to keep on
counting a little more. That evening, Matt asked him if he knew how big a
trillion was. Of course, Nathan had no real idea. So they sat down with a
pen and a paper and figured out how many seconds were in an hour, and then
in a day, and then in a year. They figured out that if Nathan counted one
number each second, and he had started counting at the moment of his birth,
never took a break, not even to sleep, and lived a full 90 years, it would
still take him around 12 lifetimes to make it to one trillion! Well, that
definitely killed his enthusiasm.

The next morning, soon after I woke up, I heard Nathan's excited voice from
his bed, calling to Justin. "Justin, Justin, guess what? When we get to
Heaven, we'll be there forever and ever and ever, so I'll have time to
finish counting to one trillion!!!"

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Stranded in the Village

Ok, so that title is a bit misleading. we're not really stuck or stranded
here. But many times it feels that way. Maybe "cut off" or "extremely
isolated" or even "totally out of the loop" would be just as apt
descriptions.

It's just hard to go for a month or two at a time, with little contact with
the outside world. We do get emails from family and friends occasionally,
and that is a major highlight of those days. But except for emails we
receive, sometimes I think that the world could end, or the US be wiped off
the map or who knows? And we would never know! Maybe that's too extreme.
But when life feels like it has ground to a halt here in the village, where
day after day pretty much looks and feels exactly the same, it's hard to
know that exciting things are happening elsewhere, or issues arise that we
wish we could be more involved in, and we can't.

This is a totally different blog than the one I started out this morning
intending to write. But then the emails came in, and along with them, a
total change of feelings and emotions. It's bad enough to be in Ukarumpa,
thousands of miles from home, when things are going on back home we wish we
could be there for. But at least there, in Ukarumpa, we have fairly
consistent email, instant messaging, skype and phone calls. Here in the
village we have only somewhat flaky email and have to be constantly watching
our use of power on gloomy days, such as today.

So just this morning, we found out that Matt's grandpa has passed away. It
wasn't completely unexpected, but (especially for Matt) it's hard to be so
very far away from family, and not able to be there for the funeral, etc.
And another family member is in the hospital, and there is nothing we can do
to help out their family.

I'm not trying to say that I hate life here. I actually don't! And I love,
love, love being in Ukarumpa and the community and environment there and
raising our kids there. But when family events and issues arise, it's just
especially hard to be so very far away, and so very cut off.

Ok, time to conserve power and spare the rest of you from my rambling! =)

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A Sunny Day

It’s always amazing to me how much a sunny day can make a difference.  When it’s cold and grey and drizzly and you can’t go outside, and everything is muddy, and the laundry won’t dry, it’s easy to get discouraged and depressed.

 

But then, a sunny day comes and everything looks and feels so much better!

 

Last week we were having lots of gloomy days.  We weren’t getting heaps of rain, but just lots of drizzle, and all the paths around were slick and muddy.  Saturday was the worst.  It started raining during the night, and it just kept up dark and cold (and no power to charge the computers) for the whole day.  But Sunday was better.  Monday we woke up to a beautiful, sunny day so I decided that it would be a family fun day!  After breakfast I got the kids ready and then we headed down to the river (about a 10 minute walk away).  The kids played there for a while, building dams, and then climbing all over the rocks, pretending to be some strange animals that lived at the river.

 

When they got tired of that, we went on a hike.  Being Monday, it was a “Community Work Day” here, where almost everyone gets together to work as a group on some project.  This day it was cleaning the road to Yalumet.  (this involves using a machete to cut down all the long grass, weeds, bushes and trees that have been overgrowing the trail).  So we thought we’d hike up the trail and visit with anyone who might be working, and maybe eventually we’d run into Matt, who had gone up to hang out with the men.  So we hiked for a ways (almost all uphill, thru goopy mud, and me carrying Julianne piggy-back).  Finally we got to the top of a steep part of the trail and I had to stop.  I didn’t want to push too hard, being pregnant and all.  We hadn’t run into a single person, because they had already “cleaned” this part of the trail and gone on.  So we had a drink and the kids had a snack and then who should appear, coming down the trail, but Matt!  He had hiked up the trail for quite a long time (an hour maybe?) and passed groups of women, but no men.  The men had told him that they were going to be working “close to” the village.  But “close to” in PNG definition doesn’t always match up with what we might consider it to mean.  So finally he decided to turn around and come back.  So while we were having a rest, he met up with us.  That was nice because he carried Julianne all the way home.

 

After getting home and washing the mud off and having lunch, the kids and I baked cookies.  Now, I love my kids, and I love baking, but I don’t really enjoy the two of them together!  It’s just so much more work and mess to have them baking with me.  But I know they enjoy it, so I try to let them help, when I can stand it!  This day we made some oatmeal, peanut butter, chocolate chip cookies… good stuff.  There were of course, all the arguments over who got to stand immediately next to me and who got to stir and who got to measure and who got to pour.  Then it was time for Julianne to pour the oatmeal in.  Of course, just at the moment when she went to pour the measuring cup into the bowl, she managed to fall backwards off the chair, taking the bowl with her. =(  Thankfully, I was able to salvage some of the flour stuff that flew out everywhere,  and that was relatively easy to add back in.  So much fun.  Despite all this, the cookies turned out great, and we’ve been enjoying them for the last 4 days! =)

Settling In in the Village

So I’m writing this blog post while in the village!  Novel thought!  Thank goodness for slow, unreliable, yet still existent email while out in the middle of nowhere!

 

We’re into our third day here in Hamelengan.  The first day we came out was a pretty normal day, for a first day.  We had a 6:30 am pick up from our house, took off in the helicopter at about 8am, and got to the village about 9.  As we were circling to land, Nathan threw up all over himself, and Kaitlyn and Justin were holding bags ready as they were about to lose it too, and Kaitlyn was screaming because of the pain in her ears as we decended.  Fun stuff.

 

We got to the house and the first item of business is always to clean.  It’s amazing how in less than 4 months of being away, how much dirt, dust, dead bugs and cockroach poop can accumulate!  I try to give the house a good sweep before we move everything in, and then it takes another sweep or two and a mopping before things are fairly normal again.  Then it’s disinfecting all the counters, table and shelves and cupboards so I can put all our dishes out, and our food items away (canned goods, food in tupperwares, etc).  The stuff that bugs can get into I keep in rubbermaid containers or action packers.  Then it’s time to make up all the beds and get all the mosquito nets shaken out and tucked in.

 

So there’s not really any time to relax, socialize, etc on the first day or so of being in the village.  Another joy of moving in is that all the dust and such makes my allergies get really, really bad. =(  So all the while I’m sweeping or scrubbing or making beds, I’m sneezing my brains out and dripping snot everywhere.  Fun stuff.  Last village stay my allergies stayed bad for the entire 7 weeks.  So far (in all 3 days now) I’ve just had 1 really bad day.  Hopefully that was the worst of it.

 

Julianne is in her very own “big girl bed” for the first time out here.  She’s sharing a bunkbed with Kaitlyn.  So far, for two nights out of two, she’s ended up in our bed before the night was out.  For some reason, our kids don’t sleep well here in the village, so after I’ve already gotten up 6 times that night, I’m just too tired to do it anymore and bring her in with me.  Hopefully that will get better too, over time.

 

Despite everyone being pretty exhausted, we had to do a little something for Nathan’s birthday (the day we came out).  I had made and frozen some Peanut butter cookies (his request) and so we sang happy birthday and ate those and opened a couple presents we brought out with us.

 

One thing I do to make things a bit simpler during all the craziness of settling in, is that I cook and freeze several meals for our first two days out.  Then I don’t have to do anything besides re-heat for the first two days.   Usually for lunches I just bring out some bread, pb and j, and cheese, tomatoes, etc for sandwiches.  But since it was Nathan’s birthday, I brought out pizza rolls for our first lunch.  Then we had chicken pompoms for dinner on Thursday, cinnamon rolls I had made and froze for breakfast on Friday, sandwiches for lunch and then more chicken pom poms for dinner.  Today I have to start cooking again!  (we’ll have spaghetti, with re-hydrated spaghetti sauce, and re-hydrated meat). 

 

Now things are mostly clean, unpacked and settling into a routine, so there’s lots more time to do stuff like write blog posts! =)