Visitors!!!

Last weekend we had a (very) rare treat!  Visitors!!!  Now, PNG in general is not on the way to anywhere.  Our village is even less so.  And since a helicopter is the only way to get in here (unless you would prefer to hike a minimum of 6 hours over very steep, rugged mountains), well, let’s just say that we don’t have guests just dropping by on a regular basis.  We’ve actually had quite a few people who have said they would like to visit us and come out to see the village where we work.  But generally, they don’t actually make it.  The realities of how far PNG is from anywhere, and then the ruggedness and price of the helicopter to get out to Hamelengan are pretty dissuasive.

 

So it was a special treat to have a group of five people fly into our village last Saturday morning!  We had been contacted by the aviation department earlier in the week, asking us if we’d be open to having some international visitors drop in for a couple of hours.    We said, “Sure, why not!”  So on Friday morning we found out that the group would be coming Saturday morning.  So we spent Friday afternoon racing around straightening things up and making things nice.

 

The visitors who came were a group of ‘bigwigs’ from JAARS who were on a vision trip to see (in aviation primarily?) how things worked here in PNG.  One was actually the president of JAARS.  Three members of the group had never been to PNG before, so this flight was a chance for them to see a little more of the country, and actually get to go to a PNG village and meet/talk to some translators. (We got some good pictures, but you’ll have to wait a couple weeks until I’m back in Ukarumpa so I can insert them into this post.)  A group of men in the village stayed up till after 11pm on Friday night planning a Singsing (traditional dances/singing) to welcome the visitors.  After the pilot took them on a rather extended scenic tour of our valley, they landed and were greeted with flower necklaces, the singing and dancing group and then were presented with spears.  We took them on a tour of the village… showing them the school, church, aid post and other interesting things.  Then we came back to our house and spent about an hour or so just chatting about the translation work, what it’s like here, and about aviation and how they help us and the community here.  Then the maybe 2 ½ hours were up and the clouds were coming down so they headed back to the helicopter and back to Ukarumpa for the rest of their short stay here in PNG.

 

Aside from getting a chance to meet some really nice people who were such an encouragement to us, the unexpected flight was also able to bring out some goodies for us!  The most important were the alternator belts that enabled Matt to fix our broken generator so that power wouldn’t be quite as stressful of an issue.  Also, thanks to two dear friends who spent a good portion of Friday racing around throwing together a ‘care package’ at the last moment, we had a few other special treats that we’ve really been enjoying!

 

Out here, we pretty much don’t get any fresh fruits or veggies for the whole of our stay.  I generally bring out a few things at the beginning—some carrots, apples, bananas, potatoes, onions—to use at the start of our stay.  But then, aside from any dehydrated fruit I’ve prepared, that’s often it (as far as fresh produce goes) for the rest of our stay.  So it was a special treat to receive apples and carrots in our ‘care package’.  We also got some fresh mince and real cheese (having no refrigeration, we only eat the dehydrated versions of these) and we had a super special treat of hamburgers for dinner that night!  Matt got a still-cold coke and we got a bunch of chocolate goodies like TimTams and M&M’s.  We’ve been rationing out the carrots and apples, sharing like 1 each every couple of days.  I’ll be using some of the candy to decorate the boy’s birthday cake this afternoon!

 

It’s such a blessing to have such thoughtful, generous friends who are willing to just race around and throw some goodies together at the last moment.

 

We thoroughly enjoyed last weekend and were glad that we could show some guests around Hamelengan!