The View

So, this is not exactly in order, but I was looking through pictures of our village time and found myself oohing and ahhing over the scenery. Seriously, if our village was in the US, it would have been made into a national park. It's gorgeous! Sometimes it's easy to take the views for granted, what with the mud, and everything being harder, etc. But sometimes the saying that "A picture is worth a thousand words" can be so true, so I'm just going to sit back and show the view.

These are some of the views from our house:

My view out my kitchen window

One of the big rivers down the ridge from the village:

Flying out from our village the view down to the coast

The Hike (Oct 21)

Kaitlyn: A PNG girl

Another post from our village time:

Since yesterday we had almost no rain, whatsoever, day or night, and we woke up to sun this morning, I was inspired to take the kids on a hike. We left the house at about 9am, after I made oatmeal muffins for breakfast and got the laundry hung up. We headed up the trail towards Yalumet, with our goal as (possibly) the big waterfall up that way. I wasn’t entirely sure how far it was, and how the kids would hold up. Kaitlyn and Nathan are great hikers, and for a 3, almost 4 year old, Justin does pretty well. But I had to carry Julianne almost the entire way. Thank goodness she still weighs just 19/20 pounds!

The trail had some fairly muddy spots, but it wasn’t too slippery. However, Justin wanted to hold my hand every time there was even a slight up or down. We made it to the first place the creek crosses the trail and stopped for a drink and a snack and the kids waded a little.


Shortly after we left there we ran into Ilang, an older man in the village. He was headed to his garden and Kaitlyn and Nathan pestered him with questions. It was actually good timing as the trail got a bit steep at that point, and he helped Kaitlyn and Nathan up a few parts. I don’t know if he suggested it, or Kaitlyn told him he needed to, but after a little while he offered to carry Julianne. But this point, we’d probably been hiking at least an hour, so my arm was ready for a break from carrying her! But then I just ended up piggybacking Justin. Oh well. We crossed the bigger river, and again had a little snack and drink. (Ilang left us there to go to his garden, somewhere further up the road.)

The river where we made it to

The clouds were starting to come down fast, and that generally means rain won’t be too far behind, so I hurried the kids along back home. We hadn’t gone far… maybe 20 minutes, past the steepest/most slippery parts when it started to rain! Kaitlyn and Nathan took off running after a little and that was the last we saw of them till we got home. Justin moved a bit slower, so it took us quite a while to get back. His little crocs are definitely not great hiking shoes, but he did pretty well. Just slowly!

About the time the downpour ended Julianne fell asleep. Now my arms were already tired from carrying her all that way, but with her sleepy dead-weight, they were getting exhausted! And all the trail was slick now that it had rained, so Justin wanted to hold my hand constantly. So I think my arms were about to drop off!

Julianne slept for probably a good half hour or so as we finished up the hike and came back home, soggy and covered in mud.

What a great field trip! (seriously… it was hard, and sweaty and muddy, but a lot of fun!!!!) Now I’m trying to get the kid’s school work done this afternoon, in between washing wet, muddy clothes, doing lunch dishes, starting the bread for dinner and folding laundry that got dry this morning!

another post from the village

From October 9:

So, I’m not actually scared of the dark. Maybe I was as a kid, but I don’t honestly remember. But when it’s pitch black outside (like the can’t-see-your-hand-in-front-of-your-face kind of dark) and all you can hear are strange night sounds (pops, groans, chirps, etc) it’s easy for me to start letting my imagination run away with me.

Last night I tossed and turned for an hour or more having nightmarish thoughts of catastrophes happening. Partly, it might be the malaria medicine I take weekly (nasty, nasty stuff, known for insomnia (yep), vivid dreams (yep) and other mental side effects. But even more than that, I think it’s Satan’s attacks on me. He knows I’m a bit vulnerable when it comes to the health and safety of my kids and that I can get to worrying overmuch. So that’s where he attacks, strong and repeatedly.

Last night’s theme was landslides and our house sliding off the mountain. Don’t laugh too hard! Our village is surrounded with extremely steep mountains, where no matter where you look there are huge gashes where the land has collapsed and slid sometimes hundreds of feet. Last night I was envisioning the weight of our water tank and house collapsing the edge of the ridge that’s just a couple meters away from the back of our house. I start panicking, wondering how I’m going to wake up my deeply sleeping husband, and get all the kids awake and out of their mosquito nets and out of the house before it slides down the cliff!

Other variations I’ve had are a strong earthquake and the house is breaking apart, or a fire starting downstairs where we have lots of flammable, explosive materials like gas bottles and petrol. And my panicking always revolves around how to get all the kids to safety in time. Or, a choking or croup or something with the kids that happens at night, when no one is on the radio, and no helicopter could come to get us to help. So I spent many sleepless nights the first few weeks when Julianne was sick, listening to her wheezy breathing and wondering what I could do if she stopped breathing, or it got even more difficult for her.

Last night, as I was starting to hit panic mode, I just started praying, and trying to remember every Bible verse I know about God being with us, and being in control, and being our help. And I definitely felt God’s peace. But I know this isn’t over. I’m sure in another night or two, or in a week, or maybe a month from now, I’m going to go thru the same thing all over again.

Matt's birthday

We got back from our 7 week village stay today and I'm taking advantage of email and internet in abundance! Whoo hoo! It's good to have a lack of things sometimes to really start appreciating them! Such as: refrigerators and washing machines, HOT SHOWERS!!!, friends who speak English....

Anyway, I wrote a couple blog posts while in the village, so now I'll get them up!

Here's the first one I wrote, on Oct. 8.

Matt's birthday fell during the middle of our village stay. At the end of the day, he said he wasn’t depressed, but after how the day went, I know I sure would have been if it had been my birthday! It was amazing!

To start things off, all four kids had potty accidents throughout the course of the day. Julianne has been having a lot of diarrhea the last few days.. no fun with cloth diapers. (not sure if it’s due to her last tooth coming thru or a bug of some sort). Justin peed all over the floor twice and Nathan even pooped in his pants, which I didn’t discover until Julianne picked something up off the floor and when I went to investigate…. Even Kaitlyn, who never has accidents, waited too long and wet her pants. What a day.

The day started as a normal work day… the kids and I upstairs in the house doing school work, and Matt downstairs in the office working with some guys to do the back translation of Genesis. But after lunch we were going to do some fun things. It started pouring in the afternoon, and it poured, and poured and poured! We got more rain yesterday than we have in all the 4+ other weeks we’ve been out here! (And our water tank actually overflowed for the first time as well!)

I made a chocolate cake for Matt (a mix, not from scratch, as we’re out in the village), and I have to confess, it was the WORST cake I have ever made! I mean, in the end, it tasted alright, but it was a pathetic mess. Totally fell apart, the can of frosting was a bit runny (all the humidity maybe?) and so it was sliding off the cake, and the cake broke and was sliding all around, etc. Needless to say, I didn’t bother to take any pictures as it was a totally embarrassing mess. In all my years of cake making, I have never had one this horrendous!

We decided that something fun to do on a special day was to have a family movie. We had a movie that we hadn’t watched before, so we all sat down to watch it. But even then, it wasn’t just a fun, relaxing time. First, part way thru the movie somehow the wrong file got copied over and the whole thing switched to French. So it took a while of reopening things and such to sort that out. Then it started pouring so hard that the noise of the rain on the metal roof was louder than the speakers! So we had to wait. Then the computer battery ran out so Matt had to get my computer, copy the movie on it and start it there. A nice, relaxing movie.

We had originally talked about watching the movie after dinner, but it turned out that it was a great thing that we opted for an afternoon showtime instead. Just as we were finishing up dinner by the light of our 12 volt fluorescent bulb, the rain bugs began to appear! Now, our house is very, very nice as far as a village house goes, but it is totally NOT bug proof. As we watched, the swarm buzzing around the light grew bigger and bigger and there started to be a pile of them on the floor under the light. When I lit the candles on Matt’s cake, bugs started swarming that light too, and sticking to the frosting. We didn’t eat that piece of cake! With rain bugs and their attraction to light, the only thing to do is get the lights off. So we quickly got the kids ready for bed, while swatting bugs away and trying to keep all lights off except for the main room, so that they wouldn’t end up in bed with us. So everyone was in bed by about 7pm, with the light off. And as it is the waning moon now, it was PITCH BLACK… can’t even see your hand in front of your face dark. So, there we were, all in our beds, in the pitch black, with the mosquito nets tucked in to keep as few bugs as possible from climbing all over us, at 7 pm.

To top everything off, almost no one even remembered it was his birthday! We got 1 email from a family member, but not even our parents remembered! =(

Happy Birthday Matt!

Waiting

Should I be feeling guilty that I'm happy I'm not currently sitting in the village? I could have been woken up at dawn by roosters, and then spent most of the morning sitting around, wondering if and when the church service was going to start!

We were supposed to go to Hamelengan (our village) on Friday, but because of Justin being pretty sick, we were asked to postpone. Justin had another check on Friday afternoon and we were cleared to go out. But I'm so glad that we didn't go on Friday. Matt and I both have the cough thing that Justin did, just not quite so bad. But with neither of us feeling 100%, the thought of all the work it would have been to be setting up/cleaning/unpacking/visiting in the village makes me so thankful that we have a few extra days.

But almost everything for the village is packed up and waiting out at Aviation for our Tuesday flight. So it's nice to not be tripping over boxes and rushing around packing still. I've still been doing little things (drying pizza sauce, making granola, making a meal to freeze for our first 2 nights out in the village) but it has been nice to have a little extra down time. (We haven't had much of that over the past who-knows-how-many months)

Everything packed and ready to be taken out to aviation Wednesday morning

So, I'm going to use this extra time to get a little reading in, and to be on the internet (find recipes, read friend's blogs, check facebook). Because in a few short days, I won't be able to. We still get emails (so if anyone is ever inspired to write, please do!) via our 2-way radio HF email modem, so we're not completely cut off from the world, but still, it can sometimes feel that way a bit.

Getting ready for the village.....

Unfortunantly, getting ready to head out to the village doesn’t mean just tossing some clothes in a bag and we’re off! In the past, I’ve given myself up to a month before we actually go to the village to get organized and packed. This time I have just two weeks. Our past several months have been full of packing and travelling and transitions, and I’m finding it really hard to get back into that way of thinking. Personally, I’d LOVE to stay in the same place/same house/same routine for like six straight months. But, as we’re leaving for the village in less than two weeks, I don’t have that luxury.

Getting ready for the village involves getting all our clothes and bedding washed and packed. We always bring all our bedding back to Ukarumpa when we leave the village as hand washing sheets and blankets in the river (or now, in my shower base) just doesn’t get them as nice and clean as I would like. So I’ve been washing and airing out lots of village clothes, sheets, towels and blankets. Then they go into our heavy-duty rubbermaid containers to head out to the village.

Then comes planning meals. I don’t do good if I just bring a variety of stuff and figure out later how to use it. I’d be sure to forget some basic ingredients, or not have enough of something. So I sit down and make up a calendar for our entire time out in the village. Then I plan meals for each day. Once I’ve figured out enough meals for our stay, I go back and double and triple check everything to make sure I know exactly how much flour, sugar, margarine, eggs, etc I’m going to need. I have to figure in how many times I’ll be making bread or tortillas, how much milk it will take for cereal and recipes that call for it, etc. I have to estimate how many loaves of banana bread the people in the village are going to ask me to bake for them, etc.

Once I get all the amounts figured out, I go shopping at our store here at Ukarumpa. I then have to get all the stuff boxed up in cardboard boxes and labeled for our flight. I try to make a bunch of pancake mix and granola ahead of time, so I don’t have to spend time doing that in the village (and it saves on how much gas I use out there as well).

Since we have no refrigeration I can’t take any perishable items. (except for eggs, which don’t need refrigeration, and margerine, which can last quite a while without). Because everything has to be flown in to our village on the helicopter (which is rather expensive) I try to dehydrate as much as possible to cut down on weight. The things that are on the list for me to dehydrate this coming week are: cheese (for pizza, burritos, etc), spagetti sauce, pizza sauce, ground beef, italian sausage (which I’ll use on our pizza), beef jerky and probably some fruit roll-ups.

As you can see, just the food prep takes a lot of time.

Thankfully, I don’t have to plan Kaitlyn’s and Nathan’s schoolwork. The school here provides exactly what they will need for our time out. I need to plan some school activities for Justin however, as he will need some things to keep occupied with while K and N are working.

Days can be long out in the village (especially if we are getting a lot of rain), so I want to plan a variety of craft activities the kids can do if we are stuck in the house.

I also need to get over to the school library this week and pick out the allotment of books that the kids are allowed to take out to the village with them. These books will be for reading assignments, as well as leisure reading, and ones we read aloud as a family.

I am also in the process of sewing curtains for our downstairs storage room in the village. I need to make some for the translation office room as well, but there is no way I have time to complete that before this village stay.

I’m definitely feeling a bit stressed as I look at my “To Do” list for village planning. I have now just 12 days till we leave for the village, and really only about 10 to get packed, as we have to have all our stuff out to avaition at least a day before our flight. So I guess it’s time to stop blogging and get back to planning and packing!