Culture events are one of the big ideas that we use as missionaries to learn language. Getting a notebook out and asking someone to list off every verb they can think of might help you learn a few verbs, but it’ll be hard to remember. If instead we experience a Read more…
Not only is the PNG culture constantly surprising even those of us who live here the fluid, logistically challenging work of our mission keeps bringing up ‘askims’ (favors). A missionary family is due to arrive back in PNG next week after the birth of a baby in the US. They shot those of us at Madang a quick email asking us to help them get the car road worthy so when they return they can head straight to the tribe.
With it taking multiple times longer than we ever dreamed it would we’ve come up against a problem – there was to be nowhere for us to stay in Madang. The interface program was to begin and would be taking over the entire Madang centre and we’d have to go and had had no luck finding alternative accommodation. We still needed to paint our plywood sheets with more coats of varnish, the hardware store needs constant encouragement from us to keep processing our order and when they finally do deliver we need to be around to take delivery – but we’d run out of time.
We were fretting about this, but unknown to us the Interface team were fretting about being short on teachers.
Buying building materials takes AGES! Part of that is our own inexperience. None of us have managed a construction project before; or thought about an entire house’s plumbing needs; or anything else for that matter. We’ve managed to cobble together a list but is it all we need? Is the thing I just got a quote for something that was on my list? I need something to join PVC pipes together is that a join, coupling, union or collar; or something else? What do we call it in Britain, what do Americans call it and what’s it called here in PNG?
So we spent a few days getting quotes and familiarising ourselves with what we needed. The rest of the time though has been dealing with hardware stores here, and we can only sigh deeply when we think about it.
21.03.2019 We had our plan for the day until a big group of Kovol people suddenly showed up last week. Actually, this has happened three times now, with people from two different villages. The first time they came they were overflowing with excitement. Ladies ran and scooped up Louis. Some Read more…
Stanley’s May update