Baby number 2 is on the way

Gerdine is being a super woman. She’s managing to continue putting hours into language learning while juggling a toddler, and now she’s added morning sickness into the mix.

Our second baby is due in April 2021, making Gerdine 12 weeks pregnant 🙂

We’re pretty excited for Oscar to be getting a baby brother or sister, and it’s going to mean a trip home. Having a baby in the capital city here is (maybe) an option or Australia, but if we’re going to have to travel anyway we’d prefer to head home so our family can see our new baby (and how much Oscar has grown!)

We’re planning to leave PNG for the UK in February, heading to the Netherlands in August and back to PNG in September/October.
So now we’re starting to plan ahead, attempting to arrange our time in Europe while also trying to make the most of the time we have left here. We think the Kovol people are happy for us, but it’s hard to tell as pregnancy is a taboo subject here.

In 6 weeks we’ll be heading out to Goroka for an ultrasound (and a 2-week break), and it’ll only be 6 more weeks of language study time before it’s time to go. Before we go we’ll have our second language check and we’re aiming to reach progressing low (level 4 out of 9 on our language learning scale).

What’s the saying though? “The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak”. Life in the bush continues to be exhausting. We were glad to be able to step in to give our co-workers a boost this week. We set aside 2 days to take their kids as often as they wanted to give them to us so they could take some time to sleep, relax, read and talk. Kovol day care!

Oscar had a great time spending so much time with Louis… mostly, when Louis wasn’t tormenting him 🙂 We’re feeling pretty tired ourselves now though. I guess that’s something we’ll have to get used to with another baby on the way!

We had a big group of about 40 people visit us today. One of the pigs in their village had become a ‘bighead’. Guess what happens to ‘bighead’ pigs? Yep, they get shot with arrows.
The community decided enough was enough: they’d shoot the pig and bring the meat over to enjoy with us.
Sometimes I feel so bad! We’ve got frozen and tinned meat and we eat meat once every 3 days or so. Meat is so hard to come by for them, but whenever they do they think of us and share it with us. They give us a bigger portion of the soup than anyone else, and they set aside a big chunk of meat for us to take home too!

It’s their way of showing appreciation for us and we accept it, but I’d so much rather they ate more of it.
With so many people here all day I’m of course thinking language study, but everyone that came was from the other dialect. I’m getting so frustrated with this other dialect. Every time I engage with it I feel like my language ability goes 2 steps backwards.
My frustration got the better of me today – I pulled the volleyball out and we spent the afternoon playing instead. That was great actually. It’s been a tiring 2 days and a nice fun language day was much needed.

It was most of the people’s first time playing volleyball and it was hilarious, with the ball ping-ponging around and rugby tackles at the net. It felt good to laugh so hard as people crashed together or miss-hit the ball. People are good sports: everyone plays with a fun, non-competitive attitude and there’s no shame for people who keep messing up.

We want to thank everyone for continuing to pray for us. We need it! Pray we’d all stay healthy, and that we wouldn’t push ourselves too far, but also that we’d make the most of the short time we have here before heading home.

Maybe we’ll have some ultrasound pictures to post in a few months…