Guinea pigs

The jungles of Papua New Guinea are filled with all kinds of interesting creatures. Birds of paradise are the most famous. We have two different kinds in our area, a yellow one and a blue one. As I write I realise that all I really know about them are the Kovol names for them. It would be a good challenge to find out more about them! There are also several different tree kangaroos and various wallabies.

You would think that living here we would have amazing opportunities to have cool, exotic pets, but no. All the jungle animals are referred to in the Kovol language as “singol” which means meat. We have rarely ever seen live examples of our area’s animals.

Thus our pet of choice has been the guinea pig. We brought in two guinea pigs from Goroka a few years ago. Since then they have been on display in a cage outside. The Kovol people have enjoyed sitting next to the cage and watching them. Visitors pluck new blades of grass and offer them through the bars of the cage and our guinea pigs have thus become trained to come to the bars to see visitors and get fresh grass from them. The Kovol people’s number one reaction to them is “they don’t have a tail!” I think I’ll interpret that as a positive reaction 🙂

Our pair of guinea pigs has not been the same over the years. We still have one of the original guinea pigs, but his friend has changed a few times now. A new female from Goroka is his latest friend and she just gave birth to three pups 🙂
3 pups meant that our 3 children could name them and so we have Cutie Booty, Nizni and Cindaquil to go along with Guinea and Squeaks.
Mum and pups spent 3 weeks inside with us to keep them warm at night. Now that they are 3 weeks old we’ve  separated male and female into different cages.

Over the 2-3 years we’ve had them I’ve had to build 3 cages for them. The design has improved and iterated over time. Jungle wood and chicken wire rotted after a year. My next attempt was to use “strong” wood painted with outdoor paint, but that rotted away after just 9 months. The third cage is now built entirely from grid wire. 6 months later I can see it is rusting, but hopefully it rusts away slowly!

The guinea pig cage is a microcosm of jungle life. It’s a tough environment where things wear out quickly. I grew up in the UK where problem solving is usually about finding the right product. It’s all about Googling reviews to find the best quality product for the best price that solves the problem. If that product breaks you get a different one or a replacement. We live in an ideas space where we think up solutions. Once we find a solution we move on to the next problem.

It’s interesting that that doesn’t translate well to bush life. Making a guinea pig cage is a simple idea. The execution is relatively simple, but the results are a cage that rots away within a year. I have many bright ideas. I’ve acted on a few of those ideas but the reality doesn’t tend to pan out as I expect. Jungle life is tough and it takes constant effort to keep things going.

It’s been a sobering experience. Life can be tough here. When arriving from a more developed part of the world it’s easy to see the challenges here and go into problem-solving mode. I’ve thought about starting chicken raising as a meat source, bringing in fertilizers to increase garden yield, digging wells, pumping water up from the stream, starting a store to sell essential goods, figuring out ways to improve the vanilla-drying process, bringing in a wifi router that distributes the Jesus film, bringing in sewing machines, starting some kind of vanilla-selling franchise with a website where people can buy directly from growers here, organizing donations of clothes from overseas supporters, teaching a few people about common sicknesses and medicines to create an impromptu aid post, gifting mothers with newborns “newborn” packs of baby care items and many other ideas.

Ideas are cheap and easy and I have them in floods. Good ideas that work in the real world for the long term are exponentially more difficult. Watching my guinea pig cage which I designed and carefully built to last for years rot and fall apart within 9 months, I can easily imagine all these other ideas falling apart.

Which leads me to thinking about the task I’m pouring my work days into. How can I pour myself into the work without it becoming a “missionary to the rescue” story? I’m glad our work is quite focussed. We’re working with 11 students and preparing material for them to continue reading. I’m being kept more than busy enough just focussed on that. The next step is critical. The current students will graduate and then we’ll be looking for some to become teachers themselves.

The literacy program taking on a life of its own so that it isn’t dependent on missionary input to continue functioning will be the guinea pig cage which doesn’t fall apart after 9 months.