SteveStanley

We’re settling in on our 2nd day in Australia and we’re enjoying how fun and surprising things here are for us. Australia feels like a mix of the world we grew up with and the tropical world we have learned to live in over these last 4 years.

We’re in the middle of no where, but it doesn’t feel like it when you have an internet connection Gerdine, a month ago Gerdine said the above the literal day before internet was to disappear and not return. There’s a Digicel tower nearby, in fact on a clear day we Read more…

On Saturday evening while out for our family walk we spot a big group of people coming back from somewhere. We thought it was a party or something and greeted them happily. The grim faces told us something was up, and sure enough they told us that a child had hurt their leg. He was being carried back by one of the adults.

By the standards of what we’re used to at home we’re living very simply, but by Kovol standards, we’re unimaginably rich.

We open the freezer to get some food and we feel guilty – we’re the only ones here with a freezer. We run the tap to wash Oscar and we feel guilty – we’re the only ones with running water.

I’m sure there have been countless misunderstandings between us and our Kovol neighbours already (and in fact now I can think of one where someone came to a team member with fresh, hot from the fire bamboo shoots they wanted to give to our team, ready right now. Our coworker misunderstood and went into their house again. The guy hung around all day long waiting for us to not be busy and finally presented us with cold bamboo after waiting for several hours!), but yesterday was the first significant one.

We landed in beautiful weather, but that changed quickly. The second flight got to within hearing distance of Kovol when a wall of cloud came in and covered us over and the helicopter couldn’t land. It was forced to take the Hansen’s back to Madang. From then on the day alternated between clouds, intense rain, lightning storms and general bad weather. It looked like we might be the only team members to make it, but finally, at 5 pm the clouds cleared and the remaining two flights brought our entire team in. Our pilot had to stay the night as it was close to dark by the time the Stous family arrived!

After years of training and preparation, tomorrow is finally the day we’re moving into the tribe. We’re excited, Gerdine is nervous (having never been there before) and Oscar seems to be oblivious to things.

Funny how Christmas feels so different over here. We’ve been so busy getting ready to move into Kovol that it’s snuck up on us! We did manage to take a few days off to have a bit of a Christmas break though – even if there were boxes piled up around us all the while!