Sunday night around 1 pm I was woken up by the sound of voices under our houses. The only people who usually wake me are my kids and my cat, we’ve never been woken by anyone from Kovol. I went to see what all the commotion was about. It was an emergency. A 4-month old baby had a terrible head wound and was in shock. 10 or so people were stood around looking sad and worried in the cold night.
A common thing in PNG culture is to be indirect. Imagine I want to tell my friend that I’d like them to give me their T-shirt; I would say “Hey, that’s a nice T-shirt!” The message comes loud and clear that I really would like to have her shirt. Imagine the potential for misunderstanding as, when we as westerners say “nice T-shirt” we intend to give a compliment and bond with our friend.
Today when I started my morning language session it was a bit frustrating and discouraging. Nambi, a man who has some sort of authority in this village, came and wanted to tell me all the little names for rats, bushrats, birds, frogs, tree kangaroos and so on. My plan was to talk about pigs and I had already started talking Read more…
It is really good to be back with our Kovol friends. However they are really busy these days, cutting new gardens and digging up all the yams planted last year. So there are not many people around but they keep coming by for a little break from work or to help us with language. Philip is planning on going on a two day work trip this week. They will be cutting big trees and bushes to clear a new garden area. This is a huge job and they normally like to do it together and help each other out in that way.
Before the soccer tournament should have finished, we heard from someone, that a young guy got injured and broke his leg. That stopped that hole event. They said there was some fighting and people fled into the bush. We are not sure until today what really happened. The people seem to avoid telling us what happened. We might never find out.
We have been here for a full year now. And while many of you have enjoyed the first big snow, we are full in the rainy season. Well you have rain as well throughout the year, and so do we. So what does it mean to be in the rainy season?
Yesterday I was able to join some ladies on a trip to their garden while Lisi my friend and visitor was watching our kids (Philip helped too). I ran down with some young girls and kids the huge mountain. That was fun. On the way down, I learnt lots of ways to say ‘run’ =) This was sooo much faster than the other times when we were dragging/ carrying down our kids with us.
One week ago, Kolom came, an almost 2 year old boy. There are no words to describe what we saw and pictures don’t even justify the reality. A starving to death baby crying quietly in agony, on the doorsteps to death. As soon as I left him, I started crying.
Can you image getting married without a ceremony, without your family and friends, without presents, without really knowing your groom, and moving to a new place, new people, in a house full of people?
Gardens are essential to their lives. There is all their food, there is their work, there it is were a lot of live happens. Everyone has several gardens, old and new ones. They have garden houses were they sleep, or there is a small shelter. Families work often together or help each other in the gardens. It is often a steep hike to get there. And if it rains, it is really muddy too.