I'm Dreaming of an Ukarumpa Christmas Part II

Christmas Eve

• Participating in Norwegian Christmas Eve traditions:
• Viewing a 1986 Czech production of Cinderella that has been dubbed over in Norwegian with one man doing the voice of all the characters. This live-action movie is always shown on TV in Norway at 11 a.m. on Christmas Eve.
• Eating rice pudding, which is traditionally served around 12 p.m. on Christmas Eve in Norway (following the showing of Cinderella). There was a peeled almond hidden in each pot, so the two people who found the almond in their bowl of rice pudding won a chocolate marzipan bar. If you found the almond in your bowl, you had to hide it until everyone was finished eating, and then we discovered who had won.

• Sharing Christmas Eve dinner with friends on the veranda in the beautiful summer weather
• Attending a Christmas Eve service...BYOC (Bring Your Own Candle)

Photo by the Dedes

Christmas Day

• Following the end of the Bills game on Twitter
• Opening presents under our “tree” sent to us by our family, including 5 new T-shirts which is good because clothing wears out fast here!

• Gathering for a community Christmas service, during which we sang Christmas songs in English, Dutch, German, Spanish, Korean, and Tok Pisin
• Planning to drink hot chocolate while watching a Christmas movie in the afternoon, but having to forgo both until the evening because it was so hot during the day, and the electricity went out for quite a while
• Watching a Christmas lights show that was created by a newly-arrived family here

I'm Dreaming of an Ukarumpa Christmas Part I

Though Christmas in Ukarumpa certainly has its differences, it is not quite as different as you might expect. Here are a few things we have done (and some improvisations we have made):

• Using my warm socks (not needed as much right now because it’s summertime!) for stockings

• Baking Christmas cookies together—Eric had to roll the dough because I fractured my pinky playing goalie at the fifth grade Christmas party

• Using a flashlight to see the cookie dough because the electricity went out periodically during the process
• Realizing after it was too late that I only had blue food coloring (the store closes at 4)...I decided the theme of my Christmas tree cookies was “I’ll have a blue Christmas without you”
• Attending a live nativity scene put on by community children, complete with a “live star”

Photo by Jenise Burgess

• Stocking up on food for two weeks because all of the departments, including the store, shut down for a two-week break
• Spotting the differences in a PNG nativity scene

Things You Don't Expect to See at a Basketball Game

Eric played on a national team during a weekly basketball tournament held by a local basketball association during the month of November. Here are some things I observed that I had never seen at a basketball game before:

• People playing with no shoes

• A dog running across the court during the game 
• The bench sitting under umbrellas (in this case, to keep the sun off...at other times because of rain!)

• Outdoor games that continued to be played when it started to rain

On the first weekend of December, the two top teams played in a championship game. Eric’s team won by one point! Eric was awarded one of two MVP awards.

For the first four weekends of the tournament, the weather was beautiful in the morning, but by the time Eric’s team played in the afternoon, rainstorms rolled in. The championship game was the kickoff event for the installation of the Aiyura Basketball Association, so there were multiple events planned in addition to the game. The group asked our community to pray for good weather.

The morning of the event started out beautiful like all the others had...but as the time for Eric’s game approached, dark clouds started to spread across the sky. I thought he would be playing another game in the rain. Before his game started, I went home to refill his water bottle. When I got back, the clouds that had been covering the whole sky were completely gone! There was not a single drop of rain during the entire event, which lasted from 10 a.m. - 6 p.m...a great answer to prayer during rainy season!

Turkeys, Trees, and Trinkets

How different was our Thanksgiving holiday than normal?

Thanksgiving Day: Someone told me, “Happy Thanksgiving!” at school. I said, “Oh yeah.” It’s easy to forget that it’s Thanksgiving in the “land of eternal spring,” especially when you are still at work that day. We get PNG holidays off here, not American ones. For dinner, we could have had turkey...but we would have had to pay about $100 to buy one! So instead, we took advantage of a “special” offered by our grocery store here and ordered a rotisserie chicken. We did have access to stuffing, so we had chicken, salad, stuffing, and dried cranberries.

Hanging of the Greens: My family has a tradition of decorating for Christmas the day after Thanksgiving (the hanging of the greens) and watching White Christmas in front of a fire afterward. Eric and I continued the tradition after we got married, but we had to make some modifications this year. Since we had to work during the day and Eric had a game night in the evening, we watched White Christmas while we decorated (and made!) the Christmas tree. No fire, because the type of wood we have here bothers my asthma when it’s burned.

Black Friday: We only have one store in Ukarumpa, and it is only open on week days from 8:30 (sometimes later) until 4. So, no Black Friday deals and no Black Friday shopping in the wee hours of the morning. However...the store DID hold a Christmas sale on Saturday morning! The sale didn’t start until 9, but people lined up outside the store around 8 a.m., and some of the high school students entertained those waiting by playing Christmas music. We live so close to the store that I opened my windows and listened to the music while I did dishes! We went to the store right at 9 and joined the slow procession of people entering the store.

The back warehouse of the store was converted into the Christmas sale area, and it was packed! It was even more crowded than any Black Friday sale I have ever been to because the space was so limited. The sale included everything from practical items (we got a laundry basket, which we have been looking for for months!) to fun Christmas items (later in the day, several of Eric’s students showed up at our house in festive Christmas fedoras). I have only done Black Friday shopping a few times, but the Saturday Christmas sale in Ukarumpa was definitely the most fun post-Thanksgiving sale I have ever been to—it’s amazing how excited you get over things like flavored hot chocolate mixes, candy canes, and laundry baskets when you don’t have access to them all the time!

Learning to Say Good Bye

As Eric and I prepared to move overseas for a significant period of time, we received A LOT of training on transitions and good byes. Since coming to PNG in January, I have found that saying good bye well is a natural part of Papua New Guinean culture. When we left the village on the coast where we lived for four short weeks, we had a farewell dinner with our church and another one with the family we stayed with, complete with speeches and gifts.

For the past six weeks, I have spent every weekday morning with 22 students from all over PNG in a class to give them “initial skills” in various components of English. The course ended with a graduation ceremony on Tuesday afternoon, but I was unable to attend because I teach at the primary campus in the afternoons. I wanted to say good bye to all the students, though, so I joined them as they practiced the song they sang for graduation before I left for lunch. They sang a beautiful song about unity and love in Christ.

Photo by Anita McCarthy

As soon as they finished singing—before I could even clap—one of the students said they wanted me to stand in the middle so they could all pray over me. First I was asked to share something with the students (it is culturally appropriate for both parties to give a small speech when sending a person off), and then one of the students said a good bye message on their behalf. All of the students then gathered around me while one of the pastors who attended the course prayed. It was such a moving way to say good bye to people who have established themselves in my heart after only six weeks.

After the prayer, I shook hands with everyone and prepared to leave, but another one of the pastors wanted to walk me to the edge of the Training Center. He was one of the first people I connected with in the course and one of my favorite students. He said, “One thing the pastor prayed for you was about children, and I wanted to tell you that I am going to add that to my prayer list. You have been married for a long time and don’t have any children yet, so I am going to keep praying for that.”

In the US, such a statement (and prayer!) would seem presumptuous in most cases. I had never talked to any of the participants about wanting children. However, this is a subject that has been on my heart for many months. Eric and I have always known we want to adopt. We have been waiting for the right time, and we have also been wrestling with questions such as, “Do we adopt internationally or domestically?” and “Should we live overseas when we adopt, or should we settle somewhere in the US?” When we came to PNG, these questions were still spinning in our minds without answers.

I don’t remember when I started to feel that domestic adoption from foster care was what Eric and I are called to do, but I do remember praying that God would give Eric the same passion because I knew it wouldn’t work unless we both were serious about it. About four or five months after arriving in PNG, Eric told me that he was ready for adoption and thought we should adopt from foster care. We were both very excited to get involved with foster care, but it was kind of a let down that we finally felt ready for the process of growing our family when we had just started our overseas ministry and will have to wait until we return to the US to take our first steps in this direction.

For the past few months, every time I see small children running around the playground near our house, sleeping on their mom or dad’s shoulder, or yes, even crying at the top of their lungs, my heart aches to have the same thing in my life. Eric and I both feel that being in PNG is a growth period that is necessary for us to be ready to adopt, and we are enjoying the time we have here, but it is still hard to have to wait so long to start a process that will probably still take several years once it’s been started.

So, when Pastor Tonny prayed that God would bless us like he blessed Abraham and Sarah as they cried out for children, and when Pastor Peter told me he is going to keep praying for us to have children, my heart was so full of blessing. They don’t know that we want to adopt, and they don’t know that it could be a several-year process before we have children, but I know that they are praying for our foster children that we will one day adopt. What an incredible blessing that in the midst of the stagnation we feel in the process of having children, we would find Papua New Guinean friends who are praying for the children we hope to have some day.

Pastor Tonny (photo by Anita McCarthy)

I left the Training Center feeling full of joy and a peace that is indescribable. I am sad to see these friends leave Ukarumpa to return to their homes, but Papua New Guineans definitely know how to say meaningful and precious good byes.

Selling Water

In Ukarumpa, we have a training center that offers courses throughout the year to nationals who want to gain skills in areas such as computers, English, grammar, translation software, linguistics, and so on. Each year, they hold a 6-week course called Initial Skills, which I have been helping with since early October. The object is for students to gain “initial skills” in English, research methods, critical thinking, and computers. Most of these students are involved in translation projects as national translators, and they need to improve their skills in each of these areas.

Critical thinking is a fairly uncommon concept in Papua New Guinea. They love to ask questions like “where are you going?” and “what are you doing?” When we lived in a village, we had to answer the question, “Where are you going?” about a dozen times every time we walked somewhere. But, the question “why” is hardly ever asked. In fact, in our pre-village training, our teacher told us it is better to make observations that might lead people to give more information about something rather than asking “why” outright, e.g. “I saw you went into town today” instead of “why did you go to town today?” Thinking critically is important to Bible translators, though, as they think about the meaning of what they are translating and how to most accurately convey it in their language.

One morning in critical thinking class, the teacher asked me to role play a saleswoman trying to sell “Sikaut” (sick out), a “new, good medicine” from China that looks like water but is “special water that gets rid of sickness.” After I gave my sales pitch, students came up with questions to ask me to decide whether it was a wise decision to buy my medicine. I didn’t know I was going to be put on the spot and have to answer questions! One student asked why the name was in Tok Pisin if it is from China. I told her it was a translation of the Chinese word. Then they wanted to know the Chinese word! So, I pretended to lose my voice. (Then, of course, I took a sip from the Sikaut in my water bottle to heal my throat.)

Another student wanted to know if I had records of the kinds of sicknesses that had been healed with Sikaut. In the sales pitch I had read, it mentioned a man who had drunk the medicine and been healed of a fever, so I told him that. Then I added that it had just healed my throat. The students thought that was hilarious! They had a lot of fun asking questions, and I had fun answering. No one decided to buy my “medicine,” so they are putting their critical thinking skills to work!

Vehicles of Ukarumpa

The primary method of transportation around Ukarumpa is walking, but there are plenty of vehicles as well. Here is a small sampling of the vehicles commonly seen around the center.

The Price is Right?

What do you normally expect to pay for laundry detergent? A box of crackers? Green beans? Prices in Ukarumpa vary quite widely because most items need to be shipped up from the coast (and sometimes from Australia or the US), but much of our produce is locally-grown. Most of our produce is purchased at an outdoor market rather than the grocery store, which carries mainly dry and refrigerated goods as well as a limited supply of household items. Here are some examples of typical prices here (prices are close approximations).

What do you think we pay for…

A box of Cheez-its? …………………………... $9

About 13 ounces of grated mozzarella cheese? ………………... $10

A small box of cereal? ……………………………. $5

“Free and Clear” laundry detergent? ………………………. $30

A large tomato? …………………….. 33 cents

A head of lettuce? ……………………….. 33 cents

A small pineapple? …………………………. $1-$1.70

A large pineapple? ……………………….. $2-$3.30

A pile of lemons (7-10)? ……………………………………... 33 cents

A handful of green beans? ……………………………………….. 7 cents

My First Birthday (In PNG)

People often ask us what we do for entertainment here in Ukarumpa. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, there are fairly regular community activities, especially as the end of each school term approaches. Last week we attended a chorus concert and a marching band concert, both of which were held in the meeting house. Since it wasn’t outdoors, the marching band actually marched around the benches in the meeting house!

However, there are often times when we have to make our own fun—particularly during school breaks. One common pastime of ours is to play games. We shipped over three games, but we soon found that game nights are such a frequent occurrence here that we got tired of our three games really quickly! During our current school break (last two weeks of September), Eric borrowed a game from a friend for us to play. It has so many components that we just left it out on the table for a week to play when we weren’t busy preparing for next term (or teaching English lessons!).

My birthday also occurred over the school break, so Eric designed a scavenger hunt that led to my birthday present. He had a hard time finding a gift because there aren’t many present-y items available here! Eventually the clues led to a ziploc bag of Red Vine bites. Our store is not well stocked at the moment, so the best thing he could think of to do was buy a combo bag of red and black licorice and take out all the black pieces! It was the sweetest birthday present I’ve ever gotten.

What Is it?

These are some common sights in PNG. Can you figure out what they are? Answers are at the bottom.

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Photo by Kristy Johnson

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1: “Cradle” (baby sleeping in a bilum, or a woven string bag)

2: Bathroom in the village (like an outhouse, but just a hole in the ground)

3: Shower (Bucket showers that we used during training. In the village we just used the river. In Ukarumpa, we have modern showers.)

4: Bush gas station (there are several stops like this along the highway in between cities to buy petrol)

5: Turtle eggs (boiled, to be eaten)

6: School bus (kids from a local high school piled in the back to come to Ukarumpa for a sports tournament)

7: Ambulance (used by our clinic to transport people if they can’t get to the clinic on their own)

In the Studio

When we arrived in Ukarumpa, I discovered that there was a need for English as a Second Language tutors, which is one of the subjects I minored in at college. I decided to devote my mornings to working in the English Assistance department, which offers tutoring for non-native English speakers, and spend my afternoons teaching social studies at the primary campus. Currently, I have four adult students I work with in the mornings: two Korean translators, a construction worker from the Netherlands, and one national woman.

In addition to tutoring, I am also working as part of a team that is developing mobile apps to be used in PNG classrooms to help students learn English. Once students in PNG reach third grade, all of their instruction is in English, but not all schools have the resources they need to teach English.

We are just in the beginning stages of designing a series of apps to progress students toward fluency. One of the apps that has already been designed is a listening library. We have a collection of illustrated short stories which you can listen to as the words are highlighted on the screen. Some of the stories have been recorded already, but several more still need to be recorded and added to the library.

I had the opportunity recently to record five of the stories that will be added to the library. We have a recording studio here (often used for recording the Bible in various languages), and I was set up with a mic and headphones in a soundproof room, looking through a window at the people who were recording me on the other side. It was a bit intimidating!

Since then, we’ve started using an Australian English speaker to record the stories, because Australian pronunciation and accent is the standard for English in PNG. It’s neat to think, though, that someday kids in a classroom in PNG may be listening to my voice as they learn English!

Q&A About PNG

Which side of the road do you drive on in PNG?

Whichever side has fewer potholes! On a pothole free road (or when traffic is coming from the opposite direction), you drive on the left.

What time is it?

Currently, we are 14 hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time. So when I call my parents at 9 a.m. on Sunday morning, they answer the phone at 7 p.m. on Saturday. We don’t have Daylight Savings, so after the clocks “fall back” in the US, we’ll be 15 hours ahead.

Do you get earthquakes?

PNG is located on the Pacific Ring of Fire, so there are earthquakes as well as volcanoes in some areas. The village we stayed in during training was located across from a volcanic island. There are no volcanoes in Ukarumpa, but we do sometimes feel small earthquakes. Sometimes you feel them, sometimes you don’t.

Do they have any sort of government system on the center where you are? (e.g. policemen, mayor, any of that type of stuff?)

We have a security team that patrols the center. There isn’t a mayor, but there is a branch director and four chief officers that oversee the branch.

What do you do when you aren’t teaching? What do you do for entertainment/leisure activities?

Ukarumpa is located in a fairly rural area, with several small villages nearby and one town about twenty minutes away (driving), so there isn’t too much to do in the area. We have been on hikes, and there is a river that some people go swimming in. A few times, we have gone into Kainantu—the nearby town—to visit the cultural museum, go to the second hand shops, and have lunch at the lodge.

 

There are also lots of activities happening on center, especially while school is in session. There are a variety of groups that meet, such as Bible studies, weekly game nights, aerobics classes, sporting activities—basketball, volleyball, ultimate frisbee, etc.—, and occasional women’s events with a guest speaker. When school is in session, there are often sports events to watch, concerts to attend, class presentations such as a living history fair, and weekly “hamburger nights” put on by the youth, which is sort of like having a restaurant available one night a week. They have burgers, fries, salads, and milkshakes.

Is there any TV?

Yes, you can buy a TV here or have one shipped in, so some people have TVs. PNG has a few national stations you can pick up if you have an antenna, and one of the major mobile providers just introduced satellite TV that you can pay for by the day, week, or month.

Do you have pizza?

All of the ingredients for making pizza are available (as long as the store hasn’t run out!). You can’t order a pizza, although one of the high schoolers makes stromboli to sell one night a week.

Wild Weekends in Ukarumpa

One of the goals in Bible translation is for national teams to take ownership of translation projects. In 1974, the PNG Bible Translation Association (BTA) was formed by PNG nationals. Our neighbors, who work for BTA, tell us that to date, 16 New Testaments have been produced by BTA. For the past two weekends, BTA has hosted fundraisers at Ukarumpa: a concert two weekends ago and a craft fair last weekend.

Photo by Janeen Michie

At the concert, we were regaled with songs from 10 different languages. The members of BTA come from all over PNG, so each brought songs from their own tok ples (local language). Our neighbor is a PNG national who met his wife, a Filipino, at a Bible translation meeting in Australia (and they got engaged in Israel!), so there was a song in a Filipino language as well. Along with singing, there was also dancing and a skit about working together. Many of the songs and skits were performed by BTA staff members, but there were also several numbers by a local church.

Photo by Janeen Michie

The craft fair was held in a roundhouse at the edge of our center where the regional BTA office is housed. Local artisans set up tables piled with bilums (string bags), wood carvings, meri blouses (a type of loose shirt worn by women in PNG), stationery, and jam. One of my students was also selling cookies!

Jungle Medicine

What do you do when you get sick in the jungle? Many villages in Papua New Guinea have aid posts, which are basic medical facilities that can treat minor infirmities and give malaria tests. Cities have hospitals and specialty medical facilities, but many people have to walk or PMV (the public transportation system) to the nearest aid post or hospital.

In Ukarumpa, we have a clinic that treats both nationals and expatriates. The availability of doctors depends on furlough schedules and who the branch is able to recruit. Currently we have four general health doctors, a few nurses, a physical therapist, and a dentist. When we first arrived in Ukarumpa, we were unable to make dentist appointments because one of the dental tools was broken, and we had to wait for a new one to be sent up from the capital.

Ukarumpa Clinic

At the clinic, there is also a pharmacy that supplies our malaria medication and prescription medications, and there is a lab where we can have blood work done. Unlike my visit to a doctor in Madang (the coastal city where we did our training), going to the clinic in Ukarumpa is pretty similar to going to the doctor in the States. A ride in the “ambulance” would be a bit different though! (See photo of the ambulance below.) We also have planes that are equipped to transport people to Cairns, Australia in the event of a medical emergency or a condition that cannot be adequately treated in our facilities. Everyone in Ukarumpa is required to have medevac insurance to cover the cost of the flight if a medevac is necessary.

On weekends, a doctor is on-call for conditions that can’t wait until Monday. We haven’t had to utilize the on-call doctor yet, but we did have to call the on-call maintenance man one Sunday for a blown fuse that we had no replacement for!

Back to School

Although Eric and I have both been working at the school since we got to Ukarumpa, this past week was our first week with a full load of classes. You may be wondering, what is the same about teaching in Ukarumpa as it is in the US and what is different?

What is the same?

• Students take most of the same subjects that are offered in the US, such as English, social studies, science, math, languages, and some electives like music and computers. In fact, the curriculum is based on a US-curriculum to allow for ease of transition when students go back to the US.
• The secondary school has basketball, volleyball, soccer, softball, and track teams (as well as girls’ and boys’ rugby!).
• Around campus, you’ll see a lot of familiar sights: libraries at both schools, a playground at the primary campus, a track of sorts at the secondary campus, computer labs, etc.
• Bells ring to dismiss students from their classes.

What is different?

• I can’t go to Target or a school supply store to buy something when I want to do a hands-on activity in class. We do have school supplies here, but we have to get creative (or do without) if we want something that can’t be found in the school supply room or the grocery store. There also aren’t any back-to-school sales!
• Homeroom only happens once a week at the secondary school—in the middle of the day—and it is used as a time for student government representatives to meet with their grade levels.
• There are no hallways. There are several buildings around the campus (both at the primary and secondary schools) that house two or more classrooms. Each classroom has a door that opens directly to the sidewalk.
  
  
  
• Most secondary students go home for lunch, while parents are invited to the primary school on Fridays to eat lunch with their students.
• There were only five weeks to prepare between the end of last school year and the start of this one! School starts in July instead of August or September.
• Eric’s classes are the smallest he’s ever had (ranging from 5-14 students), and mine are the biggest I’ve ever had (12-18)!
• Some non-native English speaking students are able to take classes in their mother tongue if a teacher is available.

10 Things About Life in Ukarumpa

1. Most people walk everywhere—to work, to the store, to school…and some people (mostly kids) walk barefoot.
2.  Most people don’t have dryers, so our laundry is hung outside to dry. That is a challenge during rainy season!
   
3. We have frequent power outages (though they usually only last for a few seconds). We’ve stopped resetting the clock on the stove every time the power goes out, and instead it now keeps track of how long it has been since the last power outage.
4. The secondary campus has a one-hour lunch break, so many students (and teachers) go home for lunch.
5. We have a horse pasture, and it is not uncommon to see people riding horses through the center on Saturday mornings.
   
6. There is no pastor at our church, so various missionaries take turns speaking, and different teams of musicians lead music every week. Once a month, we have a combined service with the Tok Pisin church that meets on center.
7. School starts in July and ends in June. There are two five-week breaks (Christmas and “summer”) and two shorter breaks during the school year.
8. We are surrounded on all sides by mountains, which makes for beautiful views, but also for challenging walks, especially at our high elevation.
   
9.  There are several different countries represented in Ukarumpa, including the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Finland, Norway, the Netherlands, Germany, Korea, and of course PNG, as well as a few other nationalities.
10. When people go on furlough, they ask other people on center to take care of their pets. We currently have 8 animals living with us (just for a little while)! Two dogs, two cats, and one cat just had four kittens!

Guest Blog: Eric

Computers have revolutionized so many different aspects of our lives, whether it’s communication, creating documents and presentations, doing research, or following the news. The same is true for Bible translation; computer programs have enhanced translation projects everywhere. But what happens when nationals want to get involved with translating the Bible into their own language, but they have never touched a computer before in their life?

Over the last week and a half, I had the privilege to serve as one of several mentors for the 12 students in the Basic Computing Course at the Training Center here in Ukarumpa, a course that provides computer training for national translators, as well as any other Papua New Guineans who are looking to become familiar with using a computer. We began with how to properly plug a computer into a power source and turn it on, worked on introductory typing and mouse exercises, and by the end of the course students were creating their own power point presentations, adding themes, transitions, and animations. It was a lot of learning in such a small amount of time!

Class ran from 8:30am-12:00pm every morning, including a tea break at 10:00, and then resumed in the afternoon from 1:30pm-4:30pm, with another tea break at 3:00. The morning would include the teaching time and different guided exercises, and the afternoon was often reserved for more individual practice of what was learned that morning, as well as opportunities for more mouse skills or typing practice.

There were definitely some challenges. Some students really caught on fast, and only asked questions about extra things they were discovering on their own, while others needed constant guidance to help them navigate all the different aspects of Microsoft that the course explored. So achievement levels were definitely varied among the different members of the class, but everyone grew, and left with more knowledge and ability than they arrived with. And to be honest, I learned a lot as well. Plenty were little things that I will probably never use, but there were several things I learned that will benefit me in my computer use!

Mentoring the course was a great reminder of why we are here. Working at the school is an important cog to keep SIL’s work running smoothly, but you can easily become isolated from a lot of the work that SIL is doing in the surrounding area, much less throughout the whole country. My assigned role may be teacher, but my work here is to serve the people of Papua New Guinea, whatever that may look like.

Winter in the Tropics

While many of my friends back home are posting about the beginning of summer, we are heading into the throes of winter in the southern hemisphere. What does “winter” mean in the tropics? Technically they don’t have winter in PNG. There are only two seasons: rainy and dry. On the coast, “winter” (dry season) means slightly cooler temperatures and less rain. In Ukarumpa, which is at an elevation of about one mile, it often means very chilly mornings and evenings!

On the morning we woke up to move to our new house last week, it was 48 degrees F. For my New York friends, that probably seems downright balmy for winter. However, the houses on center have no heat and no insulation. That means often it is colder (or hotter!) inside the house than it is outside. Luckily we have a fireplace in our house, but we still have to drag ourselves out from under the covers in the morning to build a fire.

Another factor in our chilly mornings is that if there wasn’t enough sun the day before, the water will not be warm for the shower! All the houses have solar panels to heat up their water, so cloudy days mean tepid water. You also have to think about your hot water consumption at night; e.g., if we use the hot water to wash dishes, there will be less hot water to use in the morning. Often, we heat up water for dishes rather than using our supply of hot water. Don’t forget that since we’re on the equator, the sun always sets between 6 and 7, so there is no chance to collect more solar power after dinner!

Over the River and Through the Woods

We stood at the base of a steep hill, tired from all the climbing we had already done that day, wondering if our legs would survive ascending the hill AND carrying us all the way back home. Were we back in training? Nope; we were hiking to Lone Tree Hill, a nearby mountaintop from which you get a stunning view of the missions center and the valley.

Our group—those of us from training who live in Ukarumpa now—started off in the morning, looking forward to a pleasant walk after three months of increasingly intense hiking at training. We had barely left the center when we came to a river. This was not the refreshing experience of crossing water during the hot and humid hikes on PNG’s coast; this was the chilly water of mile-high elevation, knee-deep in the middle. We removed our socks and shoes and proceeded across the river, discovering on the other side that we had no way to dry our feet. Not wanting to hike the rest of the path barefoot, we shoved wet, dirty feet back into our socks and shoes.

The trek was really not very arduous, but being at mile-high elevation, breath is often harder to come by. When we arrived at Lone Tree Hill (which actually has more than one tree), one of the girls asked us to be in a video she was filming for a school project. Her assignment was to do a book report on The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and she chose to direct a scene from the book. So the majority of us played “extras” in a battle scene while her mom and dad portrayed Peter and the White Witch! We haven’t gotten to see the movie yet, but we heard from her teacher that our acting was superb. J