The day had finally arrived. Four weeks of supplies for
seven families were loaded onto the back of our Hino truck, with room for all
of us to squeeze into the back on the floor. Remember reading about all the
bumps we bounced over while seated in the cab of a pickup truck? Now we went
over those same bumps while sitting on the floor! Pulling out of the POC
driveway, we were surprised that instead of turning down the mountain toward
the ocean, we turned UP the mountain. A few seconds later we pulled back onto
POC grounds. The Hino was out of fuel, so the workers had to come fill it up.
Finally we began proceeding down the mountain. About halfway
down, a motorcycle began tailing us. Soon he pulled up next to us, and the
truck stopped on the road. In the back of the truck, we wondered what was
happening. Our driver quickly came back to inspect the rear of the truck. One
of the tires was flat! We pulled off the road, and two of the men attempted to
change a Hino tire for the first time in their lives. They finished fairly
quickly and must have done a good job because an hour and a half later we
pulled up to the first village.
After dropping off three other families in their village
location, we arrived in Sarang 2, a community that started on an island and later
expanded to locations in Sarang 1 and Sarang 2 on the mainland. We unloaded our
mattresses, suitcase, and trunk full of food, and the truck took off. Little
did we know as we received a tour of the village how close we would grow to
those people over four weeks and how living in a Papua New Guinean village
would become second nature to us quickly.
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