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!