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!