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.