First World Problems

Being in the South Pacific certainly has its share of advantages, and one of them is being very close to New Zealand! We took advantage of our proximity by taking a trip to Middle Earth during our March school break (between terms 3 and 4). More on the adventures we had later, but first, a taste of the adjustments we had to make going from third world to first world.

1. It was REALLY hard for me to be okay with rinsing my toothbrush with hot water. We don’t use the hot water tap to rinse our toothbrushes in PNG because the hot water in our bathroom comes from the river. I had to remind myself it was okay to rinse (and wash my hands) with hot water every time.
2. It also felt strange to drink water straight from a tap without filtering it.
3. Being an introvert, I don’t love greeting everyone as I pass them, but it felt very strange/awkward to NOT greet people as we walked by them while we were in NZ.
4. I was glued to the window for our first car ride from the airport to our hotel in Auckland, amazed at the smooth, paved roads and six lane highways.
5. I was terrified a few times driving at such high speeds on the road. We don’t go that fast around Ukarumpa where the roads aren’t paved, so it’s been quite a while since I’ve been in a car going over 30 MPH!

What I Wouldn't Give for a Hot Shower

Of all the adjustments we have had to make in PNG, for me, bathing has been one of the hardest. Here are a few humorous stories about what it is like in the village and on our center at Ukarumpa.

You may recall a post from about a year ago in which I described an incident that happened after I had hiked several hours to a village, arriving sweaty and tired. Some women in the village led me and the other ladies with me to the spot in the river reserved for women to wash. The river was so shallow that we had to lie down to submerse ourselves! We didn’t have any containers with which to douse ourselves. Our village guides sat on the bank and watched us—probably laughing to themselves about the crazy women who didn’t know how to bathe properly!

In the village where we lived for a month last year, mercifully the water was deep enough for full submersion. It was quite refreshing on most days to cool off in the river. However, on cloudy days, I often found it too cold to bathe, shivering through my “bath,” the 5-15 minute walk from the river to our house (depending on how many people stopped us to talk), and as long as it took for my hair to dry. On those days when I didn’t go down to the river, the neighbors usually stopped by our house to inquire if I had bathed! They didn’t seem to think my excuse of being too cold was a good reason to skip a day.

At POC (Pacific Orientation Course), we had hot showers—sometimes. A family was assigned to “fire duty” each week, which meant getting up at 6 in the morning to start a fire to heat the water. Each shower stall had a bucket that we filled with the water that had been heated (sometimes lukewarm, sometimes scalding!), which then functioned as our shower. In Ukarumpa, we have modern plumbing, so theoretically warm showers are available...as long as the sun is out to heat the water! In our house, we use water pumped in from a nearby river for the hot water in our shower, but occasionally something happens that shuts off the river water for a period of time. A few weeks ago, I prepared a mixture of apple cider vinegar and water to apply to my scalp because I have been having issues with dryness. After massaging my whole head with the vinegar solution, I turned on the faucet to start my shower...no water! There I was with vinegar-scented hair and only cold water available for showering. So, I used a squirt bottle to dump cold water on my head so I could shampoo. It was still quite cold, but a bit better than the alternative!

Guest Blog: Eric (on Coaching Basketball)

Bright and early at 6:30 on a Saturday morning, the Ukarumpa International School’s boys’ basketball and girls’ soccer teams loaded up in a convoy of four 15-seater vans to make the trek to Goroka for a day of sports competition with teams from the New Tribes missions school. The roughly 50-mile drive led us along winding ridges and pothole-infested roads for two and a half hours!

The games against New Tribes were the first official games for our teams this term. The games were also a unique experience for our boys’ basketball team; most of our games and practices take place on an outdoor court, but New Tribes has a full-size international court in their gymnasium. For the first, and possibly the only time, our players had to deal with a raucous crowd. I lost my voice by the end of the day trying to shout over the crowd to be heard.

There will be another tournament in the middle of March, which will be the only other set of official games the team has. Every Tuesday, a group of nationals who work on center play a scrimmage against the team, and a game against a group of expatriate men in Ukarumpa was also organized earlier in the season. I have had to share reffing responsibilities at these games, since we don’t have any official refs!

Super Bowl Monday

In the US, I’ve heard of people taking off work the day after the Super Bowl. On the other side of the world, you HAVE to take the day off if you want to watch the Super Bowl! Eric and I both have a few hours off after 11:30 a.m. on Mondays, so we were able to catch the second half of the game. With the recent introduction of satellite TV by one of the major mobile providers, some places on center have access to live TV. We went to the training center (where they regularly hold classes to teach computer/linguistic/etc. skills to national translators) where they had set up a screen to project the game for anyone who wanted to watch.

As we hurried along the ten-minute walk from our house to the training center, an awful thought hit Eric. The electricity had been out at our house all morning; what if it were out at the training center, too? Some places on center run almost exclusively on solar power. Others are powered mainly from batteries that collect excess solar power from those who have solar panels. And others, like us, depend on traditional power sources. We weren’t sure which category the training center fell in, so we didn’t know whether we would actually be able to watch the game or not!

When we arrived, we found out the electricity was on! Many people who showed up to watch the game brought their laptops with them so they could actually work during the game. We muted during all the commercials so they could focus on their work. Most of us who went to watch the game were Americans, but we did have one Australian and two Papua New Guineans join us!

Communication Faux Pas

Learning a new language and a new culture inevitably leads to mistakes now and again. Here are a few entertaining examples of miscommunication we have had while learning Tok Pisin.

During our month in village living, Eric often wanted to use the phrase “you don’t need to,” e.g. “You don’t need to spend your whole day giving us a tour,” or “You don’t need to find a spider to show Joella.” However, we didn’t know the word for “need” at the time, so he used the closest phrase he could think of. As it turns out, instead of telling people “you don’t need to,” he kept telling them “you must not” – “You must not give us a tour!”

When we were at training after we’d first arrived here, I had to go into the city to see a doctor. The nurse for our training group set up an appointment for me. The doctor told us to come on Saturday morning. When we arrived, he was the only one in the office—no other patients, secretaries, nurses, etc. He seemed surprised when the nurse told him I was there for my appointment; he had thought we were coming to tell him about our organization! He saw me anyway and told us to come back the following week to pay the bill because he didn’t know how to charge us!

One morning early on in our village stay, I was sitting with a group of people under (yes, under) our house. As one of them rolled a cigarette—tobacco was fairly commonly grown in the area where we did our village stay—they said, “Bruce! Bruce!” and held up the cigarette. I thought they were telling me that “bruce” was the word for tobacco, but then someone gestured with the cigarette for me to turn around, where I saw a man waiting to be introduced to me. I thought, “Phew, I’m glad I realized they were telling me that man’s name is Bruce and it’s not the word for tobacco.” The man joined the other men who were teaching Eric various crafts, and he taught Eric how to weave a mat. Later, someone asked Eric who had taught him to weave it, and I told Eric the man’s name was Bruce. He continued to tell people for a few days that Bruce had taught him. People seemed to have trouble figuring out who that was. Later we realized that the group I had been with was telling me that “bruce” is the word for tobacco—the man’s name was actually Terry!

Ten More Things About Life in Ukarumpa

1. You flip the light switch down to turn on the lights and up to turn them off.

2. Even in our rural mountain location, we often hear airplanes overhead. Our pilots make trips almost every day, whether to take people to the international airport in the capital, take translation teams to or from villages, or make supply/mail runs. We have helicopters and small 9-passenger planes.

3. Air conditioning is opening your windows. Heat (some mornings are in the 40’s during dry season) is building a fire, wrapping up in a blanket, or cuddling with your pets.

4. The clinic recommends that we bleach all of the fruits and vegetables we buy at the local market to clean them. One morning after bleaching, I found a black bug crawling around my lettuce. (Eric wasn’t home to kill it, so I had to kill it myself!) A few days later, a worm crawled out of my broccoli while I was cleaning it, and I found an inchworm on a carrot when I rinsed it!

5. Our two water sources are water that is collected in a rain tank (everyone has at least one in their yard) and treated water that is pumped in from the nearby river. We filter the rain water for drinking and use river water for laundry and showers.

6. All of our trash (“rubbish”) has to be burned, with obvious exceptions such as metal, ceramic, plastic, etc. Our trash gets separated into three bins: burnable, non-burnable (which is collected once a week), and food scraps (which get buried in the yard).

7. Several national ladies make tortillas to sell. We have a standing order with Rose, who comes to our house every Tuesday morning to deliver our dozen freshly-made tortillas, which cost about $3.

8. Most toilets have two options when flushing: full flush or half flush.

9. Because we are so close to the equator, the sun rises and sets at about the same time every day all year long, with sunlight from roughly 6:30-6:30.

10. Our (only) grocery store has to do an inventory every year, which meant it was closed for a week in September!

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