Don’t burn the house down!!

This weekend was the first time we cooked/prepared all our meals in our haus kuk. Sara and I decided to only cook dinner and have an easy breakfast and lunch. I’m having muesli for all my weekend breakfasts, lunches will vary, but on Saturday I had a cheese and tomato sandwich – the first one I’ve had since I’ve been here!

We had stir-fry for dinner (my specialty!) and my famous banana crumble for dessert, cooked over the fire – it turned out well.

Anyway, now for the exciting part! I used the kerosene stove to prepare part of the banana crumble and turned it off when I had finished. After I cut up the vegies, I was ready to boil them, so I turned the kerosene stove on again and tried to light it. I had left some pressure in it from before, so too much kerosene was coming through and I had this massive flame coming up from the stove. It was getting really high and the flames were licking the plastic tarp covering. It was rather scary! I ended up getting some oven gloves and getting it out of the hauk kuk, tipped over on the ground and it managed to die. So that was a bit of an ordeal.

I had a second attempt, this time with the stove outside the haus kuk and I still had the same problems and lack of success. Then I went and asked for help, which resolved the problem as he got it lit for me. The next day when I had to light it again, I managed okay, so hopefully I’ve got that sorted now.

Haus kuks

A “haus kuk” is literally a house where you cook, or to put it more simply, a kitchen.

We each had to build ourselves a “haus kuk”. I worked with the other single girls to build one. The local men demonstrated how to build one and then we were let loose with our axes and machetes! We were given a bundle of wood and bamboo and we cut some wood to size and some was already the right size.

We built a table like a picnic table and we also made a bench for food preparation and for washing dishes.

We are going to be preparing all our weekend meals in our “haus kuks”, starting this weekend. It will help prepare us for our five weeks living in a village.

We will probably actually cook our food outside of our “haus kuks” so that they don’t get all smoky as we will be cooking over a fire. We will also have a kerosene stove to use.

We won’t have any refrigeration or modern appliances, so it will probably be pretty tricky to cook things that would normally be easy to cook.

The three of us standing in the “haus kuk” that we built:

Inside our “haus kuk”:

Communal living – Part two

We have all our meals together in a big dining hall during the week (weekends are different, more about that another time). When there are a lot of people eating meals there is a lot of preparation and cleaning needed also. We have a duty roster and on the current roster I have duties twice a day and four times on Wednesdays, but our roster will change soon.

When we have preparation duty in the kitchen, we often cut up some fruit and heat up and serve any hot food. In the dining room we set the tables, or if we are cleaning, we clear them and wipe them down. Kitchen clean up is pretty self-explanatory, mostly washing dishes. We only have duties for breakfast and dinner, at lunch time the staff work as we have classes to go to.

I have a new room-mate now too! The girl from New Zealand came and she moved into my room and the other girl moved out into the spare room.

Communal living – Part one

I am in a house currently with 3 other girls - two in each bedroom. The girl I am sharing a room with has just finished high school at Ukarumpa and is on staff helping out with the kids. The other two girls are both attending the course with me. We are all single girls. There is another single girl coming from New Zealand on Monday and she will be in another room in our house.

The families are over in the dorms and we are a bit away from them, which is not great for building relationships with them, but we are away from all the noise of the children and crying toddlers.

At the dorms they have to heat their water for showers and they have bucket showers, but we have a normal plumbed shower, so we are lucky!! We have a staff family that lives above us and we hear absolutely everything they say and do up there. It doesn't bother us too much though and we get a good night's sleep.

This is the house I am staying in:

This is my bed/bedroom:

Pacific Orientation Course begins!

I am settling into things at the Pacific Orientation Course (POC). We have classes on the weekdays and are learning Tok Pisin, anthropology, medical things and practical skills. Once a week we go on a hike, which will progressively get more difficult each week, but we get to see some nice views.

We are also going swimming once a week. Many people have heard that we are required to swim one mile to pass the course, but it is not a requirement, we are just encouraged to swim as much as we are able and set our own goals.

The POC buildings are up a mountain near Madang, so we have beautiful views of the sea all around us. Here is one of the views we have:

What a way to start!

I started my journey to PNG with a visit to Cooktown and as soon as I got off the plane at Cairns, I started sneezing and developed a cold! It was not much fun!

I had a good time with my friends in Cooktown and I bottle-fed on of their baby goats. My friends have very basic accommodation and I was sleeping on a mattress in the back of their ute.

By the time I left Australia, my cold had got much better. I just have a tickle in my throat now which makes me cough.

I am in Madang now where I will be for the next three months. I am sharing my room with another girl. The orientation course starts on Wednesday, so I have a couple of days to enjoy before all the work starts!

18 days to go!!

Wow, well it's only 18 days till I leave Melbourne!! It has come up really quick and I feel that there is still a lot to do before I leave!

Some of the things I still need to do include:

• Arrange insurance (travel and medical)
• Finalise signatures on my will and powers of attorney
• Book 1 night accomodation in Cairns and Madang
• Book a hire car to drive up to Cooktown
• Sort out how to send cargo to PNG
• Buy the following: air mattress, snorkel and goggles, lapel microphone, swimming shoes, and air/watertight cases
• Fill out some paperwork
• Print photos
• Pack my backpack
• Get my backpack fitted properly

My last shift at work is on 8th August, so hopefully after that I will have more time to do these things.