Buka market

Buka market is our big town market. It is nowhere near as bit as Kokopo market – just one shelter, although there are areas for certain items, for example, the smoked fish at one end, then as you walk down there is the other cooked food (eg. kaukau, tapiok), then fruit and vegetables and at the other end there is the sort of tourist section where they sell a lot of shell necklaces, baskets and other items.

Lots of things in this picture – you will need to click on it to view it larger if you want to see everything well. Here we have: Aibika (greens), mature coconuts, drinking coconuts, bok choy, cucumbers, tomatoes, Mum’s legs, pawpaw and cooking bananas.

And here is a wider shot of the overall market under the shelter.

A selection of necklaces, earrings and bracelets/armbands:

The steps to the beach

We live on a cliff here at Buka, which has a wonderful ocean view, unfortunately the beach is a bit inaccessible due to the long drop straight down. Fortunately our neighbours also wanted easier access to the beach and they constructed a concrete stairway to the beach, so now it is accessible.

This is the view from the start of the steps:

Another view, part-way down:

More steps:

Emily sitting on what looks like a stairway up to the sky:

Going down is the easy part – I think going back up the steep steps would kill your legs! Whenever I’ve gone down, I’ve gone back up the long way by walking along the beach and through a village to get to the road.

View from Buka

Sorry it’s been so long between blog posts! I’ve been in the village a lot and not had much time to write any. Hopefully they will be a bit more regular from now on.

Well, when I got back to Bougainville, I enjoyed the nice views from the Centre at Buka where we stay when we’re not in the village. This kind of view really does match the slow pace of life – you step out of the flat and just stand and gaze for a few minutes appreciating the beauty of God’s creation.

Daytime view:

The sun sets on the other side of the island, but we get some nice pink hues in the sky over the sea sometimes.

Moon above the sea with pink sunset clouds:

Moonrise with reflection over the sea:

Unpacking stored items

One of the first things that I’ll be doing when I get to Buka is taking things out of storage and repacking them for going back to the village. There are my own personal belongings as well as the things that Rebekah and I share, such as pots and plates, etc.

It will be interesting to see how it goes – we put everything in the metal shipping container back in December last year – that was a long time ago! The main challenge will be to see if I can find everything that belongs to me/us. I’m not sure if the contents of the container have been rearranged since we left, and if that’s the case, it will be REALLY interesting to see where our things are, but even if they’re where we left them, it’s still going to be a challenge, because the container is full of other people’s stored items too, and our boxes were just packed in various spots around the container, not just all in one corner.

The shipping container is all metal, so on a hot, sunny day, it’s like an oven in there (and most people would think it is hot enough outside)! So as you can imagine, you don’t want to be in there too long, but because I don’t know how many boxes to look for and where exactly they all are, I will have to spend some time standing in there, scanning around to see if something jumps out at me as belonging to us. Some things will be easy to find, others may be a bit more of a challenge.

I also wonder how the heat and humidity has treated my clothes – will they be covered in mould and falling apart? Will have to wait and see.

Shopping in Buka town

When I’m not in the village, I’m in Buka town and that is where we buy food to take to the village for our meals. If I’m only doing a small shopping trip (where I’ll be able to carry everything myself), I get a bus in to town from where we stay at Hutjena. The bus stop in town is next to the green shop in the photo below. You can just see the front of a bus on the left in this photo. We get off the bus here when we arrive in town and this is where we wait when we want to go back to Hutjena.

The market is under this big roof.

Here are some of the shops in town:

This one is one of the few stores that sometimes (occasionally) sell cheese:

We do most of our shopping for the village at two shops, and then we run around half the rest of the shops just to find some elusive items that our two main shops didn’t have. The elusive items usually are eggs, chicken stock and coconut powder (for making coconut milk). If we can’t get the coconut powder, it’s not too big a problem, there’s plenty of fresh coconuts in the village! Anyway, the blue shop in the photo below is one of the two shops where we do most of our village shopping.

Buka airport

Buka airport is an airport like no other. Your first experience with the airport is likely to be in arrivals. When you arrive, you go through a small gate and wait in a small area for the luggage to come over on a trolley. The passengers unload the luggage and you squeeze through to grab your bag when it’s accessible. The photo below shows the Buka airport building, and you can see the arrivals area outside. The people who are standing behind the mesh fence have just arrived and are waiting for their luggage.

When you arrive, you don’t need to go inside the building – it is only for departures. Here is the check in counter.

We do have a little shop to buy some snacks to keep us going. It’s called the ‘Landing and Take Off Canteen’. There’s no hot pies for sale there, mostly it’s cracker biscuits and Twisties. Here you can see the canteen, and to the right of the photo there are two security staff – they check your bags when you enter the airport, to make sure that you aren’t carrying anything you aren’t supposed to have.

Lastly, here is the waiting area. When Rebekah and I were travelling recently, we managed to sit under a fan and keep cool. I counted the ceiling fans – there were six and only three of them were working.

(Remember you can click on the photos to see them a bit bigger).

Update and some photos

Rebekah and I are off to the village on Saturday! We went shopping and bought a lot of food to take with us so that we can prepare meals for ourselves. Our shopping trip was quite a success, with us getting almost everything that we needed.

We’ve also written some plans for language learning and a list of lots of different words that we could learn. I hope that we will be able to find people who are willing to really help us learn the language.

We have 9 weeks that we could be in the village, but we won’t stay for 9 weeks straight – we will stay for maybe 3 or 4 weeks, then return to Buka to restock on some food items, and probably do email, as we won’t have our computers in the village with us.

Rebekah and I have filled a crate and are shipping it to Buka. It has a lot of supplies that we would like to use in the village, so we want to return to Buka when it arrives, to unpack it and get some of those supplies. Then we will go back out to the village again. We don’t know when the crate will arrive in Buka, so that’s why we’re not sure when we will return to Buka, but if it hasn’t come in about 3 to 4 weeks, we will probably still go to Buka after 4 weeks in the village, just for a short break.

No more blog posts until I’m back in Buka for that short break!

Here are some photos of some kids that we saw as we were walking along the beach on the weekend.

Making sand-balls:

Having a good laugh:

Looking like a warrior:

Went to the beach today

Although the ocean is right in front of us, we can’t just walk out to the beach because there’s a big cliff there too! So we can look at the lovely view a lot but we can’t just go out and enjoy the water or the beach. It’s a short walk to where there are some trails that lead down to the beach.

Some friends and I went along a trail and walked along the beach today. Here are some photos:

The waves can be quite rough if you’re in there swimming.

I tried to take an artistic photo of my foot, but I don’t think it would win any acclaim other than me being called a ‘try-hard’!

Random photos

I don’t have a lot to write about, but they say that a picture is worth 1000 words, so here’s 3000 words for you, with 3 pictures. The thing they have in common is that they were all taken on the same day.

PNG Independence Day

Today was PNG Independence day. They have been independent for 35 years now. I went across the road to where there is a large grassy area and a small market. My main motivation for going was to visit the market, but I also wondered if there was any Independence Day celebrations happening – and there was!

I bought something to eat at the small market, and I stayed on to watch the dances and entertainment.

Here are some school girls doing a dance to music on a CD.

This is the bamboo band – bamboo and PVC pipes!

The crowd watching the dances.

If you scroll down and look at the side of my blog, you will see a link to New Dawn on Bougainville, it is a news website, and they have put up some photos of the Independence Day celebrations too.

Second hand shopping

I went second hand clothes shopping recently. There are a few second hand shops in town. This one (pictured) is really hot as the building has metal walls and roof. Here’s what it looks like inside:

The latest self-portrait photo:

I’m in Buka now!

I arrived in Buka on Thursday and have been settling in. The people who were taking me down to Lae for my flight to Buka cancelled due to sickness the day before, so I had a bit of stress to arrange new transport! I ended up chartering a bus.

On Thursday morning I was up early and we left Ukarumpa at 6.15am, arriving at Lae Airport at about 8.30am. I was a little bit concerned when they had told me that they would be getting petrol at Kainantu, near the start of the trip, but when we got there, the petrol station was closed, so I was wondering if we would have enough to make it, but they bought petrol at a roadside market that was selling it in large containers.

I arrived in Buka at around 1.40pm on Thursday. Yesterday I went into town and to the market. I was happy that they are selling cooked food again at the market, but they didn’t have my favourite – banana chips, so maybe they still aren’t allowed to sell them (the ban on cooked food was to prevent cholera).

It was rainy overnight last night and now it is very windy and not very hot. It’s 25 degrees in the house and the ceiling fans are making me cold, so I have my jacket on. I’d like to turn the fans off, but we have to have them on all the time, to prevent mould from the humidity.

Glorious sunsets

It always seems to be my luck that I am on the east coast and don’t get to see the sun set over the sea and since I am not a morning person, I don’t get up early enough to see the nice sunrise over the sea on the east coast. So I was happy that for once I was on the west coast on this survey trip at Buka and had the opportunity to see nice sunsets over the water. Here are a few of the sunset photos I took.

Garamut drums

This picture shows a garamut drum at Kahule village on the west coast of Buka. Many parts of PNG have these or traditionally had them. At Kahule, only the chief is allowed to make these drums and he has passed the skill onto his future successor, who will only be able to make one after the current chief dies. It is made out of one piece of wood and the inside is hollowed out using a special tool.

This is the chief sounding the drum. He hits the side of it to make the sound. He is sending a message to the community that the visitors are here and they should leave what they are doing and come to help us with our work (maybe not quite as detailed as that though!). There are different messages that can be sent depending on how the chief hits the drum. For example, if he hits it in a different pattern, he could send the message that someone has died. It’s a great way of communicating a message to a lot of people without using modern technology!

Men’s house at Novah 1

Novah 1 men’s house:

The village of Novah 1 on the west coast of Buka still has its men’s house, and they have managed to adapt modern culture into their traditional culture, while still retaining tradition too. In the past women weren’t allowed into the men’s house or even to walk near it. Now women are allowed in, but tradition culture is upheld by having a section that only men are allowed in. The women’s side is larger than the men’s side, and the men are also allowed in the women’s area.

This picture shows me sitting in my proper place. The men’s area starts at the decorated pole, and also on the other side of the small wall/bench seat. (Note also, shiny yellow truck in the background! Infer: some people here have money).

If a woman crosses the boundary and goes into the men’s area, she and her family have to give a pig to the chief, otherwise I think the chief is entitled to marry her. There are garamut drums (slit gongs) in the men’s area, but nothing in there is secret as it is fully open for all to see inside.

When people have a feast and eat pigs, they eat them in this men’s house. The keep the jaw bone of the pig and stick it between a post and the roof, as a reminder, and they can count how many times they have eaten pig in that men’s house.

The men’s house is mainly used for community discussions and the people told us that it is good to have women present too, because it’s good to have their input in discussions. They said that the men’s house is a ‘resource centre’. I guess their definition or understanding of ‘resource’ is different to mine, as I didn’t see any resources inside the men’s house! Perhaps they are thinking of people as resources.

Matsungan madness

When we visited Matsungan Island, it seemed like everyone was in a fun, silly mood, which made it a little bit frustrating for me doing my questionnaires, but they were great people. One time when I asked a question about who speaks certain languages, a voice piped up in reply, “Me too”. I looked over and saw a Malaysian man sitting there, which was funny. The whole crowd that was with me started laughing hysterically and it took a while to get back to business. Later on when I was walking around the island he saw me and we had a short chat. It seems like he is a bit of a joker.

Mariela was taking photos of kids and young people, and I went over to join her, and as I approached a teenage boy came up to me, put his arm around my shoulder and posed for Mariela to take a photo of me. I got into the spirit of things and look a bit crazy in this photo too.

It was actually a bit weird for a second having a young man put his arm around me, as that is not culturally appropriate behaviour for PNG. I think this guy might have been a bit high on betelnut and/or something else.

Here are some more photos of people being crazy in front of the camera at Matsungan. (Mariela took all of these except the last one, which I took).