Malaria strikes again!

Just a week before we left the village recently, I got sick with malaria. I wanted to go and cut open coconuts on the day that I came down with it, so I was naughty and tried to hide the fact that I wasn’t well, but it seems that most of my village family could tell and knew before I said anything!

I started treatment on the first day, but it was a really strong bout of malaria this time, and I continued to feel ill on and off for about a week, although not as bad as the first day.

This is me lying on my makeshift bed in our eating house on the third day. I woke up feeling quite bad – weak and dry-retching, but I was feeling a bit better by the time this photo was taken.

Back on the first day of the malaria, I was really ill. Previously when I’ve had malaria, it’s gradually gotten worse, but this time it started really strong. I was weak, although I was also thrashing about a lot, and at night I vomited twice. I had a high temperature during the day and my village family put cool wet towels on me to cool me down. They were very concerned about me, and it was nice to see their care, although I’m sorry to have caused them that stress too!

Even a week later, I was still having moments of weakness and dry-retching when I didn’t feel too good. The last day of feeling ill was the Thursday, and I travelled to Australia on the Friday and didn’t have any of the ill feeling that day, so that was good. I’ve been fine since then, so I’m all better now.

Bumpy 4WD roads

Four-wheel-driving isn’t a hobby in PNG, it’s an unavoidable part of life! There aren’t a lot of sealed or graded roads, so many roads are constantly deteriorating. When it rains and the roads become muddy, it’s even worse!

Here’s one road that we travelled up in the back of a ute on a rainy day. I took this photo when we actually got bogged. Another 4WD had to tow us out.

If you go 4WD-ing, you would know that your body bumps around all over the place as the car goes up and down ditches. Sitting on a padded seat with your seatbelt on helps to restrain you a bit though. Now, imagine what it’s like in the back of a ute, sitting on a wooden plank, with no seatbelt, and metal bars not far above your head. Quite a different experience!

I focus on two things – 1. Holding on tightly. 2. Bending over to keep my head low so that it doesn’t hit the metal bars – I have hit my head a couple of times with sudden jerks in these cars; being tall doesn’t help!

Walking to the island

Yes, WALKING!! If you can’t get hold of a canoe, at low tide you can walk to Teop Island (or to the mainland if you’re at Teop). It’s not very far; it takes about 15-20 minutes, and you have to walk slower than you normally would because you’re walking through water some of the time, although it’s only about ankle depth.

You can’t walk to the island from the place that this photo was taken, but it shows a lot of exposed reef.

This photo is taken from the point where we usually cross over. You can see how there is exposed land and shallow water all the way.

This is the low tide view from Teop Island looking towards where the photo directly above was taken.

Fishing for iobo

I wrote about ‘iobo’ before (10 August) focusing on having it as food. Well I have now seen how they get iobo, so let me tell you about that.

At low tide, you go out and look for the type of grass that iobo lives under. Then you shove your special stick into the sand there and wiggle it back and forth.

Next you put your hand down the hole that the stick has made.

And you bring your hand back up with the iobo that you found

Then you should gut it straightaway, by pushing a stick through it.

This is a iobo that hasn’t been gutted yet.

Here is a pot with the day’s iobo harvest, and other seafood (not cooked yet)

Lastly you need to pound it so that it will be soft and easy to eat. I think if you don’t do this, it will be really chewy like bad calamari.

Dragging a car out of the village

This was such a fun event – everyone was in stitches laughing the whole time!

We had a shell of a car which had been an eyesore in the village for years, and the community decided that it was time to beautify the village and thus we needed to get rid of the old car.

Here’s what it looked like when I first visited in August 2009.

First they had to turn the car upside down and attach ropes to it for pulling.

Then they dragged it from the village out to the road.

After that we dragged it along the road for a while (you can see me in my pink hat in these next two photos).

Next they took it a little way into the bush (not very far from the road).

It was turned over again and positioned in its final resting place. It is next to an area where some copra work gets done, so now they put their bags of dried copra inside the car to hide it from the rain.

Making copra

Copra is the main source of money for people who aren’t employed in formal work, so there’s always someone working on making copra. We have got involved in various stages of the copra making process. This is a simplified list of the stages in making copra:

1. Gather coconuts – 500 coconuts makes 1 bag of copra.
2. Husk the coconuts.
3. Crack the coconuts open.
4. Throw the coconuts up to the drying rack.
5. Arrange the coconuts properly on the drying rack.
6. Light a fire under the coconuts every day until the flesh has dried.
7. Take the dried flesh (ie the copra) out of the shell.
8. Pound the copra into smaller pieces inside the bag for selling copra.
9. Sell the copra.
10. Buy what you want with the money you got.

In between some of these stages, the coconuts/copra need to be moved to different places (eg to the drying rack, to the place for pounding the copra) and the women do this by carrying it on their backs. Here’s a photo of me with a small, but heavy (for me) load of copra. It’s probably about a quarter of the size of what the local women carry.

This photo is a close up of how we remove the copra from the shell (step 7 above):

This is me getting the copra out of the shell:

Here is our copra drying house. I am going down our not-very-sturdy log ‘ladder’.

Back to school!

One day we visited the elementary school at Kekesu to see what happens there, as elementary school, which is the first three years of school, is taught in the local language. We spent some time at each of the three classes watching. These are some photos from that visit.

Elementary prep (E-Prep) students writing in their books:

E-Prep classroom wall:

E-1 students doing an exercise in their books:

E-2 students doing some work:

Food chain poster in the E-2 classroom. It shows that crocodiles eat people, people eat cats, cats eat rats, and rats eat sweet potato (kaukau).