Tearouki church service

Some Sundays we go to the church at Tearouki as we like to visit the different churches in the area. It’s about a 20 minute walk to Tearouki. There’s a river just near it that many people like to bathe in before going to church. You can see the bridge going over the river and the hill up to the church in this photo:

They have nice walls around the side of the church:

On special occasions, such as Easter Sunday last year when these photos were taken, they use traditional instruments and have some items.

Big bamboo flute:

Small bamboo flute. Note also the three guitars leaning against him!

Performers decorated:

Dancing with bows and arrows in church:

High humidity + hot sun = lots of sweat

Usually in Australia, I can walk in the sun for any length of time and not work up much of a sweat. I don’t really sweat all that quickly, but in Bougainville it is a whole different picture – the sweat just flows. It drips off my nose and runs down my back or legs. Some people sweat like that in Australia, but not me, so this is really quite unusual for me and I find it intriguing. Dad tells me it is because of the humidity, that’s what makes the difference.

Just to show you an example – here is my arm after a 20 minute walk in the morning sun (and the morning sun is when it still hasn’t got really hot yet). Two photos taken at the same time, one with the flash and one without, both show it slightly differently.

Mysterious red spots

Every now and then when I'm in the village I find these mysterious red spots on my arm. I have no idea what they are from. I’m guessing they’re an insect bite of some sort, unless it’s something from brushing past a certain plant.

Can you see the four red dots on my arm in the photo below?

The funny thing is, they’re not raised, and they’re not sore or itchy, so really they’re the best kind of bite to have! They don’t cause any problem. I’m just curious as to what they are – where they’ve come from. Any ideas anyone? The local people don’t know about them, as they don’t show up on their skin.

Happy Mother's Day!!

Happy Mother’s day to all the Mums out there!

Last year on Mother’s Day, I was in Buka and the local church had a special service for it – although it was postponed, so our special Mother’s Day service was one week later than the actual day!

It was a lovely service. Most of the mothers dressed in white. You can see a few in this photo below.

The church was nicely decorated for the occasion as you can see in this photo and some of the other photos too.

There was a time for people to present items such as songs and dances. First the Sunday School children said sorry for all the bad things they have done to hurt their mother and the went around putting water on the mothers’ feet as a symbolic act. They used a branch from a tree, dipped in a bucket of water, to spread the water. You can see it here in this photo.

Here are some photos of the people doing items.

Sunday School kids:

High school boys singing a song about how they love their mother:

Youth group:

And lastly, the mothers. Theirs was the most entertaining. They entered from the back of the church carrying baskets on their heads and then they sang some songs and did actions with them. Everyone had a good laugh.

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.

Watch where you’re walking!

It always makes sense to watch where you’re walking. I’m sure nearly everyone has made the mistake of not looking and consequently walking into a tree or a pole or stepping on a dog poo. Well in the village we have another hazard that you need to keep your eyes open for – large crab holes!

They are big enough for your foot to go into up to a point, and there are times when I have found myself with my foot down a crab hole. They are along our path to the toilet, and it’s even harder to spot them at night. Here’s the same crab hole as the one in the photo above, with my foot next to it to show you the size.

Being bitten by a crab is not the hazard – I think they run away – the danger is more that if you’re not lucky, you could end up spraining an ankle or just come crashing to the ground if you’re not expecting it.

There are a lot of small crab holes that aren’t a problem either, but some crabs build big homes which also produces a small mountain of sand next to the hole as you can see in this photo.

Infected sores

One of the joys of living in the tropics is that sores can get infected easily, especially if they’re on the feet.

It’s amazing what can happen to broken blisters – two of my worst infected sores have come from blisters. This one, which is not so bad when compared to the next one, came from sitting cross-legged on the back of a tipper truck. My little toe rubbed against dirt on the floor of the truck as we travelled which caused the blister. Notice how big my foot is in this photo – the swelling and pain went as far as the start of my ankle.

Another time I got a blister on my ankle after a long walk where the strap of my sandal rubbed against me. It started off not looking too bad…

Two days later it started to look worse and I started taking antibiotics.

Then the next day it looked like this…

Then one day later it was like this, maybe starting to get better. All the other photos I have after this date show the sore improving.

At the same time as I had this sore on my ankle, I also had a sore on my toe (the same foot), which was developing in much the same way as the sore on the ankle, just not quite as advanced.

I had high temperatures for four days while I had these two sores on my foot. At first I thought it might have been malaria, but the other symptoms weren’t really like malaria, so I wonder if the fever was actually related to the sores.