Conferences and meetings

At the moment we are having a time of conferences and meetings! Last week we had a linguistics conference, where various people shared about different topics that were very informative and relevant to doing language and translation work in the field. I learnt a lot and thought it was very helpful and good.

Over the next 2 weeks, we are having our Branch conference. Every morning there will be devotional speakers and then we get into the business of making decisions about where the branch is heading in the future. As I am new, I am not eligible to vote on things, but I can participate in discussions. New leadership for the branch will also be elected at conference.

Here is a photo of the linguistics conference. My back is the one closest to the camera.

Clothes shopping!

In PNG, if you need more clothes, the place to get them is at second-hand shops. Most of the clothes come from Australia, so there's some familiar brands there. Well, on Saturday, me and a few friends took the public transport to Kainantu and went shopping. I picked out so many things that it was getting heavy carrying them around the shop! The clothes are a good price and I ended up with 11 articles of clothing and paid about $13 total! The thing that I was most chuffed about finding is a Kathmandu brand fleece jacket for about $1.50. I'm not sure how much they cost in Australia, but I know that they are so expensive that it has always put me off buying them.

Village house

/-/ Village Flashback /-/ It’s been a while since I did a village flashback, but there’s still some village living experiences that I haven’t shared yet. So, in keeping with the house theme, I thought I’d tell you about our house in the village and show you some pictures.

We had a nice BIG house in the village. There was four inside rooms, plus a big verandah and a small verandah. Sara and I shared one room as a bedroom and our village sisters shared another room for their bedroom. The third room was our kitchen. It had a table in it which was good for food preparation. The last room was supposedly a change room for after we bathed, but it was not really very private, so we changed in our bedroom.

I’ll tell the rest of the story in pictures now.

The house:

From another angle:

Our kitchen:

Some of our food storage in the kitchen:

Our inside fire which we didn’t actually use very often:

Our clean, boiled drinking water – looks great, doesn’t it?

Our bedroom. My bed is the one with the mosquito net over it.

The big verandah:

The small verandah – we used this one more often as the roof leaked over the big verandah and the floor got wet.

The view from our house – buai (betelnut) trees!

Our classy toilet. It was great – newly built just for us and no-one else to use, until after we left. It was just behind the buai trees, on a main path, but it was built so well that it was very private.

Moved house

I have moved house again. I am sharing with a single woman from Argentina. This is the fourth house I have lived in at Ukarumpa already! I will be able to stay in this house until some time in June. There is a microwave and an electric kettle at this house! The house I was just in didn't have either, so I'm happy to have them again as I like using them a lot.

Here’s a picture of the house:

And this is the view from one of our windows:

Markets

There is a market at Ukarumpa three days a week selling fresh fruit and vegies. I usually go just once a week and buy enough to last the week. Compared to Australia, the price of fresh food is really cheap. I bought all the food in the picture below for about AUD$5.

During village living, there was a market just outside our village twice a week. I went to it on both days, mainly just for socialising and observing, but I usaully also bought a few things, like cherry tomatoes, spring onions or green beans, and maybe some cooked food to eat as a second breakfast.

Here are some market scenes from village living:

Victorian bushfires

I have been following the news online and I have been touched by the massive bushfire tragedy in Victoria, especially in the Kinglake and Marysville areas. These places are about 45 minutes to 1.5 hours drive from home respectively, they are like our backyard. Close enough for me to consider as a part of my extended local world.

It is hard to get my mind around the fact that these townships have been virtually wiped out. I feel the most for all those who have lost loved ones in the fires. It is awful when someone you know dies suddenly like that.

People have also lost their houses and everything they own in the fires and it is just amazing to read about the community spirit, how everyone comes together to support them, by giving money and material gifts to the victims.

Well, what else can I say? It is such a huge tragedy and I am lost for words. But I am really feeling for all those involved or affected in some way.

Free food

Many Papua New Guineans are proud of the fact that they don’t have to ‘waste’ money on buying food – they can get it for free from their gardens. I wonder how many Australians would consider buying food as a waste of money. We would maybe consider extravagance, such as travelling first class on an aeroplane, as a waste of money, but buying food? It’s an interesting difference in cultural perspective.

Today I got free food from the garden at the house I am staying in – a lot of cherry tomatoes! I’m quite happy to adopt the free food concept – why waste your money buying it, when it’s right there in your garden? It’s a pity that’s all I have, I can’t live off just cherry tomatoes, so I guess I’ll have to ‘waste’ more money and buy food.

Here are the tomatoes I picked today: