Cuscus for dinner

Our first meal of fresh meat when we were in the village was of cuscus. The Sos Kundi people are hunter-gatherers primarily, so they occasionally eat meat from an animal that they have speared.

One day some people came to our door and showed us the cuscus that they had killed, and her baby which was still alive.

Dead mother cuscus:

Baby cuscus:

Later on that night, we had cuscus for dinner. Before they cook the meat (of most animals) they remove the hair from the skin by burning it off over the fire. The burnt hair taste is very evident when you eat the meat. It is quite a strong, strange taste that is rather unpleasant at first, but it is something that I think could be an acquired taste and rather enjoyable once you get used to it.

A few days later, they still had the baby cuscus and we had a bit of play with it as you can see in these pictures. It is such a cute animal, even as adults they are cute.

Fishing

Elvira and I had the opportunity to go out with the people sometimes and observe some of their regular activities and then as part of our work, we would record someone telling us about that activity in their own language.

One of the things we did early in our trip was to go out fishing with the ladies one afternoon. They put out these nets, set them up, and then check them the next day for fish. The fish swim into them and get stuck in the holes as you can see in this picture:

Here is Rebecca with some of the fish that got caught in the net:

We went out in traditional dugout canoes and at first I was worried with every little wobble that we were going to capsize (especially after having that incident at Easter!), but of course we didn't! Here's my pose for the photo on this fishing trip:

I'm back!

I arrived back in Ukarumpa on Wednesday and have been quite busy getting settled back in and catching up with everything. We had a good 7 weeks in the village, but it's also good to be back now with modern comforts too.

I have so many stories to tell, so I'm planning on putting up new blog posts every couple of days so that you can catch up with it all before my next adventure (details of that to come).

We stayed in two villages during our time in the Sos Kundi area: 'Mangijangut' for two weeks, and 'Chikinumbu' for the rest of the time. We had some interesting bathing experiences, we actually had four different ways of bathing. So stay tuned to hear about them!

Also we had quite a variety of different meats that we ate occasionally. When we stayed in Mangijangut village we didn't carry our food with us, so we were eating local food every day there. The regular everyday food that we ate there was pumpkin, sago and fish. I'll tell you more about the different foods that we had in some later blog posts.

Here are some photos of how we started our journey…

Nice view on the way:

This is us coming in to land. It is flat, flat country where we were - no mountains to look up at.

See you in 7 weeks

Well, tomorrow morning I'll be up at the crack of dawn to get my flight to the Sepik. The language group is called Sos Kundi. I've got my small backpack and two small cardboard boxes packed with all the possessions I need for 7 weeks.

It's going to be really hot and humid where we're going, so that will be interesting. I will probably get a heat rash, so I'm taking talc to help prevent it, and cream to stop the itching.

We've heard that they are building a new toilet for us. That was very exciting news! It will be nice and clean and not smelly for the first week.

I think I will be able to recharge my camera batteries with a solar panel set up that we are bringing with us, so I won't have to worry about conserving the batteries, which is great.

There won't be any new blog posts for the 7 weeks and you'll get used to not checking it for a while, so write a reminder on your calendar/diary to start checking my blog again after 23rd June. I will have lots of stories to share when I get back and will be updating frequently.

Off to the village soon

On Wednesday I'll be leaving to go to the village with my housemate Elvira and another single lady, Correna. We're going to a village in an area called the Sepik Plains. We won't be right on the Sepik river, but there'll be other rivers in the area. The airport we will be flying to is called Tinboli, and that comes up on Google searches. We will be living in a village not far from Tinboli, about a 40 minute walk away.

Today I have been doing a few things to get ready for going. Firstly, I had a little panic in the shower when I thought about my Thermarest (sleeping mat). I had the terrible thought that I'd left it at Madang when I went there at Easter as I hadn't noticed it the other day when I was getting something out of the bag where I store it and I couldn't remember attaching it to my backpack when we left Madang. Fortunately when I looked for it in the bag, there it was - I was so happy!! Actually I only just realised a minute ago that I didn't even take it to Madang, that's why I couldn't remember taking it home! I must be going crazy!!

This morning I went to Correna's house to soak my mosquito net in permethrin to make the mozzies stay away from my net. Then in the afternoon I went to a nice lady's house and she sewed up and made a travel pillow for me. So I'm beginning to get my things together and organised for leaving on Wednesday.

Bush dancing

On Saturday night there was an Australian Bush Dance on and I went to it. I enjoy dancing and had lots of fun. I danced nearly every dance and this was 2 days after I started malaria treatment. The tablets work well! I was sick with malaria mid-week, and up and dancing on the weekend! I feel so well now that it's hard to believe that I even had malaria last week. I know I didn't imagine it though, because I had a positive blood test.

Not so bad

Last night after I wrote I went to bed. I felt hot and still had a temperature, but it didn't get too bad. This cycle wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. I don't think I'll have another cycle now that I've started the treatment, but I might be feeling a bit weak and tired for a few days.