Holidays

I haven't written much on my blog over the past few weeks, because I have been on holidays. Well, my holiday is nearly over and in a few days I will be leaving. I have had a good time here and I feel like I just slotted back into life here really easily as though I had never left.

I have enjoyed eating some foods that I can't get or are too expensive in PNG, such as crisps, fancy cheese, salami, and my Scottish delicacies – square sausage, haggis and Irn Bru (a soft drink).

I enjoyed a few days away at Kyneton near the start of my holiday and the rest of the time I have been spending around our local area. I have been to Box Hill for lunch, shopping at Brand Smart and Savers, been out for a birthday dinner with friends, spent time with friends and family, visited a gerbera and alpaca farm in Healesville, visited Marysville (very few remains of burnt houses, just empty blocks) and went to the movies.

I am looking forward to watching the Grand Final live tomorrow – much better than getting quarter by quarter scores via SMS in PNG. It is also my birthday tomorrow, so my team (Geelong) winning the Grand Final would be a good birthday present!

I leave Melbourne on Sunday evening, stay a night in Brisbane, then fly to Port Moresby, stay one night there, then fly to Alotau, where I will be for approximately five weeks to help with a translation workshop. My email connection there will be dial up and I think that most of the time I will only be able to access it on weekends, and I will probably have to blog via email again rather than on the internet. If it all works, I'll tell you more about what I'm doing in Alotau in future blogs.

On our way back from Kyneton, we drove through the Kinglake area that was affected by the February bushfires. The regrowth on the trees was amazing, it looked like a creeping vine on the trees, but it wasn't, it was just new growth coming out of the trunk and branches. Here are some photos that I took:





(Well, Dad took the above photo, not me!)

PNG braided hair

When I was at Buka, one of the cooks braided my hairs in corn rows. It took about 2 hours and she did a really good job of it, pulling it in quite tight. I kept it in till I came to Australia and I took it out the morning after I arrived since after 2½ weeks it was getting a bit loose and messy. Anyway, here are two pictures of my hair after it was just braided.

Cold toilets!!

I am back in Melbourne now and the big shock was how cold the toilet seats are! Wow!! They are so cold! I haven't felt that in over a year and it was a surprise to me how cold they are.

Anyway, yesterday I went to the Geelong vs Western Bulldogs final in the AFL yesterday with Dad and was happy to see Geelong win. This afternoon I am going away on holiday with my Mum and Dad to Kyneton (in Victoria) for a few days. I'll be back at the end of the week.

Here's a picture of me and Dad at the football:

Hakö visit

I visited the Hakö area on the weekend, staying there on Saturday and Sunday nights. It was nice, the people were very friendly and the language was definitely strong and being used a lot. Two very cute kids are pictured in a couple of the photos above.

I stayed in a modern style house which was wired for electricity but not connected. You can see it in one of the photos above. I was sharing it with the men who were working on the mobile phone tower. I had two local teenage girls sleeping in the room with me as security, and the rooms had doors with locks in the handles, so the girls locked the door when we went to sleep.

The toilet was really nice. It was the best village toilet I've been to in PNG so far and better than some public toilets in Australia. It was in a little hut that you would probably describe as a shack, not very flash looking, but inside there was a regular toilet seat with water in it. It didn't have a cistern for flushing, so we had to get a bucket of water and pour it down to flush it. It was very nice and didn't have a toilet smell to it at all.

On our first night we had mud crab for dinner, which was very nice. They gave us a crab each, you can see the size of them in one of the photos above. The one I ate was a little bit smaller than the one in the picture. I'm sure these would be very expensive to buy in Australia, so it was a real treat and although my mouth enjoyed the crab, it seems that my stomach didn't, as I had stomach pain during the night and the next day, and also diarrhoea. That was a shame. Next time I'll have to only eat a little bit of crab and not a whole big one.

The main mobile phone company is building a new tower in the village that we were staying in. It is nearly finished and will be active in a week or two. There's a picture of it in one of the photos above. These towers are popping up everywhere. There are also devices available which enable you to access the Internet using the mobile service, so if I end up working in a village with mobile reception, I will be able to access email and Internet in the village. I think that would be wonderful!

Well, there you go, that's my trip to the Hakö language area in a nutshell.

Other work I've been doing

Since managing the kitchen does not take a lot of time, I have been doing some other jobs too while I have been here.

One was gathering information about the work that is happening here and writing it in a presentable format with photos, to make a website for internal use only. There isn't much info about Bougainville in Ukarumpa, but they need more people to come and work at Bougainville, however if there isn't anything way for people to learn about Bougainville, then it probably won't even get on their radar screen. Hopefully what I have prepared will get up and running and people in Ukarumpa will be a bit more in touch with the work in Bougainville.

Another thing that I have been doing is recording interviews with Bougainvilleans who are involved in translation here. I was asking them questions such as "Why did you get involved in Bible translation?", "How have people in the community responded when they heard God's word in their own language?" and "Why do you need a translation into the local language?" The most common response to the last question was that God's Word is so much clearer when it is in their own language.

I have started typing up some of the interviews and some of the things that the people said will probably be used to promote the work of Bible translation and get other people excited about it.

Tomorrow I am going to visit the Hakö language area and will be staying there for two nights, returning on Monday. Then I leave Buka on Wednesday, have two nights in Port Moresby and then go to Melbourne! In exactly a week I will be there. How exciting! I love it here in Bougainville too though. It's a great place and I will be sad to leave, but I am happy about visiting Melbourne too.

Buka town and market

For the past three weeks I have been the kitchen manager for the Centre here while we have people attending meetings and workshops. Now the last course is winding up at the end of the week. A large part of my job was to drive to town with the two cooks, who do our market shopping, and I buy whatever food we need from the shops. We went to town three days a week to buy supplies for the kitchen (Monday, Wednesday and Friday). Today was our last trip into town for shopping.
 
Buka is a nice, basic little town and it is clean and tidy too (see picture above). There aren't many fancy Australian products in the stores, but they do have cheese sometimes. I bought a 250g block of Mainland cheese for myself the other day for about $5 (AUD), which I think is probably double what you would pay in Australia!
 
The market has fresh fruit and vegies, cream buns, banana chips, smoked fish and traditional tourist items (eg. shell necklaces, woven baskets). I don't know who their tourist market is though, as there aren't many overseas tourists here, but there are several aid organisations around who have expats working here.
 
I am thrilled that they have banana chips. These are made from savoury bananas and they salt them, so they are just like a regular packet of crisps (potato chips), except with bananas instead. I love them. They cost about 50c for a small bagful.
 
Most of the market is under a shelter, which you can see in the background two of the photos above. In these photos, you can see some outside sellers, and people buying peanuts.

Dinner time!

Here are some dinner time photos!
- People queuing up for their food
- Our two cooks serving meals
- Some men enjoying their dinner

Last week the people we were feeding were here for the Bougainville Bible Translators Fellowship's AGM and this week and next week, we have people attending a training course for mentors. These people mentor Bougainvillean language teams when they come here for translation training courses.