Watermelon season!

It seems that now is the time for watermelons, and there are two watermelon patches growing in our village.

We decided to put a fence half-way around one watermelon patch as there was a bit of a thoroughfare there and the impact of peoples’ steps might disturb the sensitive new fruit and make them fall off prematurely. I got in the mood for working on the fence, and the resulting, very basic fence is shown in the two photos below.

Here is a watermelon that has started to get big.

Simone and Jill giving you some perspective of the size of this baby watermelon.

Bugs

Some of the interesting bugs I have come across lately…

Multi-coloured grasshopper:

And now for the spiders…

The same spider as in the above photo, but as a silhouette with the pink sunset sky in the background:

Cross-shape spider. You might need to click on the photo to see it bigger and more clearly.

Nasty looking spider. This spider fell from the curtains when I was opening them in the village. Although the spiders may look nasty and scary, apparently there aren’t any spiders in our area that can bite you, so really there’s nothing to be scared of, but that doesn’t stop me from being afraid anyway!

View from Buka

Sorry it’s been so long between blog posts! I’ve been in the village a lot and not had much time to write any. Hopefully they will be a bit more regular from now on.

Well, when I got back to Bougainville, I enjoyed the nice views from the Centre at Buka where we stay when we’re not in the village. This kind of view really does match the slow pace of life – you step out of the flat and just stand and gaze for a few minutes appreciating the beauty of God’s creation.

Daytime view:

The sun sets on the other side of the island, but we get some nice pink hues in the sky over the sea sometimes.

Moon above the sea with pink sunset clouds:

Moonrise with reflection over the sea:

Two weeks until I leave

I must apologise to any of my blog fans who have been faithfully checking my blog for the past few weeks to see if there is a new post - sorry for disappointing you!

I was really busy while Rebekah was visiting, and I’ve continued to be pretty busy since then, as I do lots of little minor things that need to be done before I leave – as well as the important work of preparing the advisor check of Mark 11-16. The chapters I’m working on are 12, 14 and 16. Chapter 14 is a massive chapter with 72 verses! I’ve finished looking at chapters 12 and 14 now, and just have the 20 verses in chapter 16 to look at, so I’m glad that’s nearly finished.

Rebekah and I had a good time while she was here, so here are some pictures of some of the things we did together.

Feeding wallabies:

Pat a koala:

Ride on Puffing Billy:

Speaking at meetings:

Unpacking stored items

One of the first things that I’ll be doing when I get to Buka is taking things out of storage and repacking them for going back to the village. There are my own personal belongings as well as the things that Rebekah and I share, such as pots and plates, etc.

It will be interesting to see how it goes – we put everything in the metal shipping container back in December last year – that was a long time ago! The main challenge will be to see if I can find everything that belongs to me/us. I’m not sure if the contents of the container have been rearranged since we left, and if that’s the case, it will be REALLY interesting to see where our things are, but even if they’re where we left them, it’s still going to be a challenge, because the container is full of other people’s stored items too, and our boxes were just packed in various spots around the container, not just all in one corner.

The shipping container is all metal, so on a hot, sunny day, it’s like an oven in there (and most people would think it is hot enough outside)! So as you can imagine, you don’t want to be in there too long, but because I don’t know how many boxes to look for and where exactly they all are, I will have to spend some time standing in there, scanning around to see if something jumps out at me as belonging to us. Some things will be easy to find, others may be a bit more of a challenge.

I also wonder how the heat and humidity has treated my clothes – will they be covered in mould and falling apart? Will have to wait and see.

Minor differences

I’ve been thinking recently about a few of the minor things that will be different when I go back to Bougainville, and things that I’ll need to try and remember. Here are some below:

Grass seeds: Firstly, try to remember to pay attention to the length of the grass, so that I don’t walk through it and get seeds all through my skirt. Failing that, I will have the leisurely activity of picking grass seeds out of my skirt. It’s a great slow pace of life activity.

Head torch: I need to remember that if I have my torch switched on, try not to look at people, as wherever my head turns, there the torch shines also, and people don’t appreciated being blinded by the light. I have a terrible habit of doing that!

Leg cramps: Quite often in the morning I get cramps in my calves just as I am waking up in the village. It’s rather annoying. I don’t know why it happens, but maybe my body gets dehydrated during the night which might trigger it.

Exact change: I’ve been used to paying for things however I like here in Australia, using my bank card, or just handing over a note. In Buka however, it’s best to pay with the exact change, because there’s always a shortage of change in the register at the shops, or at the market the sellers often don’t have enough change either. Of course, when you pay the exact amount for a lot of things, you end up running out of change yourself!

Sunscreen: I don’t like putting sunscreen on, but if I know I’m going to be out in the sun for a while, I’d better put it on.

Crabs: Sometimes when you’re sitting at the beach, you see these tiny crabs scurrying along the sand. It’s not hugely fascinating or exciting or anything, but your eye just takes it in, and I remembered about it today when I saw a crab on TV.

Making postaono

I have tried making village foods a few times while I’ve been in Australia, with varying degrees of success, but until now I hadn’t tried making postaono, mainly due to not being able to buy cassava.

I found some frozen grated cassava in a shop recently and bought it, saving me the work of having to grate the cassava myself too, but since I can’t find fresh cassava I can’t do that anyway.

I have helped with the various stages of postaono in the village, but I’ve never made it from start to finish, so I wasn’t quite sure on a few things and asked some of our village aunts on the phone for their advice over the last week or so.

So today was the day for making postaono. I got my ingredients together as shown below: frozen grated cassava (defrosted), tinned coconut cream (because fresh coconuts in Australia are rubbish) and a couple of bananas.

I cut open the packets of grated cassava and put them in the bowl.

Then I put in the coconut cream. This was the part that I felt most uncertain about. The coconut cream to cassava ratio is usually judged by eye, and I haven’t seen it often enough to judge the right consistency for myself. I decided to use the whole tin. This is the cassava with the cream mixed in:

Next I spread it onto a tray and spread mashed banana onto half of it.

Then I put more cassava on top of the banana and filled the tray.

Covered in aluminium foil and put it in the oven.

When it started to dry up on the top I took it out of the oven (maybe it needed more coconut cream, or maybe the covering should have been touching the cassava.

And here are two pieces of postaono – banana postaono on the left and postaono without banana on the right. Now you know what postaono is too!