A PNG Picnic

The driving purpose behind our time  in Papua New Guinea is so Jacob can design and build a new water system for Ukarumpa.  As he works towards this goal, he spends much of his time working alongside nationals from the surrounding villages.  Jacob has spent the last month working with four men to install gabion baskets along the river bank by the new water intake site.  Over the last month, Jacob has worked very hard to build relationships with these men and learn their language (Tok Pisin).  The other day Jacob was able to see some fruit from his labors when the men asked him to join them for lunch at the project site.  The lunch consisted of chicken (a huge blessing as chickens are very expensive here, approximately 12 hours wages for 1 chicken) squash, sweet potato, and leafy greens.  One of the men, Gary had gotten up the previous morning at 3 am to kill the chicken and start preparing it!    Also served  was chicken soup, which consisted of ramen noodles, leafy greens, and all of the chicken entrails.  When the men were dishing the food out onto the banana leaves, Jacob watched as they pulled out the head and feet of the chicken and then the wings and legs, ect.  Jacob was relieved when they put a thigh on his banana leaf, but then the chicken soup came out and a large scoop was placed in the middle of Jacob's leaf.

Then all of the men sat down next to a leaf and began to dig in.  It was quite a feast, and the men really seemed to appreciate Jacob's willingness to sit on the ground and eat their food off of a big leaf while talking and joking with them in their own language.  What a blessing it was for Jacob to be given this honor and to spend time hanging out and talking as just one of the guys rather than the boss.  Pictured, from left to right is Steven, Gary, Gibson, Bakeid, and Jacob.  Take note of the size of the men compared to the size of Jacob.

SQUIRT

A few weeks ago a young PNG native in need of a good home relocated from his village near Madang to live with us.  When he first arrived he had been neglected and was not super healthy.  In fact, he looked kind of sick.  We could not even get him to talk to us, all he would do is huddle in the corner of the cage we set up in the living room for him and make a growling-squawking noise.  He was also very dirty and he had some kind of lice that you could see crawling around on him.
 Squirt, as we named him shortly after his arrival is a Black-Capped Lori, which is a type of small parrot.  Squirt is a nectar drinker, which means he only drinks nectar, like a hummingbird only bigger, and able to speak.

  Due to his diet of only mashed up fruit, Squirt has a problem with diarrhea, or maybe we should say, Squirt has diarrhea, which is normal for a Black-Capped Lori, and WE have a problem with his diarrhea!  When he first arrived we set up a wire bird cage for him in the living room.  He would be standing on his perch in the cage and every so often he would back up take aim at the nice white wall behind the cage and let fly with a stream of blended fruit juice. 
After some carefully placed newspapers, Squirt’s cage has become more diarrhea friendly, and we are starting to enjoy having him around. 





He is a young bird, only a few months old, and has started to bond to us. 

 

When we come to the house after having been out and about he will see us walk up to the front door and let out a whistle.  He also comes out of his cage and sits on our hand while he eats his dinner.  We usually hold him over a garbage can just in case he lives up to his name. 

One of Squirts favorite things to do while sitting on our hand is to walk on our arm over to our elbow and then reach up and wipe the banana that is on his beak off on the sleeve of our shirts. 


        He is lucky he is so cute! 


Squirt also has other unusual habits that we are starting to learn, he loves to sing along to music, especially rock and roll, he loves to take baths in his water dish (he makes a big mess doing this and gets really wet). 

 
Squirt loves to eat mashed up bananas and papaya but his all time favorite treat is sugarcane.  When we can buy it at the market we put it in his cage and he spends all of his waking moments licking it until it is completely dried up and gone.

Our first Trip to Madang

At 7:00 AM in the morning, we boarded the bus and were off to Madang!  The road system in Papua New Guinea is quite strange.  There are many paved roads, but just when you get comfortable cruising along on a nice paved road, you go around a corner and find that half of the road has sloughed off down the hill and there is only one lane remaining, or a boulder the size of a Buick has rolled down from one of the hills above the road and is blocking a whole lane.  Driving here definitely takes full concentration.  Ukarumpa is located in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea, at around 5,500 feet, after about an hour and a half of driving we found ourselves switchbacking down the Kissam pass  as we dropped into the lowlands and the Ramu Valley.  The people in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea tend to be aggressive; as a result, when leaving the Highlands for the Lowlands, one tends to breathe a little easier.


The Ramu Valley is a beautiful valley full of sugar cane, oil palms, and Papua New Guineans everywhere you look.   It is fun because the people walking along the roads glance at the vehicle as it passes, and when they see it is full of white people they do a double take, and then throw both hands in the air, wave frantically and scream at the top of their lungs, “Wait Man”.  Anyone that's not a New Guinean, regardless of their skin color, is called "Wait (white) Man".

We made good time through the Lowlands, slowing down occasionally for one-lane bridges, bad spots in the road, and one river ford.



Gradually the open fields of the Ramu Valley were replaced by jungle that was growing denser every kilometer.  Eventually we were passing by grass huts as we rumbled and roared by village after village.

 Still the people would scream “Wait Man” and chase after the bus clutching whatever had been in their hand at the moment they saw our bus.  Often they would be carrying a shovel, or a bush knife, one little boy chased us while carrying a long green snake.
Suddenly we came to an opening in the jungle at a fork in the road by a market.  We veered to the right, left the pavement, and began our 25 kilometer journey through the muddy road that passes over the Finnisterre Mountain Range.




 Here you are truly in the middle of the jungle.  As far as you can see in all directions is thick green vegetation.  The road is deeply rutted and muddy.
There had not been much rain in the last day or two, so the road was good, but the going slow.

There are deep dips that require bringing the vehicle almost to a stop to avoid bottoming out, and hills up to 20% grade that require shifting to low gear.  But there are still people walking along the sides of the road.  In places where a pool of water has formed naked children peer out of the ditch at the bus as it lumbers by.  Also, we met many PMV’s (a PMV is like the taxi of PNG, they are always moving too fast and carrying too many people) coming from Madang loaded up with Papua New Guineans all with tow ropes tied to the front bumpers to help them through the worst parts of the road


After making it through the Finnisterre Range, we dropped down on the other side to Madang.  On the outskirts of town, we stopped by a place known as Blue Water.  Blue Water is a cave where bright blue water smelling of sulphur seeps out of the ground into a lagoon.  There are cave formations at the mouth of the cave, and if you look down into the water pooling at the mouth of the cave, strange white turtles are swimming around.  After looking around at Blue Water we were tired and hot, and so we headed into Madang to find the flats we had reserved.

Madang is located on the coast, and it is one of the few cities in Papua New Guinea.  It is a strange place as it is home to a localized population of flying foxes.

Flying foxes are large bats, LARGE bats; they have a wing span of nearly 4 feet.   They are called flying foxes because their face looks like that of a fox.    They are bats, but do not use echo location as the bats in the U.S. do.  Flying foxes are active during the day as well as the night time and they use traditional methods for searching out their favorite food: small children….er, I mean fruit.  Any large tree in Madang is home to a large number of flying foxes.

The flats we stayed at were located within walking distance of the ocean as well as downtown.  On the afternoon we arrived, we walked over to the Madang Resort, which is located right on the ocean.  The Madang Resort was at one time a very nice place to stay.  Even today, the large courtyard is fenced off and you must enter through a gate.  There are seaside cabins and a large hotel building.  There is a large salt water pool located at the ocean; the only thing keeping the ocean out is a seawall.  The pool is right adjacent to the restaurant, which is open to the air and also right on the ocean.  They allow you to use the pool if you buy something to eat or drink.  The striking thing about the resort is how nice it is and also how empty it is.  It is not unusual for a resort like that to cost $400 U.S. a night, while the people who live in and work in Madang make the equivalent of around $0.66 U.S. per hour.


The first night we were in Madang we decided to go out to eat.  There was a Chinese restaurant that was right on the ocean about a half a mile from our flat that was supposed to have very good food.  We left our flat at around 7:30 pm and began to walk to the restaurant.  This particular night happened to be the last Friday of the month, which was one of the two Fortnight Fridays for the month.  In Papua New Guinea, everyone gets paid at the same time across the entire country, on Fortnight Friday.  As a result, Fortnight Fridays tend to be rowdy.  So it was when we began our walk to the hotel.  It was already dark out, and there are very few street lights, so the streets were very dark.  Our group included the two of us, our friends David and Evelyn, Marjon, and Susan.    Being that we had lots of ladies in our group and only two men, Jacob and David tried to bring up the front and rear of the procession.  There were groups of Papua New Guinean men milling around here and there and, as we passed, we would give a friendly greeting, which they would return.  Once we made it to the restaurant we passed through a gate into a well lit courtyard that lead up to the main entrance to the restaurant.  The restaurant was clean and the food was excellent.

The following morning we got up and drove out to a place called Rempi, which is a jungle village that is located right on the ocean.  A missionary owns a small thatched cottage that is literally 10 feet from the ocean.

We swam out across a lagoon that was sheltered from the open ocean by a coral reef and two islands.  The coral at Rempi is wild, this makes it amazingly beautiful and also a little dangerous.  As we swam out across the lagoon, we had to swim over the top of the reef so we could snorkel along the drop-off to the open ocean.



The swim over the top of the reef was a little hairy as the water was shallow and the waves would lift you up and then drop you closer to the coral than comfortable.


As we snorkeled along the drop-off, we came along the seaward side of one of the islands and there was a group of naked young boys on the land and in the water tending nets.  The way that they looked at us, they seemed to be wondering why on earth we were wasting our time looking at all of the fish if we weren’t going to catch them. 

That afternoon we also went to Malolo Plantation.  Malolo as it is called by the locals is a very fancy resort, by PNG standards.  We were told that we could use the pool and the beautiful black sand beach if we purchased some food.  We walked into the restaurant, but could not find anyone to wait on us.  Finally when we did find someone, he said that they had sent almost the entire staff home early because the previous week a conference had been held at the hotel.  As a result, all we could purchase was a can of pop, which cost two Kina, or $0.66.  Not a bad cover charge to spend the afternoon lounging at a nice pool or swimming on a private black sand beach under the palm trees!

Later we came to find out that the conference had been hosted by Bill Gates, and was part of his global plan to eliminate malaria.

The following day, Sunday we had an opportunity to rent a Hilux, which is a four door Toyota truck and one of the most common vehicles you see in PNG and we used it to drive out to Buffalo Village, where a celebration was being held to commemorate the completion of the translation of the book of Mark.  (This was the first book of the Bible completed in the Buffalo language.)

The book of Mark is often the first book of the Bible translated in a language due to the fact that it is the shortest of the four gospels, and therefore, the fastest way to get the gospel into the hands of the villagers.
The road to Buffalo Village is a dirt road that went right through the jungle.  Our group included the two of us, David and Evelyn, Marjan, a national man named Simon, and two national women.  Being that the Hilux only seats four or five if you squeeze in, Simon, David and Jacob rode in the back.  We drove past many villages and villagers walking along the road, and they were all very excited to see white men in the back of the truck.  Arriving at the village, we were shown around and then ushered to the church were the dedication was to take place.

The translators who work at Buffalo Village are missionaries who live in Ukarumpa, and Kim has their adopted daughter, Lillian in one of her math classes.  Lillian is a Papua New Guinean by birth, but is being raised Dutch.  Lillian was very excited to see Kim at the village and enjoyed taking her around and introducing her to all of her friends.  It is very hot and steamy in the jungle and during the dedication we all just kind of sat and dripped sweat.

Once the dedication was complete, we were ushered to the translator’s house for the dinner that the villagers had been preparing since the previous evening.  A large feast that accompanies a celebration in PNG is called a mumu.  One interesting thing about mumu’s is that the people make the food together but then they all go to their own home to eat it.  It is much different than an American feast, where everyone eats together. 
The food was very good.  We had brought our water bottles with us on the trip, but some of the villagers had made some orange drink and offered it to us, so we shared a glass of that instead of drinking our water.  Shortly after the mumu, we loaded back into the Hilux and headed for home.  It was getting to be about 3:30 pm and rain was coming.  Also, it is not safe to be out after dark, so it is good to give yourself plenty of time to get to your destination so you have time to change a tire of something if you need to without being caught after dark.  The rain hit when we were about half  way back to Madang and Jacob was riding in the back of the Hilux, so he got pretty wet. 
The following day we got a slow start.  We were all pretty tired from the previous two days and, Marjan and Kim and I  had pretty bad sunburns.  Kim and I also  were having stomach issues as a result of drinking the villagers’ orange drink the day before.  We did some asking around and some of the people we talked to were shocked that we had drank the village drink and assured us that it most probably came from the river at the village.  After a morning at our flat, we decided that we would walk over to the Madang resort and see if we could catch a small boat out to one of the islands off the coast known as Krankit Island.  Krankit Island is in the shape of a horseshoe and we had read that the snorkeling in the lagoon on the inside of the island was really good.  David, Evelyn, Marjan, Kim and Jacob walked down to the dock and,  seeing a man with a boat, asked how much it would be to take us to Krankit Island.  He said one Kina for each of us.  We thought that was a pretty good deal so we hopped aboard and started out to the island.  Once we were half way out to the island, the man driving the boat mentioned that one Kina would get us to the side of Krankit that is closest to the mainland, but the place we were heading to was on the far side of Krankit, and that would cost us six Kina for each person.  We told him we would give him only 25 Kina and he agreed.  One thing we learned on this trip is that each service has a price, and also a “waitman price”, and the waitman price is much more than they usually charge for the service they provide.  In this scenario, we were being dropped off on a village island, and our only way back to the mainland was in this man’s boat, so we were okay with giving him a little more than normal to help him to remember to come back and get us.  When we landed at our desired portion of the island, we walked along one of the sides of the horseshoe and found two small cottages located right on the tip, literally feet from the ocean on both sides of the island.  The cottages could be rented for 80 Kina, or around $33 a night.  At the cottages was a sand beach and we set out to snorkel from there.  The snorkeling was amazing, the coral was vibrant and the fish life was very good.  We saw lion fish, sea snakes, clown fish, and many others.  It was amazingly good snorkeling and we had it all to ourselves.  At the appointed time, our boat driver returned, and we headed back to Madang.  (Sorry no pictures of Krankit Island, as all possessions were brought there at their own risk.)
The following day was our last day in Madang, so we decided to walk into town to do some shopping.  In town there are thrift stores and grocery stores and a market.  We went to the grocery store,  and looked around at some thrift stores, and then went to the market.  At the market Kim purchased a meri blaus, which is a traditional shirt worn by PNG women, and a lap lap, which is wrap-around skirt.

Jacob purchased a hand carved crocodile from a man named Moses.   We also purchased some pineapples and other fruits.  By the time we walked back to our flat, Kim was feeling quite sick, and Jacob was not doing much better.  Our group was going to spend the afternoon at a resort known as Jais Aban.  Jais Aban has good snorkeling and scuba diving.  There is a B-25 Mitchell at 30 meters that you can scuba dive to and a Mitsubishi Zero that you can supposedly see with just your snorkel mask.  But Kim and I stayed at the flat and reflected on the lesson we had learned about not drinking any water given to you at a jungle village while all of our friends went out to Jais Aban and had another nice day at the ocean. 

The following morning we headed back to Ukarumpa.  We left Madang at around 11 in the morning for the six hour trip back to Ukarumpa.  It gets dark at around 6:30 in this part of Papua New Guinea, and it is not safe being on the roads after dark, so we were not giving ourselves much time to get un-stuck or change a tire if we needed to.  Jacob was not very excited about our late departure from Madang, but as we were just along for the ride, he did not have a choice.  For the most part, the road over the Finisterre Mountains was just as bad as it had been on our way to Madang, except in one part it was worse.  As we crested a hill, a large group of Papua New Guinean men were standing in the middle of the road.  













As we approached, we saw that the road was in terrible shape and they were working on it.  It is always a little bit spooky when a large group of men are in the road because you never really know what they are doing.  Sometimes they are stopping you to charge you to drive on the section of road they have just repaired, and sometimes they are stopping you so they can rob you.  In this case, they were charging us to pass over the section of road they had been working on.  As we pulled to a stop, one of the people on the bus held up his camera to take a picture, and when the national men saw the camera they all held their arms up and began to shout excitedly.  They were so excited to be getting their pictures taken that they let us go through for the very low fee of 10 Kina ($3.33).  We continued on past the excited “construction workers” and had an uneventful trip through the remaining portions of the Finisterre Mountains.  We then drove across the Ramu Valley and started back up the Kissam Pass and into the Highlands of PNG.  We had stopped at a few villages in the Ramu Valley and did not start up the Kissam Pass until around 4:00 pm.  From the base of the pass we still had an hour and a half drive to Ukarumpa.  We began the assent up the pass and after we had made it half of the way up the pass, the bus suddenly started to coast and the bus driver said, “There goes the transmission.”  By this time it was about 4:30 pm and Jacob was realizing the fears he had about our late departure from Madang.  Papua New Guinea is not a place to be on the roads after dark, and the Highlands have a reputation for being particularly bad.  As soon as the bus stopped, Jacob jumped out and crawled under the front of the bus to look at the transmission.

  Seeing no sign of a fluid leak, and not smelling anything hot, he got back on the bus and pulled the access panel out to check the linkage that connects the shifter to the transmission.  As he had suspected, and prayed, a nut had simply rattled loose and the linkage that connected the shifter to the transmission was dangling loose above the transmission.  A quick search of the bus produced a wing nut that was used to hold the tire jack in place.  Using this wing nut, the linkage was repaired and we were crawling up the Kissam Pass once again.  It was a good lesson in leaving early to give enough time to deal with unexpected situations and God taking care of us even with our late departure.  The remainder of the trip was uneventful and we arrived tired, but safely back at Ukarumpa!

First Day at my New Job

My first day on the Job as Ukarumpa’s engineer began with a walk to a house that had been the site of an attempted break-in the night before. The construction manager, LaVeryl Voss, and I were walking down to the river to see the site for the proposed RAM water intake when the distraught home owner saw LaVeryl and came out to tell us the story. She and her husband are translators and she was home alone during the incident. After spending an hour assuring her that larger bars would be installed in her windows LaVeryl and I continued our walk towards the project site. The project site is in one of the oldest parts of Ukarumpa. As we walked LaVeryl pointed out one of the houses, the one right next to the project site actually and said that a national man named Sam lives there. Sam had been terminated from a job in the construction department, and as such was required to move out of Ukarumpa and back to his village. Sam was over a month overdue on his scheduled departure and there was really no good way to remove him as he is a “big man” in his tribe and the powers that be at Ukarumpa was concerned that if he were removed by force he would send the young men of his tribe to make trouble for Ukarumpa.
After looking over the proposed site for the RAM water intake LaVeryl and I walked back to the construction department, got a truck and took a drive around the center so he could give me a tour of the water system. We drove to several water tanks and pump houses. LaVeryl showed me a couple of spare pumps that they have had laying around for years and told me that I could use them on the new RAM water intake project. I asked if he had any pump curves or other documentation for the pumps. LaVeryl just kind of stared at me and then said “I don’t know, you will have to look.” A pump house had been constructed a year and a half prior to my arrival and I asked if there had been an engineer that did the design and LaVeryl said that the project had been done in a hurry and there never was a design. The more questions I asked LaVeryl, the more apparent it became that he did not know much at all about the water system. I continued to ask questions until finally he told me that he is a carpenter and that he has never had much to do with the water system. He then told me that if I wanted a detailed description of the water system I would have to talk to some of the plumbers. We finished our tour and LaVeryl gave me a quick tour of the joinery (where all of Ukarumpa’s furniture is made) the sawmill and the hardware area. Apparently, all of these facilities fall under the construction envelope here in Ukarumpa. While we were in the hardware building I found an old water map hanging on the wall. As I looked at it I began to ask more questions regarding the elevations of tanks and pump houses and sizes and materials of existing water lines. The map was hand drawn in pencil and had faded very badly, almost to the point of being un-readable. As I looked at it I began to speak of mapping the existing water system using CAD and adding pipe sizes and materials as well as tank and pump elevations while I was in Ukarumpa and LaVeryl said “well, it sounds like you are writing your job description.”
I was then shown to my “office”, it was a large room that had at one time served as office space for three people. Now it housed a carpenter trainer and me. My desk faced a window that looks out at the main gate, which is interesting as national people are constantly coming and going throughout the day. I had the pick between 3 different office chairs each of which were broken a different way, and the promise that eventually they would get me a computer. I was introduced to the resident drafts person in the construction department. A young national lady named Melody. I saw that Melody was working on AutoCAD and I asked her what version she was running. She showed me that it was the student version from 2000.
I rounded out the rest of my first day by digging through all of the drawers I could find trying to dig up some information on the water system. Eventually I did find a notebook kept by a water guy that spent time in Ukarumpa in the 1970’s and up to 1986. I also found some old (and slightly moldy) graph paper. I picked the least broken chair, cleaned the dead cockroaches from my desk drawers and took up the task of defining, refining, and designing towards the goal of improving the water distribution system for Ukarumpa.

Some Background and Definitions

Kim and I came to Ukarumpa specifically so I could work on the new RAM water intake for the water system. Ukarumpa uses two kinds of water which it gets from two different places. The two kinds of water are potable (drinkable water) and non-potable (non-drinkable water) and the sources are rain water collected off of roofs and stored in tanks, and from two creeks respectively. The creek water is known as RAM water here in Ukarumpa. Rain is a very clean and reliable source of water during the rainy season. During the dry season an alternative water source becomes necessary. That is where the RAM water comes in.
Years ago, Ukarumpa installed a network of perforated pipes into the gravel at the bottom of a creek that runs along the north side of the community. Water seeps down through the gravel at the bottom of the creek, is collected by the pipes and conveyed via gravity to a pump house where it is then pumped up the hill and into Ukarumpa’s distribution system. This proved to be a good source of RAM water for Ukarumpa for many years, until about a year and a half ago. At that time some of the local tribal leaders got together and decided that they owned the creek and that Ukarumpa had no rights to the water. This is not legally the case, but laws mean nothing in the area of Papua New Guinea where Ukarumpa is located as the police force is corrupt and lawlessness prevails. At any rate, the men from the village attacked and disabled the collection pipes at the stream bed. They then proceded to defend it with bows and arrows and bush knives. This became a very big problem for Ukarumpa very quickly as tank water is the only drinking water we have here and many houses do not have large enough tanks to allow it to be used for showers and flushing toilets, ect. Eventually, a police force had to be brought in from one of the large cities in Papua New Guinea and they were able to force the village men to back off and allow the water source to be repaired.
Shortly after that incident in was decided that Ukarumpa needed a second, more secure source of RAM water. A second creek flows along the south side of Ukarumpa. It was decided that that creek would be detained with a pond and the water from the pond would be used as a second, secure source of water. The pond is considered secure as it is located within the security fence, the infiltration pipes in the other creek are located outside of the security fence. There was not an engineer at Ukarumpa when the pond was created and the pump house built. As a result, no pump sizing was done. Conveniently there were old pumps laying around so they grabbed one plugged it in and started using it. It is 180 vertical feet from the location of the pond to the tanks at the top of the hill, so a second pump and a few tanks were constructed half way up the hill, just in case the first pump could not lift the water high enough.
Shortly after this new detention pond was constructed a new problem arose. The creek that feeds the pond runs through acres of gardens belonging to the local villagers. As there is no season in the highlands of Papua New Guinea when you can’t grow produce, the gardens are being constantly tilled, year round. Also, during the wet season we get monsoon rains every day. The result is a very large amount of soil carried from the gardens into the creek. The creek in turn carries the soil into the pond and it eventually ends up in the water system and finally at our taps. When Kim and I first got here we were in a house that was old and the only tank water was the cold tap in the kitchen and the cold tap in the bathroom sink, everything else was RAM water. The first time I took a shower the RAM water was so dirty that it looked like I was showering in hot chocolate. Needless to say, I did not feel super clean after my shower.
Naturally, after a year and a half of showering and doing dishes in severely dirty water, and not being able to see the bottom of your toilet bowl, (go look into your toilet bowl and imagine how dirty the water would have to be to not be able to see bottom) people here are ready for a better source of RAM water. The new RAM water intake that I am working on designing and will build will collect water from the Bae’ River, a much larger, much cleaner source of water.

Our New House

Our first Monday at Ukarumpa was very busy, we spent the day with our host couple, Benji and Esther.  They showed us how to get a post office box, and told us how the mail works here.  They got us set up at the bank and told us how to get access to our money.  The bank is interesting because in many ways Ukarumpa runs on credit.  Everyone has an account number and if you give it at the store they will just debit your account.  The interesting thing is that the account numbers for everyone are posted for all to see.  That way, if someone owes you money, you just go to the bank and get it from his account…without him.  It seems very strange to Americans who are so used to being careful about identity theft, but it works here. 
After we completed our errands with Benji and Esther, we went to the housing department and asked if they had any other houses available.  Ukarumpa is able to support a population of up to around 1,000 people and currently supports somewhere between 350 and 500 people, so there are plenty of housing opportunities available.  The population fluctuations are a result of translators being out at villages and people going on furlough and stuff like that.  At any rate, we were able to get a different house that was still very close to our jobs, right across the street from the store, close to the market, and in a much busier neighborhood, which makes us feel more secure at night.  Also, the new house has solid floors, so fewer geckos come in, Jacob found three dead ones in the old house, and at the new house one gecko did come in when Kim opened the door to enter once, but that is still two less geckos then we found at the old house!  Our new house has five bedrooms, which is obviously too large for us, but it is very nice with hardwood floors and a fireplace.

Our new house has two two-thousand gallon water tanks that collect rain water from our roof gutters.  We then use the rain water for drinking and bathing.   The old house we were at had one one-thousand gallon tank and was plumbed so we could use the tank water for drinking, but not bathing.  For bathing the old house used what people here call ram water.  Ram water is the water from the water distribution system; it operates much as water from distribution systems in the states, but it comes from a muddy creek and receives no treatment prior to being piped to the homes.  Being that it is currently the rainy season, the ram water is very muddy and you can imagine how fun it is to shower in smelly water that looks like chocolate milk.  We are very thankful for the rain water system this new house has.

Our First Few Days in the “Land of the Unexpected”

Our arrival in Papua New Guinea finally arrived. As we taxied towards the terminal it was very sparsely populated by Air Niugini aircraft and private aircraft of every kind. As we had large carry on items in the overhead compartment, we waited for the other passengers to get off of the plane and then we proceeded to remove our luggage from the overhead compartments and deplane. It turned out that this was not a great idea as we ended up dead last in the line to go through customs.

The airport was clean but old, and we waited in line for about an hour to go through customs and have our passports stamped. As we waited we watched our action packers come in on the luggage carrousel and slowly make revolution after revolution. When we got to the customs counter we handed them our passports. They looked at them, stamped them, and said “Welcome to Papua New Guinea.” It seemed way too easy, and we were sure that the ease of clearing customs meant that immigrations was going to go through our action packers with a fine-toothed comb. We retrieved our four fifty-plus pound bags from the luggage carrousel and loaded them onto a luggage cart with our very oversized carry-ons on our backs and proceeded to the immigrations station. As we approached, we watched as a Chinese man with one small bag was being forced to dump everything out and the immigrations officer was rummaging through his belongings. We walked up to an immigrations officer and handed him our paperwork. He looked at the papers and then at his fellow officer and said “SIL.” He stepped aside and said “Welcome to Papua New Guinea.” He did not look twice and one of our huge pieces of luggage. SIL, which is the Summer Institute of Linguistics, is what Wycliffe Bible Translators is known as overseas, and they typically have a very good relationship with the governments of the countries in which they work. It was clear that we were the beneficiaries of this relationship.

We met the gentleman from Wycliffe that had been sent to meet us, and we were soon on our way to the Mission Aviation Fellowship hanger to catch our jungle plane. Once we arrived at the hanger, we were required to weigh ourselves and our luggage to make sure that the plane would have capacity to carry everything.

Fortunately, our luggage was light enough and everything was cleared to be loaded on the plane. We had the pleasure of flying out on the new Kodiak aircraft that Wycliffe had recently received. The Kodiak was very impressive and boasted all of the latest in avionics

Our flight inland offered many breathtaking views of the dense jungle that was passing below. It was not long and we began to notice small round grass huts on ridges and open areas. It was amazing to see these small villages that were so remote and think about what the people who called them home thought of us as we went zipping through the sky over their village.

Our flight lasted about an hour and we began to drop into the Ayura Valley that is the location of Ukarumpa.

We touched down and taxied towards the hanger. A small crowd had formed to welcome us to Ukarumpa. There was our host couple, Kim’s supervisor, Jacob’s supervisor and a couple that specializes in helping to orient people to life at Ukarumpa. It was around 4:00 pm on Friday the 29th of January. We had been traveling since 6:00 am on the Tuesday the 26th of January and we were tired. After a few minutes of meeting new people, the crowd dispersed.

Our host couple loaded us and our luggage into a vehicle and drove us to a house that had been assigned to us. The house we had been assigned to was next to a park filled with large jungle trees and was kind of set back all by itself. It was surrounded by all sorts of flowers and other decorative types of plants. We were deposited at the house by our host couple, Benji and Ester Campbell. Benji and Ester had purchased us some groceries to get us through the weekend, as the store is closed on the weekends. They showed us that they had gotten us milk, eggs, bread, bananas, a pineapple, and various other groceries. They then told us that at 6:00pm we were to have dinner with Jacob’s supervisor, LaVeryl Voss, and his family. LaVeryl lived just across a field from our house, so after spending a little time unpacking we walked over to the Vosses. LaVeryl’s wife, Max, had made tacos for dinner. We enjoyed a very nice meal and then sat and chatted for a while. At around 8:00pm we were beginning to get very tired as we had at this point had no time to recover from our long trip. We said good night to LaVeryl and his family and walked back to our house. Once home we got ready for bed and called it a night.


The house that had been assigned to us was like a small rustic cabin. It was clear by the layout that originally the house had had an outhouse. When you walked in the front door the bathroom was immediately to the right and straight ahead was a doorway (the door had been removed) into the kitchen. The master bedroom was immediately to the left as you walked in the front door. The bed was situated so from the bed you had an interrupted view of the entryway, the front door and into the bathroom. A large wooden bat (not the kind used for baseball) was leaning against the night stand. The floor of the entryway was very much like the floor you would find on a deck outside, it was made of 2x6’s and there were ½ inch cracks between each plank. The front door was interesting as well as it had no door knob, but rather just a leather strap used to pull it open or shut and then a deadbolt to lock it. Also, it was made of planks of wood and you could see through the cracks in it.

Being exhausted, we had gone to bed and were lying the master bedroom just dozing off to sleep when Jacob heard someone walking in the yard. He pulled the curtain back and peered out the window and watched as a Papua New Guinean man walked up to the front door and began to yank on the leather strap. The door was dead-bolted and when the man was done shaking it he turned and saw Jacob peering at him. At this point the man said “gud nait” (Tok Pisin for good night) and Jacob replied by saying “Good Evening” (English for what the heck are you trying to open my door for?) in as menacing a voice as he could muster. The man walked off. At this point we laid in bed for sometime contemplating if what had just happened was “normal,” we were in a different culture after all. Being unable to determine for ourselves what was normal in Papua New Guinea we decided to call LaVeryl. After Jacob relayed our experience to LaVeryl, he assured us that is was not normal to have someone try to open your door after dark, but suggested that possibly one of the guards was checking on the door to make sure no one had broken in, as the house had been vacant for some time. Being satisfied with this explanation and exhausted from our trip, we both fell fast asleep.

The following morning we were scheduled to have a tour of Ukarumpa. As we were being shown around Ukarumpa we mentioned our experience from the night before and our tour guide mentioned that there had been a rash of night time burglaries taking place at Ukarumpa the last few days and that the “raskols” (Tok Pisin for rascal) as they are called don’t mind if people are home when they break in or not. But we were assured that it was most likely a guard just checking to make sure no raskols had broken into the house, which had been vacant for some time.

On our way back towards our house we saw our friend Heidi from Bozeman, who is also a teacher at Ukarumpa, and stopped to talk with her. Heidi said that she had just been by our house and a group of Papua New Guineans had just killed a cow in our yard. The story went that two cows had escaped from a fence that morning, one a milk cow, and the other a cow scheduled to be slaughtered that day. The cow scheduled to be slaughtered had run through our yard but was apprehended and was being dismembered by what appeared to be a very excited group of Nationals on the lot line between our house and our neighbors. It was crazy; after they were done with the cow we walked over to the location they had butchered it and there was no sign of the cow…except a set of tracks that sank 3 inches into the saturated soil and abruptly ended with no sign of the cow…had we been ignorant of the mornings activities in that location it would have looked like the cow vanished into thin air.

That night we were getting ready for bed and the events of the previous day and night were running through our minds. We went to bed around 9pm and just kind of laid there listening to all of the evening jungle noises that may or may not have been raskols surrounding our house. At around midnight, sleep was finally starting to take hold when from the entryway came a violent thud followed immediately by a loud crack. Before he even had time to think, Jacob had grabbed the bat from by the bed and wielding it, had thrown himself into the entryway to fend off the raskol that had just kicked the door in. Fortunately, the raskol turned out to be the pineapple Benji and Ester had purchased for us that had rolled off a shelf onto the plank floor where it thudded loudly and then cracked upon impact. It now lay bleeding pineapple juice down through the cracks in the floor. Jacob, standing trembling over the broken fruit still clutching the bat, and shaking from the adrenaline that had coursed through his body looked back to Kim who was sitting up in bed and said “It’s Okay, it was just the pineapple”. Needless to say, we did not sleep much the rest of the night.