POC: Medical

Life in another land has many challenges, including staying healthy. The bugs are different to at home, cleanliness is thought of in a different way and access to health care is different. To help us stay healthy and remain in PNG, we’ve been having a series of medical lectures. Much of it boils down to being diligent in caring for ourselves and staying hydrated with clean water. At POC we’ve had our share of bugs, as people arrive stressed by major life changes and adjust to living together in a new place. The longer we are here, the more we adjust and the healthier we are.

Medical approaches across cultures are very different. Illness in PNG is often attributed to broken relationships, for the spiritual and the physical are seen to be directly related. Maintaining healthy relationships equates to maintaining the health of a community. Although the US and Australia are both ‘western’ they too have different medical approaches. I am used to using dettol or just clean water for cleaning wounds. My US friends bleach everything. As for a response to choking, they teach the Heimlich manoeuvre, which first aid training in Australia told me never to use. Lateral chest thrusts, a fancy phrase for a good thumping on the back or side, is taught instead.

As an ex-pat in this country I have health advantages. The organisation I am with has its own health centre and a doctor on call 24-7. By phone (or radio) I can always get medical advice. I am sent to the village with medications for a range of conditions that the doctor can then remotely prescribe for me to use, a situation I am familiar with from life at sea. There too, we had a locked cabinet of prescription medication and a doctor at the end of the radio or satellite. The organisation I am with also has an aviation department, to get people to and from remote villages. They also do Med-Evacs when necessary, including to Australia for more significant help. Although I pray I never need such an evacuation, there is comfort in knowing the safety net is there and that it even delivers me to my home country! Knowing insurance will pay for it is also comforting, but I’d prefer to stay fit and healthy.

POC: Cultural Awareness

Increasing our cultural awareness is a significant part of POC. This is not just making us aware of PNG culture, but aware of our own cultures and how they shape our judgements and reactions. I have found this last part the more significant as I live and work with people from across the globe. Each nation has its cultural norms, but within that is still a great range of expressions and experiences.

To increase our PNG cultural awareness we have had a series of lectures on PNG life and culture. They have covered topics such as kinship, the spiritual and the physical and the relationship of the two, the significance of gift giving, the community based nature of decisions and life as well as the value of relationships over tasks. It has been good to get a range of pointers for what to look for and questions to ask. This has been much more helpful than being given all the answers, as PNG has such a plethora of cultural expressions that there is no such thing as one PNG culture.

Before coming to PNG, I was warned that the biggest conflicts are often between co-workers, not with nationals. It can be the small cultural differences that chafe the most and, as we all know, chafe is the enemy. Our sessions on multi-cultural teamwork have been aimed at reducing this chafe by introducing understanding. The model we’ve been working within has two main scales; the hierarchical to the non-hierarchical culture as well as the strong to the weak community. PNG has a very strong sense of community, the US a weak sense of community. Australia is somewhere in between. This makes for PNG a communal culture and the USA an individualistic culture. Each has its strengths as well as its weaknesses, as well as its conflicts with the other.

In reflecting on where I fit in these scales, I am constantly evaluating my responses and expectations. This allows me to understand both myself and the people around me. I can better see why I find some people greedy and selfish; they are living out their individualistic culture. The same people often have a great self confidence, which can appear as arrogance, as their individualistic culture has given them a valuable sense of their self worth. Meanwhile, I can find myself struggling with my own self-worth, as the communal culture knocks tall poppies down. Yet, on the communal end of the scale I value the sharing and care that occurs, that PNG people are very good at including people. Where greed is the sin of the weak community, envy is the sin of the strong community as that which is yours is, or at least should be, mine, so I may as well take it to even things up. The individualist points and says ‘thief’ while the communalist indirectly agrees with their peers that the other person is selfish and greedy. Name-calling rarely helps. Understanding and adjusting our behaviour is more helpful.

Learning traditional roofing

Cross cultural child care

 I find that years at sea have taught me to function well within a hierarchy, yet on land I lean towards weak structure and consensus. PNG, Australian and North American cultures all function within a low hierarchy. Our European and Asian colleagues are more comfortable with the rules and social order of a more hierarchical culture. Many at POC struggle with the set schedule, doing activities they do not like and living to rules they would write differently, as they are from the low hierarchy culture. Life here is less ordered than at sea, so I fit into it easily enough for the time we are here.

We’ve talked about many more things like this, including the different cultural values and divisions of personal and private, clean and dirty, what constitutes a ‘proper’ home, good and bad, the causes of sickness and conflict and much more. Learning basics for reflecting on culture has been an important part of POC. Many things I’ve learnt before, but encountering them again while I am in another land and surrounded by people from a variety of cultures and places has meant I’ve had to constantly be putting them into practise, which is the best way to learn. Hopefully now I not only survive, but thrive within a multinational organisation in PNG as  I continue to live and learn. -->

POC: 6 Weekers

The youngest 6 week POC participant

6 week POC participant, David, practising fire cooking

Fourteen weeks of POC is a long time to invest in a training course, but worthwhile for  those of us who plan on being long term in this region. For people who are here shorter term (and various other reasons) there is also a six week version of POC. For the first five weeks we all do the same things. In week six the short-term POCers go on a five day village stay and the rest of us start to focus more on preparing for our five week village stay.

On their return from the village the 6-weekers had all had a good experience of PNG life, as well as their share of challenges. They’d all been very well looked after, felt their Tok Pisin had improved and were glad for a hot shower and a familiar bed. Saying goodbye to them was sad, as they have very much been part of our community to this point. We feel their absence…particularly in the noise levels. The six weekers happened to include all the children aged under one, who are at a noisier age and stage.

Now that only the fourteen week POC participants remain, the focus has shifted to village preparations. We are dehydrating food to take with, planning and shopping for five weeks, and starting to wind down life at Nobnob. Just as we had settled into the POC routine, everything is set to change once again!

POC: Haus Kuk Weekends

Pancakes in the roasting dish

Pot Oven

Collapsed haus kuk

As a family we grew up going camping. Somehow, Mum and Dad would fit all seven of us plus tents, bedding, clothes, food etc into the van and we would head off to National Parks and other bush places. Campfires, pit toilets, sponge bathing and nights under a glorious display of stars were all part of  this. Mum and Dad were not deliberately preparing me for POC and PNG, but going on an affordable holiday that explored our remarkable land. Yet, preparation it proves to have been.

As most others coming to PNG do not quite have so much camping experience, haus kuk weekends are part of the programme to prepare us for village living. Haus kuks are the name for outdoor kitchens that are standard in local villages. We have built our haus kuks out of bush poles, string and tarp, and although less sturdy than a local haus kuk, they provide us shelter in which to practice our campfire cooking skills and get an idea of what food we might like to take with to the village.

Thankfully, the point of building them was the cooking, not the building, as we have not had the most success in the building department. Our haus kuk stood up to the first tropical downpour and at least one earthquake, but two further tropical downpours flattened it. The work men had mercy on us and rebuilt it while we were in class one day and it is now much straighter and sturdier. Our version was slightly wonky and wobbly.

The cooking has been much more of a success and I’m enjoying pushing the boundaries of my campfire cooking ability. A pot oven and a heavy based roasting dish open up possibilities beyond the saucepan I’ve previously worked with. Dishes I am proud of so far include sticky date pudding, sour dough bread and pizza. We’ve also discovered that tinned corned beef can make surprisingly good meat balls and that well fried thin slices of tinned luncheon pork go well with scrambled eggs. There is an amusing cultural bias in our pancake toppings; peanut butter for the American in the team, maple syrup for the Canadian, sugar and lemon for me and our German team mate was wishing she had nutella. Okay, so she was not the only one wanting nutella…

I am very much enjoying haus kuk weekends as I find the pace slower. We organise meals when we want to and eat them in a small group. During the week meals are to a schedule and shared with fifty plus others. Other POCers find haus kuk weekends stressful, as campfire cooking is more of a chore and less of an adventure for them. I’m a kid who has gone camping in the back yard, they are parents trying to manage large families in a foreign land and all that entails. Hopefully though, it prepares us all for our five weeks in the village.

POC: Tok Pisin

Tisa Itbam showing us how to weave a wall

Language is a critical part of understanding and participating in culture as well as being critical to building relationships. As such, it is no surprise that learning Tok Pisin is an important part of POC.

Tok Pisin is one of the national languages of PNG. In a country with over 800 different languages, national languages facilitate communication between people groups. Tok Pisin started as a trade language that allowed early colonialists and plantation owners to communicate with their workers. It also allowed workers to communicate with each other across their own cultural and linguistic barriers.

Although Tok Pisin relies heavily on English for words, it is not just a simplified English. It uses words in its own distinct way, has its own grammar and its own idioms. Still a trade language in many places, it has also become a first language for some. This often occurs when parents are from different language groups and do not speak each other's language, but speak to each other in Tok Pisin.

Knowing English sometimes simplifies learning Tok Pisin, and other times complicates it. Simplification occurs when you try something using the English and it works. Complication comes when the English sounding word is a 'false friend' of the Tok Pisin. 'Mi laikim dispela samting' does not mean that you appreciate something, but that you want it and can mean you've requested that someone give you their possessions. Oops.

Another trap is the broad meanings of Tok Pisin words. The language has a small vocabulary, so each word has a wide semantic range. You may learn one meaning, then hear the same word in a different context and find the meaning quite different. 'Amamas' means happy, praise, gift, appreciate and probably more. 'Ananas' means pineapple, so be careful you get the word right!

We've been learning Tok Pisin using a variety of methods; songs, lectures, small groups, reading and storytelling. My teacher, Tisa Itbam, has been very patient at teaching us phrases, words and correcting us when we get stuck. Practising the language with our teacher as well as with our wasfemili (host family, more about that in another post) means that we have come a long way in not too long. Gaining confidence with the language gives me confidence to live and work here in PNG.

Pacific Orientation Course: Introduction

View from Nobnob

For over a month now, I’ve been at POC (Pacific Orientation Course) at Nobnob near Madang. POC is a fourteen week course designed to introduce us to life, culture and language in PNG. The goal is to give us an appreciation for the life of Papua New Guineans as well as skills to live, minister and thrive in this country.

To this end, the course has many facets which I hope to describe in a series of blog posts. As this is my first post in six weeks of POC and it is only a few weeks until we head to villages for a five week block, please be patient if the posts are somewhat delayed in arriving!

POC is certainly a full-on experience. The busy schedule is only a part of it; between 28 adult participants, their 20 kids (mostly pre-school aged) and staff families, everyday life is never dull. Shared meals, living in dorms around a common quadrangle, riding up and down the mountain in the POC truck…life is full and often tiring, but good.

I hope you enjoy my POC snapshots as I write them and post them. Maybe I’ll even manage to add some photos, but we’ll see.