Return

When I first arrived in PNG two years ago, I arrived full of nervous excitement. I was arriving in a country I barely knew, but intended to live and work in for decades to come. I was arriving to a large organisation where I only knew a handful of people. I was arriving two days before my brother’s 40^th birthday and a week before Easter, so keenly felt the distance from family and home community. I knew little of what I would be doing.

The dramatic Kaintiba airstrip. One more stop and I'm home!

Two years later, I flew back to PNG for my second work term, with a sense of returning home and excitement to be back. Coming into Port Moresby I looked out the plane window and could recognise places.  At the MAF hangar where we waited for our flight to the Highlands, I had friends to catch up with, not strange faces all around me.  Flying into a remote and challenging airstrip on our way home I enjoyed the drama of the scenery and was not worried about safety.

Not everything in my return went smoothly. When we arrived in Moresby, I was unsure if our arrival details had been noted and that we were being met with transport. This was not a worry though, as I had a PNG phone, had kina to buy credit and knew who to call. Other small things happened, but I knew the system to make things work and it did not bother me. Two years ago, had these things gone wrong, I would have been very stressed.

Welcoming other friends home.

Now that it is nearly Easter again, I am happy to be back and enjoying reconnecting with friends. The life and death cycle I wrote about during furlough has continued here too. A family I did orientation with ‘went finish’ while I was away. I did not know this when I left, so did not say a proper goodbye. Another family I am close to returned with their new baby. Two other families I am close to are preparing to leave. A friend who was over for lunch just announced that she is pregnant again. New people are arriving from orientation.

I still miss family and friends in Australia, sometimes more than others. When I was surrounded by American accents in church last week, I really missed my home church in Australia. When we sang a song it seemed everyone else knew, I missed the songs from the All Together books, which as an Aussie Lutheran I grew up on, but that no one else in this community knows.

Now I have two homes. I refer to being in Australia as ‘being home’ and coming back to PNG as ‘returning home’.  In each place there are people I love and things I delight in, and in each place there are challenges.

I had enjoyed being home (Aus), but it is good to be home (PNG).