Social networking

Organisational safety requirements are that I have an HF radio in the village which I listen to every morning, checking in twice a week on schedule.

I dutifully brought all this equipment with me, including a solar power system to keep it all running. On arrival in the village, we created a scene as we set up the radio antenna and solar panels, wiring everything to my bedroom. I had plenty of helpers and observers for the set up, and plenty of people enjoying the light at night and the availability of phone charging ever since.

In the mornings, I sit down to eat my breakfast as I listen to the morning sched. I didn’t bring a list of radio calls signs with me, but am quickly learning to recognise voices and know who else is out in the village. With the end of the school year approaching*, there are not many teams out, as families chose to be in town for end of year events.

Sitting by the radio and checking in on Mondays and Thursdays makes me feel like an old-school missionary. The radio was their connection with the outside world, their lifeline for news, flight schedules and medical advice. Even today, I have a sense of belonging as I hear the voices of friends in their far away villages, knowing that we are colleagues working together on one task.

Often while I’m listening to the radio, I’m also checking email and facebook on my phone. Usually there is enough coverage for me to download text, but rarely enough for pictures. The radio operator and two of the three levels of supervisors above me are my facebook friends, who ‘like’ my posts and so know where I am, making the radio seem obsolete much of the time. The fact phone towers go out of service, sometimes for weeks at a time, is the reason I’m still required to have a radio, but the contrast remains.

There is the contrast of communication styles, but really there is nothing new about any of it. Humans are social beings and we like to keep in touch with each other. We want to know what is going on in the world, in the lives of our friends and family. We want to know that we are not alone in our joys or in our sufferings. Online social networks are simply a new take on reading the ‘births, deaths and marriages’ or social pages in the newspaper. They are wider reaching versions of the lady in the front garden leaning on the fence and the man in the pub leaning on the bar. That wider reach can be a challenge for me, as I sit in my village house and am delighted at the birth of a friend’s child and saddened by the final days of another friend's wife. These people are strangers to each other and strangers to the people around me. I am the only common link. It is hard to celebrate or to grieve in isolation.

With my radio I communicate with a small group within my organisation. With my phone I keep in touch with friends and contacts. With this blog I open my thoughts to whoever chooses to read them.

Blessings and Bubbles standing by.

*Although in the southern hemisphere, the international school in Ukarumpa operates to a northern hemisphere schedule to cater to the majority of the student population. The PNG school year finishes in December.

PS As I’m writing this blog post with limited internet, there are no photos. I intend to add them at a later date once I have a better connection and have caught up on rest.

Days of Our Lives

Life in the village makes soap operas believable.

First, there was the tale of the teachers who had gone to Port Moresby to get school supplies. They were gone five weeks, and daily gossip centered around the weather and if they’d be able to get a dinghy back or not. Old stories of overturned dinghies and lost lives were repeated, to keep an appropriate level of suspense at all times. Then the news came in that some of the teachers were in prison! More gossip flew around the village, but an alcohol fueled incident was the most likely cause of any time locked up.

When the teachers did eventually come back, everyone was on the river bank to meet them. They had brought betel nut, and were throwing it piece by piece to the waiting crowd. A riot just about ensued and people jostled to catch a piece. Returning to their homes, the teachers had gifts for their family and friends, from the bounty of cargo available in Moresby. Someone had brought a generator and fuel, so lights and music continued though the night.

School did not resume for another week after the teachers returned, as first there needed to be a village court to resolve an issue of two students wanting to marry the same teacher. In PNG, students in primary school can easily be in their late teens, so although this is  against the law (so I was told), the age gap is not as big as it would be in Australia. In the end, both girls remained students, the teacher will be transferred elsewhere next year, compensation was paid and a reconciliation meal was held.

Love rivalries and multiple marriages make up a fair portion of the village soap opera. In my own village family there were three mothers. Add to that multiple adoptions within the family and I have a confused idea of who is the genetic or adoptive parents of whom. It took me long enough to work out who slept in our house each night (11 people) and how they are fitted together!

For a soap opera, the level of tragedy would be acceptable, but this is real life and some things are a harsh reality. One small child in a neighbouring village drowned in the river. Another small child, who had been sickly since birth, died a few hours after his parents fought and his father stormed off to be with his second wife elsewhere. This later proved to be the same man who was so drunk that when he was towed home in his canoe, he was oblivious to the rain pouring down on him. A young father died, leaving his wife and small children. The yelling and thumps heard from across the village speak of domestic violence in multiple homes.

There is also the comedy of the village soap opera. My village brother was in a band in the 90s, and apparently they’re getting the band back together. I can’t help but smile every time I hear that phrase. Small stories become big events, with all sorts of development just over the horizon and the streets to soon be paved with gold. One day I heard people talking seriously of a university being established in the area. Seeing as the primary school has been closed for six weeks while the teachers were away, I somewhat doubt the likelihood of a university being a success. My personal favourite was the highway that was to be built all the way to Cairns, and from there to Australia. Never mind that Australia starts a few thousand kilometres before Cairns!

The side show to the village soap opera is the reality TV star- me. I may not have a camera watching me, but I do have plenty of eyes observing me and reporting what I do. Being watched all the time is exhausting, but I am the local entertainment and accept it as part of my job description. I was once told that a colleague had applied to go on Survivor, but been rejected because she would have been too good at it. With all our practical jungle survival skills and our experienced at being endlessly observed, I can believe the story to be true.

Like mud between your toes on a muddy path in rainy season, these are the days of our lives.

PS I am writing these blog posts with limited internet access and scheduling them for the coming weeks. Photos will be added later when better internet is available.

Toddlerdom

Learning a new language through immersion is like returning to toddlerhood. The world around you no longer fully makes sense. People do strange and inexplicable things. People look at you intently and say a string of sounds which have little meaning and you don’t know how to respond. People laugh because you did something funny, but you’re not sure what it was. It is exhausting! Naps are a great idea to recover enough energy for the next round of learning and I understand why toddlers have tantrums out of sheer frustration.

I am thankful that as I learn Kope, I do have training  and some aids. During  my year at linguistics school I studied methods and techniques to help with language acquisition. As a linguist worked in this area in the 1980s and Robbie has worked there more recently, I have some papers and books I can refer to. There is the draft of a small dictionary. There is a children’s picture dictionary. There is a grammar of a closely related language. There are some children’s story books. Each of these is a wonderful resource for me to refer to for new words, confirming the meaning of words and for learning phrases in context. There is no ‘How to learn Kope’ book, but these other books are invaluable helps.

Another language learning help is that I share the house with a toddler. Although he comprehends more Kope than I do, and will become fluent sooner than I will, he helps me out. Because of Small Boy I have learnt the words for ‘Be quiet!’, ‘Enough!’ ‘Put it down!’ and other such phrases. His default method of communication when he has no words, crying, is one method I have chosen to bypass.

Although toddlers start their language development with a lot of ‘I want…’ I have started with stating the obvious. ‘I am cold’.’ ‘I am hot.’ ‘ The woman is tall.’ ‘The man is strong.’ Stative clauses are easy enough.  Well, except for the day I said ‘Mo darudaru ka’ instead of ‘Mo daradara ka,’ so declaring that I was yellow, rather than that I was confused.

Adding verbs is when it gets complex, but even then I am stating the obvious. ‘I am going to the toilet.’ ‘I am going to the house.’ Still, if I can learn to make verbs work for me with obvious statements, I should eventually be able to make complex statements and string my clauses together into some sort of story or argument.

Another area of village life in which the toddler outstrips me is in balance and stability. He has grown up with canoes and mud, so knows how to sit and walk so that he does not fall over. I am still learning. Miraculously, in the first six weeks I have only had one slip, the bigger miracle being that no one else saw it happen. I also weigh a whole lot more than a toddler, and more than most village folk, so I am the one who will find every weak plank in a house or a walkway. Breaking people’s houses is rather embarrassing, for both parties. I am learning to assess strength of planks before I step and to pace my steps for the parts with a beam underneath. Meanwhile, the toddler skips about the house and other adults walk in straight lines.

So it is that I have returned to being an adult sized toddler. Some days I have to remind myself that this is a stage, that it will pass, and pass sooner the more I focus on language learning. In a country where the white people are generally seen as the experts and the teachers, it is good for me to be the incompetent one and the learner. I have been learning a lot about humility as well as about language!

At the moment the toddler in the house knows more language than me, but my goal is eventually to be able to speak with Old Lady (really, that is what people call her in language). As she has few teeth, no English, talks quickly and laughs at her own jokes, I have set my sights high.

PS I am writing these blog posts with limited internet access and scheduling them for the coming weeks. Photos will be added later when better internet is available, although as Small Boy does not like to wear pants, and those sort of photos are all kinds of trouble, there may still be no photos of my toddle sized language helper.

Friends, Furloughs, Finish and Farewells

June is an ‘F’ sort of month as an ex-pat. It is the month when you farewell your friends who are going on furlough or finishing in the field.

Although I am a Southern Hemisphere person and we work in that same half of the globe, most of my colleagues are Northern Hemispherites and our school runs to that schedule. This means that June is the end of the school year and the end point of many people’s field terms. From graduation onwards, there is an annual exodus as people return to their passport countries. Some intend on only being away a few months or a few years. Others are finishing their time in the field, packing up their life here and returning to a country they may no longer feel much belonging to, to start a new life there.

Leaving or staying, we spend our time saying goodbye. Often we do not know if or when we will ever meet again on earth. Friends scatter all over the globe, and as much as we would love to visit each other, we are realistic about the limitations of time and budgets. We intend to keep in touch, but are maybe more hopeful than realistic about that.

We look around us at church as the pews thin out and week by week the list of farewells is announced. We carry hankies as tears are never far away. Out at the airstrip they call it ‘cry week’.

The pews will fill again, as last year’s furlough takers return and new faces arrive. It can be hard to give a good welcome to the new people when the wounds of farewells are raw. Do I really bother to get to know this person? Either they or I will be leaving soon enough…

Reasons for going finish are many and varied. Children’s schooling or elderly parents are common reasons. Retirement is a reason to celebrate as it usually means the end of a long and fruitful career in this country. Illness and conflict and also reasons for leaving, reasons which add an extra layer to the grief of farewells.

This year I’ll be in the village much of June, missing the official farewell afternoon teas. A friend has called these ‘missionary wakes’, as people gather for small talk, encouraging comments and a sad hug. I’ll be returning to Ukarumpa on the back load of a cry week exodus flight. There are four flights from Ukarumpa to the capital city that day and it is a day there are usually no flights to the capital. Four full flights down and only about four people flying back in. I’ve said my farewells pre-village, starting the tears of June in April, knowing I will return to what feels like a ghost town.

Farewell my friends and thank you for sharing this season of your life with me. It is my prayer that as you go you will know that you are loved here, and that you will find people to love and be loved by in the next place. May we each have the grace to keep opening our hearts to the people around us, even though there is another farewell somewhere down the road. May the joy we share in the meantime make the tears worthwhile in the end.