Day two

It is day two back in the village and I am settling back into life here. Having my own house sure makes for a quieter life, which will hopefully give me the energy I need to really focus on language learning.

My day starts at 6.30am when I turn on the radio for the aviation sked (schedule). When the pilot had dropped me off the day before he had made a comment that alerted me to the fact they had the wrong airstrip booked for the Jesus Film dedication charter flight. I need to fix that in a hurry! Listening to the sked I find that indeed it is going to the wrong place. I thought we had changed that a few months ago. I radio in and request the change to be made. When I listen in the next morning, I am able to confirm that the request was followed through on.

7am and it is Wednesday, the regular sked is replaced with the Director’s sked. The Director of Language Programmes comes on the air to encourage us all and give us updates about the work going on in different places around the country. It is good to hear her voice as I eat my breakfast by the radio. After the Director’s sked we have the regular sked and I’m finally able to officially open my radio station… having already used it a few times! Monday and Thursday are my roll call days, when I call in to confirm that all is well. I can call in any day if I have a message to pass to someone (‘traffic’), but those are the days I must call in.

8am and I am outside greeting people whom I have not seen since I arrived the day before, and showing them the DVDs, SD cards, books and bookmarks I have brought with for the Jesus Film dedication. There is general excitement that the film really is done and here in their hands. I am told there is a meeting ‘at 11am, in two hours time’ about the dedication plans. Although 11am is three hours away, the ‘two hours’ is an indicator that the organiser really would like people to be on time.

8.30am and I’m nailing down the floor of my kitchen. The boards had been laid but never secured, and their wobbliness is annoying me. Armed with hammer and nails I set out to fix the problem. Soon enough someone turns up to do it for me and I hand over my hammer. I’m not sure if this is a gender thing, a help-the-white-person thing or something else, but I chose to hand over the tools rather than argue. A village carpenter also comes to fit out my kitchen with shelves, as until now it is just an open space.

People talk of ‘galley kitchens’ as if they are a real estate highlight. Having worked on ships, I disagree. My favourite definition of a galley was the cook who said she had got herself a job cooking ‘in a wardrobe full of pots and pans that move’. At 2m x 1.2m my kitchen has all the space of a galley, but the crockery is unlikely to attack me unawares. By then end of the day, my kitchen is tidily fitted out and has since proved itself most useful, but only big enough for one.

 The kitchen before… (H.Schulz)

While the kitchen is being built, I put together the two burner cast iron stove which I had brought with me. Hopefully the gas bottle arrives with the Jesus Film guests coming from Kapuna Hospital. There have been numerous plans made and remade about that bottle.

Having defeated the stove, but still having workmen in the house and it not yet being time for the meeting, I have to decide what to do next. First I review all my language learning flash cards. The vocabulary is slowly coming back to me, but it is going to take time and effort for me to both recover what I knew before and learn more. Flash cards done, I move on to reading a theology book. Reading books like this is professional development for me.  A plumbing book would probably be more practical as I set up my house, but theology is what I have available.

At 11am the committee chairman arrives and tells me he is going to go and inform the others that it is time to gather for the meeting. I do my preparation, by putting together supplies of mugs, hot water, tea, coffee, sugar, milk powder and crackers. All meetings go better with a cuppa and a snack. We probably started with the cuppas at about noon, with the meeting then going till 3pm. Most of the meeting was in Kope, with occasional changes to English when I needed to be included. Last minute details were finalised, prices of DVDs and SD cards were negotiated and a second round of cuppas consumed.

 …the kitchen after, including the gas bottle
(H.Schulz)

By the time we were done, the kitchen fit-out was done too. Wow! With basic tools, timber off-cuts and the nails that I provided, I have a lovely little kitchen. I packed all my things into it in no time and set to making curtains to cover the front of the shelves.

The kitchen got done efficiently under the handy excuse of ‘getting ready for visitors’, with my toilets next on the list to use that excuse. Indeed, by the time the day was done, the finishing touches (ventilation pipe) were put to my loos and I could commission them. The luxury of having an indoor toilet is not fully understood unless one has first slid through the mud and walked precarious walkways to reach one, or deliberately dehydrated in the afternoons just to avoid having to go after dark, when an escort is required to go with you. Now I can pee in comfort and privacy, day or night!

During the afternoon I head down to the riverbank to attempt to send and receive messages on my phone. With visitors coming in two days, communication with the outside world is a higher priority than usual. This time it is a case of win-some and lose-some, as some messages got out, but others refused to send. Sitting by the river, waiting for messages to send, I chatted with some village ladies. Apparently I’ve been away too long, as the kids are all scared of me again.

While sitting with the ladies, two pigs arrived in a canoe. They were exchanged for two good canoe-making logs and will be dinner for the dedication feast. One pig seems resigned to its fate, but the other protests with piercing squeals. The discussion turns to the size of the pigs and if they are a bit small for the logs exchanged and the people expected at the feast.

My solar control panel, for those of you
who like such things (H.Schulz)

I’m home before dark so that I can wash off a day’s sweat and dirt in time to put on fresh mosquito repellent before the twilight round of mossies attack. As the daylight fades I turn on my new LED light that is connected to my solar power system. The light is lovely, but it draws another round of bugs into the house. This includes beetles with poor navigation, who crash into things until they knock themselves to the ground and end up stuck on their backs with their legs waving in the air.

As I don’t yet have a gas bottle, dinner is cooked for me by my neighbour, who also boils hot water for me to put in my thermos and use at breakfast time. I’m looking forward to being my own cook from tomorrow!

The village quietens down for the night. Crickets and frogs are the main soundtrack, with the flapping of a bat or a kid in a distant house joining in at times. I sit in my chair (another luxury item) and enjoy the quiet after a busy day of preparing for ‘the programme’. I’ve done little language learning today, but it has been a good day for relationships.  Tomorrow the first visitors will arrive, and I am in bed by 9pm.