The notebook

In a world that has largely moved on to electronic communications I continue to cart piles of paper about with me. Journal, Bible, novel, diary and a notebook are my companions. Sometimes I carry a sketch book too, as I believe that creating is part of what it means to be made in the image of the Creator.

My notebook is my external memory device. It is where I note things to deal with later, be that things to purchase, people to contact, thoughts to contemplate, books to read or events to write about. When I worked on sailing ships as mate, it was an essential part of my functioning in a complex and responsible role. As I move between places and tasks in my current work, it is the item which helps to keep the right things happening at the right time and in the right place. It is of particular use when in the village as with limited access to the internet, and to the outside world in general, I cannot follow many things up immediately, but most stockpile tasks for later.

One page in my current notebook is labelled 'Aus' and is a long list of things to do while in the land of plenty. There are a few other pages of shopping lists for specific stores (hardware, stationary, grocery). There are numerous notes for future blog posts, noting events and reflections in a few dot points so that they can later grow into prose. There are notes for a meeting and from a meeting, as well as addresses to add to my database.

The page that makes me smile though, is the one that gives evidence of my need to wean myself off social media when I go to the village, as it is labelled 'Life as fb posts.' This page started as I realised I was thinking of events in brief and interesting ways that under normal circumstances I would post for the world to see. So, months later, here are some thoughts from my first weeks in the village when I was still writing such notes to myself.

• Jan 25: We started drafting the Kope NT today!!!!!!!! It took six hours for 13 verses, but it is a good team, good to be started and good to be... thorough.
• Jan 26: Sitting on the verandah contemplating vowel length, tone, stress and their relationship to tense. Feeling like a real linguist.
• Jan 27: Because functioning in English, Kope and Greek was not confusing enough, we've added Hiri Motu to the mix. 
• Jan 28: You know it's a hot day when the chickens all find a cool place to nap at 10am and they're still there at 3pm.
• Jan 29: My ankle callouses are back after spending hours sitting on the floor each day.
• Jan 30: Half an hour to download a few emails to my phone. It's no wonder I've resorted to writing fb posts in my notebook!

…and Tide

 Village wharf as a spring tide comes in.

Time and tide wait for no one.

This is a maxim I thought I understood from my days sailing, but it has taken on new meaning as I live in the tidal delta area of Gulf Province PNG. Tides in our area average 2-3m, with spring tides sometimes going over 4m and neap tides having less than a metre variation at times.

This daily breathing in and out of the river system is part of life. It defines when and where you can travel, as some short cuts only work at high tide, and some routes are best followed with the flow of the tide, rather than travelling against it. The tide defines what people can catch and eat, as the greater the tidal variation in a day, the more the water is stirred up. I’m still learning which things are easier to catch in clear water, and which are more likely in muddy water.

 Same wharf when the spring tide went out.

Although the daily tide dictates life, it does not come into the village, but keeps within the river banks. It is king tides that cause flooding.

King tides occur due to a number of factors, growing bigger when some things align, such as when the partial solar eclipse occurred in January. Rain upstream from us also raises the water level, and although not a king tide, the flooding is similar.  This is when the water comes through the village, making life a little more interesting, as these photos show.

 

 Note the drain in this picture,
it is nearly a metre deep…

 …and vanishes in a king tide, so watch your step!

 Having avoided swimming in the drain with a mis-step,
I reached the bridge, only to find that it was floating,
which made crossing to the other side …’interesting’.

Time…

In Papua New Guinea we talk about ‘PNG time.’ By this we mean that things will happen when they happen, and that clocks and schedules are not the driving force, but relationships and other matters are. For me, who comes into this from a sailing background where five minutes early to watch (duty) was considered on time, it can be quite challenging. Often, I find life has become a case of hurry-up-and-wait, especially when something is happening ‘soon’.

Now that we have started drafting Scripture in Kope, I will have a language learning session with one of the village ladies in the morning, then return to my house and get ready for the translation team to arrive ‘soon’. I will get everything ready for a stated time, and then wait for people to actually arrive. Sometimes they dribble in over the next hour or so, our start point being that once there are three translators, we can start. Other times everyone arrives at once and we get straight to work. Occasionally no one comes at all and I eventually receive a message that they’re all busy with something else. On one occasion I turned up and they’d arrived before me and were waiting for me!

Part of living with PNG time is that I always have a back up or interim plan. While I wait for translators, transport and other such things, I usually have with some reading material, a letter to write, my language learning recordings to listen to or my vocabulary flashcards to go over. If a plan is cancelled, I have back up options in place, which usually means catching up on typing up notes into my computer or preparing for a text we’ll be working on soon.

Interestingly, while I am learning patience for PNG time, some PNGns have learnt impatience with whiteskins not keeping to whiteskin time. While waiting for locals to arrive is normal, there was one episode of are-they-here-yet when waiting for whiteskins to arrive at an appointed time that they did not keep. I guess when my culture has spent so long emphasising the important of being on time, I should not be surprised that we are then expected to be on time.

Being home in Australia at the moment, I realise that I have absorbed more of the PNG time frame than I thought. I am now more likely to be five minutes late than five minutes early, as was my habit before. I make meeting times with an ‘–ish’ at the end to emphasise that I might not be as exact as before. When I have a more important meeting, I’ve been turning up extra early, as in recognising the importance, I’ve become over cautious with timing.

The timing of things in PNG can require the flexibility of a gymnast, as plans are made, remade and dropped. How to read the timing of events, and when I need to be somewhere, is a skill I’m very much still working on, and one that is undergoing some readjustments now that I am back in the land of clocks and schedules.

Apologies and some links

At the moment I'm on furlough/home assignment in Australia, and although I've got plenty of notes for things to write about, I've not made the time to sit down and write about them. I've made it a priority for this week though, so hopefully this blog returns to normal scheduling from the 15th.

In the meantime, here is a video about the dedication of the Kope Jesus Film last year.

(You can watch the whole film too, if you want to hear what Kope sounds like!)