Butterflies

Wednesday: As is usual, we headed to the next village for language class and Bible study with the ladies there. For our Bible study we watch a portion of the Jesus Film in Kope, read the same story from the English Good News Bible, and use study questions from an Easy English guide to Luke. This week we looked at the story of the demon possessed boy in Luke 9:37-45. One aspect of the story which we highlighted was that while Jesus had power over demons (v42), he also was going to allow people to have power over him (v44). When we, like the disciples, do not understand what is happening, we still need to trust that God is in control and has a plan.

Luke tells the story fairly briefly. In Mark we are told that "Many times the evil spirit has tried to kill him by throwing him in the fire and into water" (9.22). Matthew says that "He is an epileptic and has such terrible fits that he often falls in the fire or into the water" (17:15). These details did not matter to me on Wednesday, but they came to mind soon enough.

 

Friday: As is usual, we started the day with language class followed by gathering on my veranda to translate hymns into the Kope language. This is always a pleasant way to end the week, as there is much singing involved and people are enjoying the task. Not too far away, a group of mothers were sitting in the shade making new thatch for the elementary school roof, chatting and enjoying each other's company while working for the community.

We were working on the song "Come to the Saviour*", which has the chorus "Happy, happy, happy we will be, when from sin our Saviour makes us free; and we shall gather, Saviour with you, in our eternal home," when a ruckus broke out. The mothers by the school started talking louder and louder, with occasional cries being mixed in. The noise and the crowd came closer, to the house across the path from us. This is when the wailing started, as the body of their recently drowned 14 year old daughter was returned to them.

Stories were flying, but from what I could gather, she was an epileptic, and it was assumed that she had had a fit while near the water, and that it had caused her to drown. When her younger siblings found her, it was too late to save her. The kind stories called her an epileptic; others called her a mental case. No one called her demon possessed, which I was thankful for after the story we had studied two days earlier.

For a dead teen to be brought home to the neighbours while we were singing a song about the joy of our eternal home was quite a juxtaposition. This juxtaposition grew greater when to close our work for the day we quietly sang "To God be the Glory".  This is a hymn that has been sung at many funerals in my family, so to sing it with wailing in the background brought the realities of life and death home in a very personal way. Yet the message of Wednesday remained true, that we need to trust God even when things make no sense, such as the drowning of this teenage girl.

 

Saturday: The village is quiet.

During the evening before, the girl's body has been moved from the house across the road to somewhere else, most likely the church, and we could not hear the wailing from our house anymore. While a village usually has the sounds of people chopping wood, kids playing and people laughing, there was the silence of respect for the dead. The only noise was the roosters, who respect no one. Late afternoon the wailing built in volume as the family, mourners and body came our way. They did not pass by to the cemetery, which is along the path from our house, but stopped across the road, to bury the girl beside her house. It was a brief ceremony, with the young men filling the grave and decorating it with leaves and flowers afterwards.

 

Sunday: Before dawn I woke to the sound of wailing, as someone from the grieving family sat by the grave and let out their feelings. In Australia we grieve quietly and wear dark glasses to hide our red eyes. Here feelings are expressed with much volume, and in many ways I think it is a healthier path.

Later in the morning, I sat on the front step of our house, enjoying the sunshine and waiting for the church bell to ring, indicating it was time to gather for worship. As I sat I watched a range of butterflies flit by, each one with its own beautiful and colourful design. Each butterfly reminded me of the brevity of life, the beauty of the hope we have in resurrection, and the unpredictable flight path of God's design in the world. Their life as beautiful butterflies is rumoured to be quite short, yet it is glorious while it lasts. I too should live out the fullness of the life I have, while I have it. They have gone from caterpillars to butterflies, while we go from broken humans to a perfect eternity. Butterflies rarely fly in a straight line, but weave their way about on a route that makes sense only to them. Just as unknowable are the details of God's plans in the world. When death has come so close, these were good reminders for me to have.

 

*Sing His Praise #101. This hymn book has revised and adapted hymns to have easier English, so that they can be better understood in the PNG context.

Pack lightly?!

I am always impressed by people who can travel with only hand luggage, as I always seem to carry half the house with me. As much as I value simplicity, when it comes to packing, I am not very good at it.

There are always reasons for the things I ship. Flying down to the village this time I had over 100kg of cargo. Maybe a third of this was fresh vegetables for my friends at the mission hospital, plus some for me. Another portion was books and resources for the translation team, which always weigh a lot. I'm booked for 25kg on the way home, as the food will have been eaten, resources left in the village and gifts distributed.

Even for an overnight village trip I do not pack lightly, but take two bags. The first bag is my office bag, with a small library of relevant resources and all the paperwork for the work we are doing, carefully wrapped in waterproof bags in case of rain or an incident on the river. This is always the heaviest bag. My other bag is the household bag. I pack the bedroom (mattress, mosquito net, sheets, pyjamas, fresh clothes), the bathroom (soap, toothbrush, towel), the kitchen (breakfast and snacks for me; tea, coffee, sugar, salt, rice and tin fish for sharing) and emergency supplies (a small pharmacy and first aid kit, satellite phone and locator beacon). I draw the line at packing the kitchen sink, but I do bring my own spoon.

On a recent holiday I was staying somewhere that bedding and towels were provided, and we could buy food locally. I was surprised at how light my bag was when these things were provided! I kept thinking I must have missed something, but after a few days it proved that I had not. The secret to packing lightly was not that I had previously been over packing, but going somewhere that I did not need to bring half the house. That makes me feel a bit better about the cargo I usually drag about with me. It is the cost of working off-grid.

Sunday Afternoon Sport

On a recent Sunday afternoon there was a friendly soccer match between one of the Ubuoo teams and a team from a nearby village. I say friendly, but as sport is basically socially endorsed organised warfare, I'm not sure there is ever a truly friendly match, as there is always rivalry.

I wandered down late in the afternoon to watch the game, once the heat was out of the day. Walking along the side of the field I was greeting people good afternoon about every three steps. Others can walk along and only say hi to friends, everyone says hi to me, weather they know me or not. Soon enough I found a friend, and sat down to watch the match with them.

As I sat down the place they had been happily sitting, in the shade at the foot of a coconut tree, was no longer deemed safe, in case a coconut fell. Someone was dispatched to get a mat and we were soon sitting away from the tree, on the mat, in the shade. Our place under the tree soon filled with people who had been concerned for my safety, but appeared unconcerned for their own.

I do not follow sport, so watching the game was a purely social affair for me. I suspect that the game was rougher than soccer is usually, as all the players were more familiar with rugby, and occasionally slipped into those habits. As I understand the rules to neither rugby nor soccer, I may well be mistaken.

I do know that the field was not exactly standard. We were in our drier season, when it only rains every second day or so, with strong sun in between. This means that there was only one significant mud pit on the field. The other mud spots had been 'improved', by packing them with logs and surrounding them with clay that the sun had baked solid. It is a good thing the players were built tough, as this was not a forgiving field.

The referee for the match was our paramount chief, and as ref and chief, he was appropriately wearing a shirt with 'BOSS' written across it. Both teams seemed to listen to him and his whistle. Along the boundaries were two umpires, with leafy branches to wave in place of flags. The ball they were playing with was very well worn, with the outer skin clearly peeling off in several places.

At one stage during the game, the ball was coming off field in my general direction. We'd earlier joked that we did not need to move further from the sidelines as I'd be able to defend myself from a rogue ball. I quickly discovered that there was no need to defend myself, as about six teen girls jumped between me and the ball to ensure it had no chance of injuring me. It was like I had my own personal security team! 

As the sun set, the game ended with the Ubuoo team winning 2-0. People scattered back to their homes in the village or to their canoes to paddle back to the other village. I wandered home, having enjoyed sitting with friends in the shade, even if I understood nothing of the game going on before us.

Ahu!

"Ahu!" is a common word to hear as people get on or off a canoe. It is a word applied to me, more than to others, as in this context it means "Be strong!" which means to move carefully, not fall on the muddy river bank and to not tip the canoe. Locals are good at avoiding such slips and trips, I am still learning. With a basic meaning of "strong" ahu can also be used to describe ground that is hard/strong and work that is difficult/takes strength. A physically strong person is pupuo, not ahu, as the word has a different range of use to "strong" in English.

While in the village I am told to be ahu about slippery things, at home I am asked what verses and words are difficult to translate, or which things are ahu. The answer is that it is very hard to predict, as was proven to me with Luke 6:46-49; the story of the wise man building on a strong foundation and surviving a flood, while the foolish man built with no foundations and was wiped out by the flood.

I expected these verses to be easy as people here dig deep to make a strong foundation, to survive a flooding river. It seemed to me that the scenario depicted was familiar, so should be easy to translate. In fact, the day we started on it was a king tide, with the water coming all the way through the village to my house at the back. Yet, even with this illustration going on around us, these verses were difficult. The problem was mostly in the phrasing, not in the concepts. Sentences were written and re-written as not being clear enough, or not being natural enough.

Eventually we got a satisfactory draft, but a week later when we were checking all of Luke 6, it underwent another round of revisions. Two months after that, when I was back in the village and we read the end of chapter 6 to help us get started on chapter 7, it underwent another series of revisions!

While these verses proved themselves ahu to translate, I also had to be ahu. Sitting through yet another round of discussions of the same four verses yet again, tests my patience and endurance, and requires inner strength. I need to remind myself that it is good that people are taking the work seriously, and seeking to have the best translation possible. Rather than sitting and getting frustrated, I remind myself to be praying for the work. I cannot contribute the right phrasing for it to be clear and natural Kope, but I can be praying for wisdom for those who do have that ability.

Photos: My Ubuoo house during a king tide (which happens two or three times a year) and in normal conditions.