Staying healthy

Working in a remote location has many challenges, one of them being how to stay healthy. It is something I attack from many angles.

Local cuisine: fish

First there is the problem of dehydration. I work less than eight degrees from the equator, at sea level. Life is hot and sweaty, and I sweat a lot. This means I have to be constantly diligent about remaining hydrated. This is more than a question of drinking at least 3L of water a day, as salts become an issue with sweating. As I am aware of this, I add far more salt to my meals than I do elsewhere, plus I have vegemite with lunch every day. Vegemite is a tasty way to have my daily salt lick.

Also on the dietary front is the limited diet with not much fresh fruit. My friends who are doctors at the local hospital have commented to me on numerous occasions of the poor nutrition in the area and what that means for health. I bring with me a lot of my own food, which helps to combat this problem. I dehydrate fruit and meat to supplement my diet. I also take multi-vitamins to further boost my system. My favourite multi-vitamins are not synthetic, but are achieved by sprouting dried mung beans so that they are fresh, crunchy, yummy and nutritious snacks. Strengthening my system to help me fight disease and infection is particularly important in a remote location.

I am constantly aware of the possibility of infections and my distance from help. Australians will be familiar with the story of the asylum seeker who died from complications from an infected wound. For wounds to do this is a sad reality of life in a tropical developing country and is the reason I fight sources of infection however possible. I use hand sanitiser on a regular basis and attack any and all scratches and bites with tea tree ointment. The soap I use when I wash each day is anti-bacterial. Still, sometimes a bite will get infected and even with lots of careful wound cleaning and care, I am not winning. Then it is time to speak with a medical person, either at the local hospitals where my friends are, or via radio with our base in the Highlands, and attack with antibiotics instead.

 Local cuisine: sago

Bugs and the diseases they bring are another problem. At night I sleep under a mosquito net, when outside my net I wear some sort of insect repellent. Sometimes I burn mosquito coils or sandalwood incense sticks to drive the bugs out of the house, but as these things give me a headache I do it rarely. In wet season, when mosquitoes are more prolific, I take anti-malarials. During the dry season I give my body a break from those drugs. All year I travel with malaria rapid tests and a course of treatment drugs. The rapid tests have one major flaw: I’m not very good at hurting myself on purpose. It is a very good thing that self harm is not my strong point, until I need to prick my finger deeply enough to draw blood.

Getting enough rest is also part of staying healthy. Life on the coast is hot and exhausting. Having a siesta rather than pushing myself in the hottest part of the day helps me to remain well.

The biggest health challenge for my area is tuberculosis, or TB. It is everywhere and it is spreading. Although my doctor friends do their best, they are fighting a battle that is much bigger than them. Living in that environment and hearing the stories from the hospitals, it is something I actively seek to avoid. Having my own house gives me a big safety margin, as I am not breathing in others air all day. Having better nutrition and being generally healthy means I am less likely to succumb. Being alert to TB means that should it ever get hold of me, I would be likely to catch it early and treat it successfully. Still, I hope to never be in that situation.

Maintaining my physical health while in the village requires planning, vigilance and an acceptance that things do not always go to plan. It means being willing to recognise when I am unwell and to go for help. It means thanking God for the good health I have had so far.

PS As per usual, I left writing my blog until the last minute before I went to the village. I wrote enough posts for one-a-week for the first half of my time away, hoping that I'd write more in the village and be in a place with internet to post them before the second half of my stay. If my blog is quiet from now until late March, you know that did not happen!

Sago Making

The canoe making I described last time was happening alongside sago making.

Sago is a staple of the Gulf Province diet. It is produced from the pith in the core of a mature sago palm. This is a process that takes a lot of hard work, but which results in a starchy food which tastes good when cooked with coconut and served with fresh fish.

To make sago, first let your sago palm mature. They are ready to cut down when a tall flower starts to sprout from the middle, unlike any of the ones in this picture.

(Photo C.Rivard)

In cutting down your sago palm beware the very sharp spines along every branch. Once the palm has been reduced to a log, float it along the river to your village and cut it into manageable pieces with an axe. The leaves can be used in roofing and for other purposes.

Split the log open and chip the pulp into small pieces.

Once all the pith is pulped, put it in a bag and transfer it to the beating station.

Put some pulp into the top of an inverted palm leaf and soak it with water.

Beat the watery pulp for all you are worth, forcing the starch to separate into the water from the pulp.

 The pulp is strained from the watery starch through a sieve.

(Photo R.Drew)

 

The edible sago then settles out of the water into a big brick.

The pigs will happily eat the pulp which the humans discard.

I have come to very much enjoy sago when it is cooked with coconut, which was common in Gulf. The place where we took these photos, Maipenairu, is a Koriki village. In this language the word for sago is ‘pu’. As much as I like the flavour, the thought of eating pu for dinner is a bit harder to cope with!

(Photo: S.Pederson)

Protein

**This post is not for vegetarians**

A balanced diet includes a certain amount of protein, but this is often a scare resource in PNG. As a ‘meat minimalist’* in my home country, I have been faced with some unusual protein challenges here…

Bat: surprisingly beefy but lots of bones

Beans: green beans grow all over the country and are often served fresh, no more than a day from the garden to the plate. Yum.

Bush rat: any of the small marsupials of the bush. I don’t want to know if they are rat or bandicoot, I just thank the hunter for sharing his catch and try not to think about it.

Chicken: village chickens are scrawny and tough. Chickens raised for market are fed specific stock feed, are fat and are a little scary as I’m not sure what hormones are in the stock feed. I want to support the locals who take the initiative to start and maintain chickens as a business, but I’m not sure I want to eat the product they provide.

Corned Beef: not the yummy stuff one of my farm Aunts used to make, but the tinned version which oozes fat. I try not to think about what is in it but about the generosity of my hosts in sharing expensive store bought goods.

Crayfish: at a dollar for a small, live crayfish, I have no complaints about price, just about having to kill my dinner. It is a good reminder though that eating meat involves taking a life.

Splurging on a seafood buffet
in Kavieng

Crab: the only animal I know of that can still hurt you once it is cooked and served. Those shells are dangerous!

Crocodile: commercially harvested and tastes like a cross between chicken and fish. I expect the wild version would be tougher.

Eggs: for all the chickens in villages, there are surprisingly few eggs. When located, they are small and a very generous gift to have given to me.

Fish: smoked, salted, fresh… so many types, so may preparations, so many options of good or bad.

Looks pretty
Tastes bad

Lentils: when they are available at our store I stock up and they are a common part of my self-catered diet.

Parrot: has a very strong flavour and I was glad to only be given a small piece.

Peanuts: a common roadside snack. There is somewhere on the road to Lae where you can pull over a purchase a bunch through the car window to shell and eat as you continue your journey.

Be gone, alarm clock!

Pig: wealth is counted in pigs, unless you are in a Seventh Day Adventist area, then it is counted in goats. Once killed, a pig is generally boiled and shared with all rather than stored or preserved. The fat and skin is considered the good bits, so given to guests. This guest usually finds a way to politely eat the meat and then pass the rest on to a kid who is very happy to help me clean my plate.

Prawns: yum!

Rooster: tough to eat but satisfying to no longer have him waking me before dawn.

Surprisingly tasty sago grubs

Sago grubs: thankfully they were toasted, not fresh, with a surprisingly bacon-like taste, probably because they are mostly fat. I surprised myself by liking them!

Shellfish: tiny black ones, big crawly ones… all salty tasting and chewy but good.

Shellfish kebabs on the fire

Spam: this is the luxury brand name version that tastes like polony/fritz/devon/luncheon (Why does Australia have so many dialect choices for this smallgood?). Usually it is the cheaper and fattier version of tinned pork which is on offer. Even the smell is enough to make me cringe, but I can eat a piece when required.

Stingray: the only protein I couldn’t eat and quietly slipped to the dogs. Maybe I struggled because it was breakfast, but I think the chewing on a car tyre sensation was the bigger issue.

Tree kangaroo and cassowary: thankfully I’ve so far been saved from eating these, as my nieces love to see them at the zoo and I don’t want to have to explain why Auntie Hanna ate their favourite animal. Turtle is another one I hope to never be faced with at dinner.

Pet with a dubious future

Tuna: tinned in oil and has a strong flavour, but is the winning option of the tinned meats available.

Victoria Crowned Pigeon: beautiful, endangered and tasty.

Wallaby: I ate roo meat in Australia, so wallaby is just a relative.

Weevils: the little pests get in my flour, my weetbix, my pasta and anything that I fail to store properly. Some days I fish them out, some days I just eat them.

The ethics of many of these protein sources is questionable, but I choose to focus on the hospitality of sharing an important and limited resource. PNG is not a country for gourmet dining, but it is a country for generosity in hospitality.

*meat minimalist: I do eat meat, but in limited amounts. For the practical purposes of catering on ships, I defined it to the cook as eating whatever they served at lunch (usually meat light anyway) and vegetarian at dinner. Even with that guideline, I generally ate more meat at sea than I did when catering for myself at home.