Cleaning Party

Being among the ‘haves’ in a country with so many ‘have-nots’ creates tension within me. How do I not hoard my riches but share them? How do I use my resources for my work, but also use them to empower those around me? How do I live with the fact that being white skinned, educated, employed, having travel insurance and Medicare card give me a constant material advantage over many around me? Where is the line between luxury and comfort, or between simplicity and a martyr complex?

One way of redistributing wealth that I make use of is through employing yard and house help. Yes, weeding my garden and cleaning my house are things I am more than capable of, but they are also the only job opportunity or skills that some locals have. By giving this work, and the government set wage, to them I am giving them the opportunity to earn their own way and support their family. I am also gaining the opportunity to build a relationship with locals, to sit and chat over a cuppa and to enjoy getting to know some lovely people who can teach me so much about PNG life and culture.

Recently, when I moved from a rental Ukarumpa home to my own home, I employed a party of cleaning women. They blessed me by making the previous house shine. I blessed them by giving five women a day’s pay to take home to their families*. A small price for a day of being surrounded by hard working women, plus a lot of chatter and laughter. Four women scrubbed every inside surface and one swept away spiders and washed the outside of the house. At morning and afternoon tea we all sat down over a cuppa and a biscuit for a break and a chat. At lunch we shared in food and then rested as they worked on bilums (string bags) and I read a book. The next day I put a mountain of cleaning rags through the wash.

At my new house I met Bina, the lady who has looked after this yard for many years. She did the gardening, I paid her, we chatted and a new relationship was started that I hope will continue for many more years.

At home I would not use my money to pay a team of cleaners or a gardener. Here I consider it a blessing to both me and the women who work for me to be able to do so. Some people sponsor a child, as that is their available avenue to share their wealth. In my situation, I have the privilege of being able to employ a matriarch, and even meet her kids and grandkids.

 Visiting Wamu (my usual house help) and
her family in the village one day.

*I’m not such a grot that it takes five women to clean up after me! Housing policy here is that a house rented more than six months must have every surface – walls, ceilings, drawers, cupboards etc- cleaned when you move to help prevent mould and to keep the house in top form for the next tenant. 

Year of the House

Having grown up in church-owned housing and rented my way through a number of houses as an adult, the great Aussie dream of home ownership has always been just that, a dream. This year though, that has changed.

Recently I was given a house in Ukarumpa.

My new Ukarumpa home.

This is our ‘company town’ in the Highlands where I am based when not living in a village situation. It is my base of professional support, personal friendships and ex-pat belonging. It is a town with a complex identity that means different things to different people, but for me it is one of my PNG homes. It is also now a place where I own a home.

Robyn (Aussie) came to PNG in 1987 and Lisbeth (Swede) arrived in 1986. Together they worked with the Ramoaaina people of the Duke of York Island near Rabaul, dedicating the Ramoaaina New Testament in 2007. They continue to work in that region, supporting the Ramoaaina Old Testament translation as well as the Label, Kandas and Fanamaket New Testament translation teams from nearby New Ireland Province.

Previously, they too were Ukarumpa based, coming and going to the Islands. These days they are Kokopo based and no longer need their Ukarumpa house. Some people sell their home, but they decided to give theirs away. It is a cosy little home, with three bedrooms, office, living room, kitchen and shed. At the moment I live here alone, but may end up sharing with another single woman either long or short term.

At the same time as moving into my Ukarumpa home, I have been getting ready to go to the village, where I am in the process of building a house. Land has been set aside and posts and bearers have already been installed. I am bringing a solar power system with me, and water tanks and some tin roofing for water catchment are on order. Nails, hinges and a saw are among the items I’m providing to assist in the building effort.

An Ubuo house (not mine) under construction (D.Petterson)

So it is that this year will probably end up with me having two homes to call my own! While I have been given one house and am buying nails to build another, my sister has gone through a mountain of paperwork and stress to gain a mortgage and purchase a home in Australia. The contrast in home acquisition is stark, yet so is the nature of our houses.

My Ukarumpa home is on land that is part of a 99 year lease to an organisation I am a member of. My village house is on land that I have no title to. Both houses are in a country where I currently have a five year visa. I expect to be here long term and renew my visa many times, which is why I am investing myself and my resources, but many things could easily change. Still, I am excited at these developments that continue to make this country more and more ‘home’.

What if…?

Settling into one area has involved a whole new round of paperwork: contingency planning. This has meant sitting down and deliberately catastrophising about various situations, planning my response, writing it down, filing it with various people and promising to do my best to keep to it in a real emergency.

I am familiar with this approach, as in my previous work on sailing ships we did regular emergency drills. We had flow diagrams of responses and responsibilities. Fire drills on hot summer days were an excuse for a water fight, but we were ready should there be a real fire. Man overboard drills taught us things that meant we saved a life when the real thing occurred (a story for another day). Preparedness makes a big difference in an emergency.

So it is that I’ve been thinking through what I would do, what I need to always carry just-in-case (bandages for snake bite, locator beacon), what I would take with me if making an emergency exit and which direction I would go. I’ve purchased a 20L container for an emergency fuel supply. If I have fuel standing by it is easier to find a driver and a boat. Contact details for various organisations and individuals have been listed. Maps have been drawn and marked.

All of this in the hope that I never need to use it.

Still, stuff happens. We live in a broken world where the acts of individuals and of nature cause fear, injury and destruction. I do not expect to avoid my share in the harsh realities of life, but I do hope to be prepared when they strike. I hope this paperwork is next read when I review it in a few years time, not when it is called on in an emergency, but it is good to have thought things through and made a plan together with others.

I do work remotely, with many challenges, but I am not unprepared or unconnected. Please take comfort in this.

 

Contingency planning… cause life is not always smooth sailing.

Solar Power

What do the Amish, doomsday preppers, Bible translators,  4WD enthusiasts, round-the-world sailors and eco-warriors have in common?

An interest in living off the grid.

As I get organised to live in a remote village location, I have been gathering information and learning skills to make that life easier. I could just live like the locals, but then I would have no time to do the work I came to do. Subsistence living is a time consuming occupation. Instead, I look into ways to preserve food, produce familiar food from scratch, and power the equipment I need for my work. Along the way I have found myself on the websites of all the above categories, getting tips for off-grid living.

My most recent adventure in off-grid discovery has been in making decisions about what sort of solar set-up* I need. I’ve had a crash course in all sorts of specifics and technical details: panel sizes and types, battery sizes and types, solar controllers, wattage, amp hours, volts…

There are so many questions that helpful people ask but that sometimes leave me more confused. How much equipment do I have? How much power do they draw? What else am I likely to get? Will I want a 12v fridge? (probably not) Will I want a 12v fan? (sounds appealing) What is my budget? (limited). Argh!

I am thankful for the people who have helped me, explaining and re-explaining concepts to me, answering my questions and responding to my blank looks. They have sure helped me to make practical choices, and then they  took on responsibility for compiling the system.

When I fly to Gulf next, I will have with approximately 65kg of solar and radio equipment. I know the weight because I had to do an estimate for my aviation booking. This will give me 190w of power for a 100ah battery. It’s primary purpose is to run an HF radio with some LED lights for night as a positive side effect. Later I will also use it to power my computer, but for the moment my notebook is literally that, a notebook and a pen.

The Amish have not been much help in my solar quest, but when it comes to preserving foods, suggesting manual methods of doing commonly powered tasks and having catalogues of fun hand tools, they are the people to look up. I suspect it is not the Amish running these websites, but people marketing at the Amish and that they also provide paper catalogues for that market. I have been dealing with the more Amish side of village preparations, but solar had been the biggest challenge this time around.

*Others call it a ‘solar system’ but as I am harvesting the energy of the sun, not revolving around it in miniature, ‘solar set-up’ seems more appropriate. That said, I’m tempted to call my solar set-up ‘Pluto’, for although it is small and remote, it still deserves to be counted.

Gemu Ray

I seem to accumulate family wherever I go. This has the wonderful effect of always belonging, but the harder effect of always being away from people you love.

In my recent trip to Gulf Province to start connecting there, I was adopted into a Kope family, the Aumaries. Although Aumarie himself is dead, I have a mama and plenty of brothers, sisters and kids to belong to. They look after me, giving me a place, identity and responsibilities, and I reciprocate that care.

It’s going to take me awhile to learn who my family is and how to best relate to them, as I have well over a dozen village-siblings and I’m still learning about the responsibilities of PNG relationships. There are also lots of first cousins who classify as siblings. Add in generational complexities and in-family adoptions, and I have an enormous number of family.  Still, it is good to belong.

My new family are all over PNG, working and studying in various roles and places. I doubt I’ll ever meet some of them, but we are still part of the same family.

Part of being adopted into the family was that I was given a village name, Gemu. This is the same village name as one of my sisters, a teacher in Goroka that I’ve not met. At the same time, people were struggling with the ‘sch’ at the start of my name, as it is not said like the ‘sch’ at the start of school. An easy solution to this is to use my father’s name for my surname, as everyone else does. All of a sudden, I had a totally new name: Gemu Ray.

It might take me awhile to remember to answer to that!

With my Mama, sister, niece, two sister-in-law and nephew.
I mentioned complex generations… the two babies in this photo are related
because the great-grandma of one is the sister to the father of the other!

Day #1

Talking at church in Kapuna before heading to Ubuo
(D.Petterson)

‘They’ (whoever ‘they’ are!) say that each day is the first day of the rest of your life. In many ways I subscribe to this and can be a Grinch about New Year’s celebrations because the timing is so arbitrary. On the other hand, I recently experienced the sort of day which really did seem like the start of the rest of my life.

Sunday February 22 was the day. It was the day I went to Ubuo village to start the relationship building and language learning that will (hopefully!) be the foundation of my work and life for years to come.

Until now, my village trips have all been for no more than a few weeks, with the next trip being to a different place. Relationships have all been short term and language learning has not progressed beyond polite greetings. This arrival was the start of the long term. I was thankful that Robbie and Debbie, who already have strong local relationships, were with me to smooth the way.

Our cargo pile on arrival at Ubuo (R.Petterson)

The day started with a low tide, meaning we could not leave until late morning. This gave us time to go to church at Kapuna Hospital before we left. The Kapuna crew were all very excited about this new start to a ministry in their area and sent me out with much prayer and encouragement as their missionary. Being sent locally, as well as internationally, is so encouraging to me as it shows that there is local ownership of my work and that it is not just my clever idea.

As we wound along the rivers to Ubuo, we stopped to visit people in Baimuru and Era Kiti. My GPS tracker says we did 64km. The journey felt longer, partly because of the stops, mostly because of my awareness that this trip signified the start of something new, something I’d been looking forward to for a long time.

Spending time with my village family (D.Petterson)

Our arrival in Ubuo was friendly and low key… the way I like things to be! We had meetings in the house where we were staying and in the church to talk about what me joining the community meant. We talked about how it will take me a while to learn Kope, but that while they are helping me learn, I can be helping them with translation. The helping will need to be mutual to be successful. We also talked about this translation being for all of the Kope people, and not just for Ubuo, and that at times I will spend time visiting the other villages. Smiles, handshakes and more names than I can remember, but a good start in what is now my other home.

Soon I was adopted into the Aumarie family, meaning I have more brothers and sisters than I can keep track of, but a place to belong. In the week we were there I enjoyed getting to know some of my new family and had loving hugs from them when I left.

Day one in Ubuo village, Kope language… the first day of the rest of my life.

Ubuo from the river (H.Schulz)

Holiday Happiness

 People have asked me what I did on my holidays, so here is a list of things I enjoyed while in Australia:

• Family! It was good to have ordinary time with family, to just hang out and do normal things. This included Scrabble with Mum, cryptic crosswords with Dad, Lego with my godson, books, games, craft and tree climbing with nieces and nephews, family bbqs in the back yard, phone conversations with no delay… and more.

• Friends! I know I only caught up with a few of you, but it was grand to be able to do so. I am blessed with many friendships that can pick up where they left off, even after building lives in different places.

• The Beach! Walking on the beach, eating fish and chips by the beach, swimming in the ocean, breathing deep of salt air. These are all things which I no longer take for granted.

• Cafes! Hot chocolate, iced coffee, cappuccino, flat white, gelato or rich and wonderful cakes… all just an order away. Time with my journal or time with family or friends. Sitting there while someone else serves you good food and good drink. Warrnambool has a collection of wonderful cafes, and I made it to all my favourites… at least once.

• Anonymity! To walk down the street and have no one watching. To walk down the street at night if I chose to and for it to be safe.

• Public Transport! Hopping on a tram or a train and having it run reliably and safely was a pleasure. When in Melbourne I kept catching the tram into town, because I could. I wasn’t really doing vast amounts of shopping, but I was finding excuses to indulge in public transport and anonymity and safety on the street.

• Stone fruits! Cherries, apricots, plums, peaches, nectarines… as much as I love my fresh tropical fruits, being home in stone fruit season was very yummy.

• Smallgoods!  Cheeses, olives, salami, interesting breads, dips, nuts, dried figs… such a range of affordable and yummy options. Walking around Queen Vic Markets was like walking around a gourmet wonderland. It could only have been improved by being Central Market in Adelaide, where one gets gourmet goodness plus chance encounters with friends.


I know I may have gone a little overboard on the exclamation marks, but they really do express the delight these things are when I experience them once more. I used to take them for granted and consider them normal, but not anymore. My Mum experienced this first hand when she let me loose in a supermarket with permission to put things in the shopping trolley that I’d missed… and I managed to fill the trolley. Thanks Mum!