Community

Our tree started as a cutting picked up
from the verge. It was a Christmas tree
that stayed and became a seasonal tree.
Here it is both Easter tree and
remembrance tree. 

After writing about being single and finding a work partnership, the natural next topic for me is community. For many years community has been a high value for me. Along the way of looking at how I can share life with those around me, I came up with five [s]s, to which I’ve added an ‘h’, so I’ll start with those;

Simplicity [sɪmˈplɪsəti]

To practice gratitude and contentment and a recognition of ‘enough’ rather than giving in to the cultural demand for ‘more’…bigger, better, newer, shinier, sexier…but always more. Sometimes it is about getting back to basics, which can be more effort than instant, but is simple in its own way.

The tree in mourning between
Good Friday and Easter Sunday.

Solidarity [sɒlɪˈdæɹəti]

To remember our brothers and sisters both in other places and nearby and to live accordingly. Sometimes this will mean small sacrifices, other times significant protests or changes. To seek to understand the ‘other’ and how they experience life, then to respond to that in love. Who would I want them to be or do if our places were reversed?

Spirituality [spɪɹɪtjuæləti]

To make the time to share, explore and deepen our spiritual life. I live this as a Christian, but expect communities of other faiths could also hold the same value. I’ve found that shared spiritual practices takes discipline and commitment, but that it is worth it. Shared prayer, shared Scripture, shared quiet, shared fears, shared joys…these are all pieces of a communal spiritual life.

Sustainability includes the vegie patch

Sustainability [sɑˈstæɪnəˌbɪliəti]

To live in a way that does not destroy God’s creation or burn ourselves out. For me this is about being community to those I cannot see and will never meet, by caring for the world in a way that allows them to live in it too. It extends my sense of community beyond people to nature.

Celebrate life [ˈsɛləbɹæɪt ˌlaɪf]

Don’t take all this too seriously, but enjoy the life we’ve been given. Create! Celebrate! Don’t wear yourself down with having to ‘do’ but spend time to ‘be’.

The tree of thankfulness,
decorated with tins that hold
candles and cards that
express thanks, which were
written as part of a
celebratory meal.

Hospitality [hɒspɪˈtæləti]

Welcoming others, sharing food and drink, making home a warm place, not a fortress, yet still having it be a sanctuary when need be. Having visitors, be they family or travellers, to stay for a day or a week.

These things all overlap and I am constantly rediscovering and redefining them.  Through childhood, travel, house-shares, sailing, villages, intentional communities and communities-by-necessity, I’ve experienced the blessings and challenges of community. Although these elements of community bring together the way I wish to live, I regularly fail. Still, it is a journey worth continuing.

Partnership

Some of the singles having a night of Indian food and dress ups

The mass of single women in this organisation each find their own way to manage alone in a foreign place. At Ukarumpa it is easier, as you can choose to share a house or to have one to yourself. You can choose to join in group events or to spend quiet evenings at home. Your work as part of a department and together you form a team. You end up being adopted into families so that you are not alone.

For those of us who are translators working in villages the challenges are different. Although we enjoy the support of Ukarumpa between village visits, our work situation is very different. It is distant, intense and isolated. Some choose to work as the only expat in a language project, most try to find another single woman to form a work partnership with. Some establish a partnership, then end up working alone as health, life and home situations…and sometimes marriage… cause the other woman to leave the project.

Traditionally, translators assigned to one language for life, working twenty years in a single place. The partnerships these women formed were intense, forged through decades of trials. How translation happens has been changing and so have work partnerships. Increasingly, languages are brought together in cluster projects and nationals given the training to carry the bulk of the translation work. Ex-pats have taken on more of an advisor role and although they ideally still ‘anchor’ in a single language community, they spend less time there in the long term than the ‘classic’ teams. This takes a lot of the pressure off their partnership.

Talking about partnership is hard. In a world where marriage is being redefined, people easily make wrong assumptions. The partnership I am talking about is a work relationship plus a friendship. Sure, it often becomes a very close friendship, but it is not a relationship in the marriage sense.

Working out who to partner with is hard. Firstly I have had to get my head around the fact that it is not as intense as it used to be. I can partner with someone for a term (2-4 years) and then review afterwards if the relationship still works and where the language programme is at. Previously, village teams were very isolated, with HF radio their only outside contact. Now, teams can get email via HF radio and mobile coverage is swiftly spreading across the country, bringing internet access with it.

Still, even with the pressure taken off, I want to partner with someone I can both work well with and be friends with. Maybe it is not as full on as previously, but working together in a team can still be an intense and isolated situation which you want to enter into with someone you trust. All my years of house sharing on land and cabin sharing at sea have given me a skill set to live with people I don’t necessarily consider myself close to, as well as the skills to quickly assess who I will enjoy living and working with, as well as who I’ll be happy to farewell.

These skills, along with discussion with friends and plenty of prayer see me on the path to establishing a work partnership, but it is something that still needs field testing before we allocate to a project. This testing will probably be in the form of pre-allocation trips and workshops in places we are looking at for the lone term. As I narrow down the partner-list to a likely option, the allocation list is wide open and I find myself yet again looking at the future and having to decide which one of many good paths to walk. 

Wanpis

Being single is a-cultural.

When I travelled in Italy, I was forever being asked if I was ‘da solo’ (alone) and where my ragazzo (boyfriend) was. That I was single and content to travel alone seemed hard for people to accept.

When I was in India, people did not see me as alone, as I was with my sister and her partner. People would stop us in the street to express their delight at seeing sisters together (Meanwhile, some of our ‘Western’ friends would ask us how we knew each other…).

In Australia I constantly find myself fighting assumptions that come with being single. One assumption is that I must be sleeping with someone, as some people cannot comprehend voluntary celibacy. Another assumption is that if I am not sleeping with someone, I must be a-sexual. No, I am definitely attracted to men, but I have chosen to follow a particular path and practice the self control to do so. Other times the assumption is that I must be a closet lesbian. Once again, No. My ‘lifestyle choice’ is to be celibate unless I enter into a lifelong monogamous relationship with a man.

Another assumption is that marriage is the be all and end all of life satisfaction, even though most married couples would dispute that. This assumption comes out in phrases such as ‘on the shelf’ or ‘spinster’ versus being ‘settled’. When a friend was unexpectedly pregnant, many people commented on how good it was to see her ‘settled at last’. As much as she loves her child, I doubt she saw it that way at the time, and she is still making plans to wander the world, but now they are family sized plans.

Here in PNG the assumptions are different. I am ‘wan pis’* and in villages get asked if I spend my life ‘sindaun nating’* I then go into a lengthy discussion of how not being married means I have to do everything as I do not share the work with someone else. I also try to explain that if I were married with children, it would be very difficult to do the work I do, such as being with them in the village running workshops. What helps me is that in every region there are some long standing single translator women who are known and respected. More often than not, the conversation finishes with ‘…like Robin/Karan/Tuula’. I am happy to be compared with women I admire and respect!

The four single women on my orientation course.

I am surrounded by amazing single women**, both nationals and ex-pats, who put their all into life. They are not sitting on the sidelines waiting for Prince Charming to sweep them off their feet…although most (myself included) wouldn’t object if that happened! They are not missing out, but filling life with good things. Sure, life would be good in different ways if they were married, but they focus on what they do have instead. They do not hate children, but are usually ‘Auntie’ to at least one other family who lives and works here.

Yes, being single has its hard days, when I wish there was someone with whom I could share life for the long term. I form many wonderful friendships, but live with the fact that my friends will move away and change as we each go our different ways. It can be hard to keep making more friends who you know will leave, but the pain of loss is preferable to that of loneliness.

Being single also has its wonderful days, when it means I am free to go to regions to work. If I had a husband or family, so much would have to change in what I did and how. Not a bad thing, just very different. Being single means I can invest myself as an Auntie in a way I could not otherwise. It means flying home to see the family is a whole lot cheaper than it is for a clan.

Some days I envy my married friends. Other days I look at all they deal with in a day and wonder how they can still be such lovely people. I am single and satisfied, but tired of defending my status.

*Wan pis: one piece, single, alone, but it could also mean one fish…gotta love Tok Pisin!

Sindaun nating: sit-down nothing, to do nothing with your life, to laze around, to live off others.

** We have approximately 50 single women and 5 single guys in the Branch… but this post is about the women.

Gulf Province

Every province of PNG is different. I have visited several regions now, but when we arrived in Gulf Province with YWAM, it was different again. Big, fast flowing rivers. So much sago and pandanus along the river banks. Few mountains. 

The highest point around.

Zooming about in zodiacs I was able to see the province from its best angle, the water. In the mornings we would head out to deliver the primary health care team to their village for the day. Mist would often still be on the water, the whole environment softened by its presence. Some days it would be raining on us, making the environment sparkle. Often we would see Hornbills flying about, bats as well.

With all the rain, the river was high and ran fast. This meant few mosquitoes, as all their breeding ponds were being flushed out and little mud, as it was all lost beneath the water. We could step straight from the zodiacs to the river bank, or even on to the steps of houses. Houses on stilts would have water the whole way underneath and a canoe tied to the front step. One village we went in to the creek was deep enough for us to  drive the zodiac right into the middle of town. While offloading people and supplies, we were passed by a man standing in his canoe and using his oar as a pole to navigate the small the creek, so very Venice!

Fast flowing river

Another day we were taking dental patients back to their village when they took us on the short cut. Now, ‘local short cut’ often means ‘I’m off on an adventure and I don’t know when I’ll be home’, but in this case it was actually shorter and far more beautiful. The creek was narrow and wound through a pandanus grove, long leaves touching the water on either side of us. Away from the rush of the big river it was peaceful and beautiful.

When we arrived in Gulf it was raining, and we navigated in by GPS and radar, knowing there were river banks nearby, but not seeing them clearly, knowing there were sand banks nearby and planning not to meet them. Towards the end of our time in the province, the river flow had subsided enough for the sand banks to show themselves. When we anchored at high tide, there was water everywhere. At low tide it was clear how treacherous those rivers are, how narrow and twisted the navigable sections.

Space for one more?

When we left it was sunny as we wove our way downstream. The most direct route was not an option, and so we took the safest one. Satellite images from the internet interfaced with data from the survey-zodiac were our map. Alongside us were riverbanks of sago and pandanus. As we exited the river and headed into the gulf, we still had to be wary of sand banks, for the river continued undersea. If we left the path of the river, we could still run aground, even though well offshore.


PNG: land of the unexpected. Where each province is unique, has its own challenges and its own beauty .

A Village Day

I spent one day in a village while with YWAM; the rest of the time I was busy with ship work. This did not bother me, as I have plenty of other opportunities to be in villages and few to be afloat. While the cook was wanting some land time, I was soaking up my ship time. The one day I did go to a village was a location where we knew English comprehension was low and some Tok Pisin help would go a long way. It was fun to go with the group and see what they actually got up to after we dropped them off each day.

Busy with clinics

Firstly, the primary health care (PHC) team met with the leaders and confirmed where they would be working for the day. They then set up a place to wait, a place to register (blood pressure measured and babies weighed) and areas for the doctors to consult, for the pharmacy-in-a-backpack to be used to fill prescriptions and for the nurse to do wound care and other tasks. We drew a crowd, both of medical issues and as the entertainment of the day. Doctor-patient confidentiality takes on a new meaning when half the village is within earshot! Although we tried to reduce the closest crowd to family only, it was with little success. 

Translating the women's talk

After the bulk of the patients had been seen, we broke into two groups for teaching sessions. The women talked about family planning and problem signs in pregnancy. The men spoke about domestic violence, among other things. Translating the women’s talk into Tok Pisin was a challenge. We didn’t exactly cover terms for pregnancy and family planning at orientation! Still, we got the message across…I hope. In another education session earlier in the day we had spoken about the importance of washing hands to prevent germs causing illness, but I wondered how much we really communicated. Here were the outsiders talking of bugs you cannot see which make you sick. Why is that any more believable than spirits you cannot see being the cause of illness? Both rely on a worldview of managing that which is unseen.

Just as we were packing up to leave the village, we found ourselves with two more patients. A mum had returned to her house to find that her husband had got frustrated with the kids, so beat them with a stick and threw them out of the house. Their house was on stilts, so being thrown out involved falling a long way down. I know domestic violence is a huge problem in PNG. It is talked about in the media here as well as at home, but usually it is not staring me in the face. Usually it does not come in the form of two small boys who are clearly concussed and a mother with tears in her eyes.

We did what we could. We provided pain medication for the boys. We convinced the mum to bring the most injured boy to the hospital for observations overnight and guaranteed to bring them back to the village the next day. We let the other boy stay to ‘sleep it off’, because we had no right to do anything else, as much as it went against the medical conscience of the team. We celebrated the next day when the boy who went to hospital was alright. We prayed that the beatings will not continue and that the children will grow up strong and healthy. 


When I looked into the teary eyes of the mother holding her two small boys, with tears in my own eyes, I think then we truly communicated, without the need for any words in any language.

Zoom!

Recently I was able to join the YWAM medical ship Pacific Link for one of their medical outreaches to Gulf Province. It was good to be back afloat, to spend three weeks immersed in another organisation, to see another region of PNG and to participate in a different sort of work within PNG.

hi ho, hi ho, its off to work we go.

We spent 24(ish) hours crossing from Port Moresby to Gulf Province then spent most of the next two weeks anchored by Kikori hospital. We were well upstream from the Gulf in areas which Admiralty charts mark as uncharted, where the zone of confidence diagrams are lacking confidence. We went upstream with a captain who has been that way before and lots of fancy technology. One of the zodiacs (small boats) could be fitted out with GPS, depth sounder, computer and more to survey as it travelled. Each time before we went to a new place, the zodiac would go ahead of us, creating charts which were then interfaced with the ship’s navigation system. Impressive!

Taking the PHC team out.

While we were at Kikori, the river was in flood. Somewhere upstream it must have been raining heavily, for although it was not particularly dry where we were, the body of water flowing by was tremendous. Many trees and large logs floated by, sometimes forming a dam wall between the anchor chain and the bow, always making driving about in the zodiacs just that little bit more exciting. Only in the last few days did the water level drop enough for the rumoured sand banks to be visible, but even then the outflow defeated the tide every day and we always had our bow pointing upstream.

I joined Pacific Link as second mate, stepping back into what felt like a former life. It took awhile for me to be at ease in the role, but although that side of me was fairly well buried, it was not forgotten. This role meant navigational watches when under way, anchor watches in the river and zooming about in zodiacs delivering the health teams to various villages.

Managing traffic at the sea door

Every morning we would take the ophthalmology team to Kikori Haus Sik (Hospital) to spend their day doing eye surgery. We would also take the primary health care (PHC) team to their village-of-the-day where they would set up for immunisations, consulting and training. We would then return to the ship with dental patients from Kikori and the village where we had left the PHC team. During the day there would be lots of back and forth, ferrying dental patients as well as our own people. There were also some longs runs, when a zodiac would go out for the day to collect, and later to return, an ophthalmology patient from their village to the hospital. These people had been referred for surgery during previous outreaches, but needed assistance to reach the hospital. Each day there was also the visit to tomorrow’s village. We would go and meet the leaders, confirm that it was okay to come with the PHC team and discuss if there was any particular concerns that they hoped we could help with.

Dental patients waiting on the aft deck

In the course of two weeks the three zodiacs travelled approximately 2000km and burnt 12 drums of fuel; a combination of unleaded and zoom (oil-unleaded pre-mix). This was the most the zodiacs had ever done in a single outreach. It was also the worst they had behaved. Something was messing with the engines. The original theory was that it was the wrong oil-fuel mix, but it was probably dirty fuel or water in the fuel. The result was an endless series of sparkplug changes, difficulty getting the boats up on the plane and a lot of uncertainty, but we made it.

Another spark plug change

At the end of each day we would do the final trips, returning the final dental patients and welcoming home the teams who had been on land. Once all were back on board, we would stow, clean and re-fuel the zodiacs for another day of zooming about. Then it would be time to share stories from the day, over dinner or over a cuppa, before curling up in bed to sleep deeply to the sound of water rushing past the hull. My favourite lullaby.



For information on volunteering with YWAM, go to www.ywamships.org.au

Sailor Girl

You? A sailor? How did you ever end up at sea?

STV One and All

Well, it just kind of happened. I never planned on a career at sea…

When I was 15 there was a careers expo at school where the sail training ship Leeuwin II had a stand. I thought it looked like a fun adventure, but one that I couldn’t afford. When I found out it was possible to get sponsorship through the Captain’s Fund, I applied. I also got a job at the customer service training agency known as Maccas to pay the rest of the voyage fees. So I had my ten day adventure at sea…which I never planned on as a career, just as an adventure. An adventure I figured was finished when my family and I moved interstate to a land locked country town a few months later.

Then one day Mr Dooley came to school and spoke of sail training and the sponsorship he could help provide. A bunch of us signed up as interested, but I was the only one who followed through on it, so I got sponsored to go to sea a second time! My savings from the service agency paying the remainder of the voyage fees. So I had myself another ten day adventure at sea, this time on the ship from the city I then went to university in, the ship which has been part of my life ever since, the One & All.

Sunset on One and All

Moving to Adelaide for university, I joined One & All’s volunteer crew, slowly learning what I was doing then forgetting half of it before the next chance I had to sail. Maintenance days, day sails, voyages… they all added up and I found that I did indeed know what I was doing. When I graduated university six years later I knew that my long term plan was Bible translation, but I also knew that I was not yet ready to commit to that path. A job as a watch leader on One & All became available, so I took it. That which had started as an adventure, had become a volunteer pastime and was now a full time job!

A few years as a watch leader, including some experience overseas, and I was ready to return to university to start my theology degree and start the journey down the road to translation. I had also reached a point where I was bored with being a watch leader. As I had the sea time, I went to Maritime college and got my Master Class V. This allowed me to keep sailing, but gave me new challenges and responsibilities. It also gave me an income to help pay my way through a theology degree.

With other casual jobs, you can usually juggle them around your study schedule. With sailing, I would miss weeks of classes at a time, always pre-warning my lecturer and getting notes and readings to do so as not to be behind when I returned. Always keeping close tabs on the 80% class attendance requirements. I doubt I ever made it to more than 85% of any subject, but never to less than 80%. Mostly I worked over the summer holidays, often missing the last week of the school year to go to sea, and the first week of the new school year as I’d not yet returned from sea. Somehow, with no real holidays in three years, I managed to not burn out and to pass all my subjects. Thank you to all my lecturers who made it possible for me to juggle study and sailing, as well as to my compassionate and long suffering housemates.

When I left One & All it was as first mate, with a passion for sail training and an unexpected yet successful career at sea. I had also worked as an officer on other traditional sailing vessels, enjoying expanding my accidental career path. When I left Australia to work as a Bible translator, I thought I had given up on sailing. My best hope was that it would be an occasional pastime when home on furlough.

Playing with a telescope on HMB Endeavour

Then the organisation I am part of joined the Wa’a partnership with other organisations working in the Pacific region. They asked for volunteers to help build the partnership, in particular by joining YWAM on their medical ship, Pacific Link, during her annual season in PNG…

…so it was that I found I could bring together my former life at sea with my new life in PNG. The adventure that started in high school and became a career was once again needed, but as part of my translation career. Sure, this was a far cry from sail training, but it was still a chance to bring my lives together and contribute to something worthwhile. A chance I very much enjoyed.