DIY…everything!

Living in the developing world with limited access to resources leads to a culture of do-it-yourself in every department. Here are some of the my common DIY projects…

Food

Our Christmas Tree

It has been said that here, we do scratch from scratch. The classic example of this my Gluten Free friend who made a cheese cake on a biscuit base, having first made the biscuits, having first made the flour for the biscuits. On a less ambitious scale, bread, yoghurt, spice mixes and a range of ethnic dishes are all made from raw ingredients. Any quick and easy freezer meal is because you took the time to cook in bulk and freeze things.

Celebrations

Decorations, invitations, special foods, party games… they are all limited by resources, as creativity does not seem to be in short supply. Kids’ parties are not fancy, but they are fun. Adult parties often revolve around food and re-gifting is acceptable as the gift supply is limited.

Christmas

Last year at Christmas I crocheted a variety of green wools that I then wove into the window security screen to become a Christmas tree. The nativity set was made with pegs and scrap fabric. Beth made a ginger bread house using a toaster oven and I cooked the fruit cake in a cast iron camp oven over coconut husk coals. Gifts given were handmade or recycled.

Fun

Games nights, movie nights, a bush dance… the only scheduled events are things you decide to plan, schedule and host. Going out to the movies is not an option, but we do know who has a good movie supply. Helping with home renovations, borrowing books from the community library, it is all DIY entertainment. Sometimes there is a coffee shop, but that is only because someone decided to run it.

Sewing

Previously a second hand quilt
cover, now kids clothing.

My favourite hobby is sewing, so DIY clothes are common. As good fabric is hard to come by, I often purchase second hand bed sheets or quilts and use them as my raw materials. I have taken the DIY of sewing a step further this year, but working on learning to draft my own patterns. Bedsheet + tape measure + paper and pencil + scissors + sewing machine = new fashion.

Others are into wood work, home renovations, quilting and all sorts of other DIY projects, but it is a common theme in all our lives. Living more simply than our home cultures is part of living in this place, but it can be fun.

To make DIY possible most of us invest in favourite tools. Mine is my sewing machine. Gluten free people have their grain mill. An electric drill is a good investment. A hand drill is a better one for a village situation where power is scarce. Hand crank sewing machines are readily available in shops for village use…although that is a challenge I am yet to try. I find myself eyeing off things in museums as appropriate technology for the life I live and getting ideas for things to try.

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.

Call, Discernment and Action

Defining ‘call’ is endlessly difficult. It can be a problem when people play the ‘God told me to’ card or the ‘I’m still waiting to hear from God’ card, but to not stop and carefully spend time discerning God’s direction in our lives is also a problem.

Biblically, some people had a very clear and audible call. I believe such clear calls can still happen, but that they are not to be expected. For me, discerning call is about an intersection of head and heart. With my head I can research a possibility and be practical about if my skills, interests and abilities are sufficient for the task. I can decide if the negatives are worth it. With my heart though, I am also looking to see if it is something I am passionate about, if there is something that draws me in.

Walking on the path or falling into the deep river
can be a fine line at times!

Discerning a call is not an expectation of perfection. We live in a broken world and have to deal with that. It is not needing to know everything, as I know that there will always be challenges and blessings down the road which are not evident now. It is giving due diligence to finding out what I can at this point in time.

In small questions, discerning God’s will is a small matter as the Word gives us direction in life. Are we called to love our neighbours? Yes! So do it, in whatever ways big or small today.

In big questions though, discerning God’s will and God’s call is a bigger challenge. That is when I call on mentors, prayer supporters and those who know me well and that I trust.

A language allocation is a big question, as the decision results in many years working in an often isolated situation as well as a relationship and commitment to a group of people that I would not want to break.

In making this decision it is important to me to hand the decision over to God. Is this the place the skills, interests and limitations God has given me best intersect with the many immediate needs around us? In making this decision prayerfully and in community I am given strength. In the long run, when the hard times come, I will be able to look back and say ‘God, you lead me here and you will lead me through.’  If I simply follow the directions of people, it is easy to say ‘The person-I-listened-to didn’t know what they were doing!’ It is hard to say ‘God didn’t know what he was doing!’

The story of my call to work as  Bible translator in PNG is a story of discernment along the way. The idea of translation was presented to me at a youth camp and would not go away, so I followed up on it. Eventually I did two months ‘work experience’ here in PNG, mostly in a remote village. At the end of two months I felt called to the work. Something in me knew it was the path I was to walk,  although I still had to work through my desire to live a ‘normal’ life. I did not feel called to a place and knew the timing was not right, but I felt called to the work.

Which way? There are many 'short cuts' through the palms
and many dead ends too.

It took me nearly ten years to get to the translation field full time. These were ten years in which God shaped me and prepared me. On a practical front I completed an honours degree in anthropology, worked full time at sea (which has given me all sorts of skills handy for life here), went travelling (so that now I do not feel the need to wander off), and completed theology and linguistics degrees. Personally, the time was spent building connections at home, repairing some broken relationships, (mostly!) letting go of the dream of marriage and maturing a lot. When I left PNG after my two months of taste-and-see I was overwhelmed by the sense of call and the implications that had. When I returned, I was trained, ready, willing and excited. I was, and am, committed to this work for the long haul.

Choosing to work in PNG was a process of elimination, not of big signs from God. I wanted to work in the Pacific Area. Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands were my first choices, but they both said they could not support extra singles at the time. PNG on the other hand, was more than willing to have more singles (we’re something like 20% of the Branch) and had lots of useful things I could help with while I sorted out the partnership question.

After two years of being a generally helpful linguist and testing other skills by filling a need in the Project Office, I am now in the stage of seriously considering which place to work in long term. There has been little guidance on how to make such a decision, so with other unallocated linguists we formed a group, to work out this big question together. We called ourselves ‘Translators Exploring Allocations’ (TEA), although some days ‘Unallocated Linguists Anonymous’ may have been more accurate!

For three months we have been meeting several times a week. We have invited Regional Directors to tell us the priorities in their region. We have followed up on areas of interest by interviewing other translators who work nearby, by reading reports, even by going to Lae to meet with Church leadership to talk about an area which was presented as a potential need at a conference in January.  We have done team building exercises to help with the partnership challenge singles must face. We have all also been working on our secondary assignments (discourse analysis paper, grammar paper, writing for the Communications department… and more).

Along the way we have found that we have formed a group that is now looking at the possibility of working together as a larger team among a group of languages. We have been surprised at the consensus between us. As we have listened to people and listened to God through prayer, the same potential projects have generally gone on and off the list of possibilities at the same time. When five people, each from a different cultural background, reach consensus like this, I think God is at work.

We now have two places that we have agreed to take the next step in checking out through a pre-allocation trip. The plan is to do workshops in each place that allow us to be there for a time and to be helpful to the community, but without having to commit for the long term. The thought of saying ‘no’ to one place and ‘yes’ to the other makes me nervous. The knowledge that we’ve had consensus along the way so far gives me comfort, as I do believe God is with us in this difficult decision making process.

‘Call’ a slippery thing that can be used as an excuse for inaction or for rash action, but it is also an essential for me in a decision as big as a allocating to a language community long term. It is head and heart working together. It is listening to the advice of the community around me, seeking to move in the direction the branch is going and among the cacophony of needs in PNG, choosing one. It is difficult and time consuming. My prayer is that these months of discerning are an investment in the future, a foundation on which a partnership, a team and project can be firmly built. It is listening to God and then stepping out in faith.

Road Trip

Last week I went to Lae for a few days. This is a 10km drive from our home in the Aiyura Valley to the Highlands Highway, then about 210km along the highway to Lae. In many places, a 220km highway drive is a matter of a few smooth hours. Not here!  We spent four hours bumping through or swerving around potholes, breaking suddenly and holding our breath.

A truck parked on your side of the road?
No worries, just swerve around it.

The 10km to Kainantu is one of the worse stretches of road. At one point the road subsides over a metre, and the cars bump down into the hollow and back up again. At another point, the road has been patched up from what used to be one lane and a gaping hole where the creek stole the other lane. The bridge to Kainantu has also been patched up, with pieces retrieved from the river below where they had previously fallen. This bridge is slowly sinking down the river banks. When it is eventually impassable, we shall be cut off from the highway.

Looking ahead to a landslide which
we will soon go along the top of.

Once on the Highlands Highway, we first wound our way towards Yonki dam. This provides hydroelectric power to much of the nation. At all points you are sharing the road with pedestrians and roaming livestock, which adds an extra challenge. Along the edge of the road are villages, market stalls and fuel stalls.

 The beautiful view along
the Markham Valley.

Once we have crossed the dam, the next challenge is KassamPass. This is the switchback road which descends from the highlands to the lowlands. As we drove down we passed through a layer of cloud, travelling from clear air to fog and back to clear air again. The clarity gives a breathtaking view of the valley and the Finnesterre Mountains beyond…and of the precipice beside each bend that you take. Reaching the bottom of the pass I always breathe out a sigh of relief and breath in the humid air that says we have reached the lowlands.

The Markham River looking lazy.

The Markham Valley is flat, grassy and full of cattle. If you take the turn off to Madang, there are palm oil plantations. I have only ever seen the Markham River in a lazy state, but the breadth of the river bed, the sharp cliffs along it and the trees and rocks scattered about testify to the force of water which sometimes passes through. It has been known to take out bridges when in full flood.

The surprising house that seems
to have landed from somewhere else.

PNG is the land of the unexpected and nearing Lae there is a sight which made my head turn; a house which looked like it had been lifted from America and landed in PNG. Apparently it belongs to a local MP.

Once we reach the turnoff for Nadzab airport we are nearing Lae, although it is still over half an hour away. Maybe this distance would be shorter if the road were better, but as a heavily trafficked road, it is quickly worn down. The worst stretch of road is the last 10-15km into town. The unofficial rule is that you keep to the side of the road which is smoothest and to the left when there is oncoming traffic.

Potholes at a Lae corner.

In Lae itself the roads vary. The road to the guesthouse had been redone since I visited a year ago. It was smooth, had kerbs, gutters and lines marked. Another corner by a main shopping centre was so full of potholes that it required defensive 4WDing skills, in a 2WD van, while dodging the pedestrian crowd. As the potholes were full of water, we never knew how deep each one was until we splashed into it and out again, sometimes with more of a ‘thunk!’ than expected.

Stepping into another world to
have lunch at the Lae Yacht Club.

Our driver for most of this was Rebekah. Taking on the driving helped her defeat motion sickness, and surely has half the Highlands Highway talking about the white woman who was driving. Women driving in PNG, especially outside of a town, are rare. As security we had one of our male colleagues with us. He rode in the front so that everyone could see him and hopefully choose not to harass us.

The long receipt after we filled four
trolleys with groceries at one
supermarket. I have no idea why
this won't upload the right way up. 

Lae itself was a time for shopping, dining out, meetings, relaxing in the pool and generally enjoying being with friends and away from the computer for a few days.

Skeleton of a ute.

On the drive home we were laden with cargo. Organising a trip to Lae is a headache and for many of us only happens once a year. As it is our best accessible centre for shopping, we make the most of it and stock up while we can. The van was rather full!

During the drive home was Susie suggested that PNG cars include skeletons and zombies. Skeletons are the remains of vehicles which have ended their life by the roadside and left only remains. Zombies are those vehicles which should have died, but somehow keep on driving. We saw plenty of both. I hope you’ve enjoyed some of my attempts at taking their photos from a swerving, bouncing vehicle!

A truck that did not make the corner
and is quickly being stripped down
to a skeleton.

Arriving safely home in the highlands we offloaded cargo and collapsed into our various beds. Our three days away had been good, but tiring. Meanwhile, another vanload of people were doing ‘Lae in a Day’, leaving before 6am and returning after 8pm. No thanks!

Vehicle skeleton on the roadside.

A local PMV (Public motor vehicle).
Surely there is space for one more!

 I think that windscreen repair
qualifies this as a zombie truck.
Note also the number of pedestrians
we're about to share a bridge with.

Humbled

The best compliments and encouragement come in the form or casual comments and leave me humbled at the same time. Here are some examples from recent months, that continue to encourage me as I wade through the morass of decision making.

“I pray for you every day…”

While home on furlough so many people told me that they pray for me everyday and that they find me an inspiration. This was not just from close friends. Sometimes it was from from people I barely know, other times from people I look up to myself. Even when I am bad at keeping in touch with them, they are praying for me. Even though I am just working at living each day well, using the skills I’ve been given in the place I feel called, apparently I am inspiring people. My life feels fairly ordinary as I live it each day. I am inspired to keep going by those who have encouraged me. When I am overwhelmed by decisions to be made, I am reminded that there are friends who carry me.

“Thank you for your friendship…”

Over the last year I’ve exchanged a number of emails with married friends who’ve been going through an incredibly difficult time. I live in a different country, am slow to reply to emails and only caught up with them once while in the same city. I am aware of how much more I could have done, but did not. Yet by email and in person they tell me that I’ve been a friend and a support. Rather than telling myself I know better, I am working to hear their words and be encouraged.

“I’ll build you a house…”

When discussing possible destinations to work with a language long term, one colleague quickly told me that as soon as we were ready, he was ready to build us a village house. Several of the others in the conversation added their support that they too would love to be part of a building party. In the middle of all the details and decisions, knowing that my friends are waiting to be practical and supportive, even before I’ve asked them, is an enormous encouragement.

In writing this, my intent is not to brag, but to say ‘Thank you!’

To all of you who pray for me, thank you.

To all of you who care in practical ways, thank you.

To all of you who encourage me in ways you do not even realise, thank you.

 At the moment, as I am in the middle of what feels like endless decisions, you are carrying me in more ways than you can know, so thank you!

The side effects of an introduction

The other day at morning tea I met with a colleague and realised that there was an odd coolness between us. Usually I get along pretty well with people, so this surprised me and left me trying to work out where things went astray. My conclusion is that we lost our way the day we met.

We met in a work context, but not a formal one. In making small talk, my purpose being to get to know this person I was to be working with, I probably asked about life before PNG. The reply I got felt like the reply one would get at a job interview as previous training and work experience was detailed. As he is an American, I’m told that this sort of introduction through qualifications is natural and normal. As an Australian, I heard it as arrogant. Ok, I’m Aussie, the idioms that came to mind were a lot more colourful than ‘arrogant’. Without realising it, I started to dislike the guy.

In response, when he asked about my past life, I would have given a general reply, mentioned sailing and not detailed all my university degrees. He probably walked away thinking me underqualified and out of place, for Australians typically undersell themselves in such a situation. Our introductions are usually low key and we do not like to be seen as self-promoting. Since then I have felt that this colleague does not value what I have to contribute. Maybe if I told him I had the equivalent of nine years full time tertiary study this might change, yet I struggle with the idea that my value is in my qualifications. I prefer people to get to know me as me, not as a collection of letters which can go after my name or as a job title.

So what now? Being aware of the fact I’m cool to him because of his cultural introductions and judgements I can start to change my attitude and get to know him as a real person, not as a stereotype. Knowing that qualifications and experience are more important to other cultures, I can try to remember not to hide my achievements.

Working in a multinational organisation means constant awareness of different ways of being polite, introducing and relating. So far I have negotiated this fairly well, but in this case, the relationship was derailed at the start. I am not too worried though, as I have plenty of other friends from the US to remind me that most of the time, that cross cultural relationship works well too.

TEA

Since returning to PNG a month ago I have been looking at which language group to work with long term. In a country with hundreds of languages waiting for translation work, it is a challenging process and a difficult choice. To help ease the process, we’ve been sharing this journey as a group of translators exploring allocations, or TEA for short.

Over the last few years, our organisation has accumulated a number of unallocated linguists. Some people were previously allocated to work with a language group and for various reasons vacated their programme. Some are new to the country. Some have been waiting for a work partner (me!). Some are committed to one project for a set period but are contemplating long term options. Together, we have been meeting for a cuppa, a chat and prayer. There is comfort and strength in sharing our struggles and working out the road forward between us.

We have also taken to inviting a guest to our gathering, usually a regional director (RD). When one first arrives as a linguist, RDs can be a bit scary as they seem to see a target painted on you and aim to recruit you for their region before another RD gets you for theirs. Having got to know a number of the RDs in person over the last few years, I now know that they are actually more gracious than that, but first impressions were intimidating. Having RDs come and share with us as a whole group takes away the pressure of feeling targeted.

Group discussions during a workshop in a village

Region by region we are listening to possibilities and priorities. We listen, we question, we pray, we ponder. We look at maps and are amused by place names. If one language group strikes a chord for one or more of us, we start discussing what the next step might be. This next step usually involves a visit to a language area, but the challenge is to do it in a way which allows us to have a look-see without promising anything long term. We find ourselves discussing options of language surveys and workshops, exploring legitimate reasons to engage with a community without raising expectations. We discuss ways to find out more information, while contributing to the community at the same time.

So far we’ve had four gatherings and heard from two of the eight regions. That leaves six more to hear from, when I’m already feeling overwhelmed with information. Yet sharing the journey between us makes it easier. Where we will all allocate waits to be seen, but at least we have found a practical way to take manageable steps towards that goal.