You can all sleep easy again. I have arrived back in Ukarumpa safe and sound. The trip back was uneventful, the only stops were planned stops to deliver chickens and eggs.
I have a good report on my tour of a coffee processing plant that I will write about later in the week. It was really interesting. I don't have time to write about it at the moment so you will all just have to wait patiently.
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Monday, August 20, 2007
Trip to CLTC
Well I thought I would take this opportunity to let you all know what travel is like here in PNG, land of the unexpected.
Earlier in the week I received a phone call from Aunty Alison who lives at CLTC (Christian Leaders Training College), around 7 hours drive from Ukarumpa. A van was coming through from Lae on the way back to CLTC on Friday that I could grab a ride on, so it seemed like a perfect opportunity to see where she lives and see a bit more of PNG.
The van was leaving Lae at around 4am and reached Ukarumpa just before 8am, so I had to leave work early. There were 5 of us in the van, myself, Uncle Ross, another kiwi named Laurie, the driver Thomas and a lady who works in the office at CLTC named Nancy. We took off and all was going well. We drove through Kainantu (not far from Ukarumpa) taking the same route I went on last weekend for the bible dedication.
As we approached the crest of a hill all of a sudden 4 men armed with home made rifles and 2 men with bush knives forced us to stop. This was a new experience to me. It would be exceptionally rare to be held up at gunpoint in New Zealand, and in my year in Canada not once did anything like this happen. So I was a little unsure what they may do. I figured they were probably after money, and I was starting to wish that I had stored some of my money in my shoe like Jonathan has been doing in the Philippines. I thought it would probably be too late to try transferring it at that point so I just sat there in the van and waited to see what would happen. One of the men with a bush knife approached the drivers door and hit it with his knife, not particularly hard, but enough to give the impression that he wanted the driver to wind down the window I guess. The driver had some lunch money stored in the ash tray and was pretty quick to hand that over, I think it was 18 kina (around NZ $9) and amazingly after receiving that money the gunmen took off. So we were let off very lightly and continued on our way, all be it a little shaken from our experience. Apparently the driver had been held up before and he and his son were driven to a village where the vehicle was unloaded and they were stripped naked before being allowed to take the van and leave. I didn't hear about that until later, so I didn't realize at the time just how lightly we had been let off.
A few hours later as we were driving along up a steep mountain pass, we came across a group of people looking over the edge of the road, where there was a 300 metre or so drop. Apparently a bus (one of the PMVs that I was intending on returning to Ukarumpa in) had not negotiated the corner successfully and had flown off the edge. Reports from people at the scene were that they had removed 15 bodies so far, and were still trying to cut others out of the wreckage.
Once again we continued on our journey, until we came across two men armed with shovels who were blocking the road. Apparently they had been filling in a few potholes and then demanding money from travellers in return. Not wanting to be harmed with the shovel, I quickly removed a 2 kina note from my shoe and handed it to the driver who passed it out the window. That seemed to satisfy them and we were allowed to continue yet again.
So we continued yet again until we came across a big truck trailer unit that was blocking half the road. A bunch of people were blocking the other half of the road asking for money. These people didn't even have any shovels, so they were a little more negotiable on price. They wanted 5 kina, instead Laurie told them off in the name of Jesus, and they took that as a fair payment and let us pass.
And that was the last stopage on the journey. Last night I heard that there was a possibility of catching a flight from Hagen to Ukarumpa, Hagen is about 1 hour or so from CLTC. So I left bright and early this morning in a van fill of day old chickens. After waiting at the airport for about an hour I finally found out that there were no flights going to Ukarumpa today so I was out of luck. Instead I spent a rather interesting day delivering chickens and driving around Hagen (I wasn't driving, I was just a passenger). I am heading back to Ukarumpa at 4am Wednesday in the CLTC egg delivery truck. Hopefully we will be too early for the rascalls and we will have a less eventful journey this time.
Sorry I didn't have the prescence of mind to grab my camera and take photos of the gunmen, you will just have to take my word for it that they looked pretty mean.
Earlier in the week I received a phone call from Aunty Alison who lives at CLTC (Christian Leaders Training College), around 7 hours drive from Ukarumpa. A van was coming through from Lae on the way back to CLTC on Friday that I could grab a ride on, so it seemed like a perfect opportunity to see where she lives and see a bit more of PNG.
The van was leaving Lae at around 4am and reached Ukarumpa just before 8am, so I had to leave work early. There were 5 of us in the van, myself, Uncle Ross, another kiwi named Laurie, the driver Thomas and a lady who works in the office at CLTC named Nancy. We took off and all was going well. We drove through Kainantu (not far from Ukarumpa) taking the same route I went on last weekend for the bible dedication.
As we approached the crest of a hill all of a sudden 4 men armed with home made rifles and 2 men with bush knives forced us to stop. This was a new experience to me. It would be exceptionally rare to be held up at gunpoint in New Zealand, and in my year in Canada not once did anything like this happen. So I was a little unsure what they may do. I figured they were probably after money, and I was starting to wish that I had stored some of my money in my shoe like Jonathan has been doing in the Philippines. I thought it would probably be too late to try transferring it at that point so I just sat there in the van and waited to see what would happen. One of the men with a bush knife approached the drivers door and hit it with his knife, not particularly hard, but enough to give the impression that he wanted the driver to wind down the window I guess. The driver had some lunch money stored in the ash tray and was pretty quick to hand that over, I think it was 18 kina (around NZ $9) and amazingly after receiving that money the gunmen took off. So we were let off very lightly and continued on our way, all be it a little shaken from our experience. Apparently the driver had been held up before and he and his son were driven to a village where the vehicle was unloaded and they were stripped naked before being allowed to take the van and leave. I didn't hear about that until later, so I didn't realize at the time just how lightly we had been let off.
A few hours later as we were driving along up a steep mountain pass, we came across a group of people looking over the edge of the road, where there was a 300 metre or so drop. Apparently a bus (one of the PMVs that I was intending on returning to Ukarumpa in) had not negotiated the corner successfully and had flown off the edge. Reports from people at the scene were that they had removed 15 bodies so far, and were still trying to cut others out of the wreckage.
Once again we continued on our journey, until we came across two men armed with shovels who were blocking the road. Apparently they had been filling in a few potholes and then demanding money from travellers in return. Not wanting to be harmed with the shovel, I quickly removed a 2 kina note from my shoe and handed it to the driver who passed it out the window. That seemed to satisfy them and we were allowed to continue yet again.
So we continued yet again until we came across a big truck trailer unit that was blocking half the road. A bunch of people were blocking the other half of the road asking for money. These people didn't even have any shovels, so they were a little more negotiable on price. They wanted 5 kina, instead Laurie told them off in the name of Jesus, and they took that as a fair payment and let us pass.
And that was the last stopage on the journey. Last night I heard that there was a possibility of catching a flight from Hagen to Ukarumpa, Hagen is about 1 hour or so from CLTC. So I left bright and early this morning in a van fill of day old chickens. After waiting at the airport for about an hour I finally found out that there were no flights going to Ukarumpa today so I was out of luck. Instead I spent a rather interesting day delivering chickens and driving around Hagen (I wasn't driving, I was just a passenger). I am heading back to Ukarumpa at 4am Wednesday in the CLTC egg delivery truck. Hopefully we will be too early for the rascalls and we will have a less eventful journey this time.
Sorry I didn't have the prescence of mind to grab my camera and take photos of the gunmen, you will just have to take my word for it that they looked pretty mean.
Sunday, August 12, 2007
The Bible Dedication
kind of odd then that is likely to be the reason.
Right, well on Saturday I went on my first trip outside of the
Ukarumpa mission centre. I was going with a bunch of other people
from Ukarumpa to a bible dedication a couple of hours drive away.
When I say a couple of hours drive away you must realize that I am
talking about a couple of hours on PNG roads away, so it wasn't actually all that far, maybe 100Km or so.
Anyhoo, we all met at 7:30 am and headed out. After about 5 minutes
we had to stop because the radiator hose on the vehicle I was
travelling in blew off. Like all good blokes we all got out and
looked under the hood to see what the problem was. Being the
incredibly handy guy that I am in all situations mechanical, I
decided the most useful role I could play would be the photographer.
Some of the others were more mechanically inclined and quickly found
that the radiator hose was no longer attached and then proceeded to
reattach it making good use of some electrical tape that of course
they had in the back of the vehicle. So after 10 minutes we were
back under way with our patched up radiator hose. Thankfully there were no more car troubles for the rest of the trip.
I recall while in Vancouver complaining a little about the state of
some of the roads and thinking there were quite a few potholes
around. I now look back on those roads and have a good old chuckle
as they were many times better than the roads over here. There were
huge potholes all over the place,
some of them particularly difficult to see amongst the shadows on the road. We were in a pretty decent size 4x4 and still there were several times that I was sure we were
going to do some serious damage to the axle or blow out a tyre. At
one point the road looked barely passable and yet the 2 others that
were with me said that there had been significant improvements on
that part of the road in the last 3 weeks, apparently the road bore
more resemblance to a lake 3 weeks earlier.
Well enough about the roads, I am sure you all want to hear about the
bible dedication. When a new translation of a bible is completed and
printed the tribe who are benefactors of the new translation hold a
bible dedication. I have been told that they vary quite a bit from
tribe to tribe, some of them being pretty solemn and others having
more of a celebratory mood. This one was leaning towards the
celebratory side of things thankfully. People had walked to the
meeting spot from miles around, and there was much singing going on
as we drove along the road.
People were clearly very happy. A number of people were dressed in traditional tribal attire, they generally don't wear this any more but have adopted a more western
style of clothing. When everyone had arrived the ceremony got
underway. The 'White Skins' as we are called were invited to sit
under a blue tarpaulin to the right of the stage, however we managed
to avoid this by moving quickly to a grass bank to the side and
making ourselves comfortable there.
Once the seating arrangements were sorted out there was a drama,
re=enacting the arrival of the white skin missionaries, it was
narrated in the local language so I had to do my best to follow what
was going on by looking. I couldn't really see very well from where
I was so I went for a bit of a walk around the area to see what else
was photo-worthy. There were lots of decorations around, often
comprising of large bunches of bananas with some hibiscus flowers on
them, or in other cases a cabbage hanging on a wire. I guess they
made use of what they had available.
After the drama the speeches began, and they continued for quite some
time. Every now and then I picked up a word or 2 and Steve Curry (my
manager) did a good job of translating what he picked up. It turns
out that the original translation work was begun in 1965. The
translation being dedicated was a revision of the old translation as
the language had changed quite a bit in the last 40 years.
After the speeches we were invited to have lunch so we accepted the
kind offer and joined the other white skins in a nearby classroom for
a lunch of potato, kau-kau, chicken, coleslaw, lettuce, pawpaw and
pineapple. Not bad although the chicken could have done with a
little seasoning.
Friday, August 3, 2007
Food, lodgings and coffee
As those of you who have been regular readers over the last year may remember, while I was in Vancouver I made regular trips to the public market at Granville Island where I could find all manner of fresh fruit and veggies and a wide variety of fish and meat, not to mention the vast array of gourmet cheeses. Add to that the various herbs and grains etc and pretty much 95% of my ingredients could all be found in the often very busy market.
Well the morning market at Ukarumpa is kind of like that except there are only fruit and veggies, and not so many of them. The morning market happens 3 times a week, Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Calling it the morning market in my opinion is not the most appropriate name for it, I prefer to think of it as the pre-morning market. It kicks off at 6:30 and is all over by 8:00, and the later you go the more meager the selection is. On the 3 occasions that I have made it to the market so far I have arrived at around 7:00 and there has been quite a good variety of produce for sale. There are pineapple, bananas, strawberries, some other berry looking things, bell peppers (capsicums), potatoes, sweet potatoes, broccoli, beans, lettuce, vanilla beans, and the list could go on. The prices are often ridiculously cheap, yesterday I managed to score a bunch of bananas for around US $0.50 and they have been pretty tasty so far. Then there were the vanilla beans, 4 for US$0.30, not bad at all considering I spent around $9 for 2 of them in New Zealand last month. Instead of listing all of the items and their prices I will include a picture, everything in that picture was purchased for about US$3.00, not bad at all. On my first trip to the market I was looking for garlic, and was rather surprised when someone pointed it out at one of the tables. It was tiny, the whole bulb was about the size of a regular single clove. I bought some and used it a few times, I found it ridiculously painful to work with. Each clove was not much larger than a grain of rice once it was peeled. I ended up buying a jar of minced garlic from the store, much easier to work with.
Well enough about food for now, a number of people have expressed an interest in what my living arrangements are like. They are pretty nice. I have hot water available thanks to the solar panels on the roof, so I can still enjoy hot showers. The house is a duplex, with the other half of the house currently unoccupied. My half is the half on the right in the photo. Yesterday my flatmate arrived, his name is Ron I think. He is from Canada, Labrador I believe. His accent is quite different to the few Canadians I met in Vancouver, but I can normally understand him alright. He is a physio and is here for 6 weeks before heading to New Zealand for a couple of weeks. He is then going to Singapore or Taiwan, I forget, for a wedding, before eventually heading back to Canada for his own wedding in December. Any way back to the house, um, it has wooden floors, white walls and white ceilings. There is a kitchen with a rather scary gas oven, I am yet to figure out how to turn the oven on, some other gas ovens I have seen around Ukarumpa have to be started by using a long match. There is a starter button on the oven, but as yet pressing it has not achieved anything and the smell of gas filling the kitchen has prompted me to turn the gas off again before a random spark leaves me without any eyebrows. The lounge has a rather uncomfortable couch and 2 equally uncomfortable armchairs. There is also a table with 4 chairs. My bedroom has a double bed, a small desk with chair and an empty bookcase. If anyone has any further questions regarding the house feel free to leave a question, or if you prefer your questions to be private then send me an email.
A few people have also asked what the coffee situation is like here. Well, for the first few days it was particularly tough as I had no way of making any coffee. However someone I had lunch with on Saturday came to my rescue and found a spare french press that I can borrow for the time I am here. That alleviated the problem to some extent, now the only problem is I have no coffee grinder. I will have to keep a lookout for a cheap grinder somewhere, maybe the store will have one soon (it is pretty variable what the store actually has in stock). Anyway, I was given a bag of pre-ground coffee, PNG Blue Mountain. The beans taste kind of odd, I haven't quite been able to figure out exactly what it is that was odd about it that is odd, they are not really nasty tasting, just odd. Considering they were roasted in April I would have to say they are not too bad, and they may have actually been quite nice when they were fresh. There is a coffee research centre just outside of the village, I passed it on my way here from the airstrip, so I will have to pay a visit there some time.
There seems to be an abundance of very small wildlife around my house, particularly wildlife of the type that like to spin webs. I happened to look a little closer at one the other day and noticed that it had what looks like a big shell on it's back. I have since seen a few more of these around the exterior of the house, they look kind of cool so I took a photo.
Monday, July 30, 2007
Settling in time
Well for those of you who I haven't contacted yet, which would be pretty much everyone except Mum and Dad, I have safely arrived in Ukarumpa, Papua New Guinea.
I think I have now traveled in the smallest plane I will ever travel in, a Cessna 206, maximum capacity 5 passengers. I was in the co-pilot seat so had a wonderful view of the clouds and occasional river and rolling hills that make up the PNG eastern highlands. I had to be careful not to stretch my legs too straight as there were some foot pedals down there and I didn't really want to send the plane in an uncontrollable spin or anything. The flight was around 1 3/4 hours and the plane actually felt reasonably safe, it didn't bounce around too much.
On arriving in Ukarumpa I was met at the airstrip by my department bosses and Tony and Martha Hinton, the fellowship family that was assigned to show me around. Tony is a fellow kiwi although he has spent about 10 years in the UK and another 10 years in the US so his accent is a little confused at times.
There is a sign up sheet in the post office here with all the new people on it, where people sign up to have the newbies over for dinner or lunch. So far I have been out for dinner 3 times and lunch 4 times, so I am getting to know people pretty quickly. There are a bunch of young people here and the ones I have met so far have been great fun to be around and very welcoming.
On Saturday night there was a contemporary worship time with a really good worship band playing a good mix of songs. I would have to say it was one of the best worship bands I have seen. The music on Sunday morning was a little less to my liking, although they say if you don't like the style of service here, come back next week because it will be totally different, so I will have to see what it is like next week. I had a chat with one of the worship leaders and he sounded keen to get me involved in his team. There are so many good musicians over here, I guess I won't be playing quite as often as I was in Vancouver.
I haven't gone for a walk with my camera yet so don't have many photos yet, and the ones I do have are still on my camera so they will have to wait for the next posting. I was a little concerned for a while that I wouldn't be able to post pictures on my blog as I have to pay 30 cents per Mb for web usage. Fortunately that charge is only for incoming traffic, so I can post pictures for free! I will have to limit my web browsing though so probably won't be playing any of Dan's I hate Monday games for a while.
And that's all I have to say today. Check back in a few days and I may have more to say.
I think I have now traveled in the smallest plane I will ever travel in, a Cessna 206, maximum capacity 5 passengers. I was in the co-pilot seat so had a wonderful view of the clouds and occasional river and rolling hills that make up the PNG eastern highlands. I had to be careful not to stretch my legs too straight as there were some foot pedals down there and I didn't really want to send the plane in an uncontrollable spin or anything. The flight was around 1 3/4 hours and the plane actually felt reasonably safe, it didn't bounce around too much.
On arriving in Ukarumpa I was met at the airstrip by my department bosses and Tony and Martha Hinton, the fellowship family that was assigned to show me around. Tony is a fellow kiwi although he has spent about 10 years in the UK and another 10 years in the US so his accent is a little confused at times.
There is a sign up sheet in the post office here with all the new people on it, where people sign up to have the newbies over for dinner or lunch. So far I have been out for dinner 3 times and lunch 4 times, so I am getting to know people pretty quickly. There are a bunch of young people here and the ones I have met so far have been great fun to be around and very welcoming.
On Saturday night there was a contemporary worship time with a really good worship band playing a good mix of songs. I would have to say it was one of the best worship bands I have seen. The music on Sunday morning was a little less to my liking, although they say if you don't like the style of service here, come back next week because it will be totally different, so I will have to see what it is like next week. I had a chat with one of the worship leaders and he sounded keen to get me involved in his team. There are so many good musicians over here, I guess I won't be playing quite as often as I was in Vancouver.
I haven't gone for a walk with my camera yet so don't have many photos yet, and the ones I do have are still on my camera so they will have to wait for the next posting. I was a little concerned for a while that I wouldn't be able to post pictures on my blog as I have to pay 30 cents per Mb for web usage. Fortunately that charge is only for incoming traffic, so I can post pictures for free! I will have to limit my web browsing though so probably won't be playing any of Dan's I hate Monday games for a while.
And that's all I have to say today. Check back in a few days and I may have more to say.
Sunday, July 22, 2007
Final post from NZ
Well my month home in Auckland has just flown by and it is now only 12 1/2 hours until I depart to on my next great adventure.
In my time back home I have once again come to realise how good my espresso machine is. I had actually gotten used to not having fantastic coffee at home while living in Vancouver and had forgotten how good it was to wake up and be able to start the day off with a perfect latte or espresso. It will be missed over the next 5 months for sure.
It has also been nice being able to play a few rounds of golf over the last month, even if I got absolutely drenched in the process. I was certainly a bit rusty after not playing since October but in the last game I was starting to be a bit happier with the way I was hitting the ball, despite the somewhat unimpressive scorecard. It has been great being able to finally use my 'new' driver on a course at last, surprisingly it didn't totally fix my slice, so perhaps there is a flaw in my swing.
In my time back home I have once again come to realise how good my espresso machine is. I had actually gotten used to not having fantastic coffee at home while living in Vancouver and had forgotten how good it was to wake up and be able to start the day off with a perfect latte or espresso. It will be missed over the next 5 months for sure.
It has also been nice being able to play a few rounds of golf over the last month, even if I got absolutely drenched in the process. I was certainly a bit rusty after not playing since October but in the last game I was starting to be a bit happier with the way I was hitting the ball, despite the somewhat unimpressive scorecard. It has been great being able to finally use my 'new' driver on a course at last, surprisingly it didn't totally fix my slice, so perhaps there is a flaw in my swing.
Tuesday, July 3, 2007
Vacation montage
Well I have been very slack writing about my vacation and quite frankly am lacking the inspiration right now to write a detailed commentary on all I did and saw, so instead I will put together a bit of a photo montage of the last month or so.
Whistler
It was kind of cloudy up the mountains so we just hired some bikes to ride around the valley. There are some really nice lakes that are pretty close to the village. Didn't get a chance to do any downhill riding, Mum and Dad didn't seem to keen.
Victoria
Apparently we were really lucky to see so many orcas resting. And as you can tell we got really close to the whales to. Splendid.
The deer in somebodies garden was pretty cool.
Salt Spring Island
Beautiful place, we stayed in a really nice little log cabin beside a lake. Highlight of Salt Spring Island was visiting the cheese shop, very yummy goats cheeses. The bread shop had some really nice bread too.
Las Vegas
We arrived kind of late at night so all the rooms that we had booked were taken, so we got an upgrade to a suite, a 2 level room complete with a sauna shower and jacuzzi. Unfortunately it also only came with 1 bed so I had to sleep on a roll-away. Didn't really do much in Vegas other than sleep and eat.
Zion National Park
Bryce Canyon
Well known for it's hoodoos, indeed they were the best hoodoos I have ever seen.
Grand Canyon
The grand canyon is huge, I had no idea it was that big. It is pretty hard to capture the scale of it in a photograph, I kind of failed in that regard but I got a photo of a bee and a squirrel!
Yosemite National Park
My favourite of all the places we visited. I would love to go back there in winter time, maybe next year.
San Francisco
Didn't really get any photos worth posting here. We went on a tour to the golden gate bridge but it didn't stop on the side of the bridge I wanted a photo from, a little disappointing.
Whistler
It was kind of cloudy up the mountains so we just hired some bikes to ride around the valley. There are some really nice lakes that are pretty close to the village. Didn't get a chance to do any downhill riding, Mum and Dad didn't seem to keen.
Victoria
Apparently we were really lucky to see so many orcas resting. And as you can tell we got really close to the whales to. Splendid.
The deer in somebodies garden was pretty cool.
Salt Spring Island
Beautiful place, we stayed in a really nice little log cabin beside a lake. Highlight of Salt Spring Island was visiting the cheese shop, very yummy goats cheeses. The bread shop had some really nice bread too.
Las Vegas
We arrived kind of late at night so all the rooms that we had booked were taken, so we got an upgrade to a suite, a 2 level room complete with a sauna shower and jacuzzi. Unfortunately it also only came with 1 bed so I had to sleep on a roll-away. Didn't really do much in Vegas other than sleep and eat.
Zion National Park
Bryce Canyon
Well known for it's hoodoos, indeed they were the best hoodoos I have ever seen.
Grand Canyon
The grand canyon is huge, I had no idea it was that big. It is pretty hard to capture the scale of it in a photograph, I kind of failed in that regard but I got a photo of a bee and a squirrel!
Yosemite National Park
My favourite of all the places we visited. I would love to go back there in winter time, maybe next year.
San Francisco
Didn't really get any photos worth posting here. We went on a tour to the golden gate bridge but it didn't stop on the side of the bridge I wanted a photo from, a little disappointing.
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