Home: Sweet Kaiam

Here's a picture of the house at Kaiam. It has three rooms, a common
room with a kitchen sink, and two sleeping rooms with built in bunk
beds. The floor is made of sago tree bark, and the walls are tied
together fire wood planks. The roof is also made of sago tree palms.
All in all this beam and pole construction does well, but it's not
exactly the accommodations that I'm used to living in. If you picked a
spot at random in the walls or floor, you can stick a finger through
them, but at least the roof doesn't leak over my bed. The porch you see
here is pretty nice though. It has built in benches that we spend warm
afternoons and nights sitting on where we can look out over the airstrip.

The interesting thing about this type of construction (using native
materials) is that they don't last very long in these conditions. This
house is a little more than three years old (I think that's what Anton
said) and the porch is starting to sag, and the house shakes more when
people move around in it than it used to... I wouldn't know except that
Anton has mentioned this. It's getting to be an old house and it's time
to build a new one, which is what we've been doing when we can't drive
due to rain or broken machinery. It'll probably be six months or more
before the new house is built, and all we've got to show for it right
now is a big tree stump that's been removed over the last five days or so.

For those of you who would like to see the very exciting path that I
underwent to get here, here's the GPS log in all it's glory:
http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&t=h&msa=0&msid=111086795554757393969.000482aebb27bada3d4c0&ll=-5.200365,144.063721&spn=1.304702,2.469177&z=9
My brother has been helping me put things on the internet, and he's
pretty impressed with how this turned out, so you should take a look at
it. The journey took three days.
Day 1: From Mt. Hagen (via MAF: Mission Aviation Fellowship) to Munduku,
jump into a canoe and head upstream where we got rained out and hastily
made camp in a House Win.
Day 2: Continue up river at at the end of the day we had three options:
Continue by canoe, hike a few hours overland to Kaiam, sleep in a very
little Haus Win overnight... We chose the 3rd option.
Day 3: A few hours more by canoe and arrival at Kaiam.

Most of the trip upstream was interrupted by low water crossings that
required most of the occupants to jump out of the canoe and push it over
rocks to deeper water, then drop the motor back down and race upstream
to the next obstacle. It made for some extraordinarily long days. All
told, we covered about 40 miles by boat from Munduku to Kaiam, and the
flight was about 110 miles.

Tractor bearing

Well, you know there's a problem with your tractor when the wheel stops
turning. And all these loose pieces of metal may be part of the problem.

Anton and I have had a few dry-ish days in the last week we've been at
Kaiam and have gotten some dirt moved from the hill over to the fill
spot. Yesterday was a little bit wet, but we decided to work through it
anyway. After we'd been working for about an hour we had chewed up the
soft ground pretty well and the little scraper being pulled by Anton in
the little tractor was having trouble navigating the ravines. So I came
through with the loader tractor to smooth out a little spot for him to
drive through. After clearing one pass for him, I was waiting for him
to go through and I was going to clear the rest of the area for him, but
when he tried to pass by me, his right rear tire didn't want to turn.
We call this a bad day. After a few tries forward and back, it loosened
up and he was able to drive (slowly) back to the shed where he took of
the wheel and found the resulting situation.

It looks like the bolts had loosened themselves, allowed all the oil to
drain out, resulting in a hot bearing and the pieces you see here that
remain. Down one tractor.

It's crazy hot here today... more than usual. Most nights it cools off
and we've got a refreshing breeze, but last night we had heavy cloud
cover (with some rain) and no breeze and today the humidity is through
the roof and I'm literally dripping sweat from my elbows as I type
this... And I don't usually drip. Today will probably be a great day
for a swim in the river.

Sac-sac and fish

Well, it may not look too appealing, but it was actually pretty good.
Sac-sac (I'm not sure how it's spelled, but that's what it sounds like)
is one of the staple foods here and it's made from the mashed, washed
insides of the Sago tree. It's a very strange powder when it's "dry"
because it's a lot like corn meal as it will hold a shape and can be
packed together fairly well. As soon as it gets a little wet though it
becomes very runny. The way you cook it is quite complex: take a
handful of sac-sac and place it in a frying pan over the fire and squish
it into the pan... flip when ready. It becomes the only food (that I'm
aware of) that is both sticky and crumbly... I know, I didn't think that
was possible either! When it's well cooked it becomes translucent and
sticky, like those sticky hand things you get in the $0.50 eggs at the
supermarket. We had some the other night that was cooked inside bamboo
and it was nearly all translucent... yummy translucent worms... As far
as taste, well it doesn't really have any, but I had to drink about a
liter of water for the amount of sac-sac you see here in this photo, so
I guess it's a great food to eat to keep from getting dehydrated! It's
actually pretty tasty with a good layer of salt. As they say: more salt
to make it sweet... well, at least they say that here... lol

Trip to Kaiam

Well, it took about three days, fifteen hours of travel time, forty
miles, and dozens of pushes of the canoe to travel from Munduku to
Kaiam. Anton and I left Mambis on Monday morning at five, drove to Mt.
Hagen and got onto an MAF flight to Munduku. It was only about an hour
flight between the two, but we traveled about a hundred miles in that
time. We weren't on the ground more than ten minutes before Anton had
his hands greased up in the tractor there that was misbehaving. It
looked like when they had changed engine and transmission oil, they only
put 6L into the engine, and 6L into the transmission. Not only was that
not enough oil to keep the transmission from making an awful racket, but
it also wasn't enough to be able to use the hydraulics on the machine to
lift the 3-point in the back... We told them they needed more like 40L
for that tractor.

We then started to load the motor canoe full of our gear and then looked
at a powered lawnmower that wouldn't walk by itself, or spin the
blade... The belts had become loose, so we tightened them and it was
back up and running. A little while later we had to get fuel for that
motor, so we stopped at THE fuel drum to get a few liters for our trip
up river. They had a hand pump in order to transfer fuel from the drum
to our containers, but they had to measure how much they were taking
out, so it went into another container, then was hand pumped from that
container into ours... Another guy though he had a faster way, so he
took a few 5L jugs and a hose and tried to do a gravity siphon. He put
one side in the barrel, and started sucking on the other side, but it
apparently wasn't working to his satisfaction, so he takes out the other
side, puts the side he had in his mouth into the barrel, and proceeds to
get the siphon working by sucking on the now fuel covered end.

There's a saying that came up at some point... "It's a wonder they made
it into the stone age"... Not very nice, but given the tenancy to do
not so bright things, it does make you think... and it's truly a wonder
that we made it to Kaiam (safely) at all...

The GPS data for the flight, and trip up the river will follow in
another post, but I figured I should post something sooner rather than
later. And one last thing: If I thought that Mambis was hot at close to
6000' elevation, Kaiam at around 800' is sweltering... Even in the
shade I'm sweating and everything ... EVERYTHING is wet... and not just
damp, but ring out water wet. It's no wonder the airstrip has taken ten
years to get to the point it's at now. With all that water and clay
mixing it's going to be a lot of hard work to complete.

Let's go fly a kite!

A few weeks ago we hiked up Radio Tower again for an afternoon hike.
This time I wasn't sucking as much wind as I was the first time, but
it's still a pretty difficult hike. We even took a side excursion to a
small waterfall and bushwhacked our way back down to Mambis to see what
else we could see. But the whole reason for going up in the first place
was to fly a kite.

Anton has this box kite and a whole bunch of string to get this kite
waaaaaay up in the sky. The only problem is getting the kite up in the
air to begin with. From my own kite experience in Nebraska, all you
need was a good running start and up goes the kite. Not quite so with
this kite and the limited area on top of the hill to get a running
start... Time for plan B... Paul gets to climb the radio tower and
launch the kite thirty feet up! Yeah, it's a short tower, but it
doesn't need to be a tall one because it's on the largest hill for about
four miles in all directions. I took the kite from Anton, stuffed it in
my pocket and shimmied up to the top of the tower. It took a few tries
before I figured out how to make a box kite fly, but soon it was
climbing quickly into the sky. Anton had enough line on so that the
kite was simply a dot in the sky when we let out all the string.

Right about the time we got the kite going up, some kids from
Wapenamanda joined us on top of the hill. Most of the time they were
speaking Enga amongst themselves, so none of us knew what they were
saying, but they kept laughing and laughing at us... I guess us white
skins look pretty funny; I mean we start turning red in the sunlight and
all... After about a half our of flying the kite, and 'sharing with
string' (Anton and Laura know quite a few of those string tricks) we
pulled the kite back in and the kids followed us down the hill until
they turned onto a path that leads back to Wapenamanda, but they were
still laughing the whole time. It must be nice to have so much to laugh
about.

Most of the time we end up being spectacles like that; when we go out
into other towns or mission stations a crowd is quick to gather to see
what we're up to... I'm not sure I like all that much attention, but
it's inevitable here. I did like flying the kite though!

Birthday Haircut

The plan keeps changing, but right now it is to take an MAF flight on
Monday to a village "close by" the airstrip in Kaiam. Then take the
motor canoe's upstream for a couple days to get to our job site. So, in
order to prepare for the additional temperature increase that will be
felt when transitioning from Mambis at 5900 feet to Kaiam at 600 feet,
and because it's my birthday today, I took time out of the day to cut my
hair shorter. I feel cooler already!

The jokes around here keep coming about a kid who transitioned from
Alaska to PNG and how everyone is shivering during the rain showers
while I'm finally feeling comfortable... Several people wear fairly
heavy coats in the morning and evening in order to stay warm... but I am
finally starting to acclimate a little bit because the temperature the
other night during a fairly windy storm was cool enough that the sheet
and heavy sheet on my bed were not enough.

In other words, going back to Alaska may be quite the shock...
especially after spending time at the airstrip where it's much, much warmer.

Escape Goat

So we've mostly eaten chicken since I've been in PNG. Baked chicken,
fried chicken, chicken stir-fry, chicken guts, chicken pot pie... you
get the idea. So we thought it was time for a change and that change
happened to be a goat.

We got the goat from our gardener: Joseph. The day we slaughtered it
was the Monday after Easter. We told Joseph to bring it by about noon
so we'd have plenty of time to get all our work done. We wanted to try
to tan the hide, and boil the skull. Both turned out to be very time
consuming tasks. Joseph went to go get the goat, but it had escaped
from his house and ran away, so they locked it in a neighbors house and
that neighbor wasn't home at the time.

When Joseph finally got the goat to us, it was about two in the
afternoon... PNG time... Then, he came inside to tell us it was here,
and we could start slaughtering it. I went out to see it, and saw a
brown streek going down the road.

"Joseph, where'd you tie up the goat?"
"Em stop. Em long Hous Win." ("He's here. He's at the shed.")
"You mean at the end of this rope?"
"Eh? Em where?"
"I think he ran down the road."

I pointed, and Joseph took off down the road, Anton close behind, and I
ran back to get my camera because I knew this was going to be good.
Turns out the goat wasn't too smart. He made it about 200m down the
road, tried to get across a fence and got stuck. Quickly it was back in
the yard, and we didn't take eyes off the escape artist until we
finished putting it in the freezer at about 7 pm.

Now we're having goat stew, goat spaghetti, and goat stir fry. Yummy.

Wild Honey

There were more bees in the house we are trying to repair and it just so
happens that the hive that got removed next was huge! The process got
started by putting on rain coats and gloves and going out while it was
raining at night. The theory was that the bees wouldn't be able to fly
in the rain, and less likely to fly at night. This was only partly
true. Solo got stung as I took the first crowbar swing at removing the
siding. So we retreated for more protection and came back with mosquito
net over our heads.

As the process continued, Solo got stung nine more times but we removed
a section of hive roughly a foot wide and six feet long! All the comb
barely fit into two very large pots and we stuck them in the deep freeze
to kill all the bees. The next day we took the honey from the deep
freeze and put it through the cheese cloth, and the press that I made
over the last few weeks and got about seven pint sized jars full! So
much honey... yum.

The honey is very light in color and flavor, and not overly sweet. It's
a very good tasting honey and we've been putting it on everything from
bread to glazes for chicken and sweet potatoes. It looks like there are
two more hives to remove and I've made a smoker so that hopefully no one
will get stung anymore. We'll see how that project goes.

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter to all! Christ is Risen today!

Usually when I go to Easter Sunday service, I've gone through a very
sad, dark Good Friday service and then you have the dichotomy of a
bright early morning Easter Service. Well, they do it a little bit
differently in PNG. Good Friday is just as the name implies. There are
hallelujahs all over the place and it's a pretty upbeat worship
service. Then you have an even more joyful Easter Service.

The church we went to had some lapun women that sang an old style PNG
song during the service. The style of these songs is that one person
starts out in a kind of chanting voice that is the verse of the song,
then a few more people join in with the first part of the chorus,
followed by a few more. Soon they're all singing different notes and
pitches that individually would be very harsh, but together it somehow
works. The most interesting part for me is at the end of the chorus,
they suddenly go up together and fall off quickly into silence. It
always sounds like "Owwwwaaaahhhhhh--" to me... but since they were
singing in Enga, I have no idea what they were saying.

After the singing all the kids in the congregation got up and went
outside. In a few minutes they all came back in and went to the front
and gave several people Easter Eggs. Since we're the white-skins,
everywhere we go we're the center of attention, so we each got one as
well as the newly graduated Pastors and praise team and leaders of the
community. It was really nice to get an Easter Egg. And a really
unique Easter Sunday.