What did you have for breakfast?

Think back... way back to this morning. After you slapped the snooze
button three or four times, staggered out of your room into the kitchen
and reached for your favorite breakfast food: Corn puffs? Toast?
Waffles? Coffee? Today, like most days at Kaiam, I had a pack of
Wopa's, which are basically a hard tack cracker that come in beef
flavors or plain.

Meet Douglas. He lives next door. This morning while his dad was out
cutting grass on the airstrip when breakfast started running away. A
large field mouse was quickly caught, gutted, roasted (to remove the
fur), "cooked" (I'd say more warmed), and eaten (bones, skin, even the
head) by this very quiet, polite boy. A tasty meal of protein in an
otherwise carb only diet.

And just to be clear, Douglas would love to share with you... ;-)

Bearing Between Teeth

Remember that bearing that blew up on us about a month ago? Well, we
now have the replacement bearing and when we had it almost all put
together again, I noticed a little crack in one of the teeth of the
drive shaft that had happened when a ball got wedged between a couple of
the teeth when it failed. Unfortunately there is no easy way to get a
replacement shaft, or the gear that was also slightly damaged. So, we
did the next best thing: we ground out the crack, put it together and
hoped for the best. The tractor has now been running up and down the
airstrip delivering it's dirty payload for about ten hours now... so
far, so good.

I also had fun with a chainsaw yesterday. It needed a new bearing as
well, which was hand delivered up the river the same time as our tractor
bearing. It's the clutch bearing and this new clutch is tight enough
that the chain doesn't want to stop moving even with the idle turned way
down. It required a pretty substantial change of the mixture (as it
turned out both high and low) before it got sorted out. Silly
carburetors and lots of air at this elevation. This was the first time
that I've ever used a big chainsaw and I was glad to get it running well
and hand it back.

We've got about a week left in Kaiam before we rotate out for a little
break. My body probably needs it more than my mind, but it would be
nice to see more than just three buildings and a field of dirt to move.

Taka Anda - Human Skull

The CRMF (Christian Radio Mission Fellowship?) email server has been
down for a week, so I wasn't able to post anything until now. I figured
I should post a photo from the Taka Anda museum in Wabag when we went a
few months ago... Just because I like skulls.

Night of the Flying Ants

If it sounds like the title of a horror movie, it kind of was. Last
night, just after dark, we were bombarded by thousands of flying ants.
I sat down to write a short email and had to stop when I couldn't read
the screen anymore because the ants had almost completely covered up the
screen with their winged bodies. I blew them off, closed the computer,
and went outside to sit in the dark to avoid the continual harassment of
six legged fiends flying toward lights. We have a kerosene lamp that
usually gets lit in the common room, and we all turned to look at it
when we thought it was running out of fuel since the light got dimmer.
Drastic measures were to be taken as the tiny insects were engulfing the
lamp.

So, we decided to go to war. We set up a candle on the floor of the
room. As the victims flew too close to the flame, their little wings
got clipped. Having lost the ability to transcend quickly toward the
light, they resorted to climbing the candle where their doom awaited
them at the top in the form of fiery vengeance.

Our elation was quickly subdued, however, when the continual stream of
their forces began to overwhelm our meager candle. Soon their bodies
were stacking up around the flame, choking it out in a suffocating wall
of bodies. Within ten minutes (we hadn't even finished our suppers) our
source of light, and our weapon, was extinguished! There was only one
thing to be done: clean off the candle and re-light it... over, and
over, and over again... I personally lost count after half a dozen
times when we resorted to much more extreme measures to eradicate our
enemy: aerosol can.

Their forces never saw it coming. They died by the hundreds. With each
blast their force was left scattered on the sago bark floor. We won the
battle, but they won the war. After ten minutes of intermittent battle,
and a can of ammo, we retreated to our portable DVD player under the
security guard of a mosquito net over the three of us and the brightly
light screen. Our candle soon extinguished, we were left in relative
peace under the net and an uneasy truce was kept for the remainder of
the night.

Bards will write of the saga of the Night of the Flying Ants for
weeks... At least we tried during supper.

Triancula

It's very interesting to see the local reaction to snakes and spiders.
I have a healthy respect for them myself, but I'm not opposed to petting
a constrictor snake, or lifting a triancula with a shovel to look at
it's fangs. In general, I understand this to be a little more friendly
than the average person but the reaction here is nothing short of over
dramatic.

The Lutz's have a few pet snakes in small fish tank type containers.
The largest one is a good sized constrictor of almost two meters in
length. The smallest one is probably half a meter long. Anton once
took the small one out of it's cage when we had a crowd of people over.
Instantaneously the people that saw the snake in his hand dashed for the
closest exit pushing, shoving, climbing over anything (including people)
in their way. It was a stampede. The reaction was quite similar when
one of the guys found this triancula in the stump of a tree that we were
removing. Even as I leaned down to get a closer shot (taking one of the
pictures I was probably within a foot of the large spider) the unnatural
fear that overtakes the average Papua New Guinean was so strong that
they felt fear for themselves and moved instinctively farther away.

Life around here is usually anything but dull... I should really take
video in the middle of one of these episodes sometime... ;-)