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.