Our week out bush went well, thanks to those who prayed for us. It was a very peaceful and restful time. We stayed on a mission station run by the church of the Nazarene, in a beautiful village called Sangapi in the highlands. We were told that it takes two days of walking through the bush to get to a ‘real’ road before you can catch a ride to Mt Hagan. It took us 25 minutes in the plane.
It was a rather wet and cold week, but we were fortunate to have very comfortable housing and wonderful people looking after us. (And the really good thing about being in the cold part of PNG…no snakes.)
We stayed in the visitor’s end of the clinic nurses house. It had solar powered lights, water into the house (via a header tank which we pumped by hand) and even hot water into the house on sunny days.
On good weather days, we spent a lot of time taking short walks around the area chatting with the local people (in our very limited pidgin) and learnt a bit about life in the bush. On wet days, we spent time catching up on school work with Rachel and Megan, read, played LOTS of card games with the kids and generally relaxed.
The girls got on well with our neighbours children, and spent many hours by the fire in their cook haus. Our neighbours had a gas stove in their house, but told us they preferred to cook in the traditional way – in fact, they spent most of their time in the cook haus keeping near the fire for warmth. Our girls loved to go and have sugar cane parties with the other kids, and also started to enjoy munching on cold cooked kau kau (sweet potatoes). They picked up lots of pidgin language, and unfortunately, an impressive collection of flee bites on their bodies.
On Saturday, we walked up to the local government station, where about a hundred people had assembled for the weekly soccer and basketball competitions and market. We were told that some people walk from 3 hours away each week to attend this social event. Our family was the bonus attraction that week, and we could only stay as long as the kids could stand being stared at. More than once I wished we could all blend in and observe and participate without drawing so much attention.
So it was a very mellow week, very unlike our friends Debbie and Ed who had to be evacuated out of their village due to tribal fighting. I can gladly do without that sort of excitement.
Rachel wrote this poem while we were in Singapi.
The Sounds Of Sangapi. By Rachel Wilson
Ladies chat chat.
Dogs yap yap.
Children play play.
Trees sway sway.
In the village all is calm.
No cars.
No yelling.
No alarms.
When the sun goes down,
Crickets peep peep.
Chickens cheep cheep.
And all sleep sleep.
Yep, it was a ‘bel isi tru’ week (‘bel isi’ literally means, slow heart or peaceful/ calm).
Hope your week is full of ‘bel isi’ moments!
Sandy has taken the camera to work, and has promised to report on his week...until then, we will share about our days at home in Mt Hagan.
My (Narelle's) days are spent largely in the kitchen, as we are back to cooking from scratch. Another part of my job is hospitality. We have many pilots and other MAF personel coming through Mt Hagan. This week we had a pilot, Greg Fallend, staying with us for two nights. Greg and his wife Jacquie and their family live in a town called Goroka, and Greg was in this week to help with training some of the new pilots.
