Wednesday, November 29, 2006
Last village email for a month.
Dear friends and family,
We have had an interesting last week or so. First off, we have decided to leave the village early, to take part in a seminar about a new SIL software package that has just been upgraded, and which we want to use to organize all our village language and cultural data. That means we will leave here on Dec. 1 (instead of Dec. 7), and arrive in Ukarumpa on Dec. 2. The seminar is held on Dec. 4-5. We hope to get some good hints and overview of the program, so we can make the maximum use of this excellent software.
We have had several uninvited guests, besides the rain bugs that flock to our lights at night and their huge cousins, the big black beetles. Last Tuesday night, a leaf flew in to buzz crazily around, to do an exuberant dance with our light. The leaf was about 4 in. long and green, and had intricate markings showing the veins in the leaf. It turned out to be a cleverly disguised grasshopper! It was just amazing! Then the next night we had a big huge brown grasshopper that just looked like a grasshopper, or rather, like a commando grasshopper, with huge legs and antenna, and a big blockish head. It took a lot to kill him, and he put up a good fight. On Sunday night, Sarah saw a flicker of gray that was just a blur, going to underneath our kitchen cabinet. The blur was a rat, which obviously hadn't read the "No tresspassing" signs. So, we now have put out more rat poison, and we'll see what we see.
On Saturday I was spraying antiseptic liquid bandaid solution on my arm, and when it didn't come out, I looked at it and the liquid came out at just that moment, squirting into my left eye. This solution, as you might infer, is supposed to land on the skin and then make a thin layer of protection, and here I had put it right on my eyeball. I shot up out of my chair and stumbled over to the kitchen sink, and tried to rinse my eye with water. The cannister has a warning that you should not put it in your eye, but it didn't say anything like if you are in a remote area, then leave immediately to get to medical help! :) I thought that since the solution dries when it is exposed to air, then I should make sure the eyeball was wet as much as possible, so I was a sight, alternately blinking and closing my eyelid!
I had an ambulance run on Tuesday last week, with a lady that fainted and was having heavy bleeding. It turned out to be a pregancy complication - her third miscarriage in a row (She already has 7 kids). Someone came to get me, and asked if I could take her to the Health Centre at a village about 45 minutes away. I said "yes" immediately, and after getting all my stuff together (water and a tarp), I got in the car. It had a problem with the electrical system again, and just had a "check bettery" light. A week earlier when this same problem happened, I had no headlights, turn signals, fan, gas gauge, temp gauge, ignition or 4WD lights. So, I was wondering how it was going to go. It was starting to get into dusk, about 5:25 pm, and it would be dark around 6:20 or so. If I hurried, maybe I could get back before it was too dark.
When we got her to the Health Centre, it was hard to work on her because of having to use flashlights, which none of us had because we had left so quickly. But finally a few flashlights came from the people down there, and the two health workers got the IV drip in her and the oxygen. She looked very still and like she wasn't breathing, until they started the oxygen. The light was so bad that they had to really work hard to find the vein to put the drip into.
After we'd gotten her in, my friend went to talk to the Madang Hospital, and for about 15 minutes they didn't respond on the radio. But finally they came up, and said we should take her to the Hospital as soon as we could. My friend asked me if I could help, as they had to vehicles there at Ileg. I really wanted too, but I was having doubts about whether I could get to Madang (2 hours away) in the dark, with no headlights. We were both trying to figure out what to do, and my friend asked the Hospital to send an ambulance and we would meet it halfway. It turns out that it wasn't really halfway because the ambulance can't go very fast because the front wheels and steering wheel wobble.
So I went out to the car, and tried to figure out what was causing the electrical problem. Before, it was an electrical short, and the symptoms were the same. I would wiggle and reposition a wire, as another guy was shining a flashlight on the area, and then would see if the warning light went off, and then would try another wire. But no solution. Finally I thought I should make sure the lights didn't work, so I would know if we needed to try to round up a savvy guy from the village. So I got in, started the engine, and - the lights worked! Still no turn signals, or fan, or any other lights, but at least we had the headlight. So I think that was probably a miracle.
We were able to clean up the lady and put her in the truck again, this time on a mattress, and then we drove off toward town. It was dark by this time, but we had our headlights! We crossed all the rivers fine, but one was pretty unnerving, when we drove in and then it got deeper and deeper until the headlights were under the water for about 3 seconds, and we could sort of see where we were going. Sometimes it was dark and sometimes we would get a glimmer of light as if it was underwater, which it was! I never have tried to go through the rivers at night, so this was a new experience.
We came to the ambulance, around 9 pm. We tranferred the lady to the ambulance, as a guy who lived there watched, and he happened to have a solution to my car problem. It turns out that if you wiggle the fuse, the lights work again! So now we have lights back, and we are feeling much better about driving around now.
On a closing note, the lady was discharged yesterday, and she came up to our village yesterday and slept here. Today she was going to walk up to her village, just in time to take part in a school graduation ceremony and singsing!
Love,
Dave and Sarah
Friday, November 17, 2006
Unexpected stay in Madang
Dear Friends,
We had a one day trip to Madang last week, which turned into two days, because the truck developed an electrical short on the trip to Madang! We were driving up to Madang, and we'd crossed two rivers about 3 feet deep at the deepest parts, and then I saw the fuel gauge start to drop to zero in about 2 seconds. The fan stopped working, and I saw that the turn signals weren't working either. Somebody we were bringing to Madang (we had about 7 people in the back - deciding who will come is always a big deal, as I'm sure you can imagine!) yelled that he wanted to wash in the river before we got to town, but I said we couldn't stop because the engine might not start again, and we'd be stuck in the boondocks.
It turned out that it was an electrical short, and we had to stay in Madang overnight to get it fixed. We enjoyed being stuck in Madang though, with ceiling fans, restaurants, and friends. :)
We made it back to Buan village fine on Thursday, and arrived in time to have some light to get unpacked and start making supper. When we got here, the house was in great shape - our waspapa had slept on the porch at night, and stayed around the house during the day! We really appreciated his help. Probably no one would have broken in, and we had put all the important things inside the storage room and locked it, but still it would have been a big "hevi" and aggravation.
Now that we're back, we have figured out we have 22 days left. We will be very busy these last few weeks, doing language learning, and setting up a system for reviewing language.
I went out with the men to cut the Aid Post grass, and I found out that a man from Bom, north of us a bit, in the same language family as Sam, was working with the mining company down south, about 50 km from us, at a place called Passamuk. A local man was up on a digger or something, and he couldn't operate it - he'd said on his application that he knew how to operate the machine. So the Chinese boss said to get down, and replaced him with the Bom man. As the Bom man drove out of the yard, the local man's family came and tried to hurt him with a bush knife, and ended up cutting his arm and fingers on one hand.
So on Monday, as we were cutting the grass, I saw two guys from Buan going down to Bom to see the man and have a meeting to figure out what to do, and they thought the group would probably send a group to fight with the Passamuk people. But when I asked why we were banding with the Bom people (I thought maybe it was a thing like if the threat is outside the area, then the whole area bands together against it), the guys said that the real issue was that the mining company was going to send a pipeline through the Raicoast land, and wasn't going to hire locals to do the work. So, probably this man being cut was really an excuse to address the bigger issue.
Regarding a different company that started work in our area, on Tuesday I heard that a local man had stopped the lumber company workers here, and told them that before they could continue, they had to make the second road through the mountain range over to the coast. Maybe that was something they had all agreed upon before, but the company was just ignoring it and hoping no one would notice. Or maybe our community is asking for more and more stuff, now that they have the company on the hook. So far they have asked for a new Aid Post building, and new school buildings. There are two sides, and I don't know where we are in this issue yet. But I think our people are asking for more and more things. And only one of the four clans have agreed to sell their logs, so the company has the right to get logs from only that one clan's land! So the road and all the buildings are being built and only one clan loses their logs. So that will be interesting to see what happens.
We went to our local market Wednesday, held at the Aid Post, about a 3 minute walk from our house. We used the Sam language to buy things, and walked away with cucumbers, sweet potatoes, bananas and some huge beans. It's great! They just started this recently, and we think it's for the people from Erima, whose gardens were destroyed by too much rain.
We worked on making a metal-roofed shelter for the car, which will also collect rain water for our water tank. We made it yesterday, Thursday, and it looks really good. I hope it works. We had to anchor the gutter to some bamboo, and it wasn't sloped very well - actually it sags a little in the middle! :) But in a good rain we'll get some rain in the tank. Right now we are depending on a pipe from a spring uphill, but that was blocked by some mischief makers a few weeks ago, and reminded us that we really need two sources of water, so we don't have to go to the river and carry our water up!
We found out Friday that the people in one of the village we pass through on the way to Madang have fixed part of the road (which was tricky to pass through, but do-able) and now charge vehicles 20 kina to drive on the fixed part. We don't want to pay, but maybe in 3 weeks, when we need to drive to town, this situation will be resolved.
Take care,
Dave and Sarah
Wednesday, November 01, 2006
Getting down to language learning, and a Birthday party!
Dear Friends and Family,
We normally connect to get our emails on Friday, but we had to connect a little earlier this week.
We have been getting more confident in language learning, and have been getting out a bit more. We went down to a fish damming event on the Saturday of the first week, a few days later we went to the big river where we enjoyed splashing around, and Dave went up to visit the logging camp two days ago. On the way he saw several gardens, and we hope to visit those with the children sometime. We had planned on doing everything monolingually, and that is still our goal, but it is frustrating for Dave who wants to talk about things that we haven't learned yet, and are pretty advanced, as well as important, such as the practices of the logging company, our plans for starting translation next year, etc.! Please pray for our language learning!
We are doing very good healthwise. Joanna's sores are looking very good now, and Matthew is over his cold and the breathing problems! Praise the Lord for that! Sarah cut Matthew's hair this week. His curls were beautiful but it was all getting too long and hot for our little BOY! There's a bit of lift to his hair still and a bit of wave and curl, so he looks quite stylish!!
We have been having great sunny days, so we are able to charge up our battery and use it for printing, using the computer, and the lights and radio without worrying about getting too low. That is a praise too!
On the 29th we celebrated Samuel's birthday! We had two parties, one with the people where we played games, ate popcorn, and had a great time, and the second with just our family where we had a great cheesecake pie that Sarah made and opened presents we brought from Ukarumpa. It was a very fun day, and now we are looking forward to the next party - Dave's brithday is on Nov. 19.
Our good friend, Paulus, came from Songgum on Monday, and we enjoyed talking with him again. He lives in another village, and came to Buan to visit the health clinic to get medicine for his three children. The clinic "doctor" is on strike though, because the community hasn't been meeting their obligations to him, such as digging him a hole for his pit toilet, and finishing his kitchen. So, he came to see us, and I was able to help him a little with medicine, but I encouraged him to visit the other clinic in the area because the symptoms were confusing and I wasn't sure what the children had.
Before leaving he said that he had had several offers of work with different companies, but he told them he couldn't take the offers. He felt like although he really wanted to get work to help with physical needs, he sensed that God didn't want him to leave the translation work. He felt like he had to stay in the area to continue helping us with the translation work. Almost all of the other translation and literacy team members have gone to work with a mining company and a logging company in the area. He said, "But I am going to keep working with you, and stay loyal to you, because this work is really satisfying to me spiritually." Wow! Praise the Lord for Paulus and the other two committed people, Paul and Philip!
Take care,
Dave and Sarah
PS: I didn't forget Pete's email address - it's just that it's on the other computer, and we left it in Ukarumpa! Could you guys please forward this to Pete and Danica? Thanks!
