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
# posted by Dave Troolin @ 11:10 AM 
