Five Weeks of Village Living

Early Friday morning we will be leaving for Village Living. My teammate and I will be spending 5 weeks in a small village called Banana Bush. We'll have a 7 minute walk to our drinking water source, and a 10 minute walkt to the place where we can wash/bathe. We'll have some assignments to do while we are in the village (written cultural observations, maps, transcribing and translating a short story in Tok Pisin, etc.), but mostly we will just be living--spending time with our was family cooking, working in the garden, chatting.

Talk to you again in November!

Day 3 of the 3-Day Hike

I realized today that I am getting used to BUGS. As I was walking along today, backpack on my back, hiking stick in hand, I realized that I felt the tickle of an ant inside my clothes. While at home I probably would have felt the need to stop, take off my backpack, and remove the offending bug, instead I just smashed it right where it was and kept on walking :)

COLD SHOWERS have never felt so good as they did after we returned from our last day of hiking!! We left in the morning about 8:30 and spent the next three hours climbing hills to reach, at last, POC on the top of our mountain. That last mountain was all about determination and the promise of a cold shower at the end, though I must admit that I was wondering if I would have enough energy to stand up in the shower. But we made it, got our cold showers, and had a light lunch and a nice loooong nap.

Day 2 of the 3-Day Hike

EYEBROWS. I never knew how important eyebrows were until day 2 of the 3-day hike. The gear hike was nothing. I've never been so gross in my life :) One of the gals said she'd never smelled quite like she did, and that she felt like her clothes were molding on her! It had rained all night the night before We awoke in the morning to a light drizzle. When we left in the morning it was still raining. we slipped our way uphill for about fifteen minutes to where there should have been a beautiful view of Madang...unfortunately it was completely covered in mist--but the mist was pretty in its own way.

Then it was downhill. One look at the steep muddy slope, and myself and one of the other gals just removed our shoes, figuring that we would have better grip without shoes than with. Still precarious, but shoeless and with ealking sticks in hand we made it down the hill. The huge rain the night before made rivers where there were none before and we ended up crossing about 11 rivers; some little trickles, others knee high. We again luched by a river, this one a sandy bank, so we sat on leaves to stay slightly cleaner. When we arrived in our night's stop, we students didn't understand that we had arrived. Thinking that we were just taking a break, we milled around for a good 45 mintues. Then we finally asked one of the ladies, is this Baitabag? Yes, it was. Oops! So, we felt really bad that we hadn't been trying to talk to the lady in the village. We decided that she was a bit busy with her two very cute 6 month old babies, so she didn't really have much time to talk.

The family that we stayed with was really nice. They had been working in their garden, and not in the village, which was why we weren't introduced to them right away. We had some great conversations that we didn't know were possible at our level of Tok Pisin, such as when our was papa asked about segregation in the U.S.!

Day 1 of the 3-Day Hike

We were packed up and ready to go in the morning by nine o'clock, but because we didn't actually have very far to walk before lunch, we delayed our startint time. After taking our "before" picture, we headed out of POC at 9:50. Myself, 3 other ladies, our national guide and two ladies made up the "namel" (middle) hike group.

After hiking for about an hour, we arrived at our first "malolo" (rest). The "isi isi" (easy easy) group, who had left a full hour before us had just arrived. We discovered that they had already had a small accident, someone had slipped and twisted their ankle. Luckly, one of the gals in my group had brought some medical tape to tape her own ankles, and was able to share some of that with the other group.

After another hour of hiking we arrived at our lunch stop for the day. It was along a beautiful little river, with some really nice rocks sprinkled freely alongside and throughout the river. We were so thenkful to be able to sit on the rocks and dangle our feet in the cool river water while we munched on our peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. After lunch we had plenty of time for a nice little snooze before heading out on the final leg of our hike--destination, our first overnight stay in the small village of Batab.

When we arrived in Batab, they really had laid out the red carpet! It was a small village, 2-3 houses and a few other small sheds. They had built a little shady spot, stretching a large tarp over a bamboo frame and covering it with large palm leaves. They served us each a fresh kulau (not quite ripe coconut with lots of juice inside) which was really refreshing after a long hike--and doesn't have to be boiled like water would. They killed a chicken and cooked it for us, to go along with the rice that we had brought with us. We slept in luxury that night--they gave us a whole room all to ourselves, with one giant mosquito net and pillows and even a night stand with a candle!