Fore Falls

We don't get too many chances to get off of our campus and have a day away, so we really enjoy it when we get the chance!  In between our two summer programs this year we managed to find a day to head out to Fore (four-eh) Falls, about 45 minutes from our campus. 

The Falls have been worn away by water so much that you can slide down the rocks into a pool below.  A little nervewracking on your first go.

Surviving the slide wasn't enough, apparently, and I felt the need to take my life in my hands again and jump in.   

Ragan (left) came to help Interface in the kitchen for half of the summer and went through our program the next half.  Kari (2nd left) was a relative of some co-workers, and Ope (next to me) also came out to help us for the entire summer.  

 I love these cliffs!  You can see them for miles around.  Below is a view of the cliffs from just a few minutes outside of Interface...Fore Falls is just behind them.   

 It was a little slick...getting up this hill was an adventure all its own. 



I stole this from a co-worker's blog today because it captures our Interface life so well! 

"Just another day in PNG on the Interface school bus!  Back home we have snow delays, fog delays, cold delays...here in PNG we have stuck in the mud delays."



What do you take in your coffee?  More than you might think!  Earlier in this blog I showed you how coffee is harvested.  For those interested, I thought you'd like to see the rest of the process. 

For a quick recap, the ripe coffee beans (or "cherries") are first hand picked.  Coffee is a fairly new crop to Papua New Guinea and if you look back at pictures even 50 years ago all you'll see is grassy hills.  But since coffee grows best in the shade, whoever introduced coffee to this area also introduced large Malomalo trees ("malomalo" means "soft") to provide cover for their coffee crops.  Now the hills are covered with forests of these trees hiding coffee gardens everywhere you go. 

 Each coffee "cherry" contains two beans.

 

 Ripe cherries are fed through these shelling machines.  Shelled beans (see below) fall into the bag, while the shells are spit out the other side.  During coffee season our valley is filled with the stench of rotting coffee shells.  It may not look too sanitary but to give you some perspective, it used to be done by chewing the skins the off.

 Shelled beans are then laid in the sun on tarps to dry. 

At the coffee factory we often visit I was surprised to find that a parking lot covered with beans isn't meant to stop anyone...

Just drive right on in!

 ...or walk in.

...or take time for a photo op.

...or make a "coffee angel" or two.

Worried about what you're drinking?  Don't be.  There's still another shell that's removed from the beans before they're roasted.

  

Shelled beans are put through two more machines that seperate them into grades.

Each grade is then roasted in this huge machine.  The dried beans are stuck in the vat on the left and a man stands watch (the guy in white) to make sure the beans are taken out at the exact moment.  I think last time I was in I heard that 16 minutes is light roast, 17 minutes is medium and 18 is dark.  Not much room for error.  When the coffee is ready it's dumped into the bin where it's quickly turned while air blows up from below to cool it off. 

It's then ground...

Poured into bags...

Double checked for the exact weight...

 

Then sealed up to be sold. 

Want flavored coffee?  Add a splash of your flavor of choice.  Literally, they just dump 1/2 a cup or so of flavoring into a barrel (on a spinner) of coffee that someone spins to coat the beans.   Pretty high tech.

There it is...fresh coffee from the Highlands of Papua New Guinea.  If you're tired of paying $20 a pound for it back home...come visit me here and you can buy a bag for $3.50.   It might just make it worth the $2500 trip. 

A special at one of our local restaurants:  pukpuk (crocodile) and pawpaw (papaya) with red chilli.  Interesting.

Have any of you checked out the CHANGED video that I have a link to at the right?  Each Interface program we take our students on a hike to where it was filmed.   Check out my facebook album for a few pics.

Esta is a super good friend of mine.  I got to hang out with her a bit at the market that the local villagers put on for our students.  She even let me try and sell a few of her things...not sure that benefited her a whole lot. 

A Yagaria Adventure

Each time we have a group of students here at Interface we take them on a 2 to 7 day side trip into a tribal location to see a church plant in progress.  This time is a culmination of everything they've been learning in the classroom up until then.  We have two summer programs here at Interface, one in May/June and the other in July/August - both 5 weeks long.  In June we took the students to the Yagaria tribe which has been an established church for years - the Yagaria believers are now the ones taking the truth of Christ to other tribes and villages!  Very cool. 

Apparently no one told us we'd be hiking a mammoth mountain.

We were able to watch the baptism of 29 Yagaria believers...pretty inspiring.  Pastors from several different Yagaria churches took turns baptizing them all. 

Tinned mackerel and rice for breakfast...yum.  I opted out on the tin fish, for the sake of my stomach.

When your toilet is a hole in the ground, it doesn't really matter whose you use. 

When you gotta go, you gotta go. 

Whitney and Abigail are two students and good friends who survived the hike with me.  Our shoes and skirts didn't fare so well.

WANT TO SEE MORE PICTURES?   Click here.