Each Monday morning at 8:00am our local ladies from the village bring their fruits and veggies to our campus to sell. Since we live about 45 minutes from the nearest town this is really nice and convenient for us, and a good source of income for the village. The selection varies throughout the year but we can usually count on pineapple, bananas, pumpkin, papaya, cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, lettuce, an assortment of greens to cook with, avacado and green beans to name some. Where we live in the cool Highlands is the perfect environment for a huge variety of fruits and vegetables and we enjoy it! If I start complaining about the prices it's good for me to remember that in order to bring us fresh food at 8:00am, these ladies have to get up early, trek to their gardens (sometimes a 1/2 hour walk away), pick/wash/prepare their produce and lug it (usually in string bags hanging from their heads) to our campus. Although it's acceptable to barter for artifacts and other similar items, we don't normally barter for food.
Occassionally at Christmas the villagers like to present the Interface staff with a Christmas gift. They don't have much to offer in the way of material things, but they'll each contribute a bit of garden food to "bung" together (put together) for us to divide between ourselves. Last Monday the villagers put together this pile of food for us in the middle of the grass above.
One of the ladies that sells produce each Monday is my "apa" (namesake), Julie.
While we walk around buying our food the ladies usually sit around working on their bilums (string bags).
Here we take a look at our Christmas food and decide who gets to take what home.
With what I'd initially bought at the market plus my Christmas food, this is what I ended up walking home with. We have lots of bees around here, and occassionally the villagers will show up with honey to sell (in the coke bottle above). It's cheap and the flavor is amazing.
Good morning how are you?
ReplyDeleteMy name is Emilio, I am a Spanish boy and I live in a town near to Madrid. I am a very interested person in knowing things so different as the culture, the way of life of the inhabitants of our planet, the fauna, the flora, and the landscapes of all the countries of the world etc. in summary, I am a person that enjoys traveling, learning and respecting people's diversity from all over the world.
I would love to travel and meet in person all the aspects above mentioned, but unfortunately as this is very expensive and my purchasing power is quite small, so I devised a way to travel with the imagination in every corner of our planet. A few years ago I started a collection of letters addressed to me in which my goal was to get at least 1 letter from each country in the world. This modest goal is feasible to reach in the most part of countries, but unfortunately it’s impossible to achieve in other various territories for several reasons, either because they are countries at war, either because they are countries with extreme poverty or because for whatever reason the postal system is not functioning properly.
For all this I would ask you one small favour:
Would you be so kind as to send me a letter by traditional mail from Papua and New Guinea? I understand perfectly that you think that your blog is not the appropriate place to ask this, and even, is very probably that you ignore my letter, but I would call your attention to the difficulty involved in getting a letter from that country, and also I don’t know anyone neither where to write in Papua and New Guinea in order to increase my collection. a letter for me is like a little souvenir, like if I have had visited that territory with my imagination and at same time, the arrival of the letters from a country is a sign of peace and normality and a original way to promote a country in the world. My postal address is the following one:
Emilio Fernandez Esteban
Avenida Juan de la Cierva, 44
28902 Getafe (Madrid)
Spain
If you wish, you can visit my blog www.cartasenmibuzon.blogspot.com, where you can see the pictures of all the letters that I have received from whole World.
Finally I would like to thank the attention given to this letter, and whether you can help me or not, I send my best wishes for peace, health and happiness for you, your family and all your dear beings.
Yours Sincerely