Exciting Times: The Floor - Part One

You might be wondering how "floor" and "exciting" can used in the same title, but we are a VERY excited bunch of people these days as we watch a new floor being put into our classroom building.  For years our concrete floor has been chipping away and coming apart in chunks and this last month the Lord finally brought everything together for us to have something done about it.  When Hank (above left) & Marg Demark (parents of  my co-worker, Lesley (husband Pete, above right) Doerksen) found out about the sad and desperate state of our floor, they decided to kill two birds with one stone and come visit their family and also put Hank's years of experience to use re-doing our floors.  We are so grateful to have them here, and it's been amazing to see our classroom slowly transformed. 

The classroom is the building at left (my home sweet home is on the right).  The middle building is another staff home. 

Here's the floor during an Interface program.  Doesn't really look too bad but there wasn't a level spot in just about the entire building. 

Weeks before the Demarks got here the guys had been doing a pretty good job of ripping up the floor.

Buka and Morobe doing some damage.

All that torn up concrete got shoveled into a pile to be used later to help on our roads.

The crew. 

 Hank hasn't been here long and, true to character, already has a great relationship with the guys.  Here he shows off Samson's huge muscles.

Rain water had (unbeknownst to us) been building up in a huge pool behind the classroom, causing huge areas of white mold to grow up inside. 

After all the concrete was lugged out, the guys began laying down plastic and the old wire mesh salvaged from the previous floor, then building the framework for the first section of new concrete.

Here's Lesley, Bobbi and myself working real hard. 

We'd gotten this load of gravel months ago, so by the time we needed it it was overgrown with weeds.  I'm sure that was fun picking it all out. 

Months ago we began looking into purchasing cement, only to find out once we were ready to purchase it that the country's only supplier had shut down.  We knew that this project was in the Lord's hands and that even in a country with no cement God could easily provide.  We decided to all pray about it for two weeks, until our next staff meeting.  Two weeks passed, and at the meeting we discussed how there was still no cement but we would continue to trust the Lord to provide.  We had all just left the meeting and were walking away when Pete came out on the porch and said "We just got a call that there's cement available for us!"  I still get teared up thinking about this and how God provides for His children.  When we pray He doesn't always answer in the way we expect or in a way that we can see, but He does always answer and it's encouraging to experience those moments when He chooses to show you a very obvious answer to a specific prayer.   

 Kino (middle) was spouting off some Tokples (tribal language) to me.  They know we can't understand them (we only talk together in the national language, Melanesian Pidgin) but they get a kick out of trying and seeing our awkward faces.  Heti (left) whispered the answer I should give, which resulted in a round of happy comments from all the men.

 

 

 The first section is poured.  Very exciting!

 

 

The Interface staff - all the ones on campus, anyways.  In two weeks there'll be three returning staff and two new families added. 

Thank you so much to those of you who have prayed for and given towards this project! 

Keep your eye out for more floor updates and the final result! 

Goroka

I'd like to take you on a little journey called "Shopping in Goroka."  Long gone are the days of hopping in your car and running to the store for some milk or that one ingredient you're missing for supper.  Here, grocery shopping is an all day affair.  To start with, we're 40 minutes from the nearest town of Goroka, so we don't make the trip often.  We try to plan a "supply run" every two weeks but depending on our schedule it can be a lot longer than that inbetween trips.  Thankfully, the main mission center (which has it's own little store) is only about 25 minutes away and we make two trips there each day to drop off/pick up our school kids.  The store is only open on Mondays and Thursdays, so sometimes we give a list to the "school bus drivers" (aka the missionary men) to pick us up any "I need it now!!" items. 

Becaus a trip to Goroka takes a whole day, we always make sure we're remembering everything we need.  A checklist might include:  Mission Checks, P.O.'s, cash, water, hand sanitizer, toilet paper (you never know), cards to play while you're waiting two hours for a meal, snacks, food coolers, comfy shoes for walking in, mud shoes for the veggie market, umbrella for rain, a hat for the sun...basically everything short of a tent and sleeping bag.    

We travel about 20 minutes on this dirt/mud road...

...and another 20 minutes on lovely stretches of highway such as this dodging people and animals. 

Usually on the way into Goroka we stop at the main mission center store to buy things we know we can't get in town.  Food here is a mix of food bought bulk from town, or shipped from Australia and the States.  Treats you can sometimes find here are Cheerios, Nutella, American mustard, and Parmesan cheese.

Welcome to Goroka.  The pink "odd shop" is one of our favorite Second Hand Stores. :)

Aerial view of the Goroka area.

Our first stop in town is always the veggie and fruit market.  We are so fortunate here in the cool Highlands to have perfect growing weather for fruit and vegetables.  The weather is perfect...the parking lots aren't.

Here's where those mud shoes come in handy.  Optional, as you can see.

Beside the market (and behind the hardware store) is the place to go to buy yourself a chicken.  Because you never know when you'll need a live chicken.  You can also see fire wood for sale on the left. 

No matter how busy our day is, there's always time for Second Hand shopping!  This is my personal favorite - "Bikpela Klos Stoa."  And in case you're not fluent in Malenesian Pidgin, that says "The Big Clothes Store." 

No change rooms so a camera helps.

Your local Toyota dealership.  You have your choice of a White Landcruiser or a White Landcruiser.  Tape deck included.

Papindos is usually our next stop.  Cooking can be daunting when you first arrive here, not having all the ingredients you're familiar with back home.  But it's fun to try new things (often with names in languages we can't read) and discover great substitutions for the ingredients you're used to.

Rice, anyone?

Your choice of colors in laundry soap.

One of our favorite parts of the day - lunchtime.  This day we decided to eat at a "Kai Bar," one of dozens of similar eateries around town where you can usually find fried chicken, fries, rice, and other quick meals on the go. 

No shirt, no shoes?  No problem.

Pacific Gardens is another place we love to eat.  It's out of town in a quiet area with great food.  This is where the deck of cards comes in handy, though.

Look, another White Landcruiser!  That ones ours (Interface's). 

In a typical afternoon downpour, any place with a roof is instantly packed with people.

Loading our supplies into containers strapped to the roof.

Vendors line the sidewalks in one section of town selling everything from string bags, baskets and bows and arrows, to fossils, paintings...and in this case high heels and men's loafers. 

  

Security guards.

When our day starts at 8:00am, we're happy to finally be home by 5:00pm - usually exhausted, dirty and with an infamous "Goroka headache," but home! 

Sweet Summer Days

It's not summer here, but it feels like it...and eating Roll Kuchen and watermelon is one of the perfect things to do on a warm summer's day.  One of the surprises in moving to Papua New Guinea was finding watermelon for sale.  It doesn't show up very often - only once a year or so for a few months - but we take advantage of it when it does. 

Eating Roll Kuchen (like fried dough) and watermelon together is one of my favorite Mennonite traditions, and it's fun finding people who appreciate it here.  Lesley's (above) background is Ukrainian, but her husband, Pete, is Mennonite so we made enough Roll Kuchen to feed an army and dug in. 

Spring Cleaning

The weather doesn't change much here throughout the year so every day's a good day for spring cleaning.  My co-worker, Beth, and I decided to tackle the office loft, a.k.a. the toss-it-up-there-and-we'll-deal-with-it-later place.  We had 20 years of paperwork that had been collecting dust, and boxes and boxes full of other items.  We both love organizing so this was more fun than work.  There was so much paper to burn (recycling isn't an option here), though, that the guys in the workshop decided to dig a huge hole and bury it all instead.

Along with lots of garbage and cockroaches we found this perfectly preserved lizard in with some toys. 

The Conundrum

Almost daily I'm faced with relationships and situations that make me realize what a drastically different culture I live in compared to my own.  A lot of days this is good - it makes me appreciate that my North American way of doing things isn't always right and it stretches me to get more into the mind of a Papua New Guinean and be more sensitive to the way life is lived here.  But other days it's just plain hard and frustrating and I'm left thinking "how do I get around this one?" 

Last year I bought a miniature soccer ball for my dog, Wyatt, who lovingly played with it every day.  One day, that beloved soccer ball went missing.  It wasn't mysterious...I knew exactly where it went.  We often have village kids that roam around our campus and if there's anything lying around that can be easily picked up and carried away, they'll take the opportunity to do so.  Stealing isn't bad unless you're caught, so as long as no one sees you you're good.  I didn't think too much about my missing ball but oftened wondered where it had ended up.  Until this week.  I was invited to take part in a traditional feast at a friends' house in the village, and was surprised to see my soccer ball lying in their yard.  Kids were playing with it (see picture) and my first thought was "I'm going to go grab my soccer ball and take it back!"  Did it matter that it only cost me a couple dollars and Wyatt had forgotten about the ball long ago?  No...it was mine and I wanted it back. 

Then I started looking around at those kids with dirty clothes and few belongings and wondered how important it really was.  Culturally it would have been completely acceptable to take it back and confront the new owners of the ball, who would probably just laugh and let me have it.  But was it worth it?  It might all seem a little trivial, but these are the little conundrums we find ourselves faced with here, and looking at them through North American eyes doesn't help.  I didn't end up taking the ball home, although I admit I could be easily swayed if I saw the ball again.