January,2001

I had a wonderful first village experience. It's a bit overwhelming to think of trying to write about it all, but I will do my best. It is a whole different world. I'll try to describe it. Before I went out there I had heard that their village was really remote - "bus tru" we call it in Pidgin. That was quite true, but not as true as it used to be. The kids were in grass skirts and the adults were generally in grass skirts and western t-shirts that were dirty (soap is hard to get) and often with holes in them. As I tried to learn their names I would write down what they were wearing because I knew that they didn't have many clothes and that would identify them. Half of the men wore grass skirts and half western-style shorts. The difference between men's and women's apparel was that the women had grass all around, but men had grass in front and a length of bark on the back. It was hard to tell the difference between the young boys and girls sometimes without looking for that.

The trip began with going to the Ukarumpa airstrip to go on a Cessna 206 single engine plane to the airstrip nearest the Whitneys' village. They would shuttle us in by helicopter from there. When we got to the airstrip, we discovered that there was a problem with one of the helicopter's indicator lights. So we waited, hoping and praying that it could get fixed and we would still be able to get out to the village on the scheduled day. They were able to fix it in about an hour.

So I got in the "206" with Susan Williams, another teacher who was also visiting the village, as well as Henry (the dad) and Erica (the 3rd grade daughter). Ginny (the mom) and Charis (12th grade) and Susanna (7th grade) had gone earlier. The flight was beautiful, as are all plane flights in Papua New Guinea. There are big green mountains - so many different shades of green - with the occasional round grass roofs of a village along with rivers and waterfalls. We arrived at Bu'u airstrip, the closest place that is flat enough for a plane to land. That was my first view of the people dressed in grass skirts and dirty western t-shirts. One man had a colored stick thing through his nose. I got out and shook some hands. They all stared at us. We walked over and got in the helicopter.

It would have been 18 hours' hike up and down steep inclines to get to their village. By helicopter it was only 10 minutes. The Whitneys sometimes go by helicopter and sometimes hike. The helicopter ride was exciting, especially when we went close to a mountain. I got to sit in the copilot seat. It was awesome to look down and think about how hard it would be to have to hike in and how challenging it must be to live in a place with no flat spaces.

We landed on the helicopter pad and got out. The people were so excited to see us. They all wanted to shake our hand and have us smile at them. Some hugged us, too. And they wanted to help us with walking, since both Susan and I had trouble. Susan had twisted her ankle but it was almost better. As we walked the people talked in their language and Ginny told us some of the things that they said. "She will be my sister", and "That one is mine". Some reached out to touch our white skin. From the helipad to the Whitneys' house it sloped down some but it wasn't terribly steep. The Whitneys said that the crowd that came to welcome us was more people than they had had all together in a very long time. Some people had walked in from 2 hours away.

We put all of their boxes into the house. Their house is large for a village house but it is still made of bush materials mostly. It was elevated to make even ground. The floor was made of the bark of a pandanus palm tree. It wasn't quite flat, but it was close. Whenever someone walked it felt like a small earthquake. The exterior walls were made of hand-hewn planks, and interior walls were either pandanus or stalks of bamboo called pitpit. The roof was iron sheets. The windows were screens and translucent plastic that could be rolled down to shut them. We slept under mosquito nets at night because some of the mosquitoes here carry malaria. One night when it had rained in the late afternoon we had a lot of bugs in the house, including some big moths. They flew around the lights, which were powered by solar power gathered during the day.

They had a smaller house before, but the termites were eating it, so they built this house 3 years ago. One difference in this house is that is has a designated room where the village people are welcome - the "people's room". It has a bookshelf with literacy materials, maps on the walls, and a chalkboard. When we first arrived, the room was full of people, but usually there is just a handful.

The water system in the house was nicer than many of the translators' houses in PNG. Susan and I were very happy to hear that they had running water, a shower, and a toilet inside. The rainwater was collected in a circular aluminum water tank. They had a hand pump that was used to get the water from the tank to a smaller indoor water tank in the rafters. Water from here had gravity to help it to get to the sinks and the toilet. The shower was a bucket shower, so we combined cold water and water heated on the wood stove to the right temperature. The bucket had a mechanism that you turned to open and close little holes for the water to come out. It worked well, but we couldn't dawdle or we would run out of water with shampoo still in our hair!

After getting all the boxes inside, we went out on the doorstep to be with the people again. They crowded around to stare at us. We sat and smiled and wondered what they were saying. I tried to take in everything, noticing their facial expressions, clothes, and all the sights and sounds.

Later Ginny wrote for me a few things that I could try to say to people. In this culture we don't ask someone directly what their name is. Instead you ask someone else, "What's his name?" and point. But talking about names isn't as common as it is for us. The kids did love it when we tried to say their names, though. I walked down with Erica and Susan to where some people were playing basketball. Because everyone had gathered to see the helicopter there was plenty of people for a game. We sat in the shade of a house and watched. I asked Charis about the rules and she told me some, but even she didn't know how it really worked - and she played with them. The basketball court is the only semi-flat ground anywhere around, and if it goes off the court, it goes down a cliff! They've lost plenty of balls that way. Whenever it went over the side, they stopped the game and went after it. As we watched, Susan had her camping chair. Later she got up and let the kids take turns sitting in it - they loved it. I practiced my new phrase and learned a few names. They laughed and smiled whenever I tried to say something in their language. I also enjoyed watching one of the girls making a bilum (string bag). With some of the other kids, I played a little game with my key ring where we held up different keys and key rings in a sequence. At first I just did it randomly, but then when they passed it around, they tried to do it exactly the way that I had, or they told each other they were wrong. (Charis told me what they said). I thought that was pretty funny.

Later in the afternoon we came back to the house. I sat on the front step with Ginny, and when someone asked about my parents, I got out my picture book. Ginny taught me to say the words for mother, father, brother, sister, etc. They have a different word for older sister and younger sister, and the word changes if you are talking about your mom rather than my mom. She did some explaining of the pictures in Akoye. They were very interested in the concept of cello and violin since they'd never seen them before. They were also very interested in snow. It's impossible to describe it if you've never seen it. They asked if it was like a cloud, or like a rock.

For supper we had macaroni and cheese - their last taste of real fresh cheese for a long time. This first day out we had our big meal in the evening, but other days we ate the big meal in the morning at breakfast. The reasons for this are many: they don't have a refrigerator so they could eat the leftovers from breakfast through the day, Ginny has more energy at the beginning of the day and it isn't as hot, there aren't people to see them eating foods that aren't available in the village, and in the evening everyone is coming back from their gardens and might stop by to talk or to trade things.

The Whitneys trade for garden food with the people. They give them matches, salt, literacy books, soap, etc. in exchange for things like bananas of different kids, taro root, bamboo shoots, greens, etc. Ginny said that this time people aren't bringing as much food as they usually do, so it may be tight for the Whitneys to have enough food without as many things to supplement their food supplies flown in from Ukarumpa. Because they have no refrigerator, their food is things like homemade bread, dehydrated meat and fruits (I especially liked those), powdered milk, rice, beef crackers (a very common PNG food) and a limited amount of canned food. They have to pay by weight for whatever comes in the helicopter or carry it in the 9-hour hike, so every thing they bring is precious. We've had a few food treats to celebrate Susan and I being here. Susan made funnel cakes and the next day Charis made cinnamon rolls. Other meals were bean burritos, 2 minute noodles, cream (dehydrated) chicken with greens. We had popcorn for a snack and as part of lunches.

Searching for bamboo shoots has been a big part of the childhood of all of the Whitney children. The first day Erica was so excited to go and find some for me and Susan. She headed into the grass and down the hills in her search. She found some, and the other kids got into it too. Soon we had more bamboo shoots than we could possibly eat! They can be eaten raw or cooked. The first day we ate them raw and later we tried them cooked over the fire. They tasted a little bit like asparagus. The outside was peeled away to reveal the edible part.

We had beautiful weather - some of the best of the year. It was quite hot and sunny and clear. The view of the mountains stretched out range after range. The elevation was about 3,000 feet. In the evening we could see the sunlight glinting off the ocean past about 5 ranges of mountains. The sunsets were gorgeous - different every night. They included sometimes red, orange, purple, yellow, and some small scattered clouds. One night we went up to the helipad to enjoy it more.

I had a good variety of experiencing the work of SIL in the village too, especially considering the short time that we were there. I went with Ginny to observe a Papua New Guinean teaching children to read two of the mornings. Ginny was very encouraged with how much they had learned while she had been in Ukarumpa and how well the teacher was doing since he hadn't had any formal training in how to teach. Part of the Whitneys' job when they first arrived was to learn the language, make an alphabet, and create a way to express the language in writing. Since no one from the village could read in any language, it was a long process. Ginny said that it took them 10 years before they had the final form of the alphabet. It has fewer letters than English, but sometimes they make different sounds depending on where they are in the word. Since I had shown an interest in their language, one afternoon one of the kids came by with their first literacy book and tried to teach me to read. They pointed and said each word and I repeated it after them. We drew a crowd, of course. They thought it was pretty funny to hear me trying to make their talk. By the end of the day my head was swimming with all of the new words that I had learned. I love learning new languages, but I can just imagine how much harder it would be to learn it from scratch with no other common language to communicate in and nothing written down, the way Henry and Ginny did.

I learned mostly nouns, but I did learn a few sentences. I learned to say "My knee hurts. I can't go fast." - That was a big accomplishment. The second morning at the school the kids helped me to learn the parts of the body from a poster on the wall and from pointing.

I also had the opportunity to watch a translation session. They have a separate one-room building where they do translation so that they can be apart from the distractions of the home. It was built so long ago that once when Ginny sat down, the leg of her chair almost went through the floor! Both Henry and Ginny were working with 2 of their translation helpers. Usually Ginny works separately with the women, but today I was glad that they were together because occasionally they would discuss something with each other in English. That gave me some little clue what was going on. Otherwise I just had to guess. They went one verse, or sometimes part of a verse, at a time. They talked over the concepts and how they might be understood and received by the people in light of their culture. The hardest concept that I was there for was when they tried to come up with a word or phrase for 'busybody'. As they were working on it, Erica came to ask her Mom something. She drew on the chalkboard for a few minutes and after listening to their discussion a little bit, she offered a word. It turned out to be a word that neither Henry nor Ginny had learned - a word for show-off. You can live with a people for 18 years and still be learning new words. They added the word to the dictionary on the computer. It wasn't the right word for the verse, though.

Every late afternoon Ginny and I would go for a walk. We went in a different direction each day. We ended up at someone's house and chatted with them, sometimes inside, sometimes outside. Their houses were made of pandanus and pitpit with grass roof and had a cooking and heating fire in the middle. The extra firewood was kept in the rafters. There was a big occurrence while we were there. A kuskus went inside of someone's house. They never do that, so the people caught it and sat around wondering why. Someone suggested that maybe it was one of the ancestors. Henry suggested that maybe God had sent it to them so that they could have some meat.

The people don't get enough meat. The kids have big stomachs like you see on TV because they are malnourished. But they sure have plenty of energy. Ginny said that they have tried various ways of introducing protein into their diet, but nothing has been successful. They tried chickens, but the dogs got them. The people talk about the time of their grandparents when they say that there was plenty of wild meat - like talking about the "good old days".

One of the days we went visiting down the hill. We came to outside a house where a few women were sitting and working on making bilums. We sat down to talk with them. We asked if they would show us how to make the bilum string. First they have to get the bark from a tree, then it is ripped into little strips, then the strips are rolled on your leg in a special way. When one section is rolled, another section is attached to it so that it is a continuing long string. After the string is made, it is woven into the string bag. Since I enjoy crafts, I really liked learning it and would have liked to learn more. The women were impressed that we could do it, and they loved hearing me tell them the words that I had learned.

One of the disappointments for the Whitneys when they at the village arrived this time was to find out that the people had built a church building furnished with benches and now the men were going to sit on a different side from the women, like in other PNG churches. In the past everyone has been together sitting on the ground underneath one of the buildings. The dogs, pigs, and chickens were free to roam and the children were free to leave when they needed to. Now it would be uncomfortable and more formal.

When the Whitneys arrived in the village the first time, they had trouble with the people having different expectations of them. Some missionaries had come to another valley not too far away and had built a school, a clinic, stores, and made lots of jobs for the people because they had funding from a big archdiocese in Australia. The people thought that was what Henry and Ginny were here to do. They were disappointed when they understood that they were here to translate the bible and not to bring them all of these worldly things. It is hard for the Whitneys to see so many needs and not be able to fill them, but they are called to bible translation and they need to stay focused on that to complete the task.

They do quite a bit of medical work also. The people come to their people's room and Henry and Ginny give them medicines and shots. They have an index card with information on each person and a number of big thick books on jungle medicine. The medicines are given at very low cost by an organization in Canada. The Whitneys do what they can, but it makes them very sad when they see problems that are too complicated for them to deal with.

The two-way radio is a central part of every village family's life. In the morning the radio was on and a radio operator in Ukarumpa went through the different village teams asking if they had any messages ("traffic") to pass along and gave them any messages from people on the centre. People in Ukarumpa set up 15-minute times during the day to talk with teams in the village. It's called a "sked", after the word schedule. When I am in Ukarumpa, I talk with the Whitneys once a week to hear how things are going and how I can be praying for them.

So after they have given and received their messages, the radio goes off. The alarm is set for the next time that they will need to turn it on to talk to someone. In addition to personal skeds, there is also a time for village teams to ask medical questions of the clinic staff and a time to check in with the Regional Associate Director for their area of the country.

I'll end with a version of the 12 days of Christmas that the Whitneys' daughter Erica wrote showing some aspects of PNG culture.

12 squeeling bush pigs
11 grass skirts swinging
10 colorful bilums (string bags)
9 purple passionfruit
8 squawking chickens
7 pods of buai (a nut the people chew as a mild narcotic)
6 sharpened bushknives (machetes)
5 bamboo shoots
4 golden yams
3 sugar cane
2 walking sticks
and a brown cuscus in a palm tree. (a cuscus is like a possum)