First Impressions: Week One

I'm off to the Pacific Orientation Course (POC)! These are some of my first impressions, and a general idea of what we're doing on a daily basis.



The view from the plane on
the flight to Madang.

Tuesday: After a (shockingly!) short flight—only 30 minutes—I arrived in Madang on Monday morning. The flight was really fun; we could see a lot of the country as we flew north. Papua New Guineans are amazing—they clear trees and brush to plant gardens…no big deal, you say? Well, these gardens are on the sides of steep hills and mountains—the last place we would even consider putting in a garden, much less all the sweat equity needed to clear the land. We rode up to the POC site in the back of a truck, a bench on either side of the bed, with our luggage and hiking packs piled up in the middle. We quickly left the city and headed up a mountain on quite possibly the worst road I’ve ever ridden on, but the view more than made up for the poor road. The higher we went, the better we could the ocean, some islands just off the coast, and even a volcano off in the distance. The scent as we bumped along the dirt road was delightful, a light flowery smell, courtesy of all the flowering trees and bushes along the road. There were banana trees everywhere, with more varieties than I even knew existed!

Thursday: Today was Day 2 of classes; we still have a few “introductory” lectures to get out of the way, and then we should be getting into the meat of the course. We’ve talked about the reasons we are required to take the course, had our first medical lecture on various animals and insects and how to treat any bites or stings they inflict, and had our first swimming session! For swimming, we headed back down the infamous road that we came up on J (which is also the only road that goes by the camp we live at) and over to Nagada. When we arrived, there was quite a crowd of Papua New Guineans on the beach, which prompted my first thought…oh good, I have an audience to watch me swim like a four year old!  It was fine though, I’m not sure why there were there in the first place, but apparently we weren’t very exciting to watch, because after 30 minutes or so, most of them left.

After swimming, we headed back up our wonderful road in the truck (the students sit in the bed of the truck: three long benches with a tin roof) and made a mad dash for the showers when we got home. Believe you me, a bucket shower with slightly muddy water has never felt so refreshing! Today was also sheet day, so tonight I shall be sleeping on clean (DRY!) sheets…glorious!

Saturday: Last night we stayed up late (10:00 pm—“missionary midnight” is around 9 pm, so 10 seems quite late!) and watched the movie The Swiss Family Robinson. Do you know that they were on their way to New Guinea? I had forgotten that from when I watched it as a kid. We got quite a few chuckles from the movie, as the family started building their huge, multi-level treehouse and some of the movie lines about women being more delicate. J

This morning, after breakfast, we headed down the mountain into Madang. We went to a market (where they sell fruits and veggies, as well as bilums (woven purses/bags) and some women’s tops and skirts), to Anderson’s (a grocery store that has a pharmacy in it), a second-hand clothing store (where I picked up a couple “new” skirts), and a fabric store (where some people bought fabric to make a meri blaus (literally it means woman blouse; it’s a long blouse than can be worn over pants or a skirt).



Drinking kulau, or as the kids call it: jungle Gatorade!
It's coconut water, surprisingly refreshing.

After lunch we headed out on a community hike—basically a tour of the surrounding villages. The scenery is beautiful, lots of lush greenery and flowers, but I spent most of the trip watching where I was walking…I tend to be klutzy, and the loose rock doesn’t help that tendency! After we got back to the POC camp, we had supper, a fantastic bucket shower, and now it’s homework/relaxing time. Nighty night!