The Bare Necessities

When I returned from furlough a few weeks ago, I noticed that there were a few things missing from my house (or that I had missed during furlough) that I considered necessary or life (or just to save my sanity!) here in Papua New Guinea (PNG). I wrote a similar blog post way back when I first arrived in PNG in 2014 (you can read it here), but that post was based more on village living than being in Ukarumpa, which is where I live now (and have lived for most of the last four years).

You Might Be a Missionary If...

-the party breaks up at 9:30 and everyone is yawning and half-asleep because it’s past “missionary midnight” (aka 9 pm).

-you find yourself searching for recipes that you can use pukpuk (crocodile) in.

-you get excited when you find a new recipe for pukpuk.

-you pick bugs out of the rice, flour, and various other dry ingredients without batting an eye.

-you aren’t really bothered by the thought that you very likely missed quite a few bugs in said dry ingredients.

You Know...

      I was thinking the other day about my "new normal," when I realized that, as of this Friday, I've been in Papua New Guinea for eight months. So, in honor of my eight month anniversary of arriving in PNG, here is a list of things that I never thought I would consider normal.

          You Know You've Lived in PNG for Eight Months When...

1. You get up early to hang your laundry on the line…even though it’s cloudy and will rain later in the day.
2. You wear gum boots outside to hang your laundry on the line so you don’t sink up to your ankles in mud.

Baking with Weevils

The blacks things in the middle are weevils
and the yellowish little guys are meal worms.

Yes, you read the title correctly...baking with weevils...sounds appetizing, doesn't it?! When I first arrived in PNG last July, a friend and I decided to make tortillas, so we mixed up the ingredients; my friend rolled them out and I cooked them on a skillet. About halfway through, I happened to notice some funny looking little things in the tortillas. When I pointed them out, we took a closer look at the offending tortilla, looked at each other, and said, “Meal worms.” Then we both shrugged our shoulders and finished making the batch of tortillas—and they tasted pretty good, too!