I leave tomorrow! Plus a Beginner's Guide to PNG

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In less than 24 hours, I will be boarding a plane and leaving the US for 2 months. This has come so much sooner than I anticipated – school finished less than a week ago and I took my MCAT last Saturday. It’s just been one thing after another. Thanksfully, I will have plenty of time to catch up on sleep on my over 24 hours of air travel. For my followers, here’s a little more info about where I am going.

· Papua New Guinea is not in Africa and many people seem to think it is.

· PNG is located above Australia, a few degrees south of the equator. PNG is located on the eastern half of the island of New Guinea (the western half is part of Indonesia, and New Guinea is the 2^nd largest island in the world, after Greenland).

· There are over 800 native languages in PNG alone, more than anywhere else in the world. The “national” one is Tok Pisin, a pidgin language. All of the hospital staff speaks English.

· The tribes in highlands were not discovered until the late 1930s and early 1940s (during WWII). They were Stone Age people – stone tools and no invention of the wheel or written language. A lot of progress has been made in the past 70 years. Some places have electricity and access to a hospital.

· I will be staying in the village of Kudjip, in the Western Highlands Province. It’s located about 6000 ft. above sea level and enjoys a temperate climate – about 80°F during the day and 55°F or so during the night. There are no seasons except rainy and dry.

· Most of the people in the villages are subsistence farmers, living off a variety of sweet potatoes called kaukau, and many other vegetables. Meat is not part of the daily diet. I will be eating mostly local fruits and vegetables in order to save money.

· PNG is incredibly biodiverse with thousands of variety of flowers, trees, and other plants. It’s also home to the world’s largest butterfly with a wingspan of 12 inches (I probably won’t see any of these). Most mammals are small; many are marsupials such as the cuscus. The largest animal that I know of is the cassowary (or <em style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">maruk in the native tongue) which stands 3-4 feet tall with a large crest and wattle like a turkey. They actually look pretty scary.

· I will be volunteering with construction on the Nazarene mission station and in the Nazarene Hospital. The hospital was founded in 1967 and has about 130 beds, I believe, with 8 or so fulltime American physicians and 1 native physician that I know of. For more about the hospital check out http://nazpng.org/hospital/.

· Pigbel is a disease that occurs only in the highlands of New Guinea and a form of necrotizing enteritis caused by <em style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Clostridium perfringens. It occurs mainly in children and is exacerbated by trypsin inhibitors found in the staple kaukau.

· Yes, there were cannibals in PNG, but there are not really anymore. I will not be eaten, don’t worry.

· Much of PNG is still tribal, the weapon of choice is a machete, or bushknife as they call it. Many of the injuries seen in the hospital are caused by bushknives. Other trauma injuries are from car accidents (cars are not prevalent at all), or police violence.

· Vehicles have the right-of-way and I never saw a speed limit sign in the highlands. There is only one paved road through the highlands. To go long distances inland, you usually must fly.

· The people of PNG are Melanesian, closely related to the Aborigines of Australia and are one of the oldest civilizations in the world. Their skin is black, they have thick curly hair, wide flat noses, and are generally pretty short. Each tribes tends to have its own language (which explains the over 800 languages). The estimated population if the country is about six million.

· Coffee and tea are two huge exports.

Please pray for me during all of my travel! I leave tomorrow; fly to Texas, Australia, and then PNG. I will be travelling with a work and witness team from ONU, but will be living and working independently of them (this includes my own cooking!). I’ll try to update every few days, but I can’t make any promises based on their unreliable internet.

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