Blogs from Western Highlands, Papua New Guinea, Oceania - page 2

Some More Hospital Experience Tuesday and Thursday of this week I was to work in the ER. This was not as exciting as it sounds. I have been in the ER when people are coming in with bushknife wounds or broken bones, but most of what I saw this week was dressings changes and feigned illnesses. Thankfully, on Tuesday, Dr. Erin Meier didn't have anyone working with her, so she offered to take me under her wing for the rest of the day. She is a family practice doctor by trade and so we worked in outpatient, sitting in her office and seeing patient after patient. Dr. Erin is an incredibly good teacher and was very eager to help me learn techniques and diagnoses. She had me take patient's blood pressures, inspect ears and eyes, and ... read more

On Sunday I went to church with Kumi. Kumi is the first Papua New Guinean I ever met. He works construction with Mike Chapman, and has very good English. I asked Kumi how old he was and I got the typical PNG response, "I don't know", followed up by the estimate, "maybe 24?" We walked to his church in the village of Tumba, which is about a 50 minute walk off of the mission station. Along the way, I plied Kumi with lots of questions and learned a lot more about PNG culture. Among the more important things that I learned: 25 kina is a good deal for a chicken. Since I was the only white person at Tumba, I got a good deal of attention, especially from the children (or "pikininis" as they are called ... read more

Geo: -5.8674, 144.207From the minute we entered the festival grounds we knew we were in for something special and it just kept getting better from there. We went early so we could wander around the outside of the show grounds and watch the various participating tribes getting ready.It's hard if not impossible to describe what we were seeing, hearing, smelling. An explosion of colour (can colours explode?) was made that much more exciting by the various tribes practicing both dances and songs with an energy that, at times, seemed to shake the ground. At times aggressive and at other times offered up shyly, the hospitality of the various participants was warm and authentic. Every time we turned around there was an amazing site that was pulling my camera like some sort of digital magnet- we had ... read more

A car full of young men screeched to a halt beside our bus and started shouting at all the people who had got off for a short break. Everyone quickly ran to the bus and pushing and shoving, started to clamber on. I turned to Howard and he shouted “Tribal fight!” and urged me to get back on the bus. With everyone looking on edge and all of the windows tightly shut we continued on a few hundred meters to the next village. There was a big group of sullen looking men waiting by the side of the road, all holding machetes and with black paint smeared on their faces. Thankfully they paid very little attention to us and we crept past and continued on our way a little more mindful of where we would take ... read more