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Published: September 3rd 2005
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Best Buy
Grocery store PNG- News #4: If you want a story without animals, DON’T READ THIS. Brandy in the heat is different than on the Queen Charlottes Islands. The fire it creates in your belly just extends to the outside atmosphere and melts all around you.
It is raining, lightening and thundering tonight (a real treat) and one of the neighbour’s sick child is crying non stop (not a treat at all). You can hear the crying because all the windows are wide open all the time. I heard about two cases of malaria today. One, an eleven year old boy died. I know his mother who is HIV positive. His father died of AIDS - he had two wives so produced two widows. The other, an adult male sponsored by the European Union who will survive after spending a week in bed. A mosquito needs to bite someone with malaria and then bite you. It is a common disease here, a real killer in some areas. (I am not planning on getting the disease- I take pills everyday the ward off the possibility). Death comes readily in this place. Someone is always digging a grave. The cemeteries are visible here -close
Flying Foxes
On Coronation Street at 5pm to schools, etc. Their spirits continue to live with their wantoks. Suicides are most frequently abused women taking revenge. Everyone, including the violent husbands are certain the spirits are haunting them.
There are running shoes hanging on electrical wires. Some have said it is the dead people’s last shoes. However this is difficult to believe, as most people wear no shoes or flipflops.
Last Saturday morning at 6 am I biked to yet another Catholic church - beautifully situated facing the ocean on two sides. Alexishafen is famous for housing missionaries who fought off the Japanese in WWII. In their cemetery you can see evidence that some of these missionaries lived only 2 and 3 years once they came over here!
Word is that there is a war airplane relic close to the missionary however we didn’t visit it. There have been a couple of ambushes in the last year at that locale and we didn’t want to chance it. I was biking with two religious folks, Sheryl and Dan, separately brought their 15 speed bikes with them from the US and New Zealand. When Sheryl’s parents from Idaho were visiting, half dozen young men robbed them with bush knives and handmade guns. All four of the minivan’s tires were slashed. After the incident the guide continued on the road, toured the relic and then drove to the missionary to report the accident to the police. I had a tough time keeping up with my fellow biking partners on the one speed bike bought at Best Buy, the local grocery store.
Valia and I have used 6 rolls of toilet paper in the last 7 days. Neither of us have had stomach problems - it is merely that the rolls that are very large indeed, contain very few sheets of TP. This is only an indicator of the short-term solution mentality. Local staff are given 2 hours off their work time and PMV (public motor vehicle) fare every 2 weeks on PayDay. This allows them to go to the bank to pick up their pay. They cannot be given the money or they will be robbed. And they cannot get to the bank, as they have no money left. No savings plans here. (It costs the equivalent of 45 cents to take the PMV.) The bank lineups to use the bank machines are yet another story. No surprise, Best Buy was totally sold out of toilet paper this weekend.
If you took the town of Madang and turned it upside down and shook it, (Life of Pi again) you’d be amazed at all the animals that would fallout: snakes, spiders, birds and butterflies, crocodiles, chickens, noisy frogs, geckos, black pigs, and untold numbers of ants and flying foxes. And we haven’t even started on the creatures in the sea.
Well to be honest I haven’t yet seen any snakes in my month here. I am told they are present, however they are not the dangerous Australia species.
The butterflies as big as birds can be a beautiful bright cobalt blue and black or deep cadmium yellow and black. The birds sing loudly at 6:30pm it is almost deafening under a tree. The sound levels almost match the later evening conversations between frogs. We are into rainy season that started the first of November and it almost seems like it is raining frogs instead of cats and dogs.
I am waiting anxiously to actually see a real crocodile as opposed to the wooden one in my office.
Geckos hang on to you for dear life- it is no wonder they can climb walls and ceilings. There are many living in the house and hopefully eating mosquitoes like they are hired to do.
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