Throwing Rocks
Here I’m babysitting the kids while Janice brings food to the “MDR” ward patients. MDR stands for "Multiple Drug Resistant.” It refers to a drug resistant strain of tuberculosis. The MDR patients are quarantined and so we drop off local food and coloring books (or other similar things) to help them pass the time. We don’t take the kids into to the MDR ward and so here I’m showing them how to throw rocks in the ocean while Janice does the delivery. Throwing rocks is generally very therapeutic. Of course, that all depends on where they are being thrown. For example, if they were being thrown in the house it would stress some people out. Here, the only people who minded were fish, and frankly we don’t care what they think. Note: You can see a ship at the Wewak wharf in the background.
Finding Patients
Janice talks to a patient family we found out by the beach. Finding patients can be as challenging as anything. The hospital has many different wards and patients are moved all over. Some days it feels like we spend most of our time walking around with bewildered looks on our faces asking people if they know where other people are. It’s like a real life version of “Where’s Waldo?” except that in this version Waldo looks exactly like everyone else.
Elliot Assembles Legos
It can be tough to get our kids excited about visiting patients in the haus sik. Especially on days when we don’t feel like doing it either. However, a few weeks ago, we found these cheap Chinese “Lego” sets and bought a few to help our younger patients pass the time when they’re stuck in a bed. As we walked into the children’s ward, it occurred to me that Elliot could assemble the toy in front of them (they’ve never seen Legos before) so they could get the concept of clicking together bricks. And wouldn’t you know it, suddenly Elliot enjoyed the Haus Sik trip. And it dawned on me that instead of trying to make my little introverted children into Pentecostal evangelists, I could instead find ways for them to use their natural giftings to minister to other children, such as quietly assembling a Lego toy. It stands to reason that they’ll be more excited about doing so.
Elliot Climbs a Tree
Climbing a tree doesn’t seem that significant but this occasion stuck out to me. This tree is beside the road that runs around the top of our little hill. We walk around it sometimes during cooler evenings. The last time he tried to climb this tree he got halfway up and freaked out. He was a blubbering mess and I remember being annoyed that I had to rescue him (proud dad moment). Fast forward two months and this time he scampered up the tree and then basically leaped off, all without interrupting his own commentary on dinosaurs. I was shocked. Who is this child? As is the case with younger siblings who want to follow their brothers everywhere but can’t, Oliver stood at the bottom and cried.
Adi Climbs Some Monkey Bars
This is the play set at the bottom of the compound. “Look what I can do!” is usually what the kids say right before they get hurt. In this case, it’s what Adi said when she saw me holding a camera.
Elliot Has a Birthday Party
It’s safe to say that Elliot wouldn’t be learning to climb trees so well if he didn’t have so many friends who encourage him to do so. One of my big fears when we moved to the mission field was that my children would grow to be unsocialized weirdos with no friends. But that’s been far from the truth and that’s why I like this picture - it shows that. Elliot got far more presents than was healthy for a five year old boy.
Artists Paint the Seawall
Over the past few months they have closed the main road in Wewak town and did some construction work. This is a good thing because the road would get flooded with seawater which resulted in some big holes big enough to swallow things like axles and transmissions. They raised the road quite a bit and put up a seawall. Then they invited local artists to paint things on it.
Making Bilums at Market
At first glance you may be under the assumption that this lady is winking at me. I thought she was too, but upon closer inspection there wasn’t anything scandalous going on. She’s actually a one-eyed market mama making “bilums.” A bilum is a woven bag that men and women wear all the time. They don’t leave home without them. Here she’s making “bush rope" from a vine. She’s trimming off all the loose strands so it looks nice. She will dye the rope different colors. Then she’ll make more baskets similar to those you can see in the foreground. You can buy a basket for about $10 - $20 US.
Looking East(ish)
I’m no Marco Polo but I believe this is the view looking east from “Nambis Road.” You will often see commercial fishing trawlers or container ships anchored out there because the wharf is just off to the right of this picture. This is around 5:45 am. I was dropping a family off at the airport and brought my camera for a little extra excitement.
Pilot Piet
We’ve gotten to know a MAF pilot family here in Wewak. I can’t even pronounce their last names because they come from Holland and you need to be well hydrated to produce the sounds required. I’m also currently drinking coffee and don’t want to spit it all over my keyboard. MAF has their Cessna Caravan based at a hangar right across from ours so one day Piet came over and asked if someone would like to ride along with him to Ambunti to pick up some missionaries. We pick up a lot of patients from Ambunti and so I was happy for a chance to see this place first hand.
Landing in Ambunti
Dead ahead (pardon the phrase) is the Ambunti grass strip. When Samaritan Aviation lands here, we use the Sepik river running across the frame. Ambunti is home to a good health center and so a lot of people come from the surrounding areas and get referrals to the “big” hospital in Wewak. This is why we have so many flights from Ambunti - probably one a week on average.
Loading Luggage
There are no roads connecting Ambunti to larger cities so I’m not sure how they got a Massey Furgeson here. They probably put it on a barge and chugged up the river for a week. I’m guessing it's not a small investment of time or money to get a Massey Furgeson into Ambunti.
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