The Jarai Song

I’ve just got back from the Tonda Survey. It was an amazing experience. So much so, in fact, that I could happily never go on another survey again. I don’t think another one will match it for scenery, food, successful data collection, exercise or sheer suspense.

While I was there, I left my two survey companions at a village called Bula and grabbed the only available transport, an Indonesian Chinese trader’s motorboat, for the village of Jarai right on the edge of our survey area. I had no way of communicating with the rest of my team and I thought I’d be back in 24 hours so that we could head back to our final village location and catch our flight out of there.

Heh heh… think again boy.

I spent the last two days of the survey writing a song about it. The recording’s a bit rubbish and I’m afraid it’s a wma file (so Windows only) but you’ll get the idea. Click to download the Jarai Song (wma file @ 5.3Mb) and/or the lyrics (Word doc @ 87Kb).

Home Sweet Highlands Home

 

About time we put something here about where "here" currently is. We live in Ukarumpa, SIL International’s Pacific headquarters which is about a 20 min drive from Kainantu on the Highlands Highway in Eastern Highlands Province (yes, that’s what the EHP on our address stands for) in Papua New Guinea.

Now Ukarumpa isn’t your normal Highlands PNG settlement. Over 50 years ago when the Summer Institute of Linguistics was looking for a place to set up shop, the government leased this land to them for 99 years. Thus began an influx of ex-pat expertise and house-building skill that has continued unabated ever since. Almost all the houses here are wooden framed and set among what are usually lovely gardens. Ours is a bit overgrown as we’re the first long-term tenants the owners have had for ages. Slowly, we’re doing up the flowerbeds and enjoying every moment in the first garden we’ve ever had.

Why have we started off with a view of the back and not the front? Well, we don’t use the front door as it opens straight into the living room. In fact, there’s a bookcase across it so you wouldn’t get far if you tried. A few notes about this view:

• that’s not our motorbike. We’re looking after someone’s while they’re off in their village.
• The washing machine lives outside (very common here) and is behind the motorbike. You can just see our clothes line thing on the left of the pic.
• There’s a tumble dryer above the washing machine but it doesn’t work.
• On the roof, you can see our green backup water tank which fills from the rain falling in it for when our reservoir runs dry which happens in the dry season (July-Nov).
• The long silver thing on the roof is our solar water heater which is amazing.

If you were to walk right in the top pic, through the hedge and over the road onto the grass and look back, you’d see the view in pic 2. We live on the Upper Oval as it’s called. Sometimes we play volleyball here and it’s a very popular part of Ukarumpa for joggers, walkers and kids to play. If you walk to the top end of the Oval and turn right, you’ll come immediately to the Primary School where Sheena works about 3 mins walk from our house.

If you were to walk straight ahead towards the green house in pic 2, you’d come to this road junction. It’s one of the busiest corners in Ukarumpa. We must get a car every 15 minutes here… on a busy day. The front door is here and the road on the right leads to the centre of Ukarumpa. A few minutes’ walk down there will take you to the tennis courts, the post office, finance, the meeting house, the Secondary School and where John works in the survey office. So, we’re in a pretty good location right in the middle of our two workplaces. None of the roads in Ukarumpa are paved which means they can get pretty muddy when it rains. They’re quite rocky too although you can’t see it from this pic. You need proper flip-flops, not the Everything’s a £ shop kind.

This is the view John gets every time he walks back from work. You’re looking towards the shed in the distance with our patch of banana trees just to the right of it. A few notes about this view:

• Our main drinking water tank is the big one on the left. You can see the gutters from the roof leading into it. We have to keep this clean of the pine needles that incessantly fall. They don’t get in the water, but they do clog up the intake. Non-drinking water we get from a reservoir just outside Ukarumpa and that is not safe to drink. But rainwater is fine.
• The windows next to the water tank are the kitchen and the sun rises through them in the morning which is really beautiful.
• The bit of the house that juts out to the right is the bathroom which is right by the back door (our entrance) which is a bit strange. Many a guest has wandered helplessly down our hallway to the bedrooms only to come back wondering where the bathroom is!
• The shed has a lawnmower in it (petrol) but it needs a spare part so is out of action for a month. I borrowed the neighbour’s mower to do the lawn which grows like a beast. Needs cutting once a week really although you can get away with once every three weeks if you’re desperate. I love cutting it… when the lawnmower isn’t dead. Most people employ someone to do the garden but we’re enjoying doing it ourselves so much at the moment!

Once inside, here’s what half the house looks like. We’ve an open-plan dining/kitchen/living area and behind me as I took the pics is a dark hallway with three small bedrooms and an office off it. It’s not a big house compared to some but it’s the perfect size for us. We love the wooden floors. Not so keen about the office carpet and see-through ‘curtains’ though but we’re making it home as best we can. In fact, the patter of tiny feet may be heard in a matter of weeks – a friend of ours has a cat that has just had two gorgeous kittens!

So, who’s going to be the first to warm our guest bedroom?

New World Postal Record Set

Yes, it’s official, we’ve received the most items of post in one day by a couple named John & Sheena in the history of Papua New Guinea. Pretty impressive I’m sure you’ll agree.

The new world record is 12 (twelve).

Here’s the evidence:

We’d like to take a moment to thank each of those concerned publically.

• Mrs Pauline Harris of Bar Hill, Cambridge, UK (x3)
• Mr Chris Grummitt of Stockton on Tees, UK
• Mrs Amanda Rylander of Stockton on Tees, UK (x2)
• The Calvert family of Ovington, Northumberland, UK
• Mrs Alwyn Keeves of Bar Hill, Cambridge, UK
• Mr & Mrs Hinchcliffe of Bar Hill, Cambridge, UK
• The Jones family of Lansing, Michigan, USA
• Mr & Mrs Biggs of Seoul, South Korea via Paris, France
• Mrs Sheila Nightingale of Cambridge, UK

In actual fact, almost all of this consisted of Christmas stuff and a few things for Sheena’s birthday. It all arrived late because a) the post office is shut here for two weeks over Christmas and New Year and b) because then aviation has to deal with a huge backlog of mail in Port Moresby and get it up to Ukarumpa.

Anyway, we were very blessed when we opened our little post box today and saw such a pile. Wonderful people, truly wonderful!