Sickness is making the rounds in the community here again.  Our family is mostly ok, just some colds.  I have a cold and the climate has been really hot and humid over the last few days and that combined with my cold has left me feeling a titch drained.  Hugo and I haven’t been sleeping very well as of late either.  It’s rather annoying really…

Basketball season has started and a couple dad’s from the community were gracious enough to offer to coach a middle school team giving Christiaan the opportunity to learn the sport better.  They had their first game last Friday.  The team they played was considerably bigger and older than them but they kept their composure.  They lost badly, but we were very proud of Christiaan when he scored a surprise 3 pointer!  Yay!

Basic health knowledge is just not a common thing out here.  The local folks always think I’m a nurse…  right…  I know that an open wound should be kept covered and I can treat malaria, amoeba, and worms…  and oh ya, I now know how to treat typhoid…  People here don’t ask questions at the doctor, they just do whatever he/she tells them to do.  If you are told to take yellow pills twice a day for three days, you do it.  Even though it might just be vitamin C…  And when you are not very well-off, you do without things that you might consider non-essential, like bandaids…  On Monday Y and his brother Y were working on the road in front of our house and a cute young girl from the local community was watching them and joking with them.  I went to talk with them and noticed a cloud of flies around one of her feet.  See the photos for pictorial evidence of one of her two wounds after two days of band-aids and antibiotic ointment.  Still nasty looking.  I told her to come every day for me to change the band-aids and so far she’s come every day.  She’s the cutest thing!  She’s eight and has never been to school.  She said her parents wanted to register but waited too long and the registration was already closed.  Typical…

Today the very first National Syn*d of the Gereja-Gereja Reformasi in Indonesia began.  It was supposed to begin tomorrow, but they had not yet received the necessary permit.  In this province, whenever a church wants to have a large gathering a provincial permit is necessary.  If f*reigners are going to attend, a permit from J*karta is necessary.  I doubt our cousins in faith need any permit of the sort for any of their gatherings…  So today they had the opening ceremonies including a speech by a representative of the governor of the province.  There are a number of people who have travelled from far to attend.  There are a couple from Holland, a couple from PNG, and one from Australia.

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Life moves on here.  Since Saturday I’ve not heard anything from “I” or her husband.  In fact just the other morning I gave her dad a ride down the hill and lent him 100,000 rupiahs to put in a new toilet as his was washed away in the big rains we’ve had lately.  Not a word about his daughter, he was just interested in borrowing funds.  My gracious neighbour is sharing her helper with me two days a week which is of great relief.

Speaking of rain, we’ve had a ton as of late.  The other day we had so much in a short span that many parts of the city flooded.  A lot of public schools were closed as they needed to be cleaned out.  Many people were drying their stuff and cleaning their floors that day.  Last week there was flooding in Abe and a number of poorer families living along the river lost their homes.

On Tuesday Christiaan celebrated his 12th birthday.  We’d actually had a party with all the boys from his class on the prior Saturday morning.  We rented one of the indoor soccer fields at the Sentani Futsal Centre.  The boys played soccer for 1.5 hours straight before having cake!  Then on his birthday Christiaan had three buddies come over and they played Wii and he had hamburgers and fries.  Now hamburgers back home is a relatively easy meal.  But here not so much.  I had to make the buns and the patties from scratch.  But it was worth it!  We are very thankful for our son!

Going back to rain.  We are not the only place in Papua that has had a lot of rain.  To the South West of us, there is an area that has gotten so much rain the people are on the verge of starvation.  They normally subsist on sweet potatoes and such but because of the lack of sun they aren’t growing.  MAF has been flying some food into the areas but of course it takes time for the food to make it to each village.  Not every village has an airstrip so much food needs to be hand carried to outlying villages.

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Helpless…

This past week I had to make a difficult decision.  I had been frustrated with “I” for quite some time already; years in fact.  Knowing how difficult her life has been and how dysfunctional her home life has always been, I decided to work with her and try to help her.  Over the past half a year, things have gone in a downhill direction instead of uphill.  It became evident that she could not work independantly and there was also the issue of funds having gone missing.  I had confronted her on more than one occasion regarding the missing funds but she denied it each time.  However, it’s not possible that it was anyone else as she was the only one in our home.  I wanted with my whole heart to believe her but I also know how good the local people are at telling falsehoods.  It’s sad but true.  On more than one occasion “I” had told me stories of how she had lied to others.  This only makes it more difficult for me to believe her.  Talking to her about the ethics of this type of behaviour seemed to have no effect.  Then there was the issue of timely arrival at work.  For the local people here this is a difficult thing.  I had been quite flexible for a long time but slowly over the past year have tried to make things more concrete.  This had proven difficult for “I” and just added to my frustration.

Anyways, I let her go and gave her more than 2 weeks severance.  However, her neighbours told her that that was not nearly enough.  Legally, I am not required to give her anything, but I decided to give her some anyways.  She came to ask me about it on Saturday and I told her that we were firm in our decision.  I do not want to set a precendent where behaviour such as hers is rewarded.  In fact, I am not the only one in our area who has experienced some difficulty of this type.  Later I received an sms from “I’s” husband saying that if I was to get another helper, he would take her life.  Nice…

I feel very sad and disappointed by this situation.  I’m sure I made mistakes along the way, but I did try my best to do the right thing.  It is so hard to know how best to help the people in a way that will produce permanent positive results.  In the meantime, I have no helper and I need to wait until things calm down before even seeking out another one.  “R” has been helping me a little which has eased my stress level immensely and also made me aware that I don’t need someone to help me every day, but maybe just three days a week.

Please pray for this situation and pray for wisdom for us as we try to figure out how best to help the people here.

Brynne had the unfortunate pleasure of being double-bounced on our neighbours trampoline the other day.  The nurse practitioner here thought an x-ray would be in order.  So Brynne and I headed out to the local hospital.  The starkness of this place never ceases to amaze me.  It consists of a series of stark white buildings connected by covered walkways.  Inside there is nothing but a few wooden benches.  There are no prints on the walls, couches, magazines to read, pleasant music, or the like…  There are only a few standing posters proclaiming that smoking really isn’t cool.  Brynne and I hiked up to the radiology area where there was surprisingly no line-up.  Following the x-rays we had to go down to the entrance area to pay and then we hiked back up and immediately received the x-rays.  It all took surprisingly little time.  The x-rays confirmed there is no break/crack in her bones so it’s just a sprain…  whew…

We continue to have crazy weather.  Periodic rains and strong winds.  With that of course comes the odd power outage.

Bits and Bites…

So now that I’ve pictorially updated you all on what happened in the past, it’s time for the present.

On Jan 16 Christiaan and I flew to Singapore for his annual check-up and new ear molds.  That very same day, on a later flight, Hugo’s folks left for Australia.  It was a fun three weeks with them!

While in Singapore I went for a follow-up consult with my knee surgeon.  He was happy with my knee and gave me other exercises to do.  My knee is still rather stiff and weak so I need to continue with my physio exercises.  Not the funnest thing to do…  I am able to play all the sports that I like, I just can’t run at the same quickness yet that I could before surgery, but there is progress.  While in Singapore Christiaan and I enjoyed eating Western food like McDonald’s and Chili’s and drinking slurpies from 7/11.  On our way back to Papua we spent a night with friends in Jakarta and even managed to do a little shopping.

We have had very strange weather these past few days.  High winds and cold morning temps (25C and breezy) with sporatic rainfall.  As our house doesn’t have glass louvers in the windows of the living/dining area, the wind and rain just blow right through the house.  So as you can imagine, I don’t really enjoy this weather.  The other negative of the high winds, is frequent power outages.  The power had been stable for so long that our generator had a layer of dust on it…  but now it’s getting a real workout again.

The kids have been back to school for three weeks now and we’re into the routine again.  Right now the entire high school is interior for the annual Outdoor Education weeks.  They spend two weeks interior working in a few villages.  Some of the things they do are: HIV/Aids awareness, Dental care, and kids stuff for the village kids.  They also usually have a project that they work on for the village such as repairing a water source, or working on the runway or the like.  There is also a pastor each time who speaks to the high schoolers.  It’s a great time of learning and spiritual growth for the kids.  Next year Mikah can look forward to participating in this event!

Hugo enjoyed two weeks off of work while his parents were in town.  Now he is back in the swing of things.  There is never a dull moment for him as maintenance operations manager.          They have been renovating the hangar and can now fit three aircraft in it at one time!  One caravan and two kodiaks.  For you aircraft people, this is very exciting…

 

 

More Bits and Bites…

We, Hugo and I, took Dad and Mom to Jayapura.  First we had a lovely lunch of sandwiches and fries at a local cafe and then we headed to a soccer game.  It was the local Jayapura team, Persipura, versus the Sentani team, Persidafon.  We were among the minority cheering for Persidafon as you can see by the majority of red in the photos…  Persipura won 3-1.  Unfortunately, shortly after we left the game we realized that somewhere along the way, Dad’s wallet had been skillfully lifted.  Bummer!

A few days later we went to Lake Sentani with friends and rented a boat to take us out to a picnic area.  There are a number of islands in the lake with houses encircling them and usually a church perched on one of the higher points of the island.  We saw quite a few houses with small solar panels on their roofs.  There are some crocodiles in the lake but our driver assured us that the area we were swimming in has long been harvested clean…  We trusted him and most of us took a dip, diving off the boat.  Then we enjoyed a picnic lunch before heading back to shore.

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Bits and Bites….

Hello again!  It’s been an absurd amount of time since I’ve posted anything…  With good reason of course.  Dec 23 we were excited to welcome Dad and Mom Feunekes here.  It’s always exciting to have visitors especially family.  They spent three weeks here and we had some fun adventures.  But first we celebrated Christmas together with great friends at our neighbours house.  New Years Eve involved fireworks until it rained and we saved them for the next night.  The kids didn’t mind.

Then a few days later we headed out to Base G with Dad and Mom.  We took along the son of a friend who was in America visiting her ailing father.  Base G was given its name during WW2.  The advantage of this beach is that we don’t need to take a boat there.  You can’t really snorkel at this beach, but you can have fun in the waves.  While we were there, we saw the passenger ship go by.  It felt like it was so close to the shore.  Then Dad and Mom took us to Pizza Hut for supper.  It was the most North American dining experience we’ve had here yet.  Well, except for the chicken sausage (hot dog) on the one pizza.  The kids enjoyed the ice cream station a lot.

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