Hugo and the boys have been taking karate lessons for the past couple months. The lessons are taught by a local man who holds a black belt, in Indonesian. It’s been a good experience for the boys and some take it more seriously than others…
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Aidan has this cool dragon kite and one windy day he was convinced he could fly it over at the Youth Centre across the road. Due to the sporatic nature of the wind, he wasn’t really successful but the neighbourhood kids had fun helping him try.
This week I’m doing a peer debriefing course. It’s been very interesting so far to learn about how to do a proper debriefing and who we can actually debrief. There are still two more days to go and I’m excited about what we’re learning!
Not that long ago we had a half day of prayer at MAF. At 11:00 in the morning we all met in the conference room and listened to a devotional from a local pastor. We also sang and prayed. Then we ate a snack together. Following the snack, we had some lunch and at 1:00 each department met to pray and then at 2:00 the ladies who work for MAF and some of us wives met together to share our praise and prayer requests. After that we all congregated on the base and I got everyone warmed up with some running/walking and stretches. Then my friend K taught everyone a simple line dance, which they loved! Following that I got a rousing game of dodgeball going. It was kinda funny because the national workers had never played before so I had to explain all the rules. Exercise at the local schools here tends to be limited to stretches and marching… really…
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On the Easter weekend the kids enjoyed an egg hunt on base. It was the first time for the kids and they loved it!
At the pasar (market) you can buy coloured chicks. They’ve injected the eggs with dye. Super cute!
There’ve been no developments on the “I” front as of late. I’m really hoping it will just go away… 
Our church likes to go to the beach during special holiday weekends. So this weekend we went but to a different beach than we normally do. It’s in the same general vicinity but is accessible by car so no need to pay the inflated boat ride prices. The drive is one that involves much pot-hole avoiding, goat/cow/dog dodging, and you get the picture…
We were there quite early so we had the pick of the shelters. The kids also got to enjoy a little egg hunt. Their reward was that each of them received a hard-boiled egg. Yum!
The younger guys played a little beach soccer and the kids enjoyed the waves.
Lunch was served in one of the shelters and consisted of different foods brought by each of us. There was pig meat, cat fish in a curry sauce, some other kind of fish, a leafy vegetable cooked with papaya flowers, other veggies, krupuk, fruit, and of course, rice.
As we were finishing up our lunch we heard some people yelling. Myself and some other ladies looked out to the ocean and we could see a someone struggling in the water. Doing the typical waving of the arms and going up and down. One of the men in our church started to run towards the ocean and tried to get out there. He was slow in the water and there were others closer, but no one seemed to be doing anything. (maybe people thought he was playing and the reality is that not many people can swim here.)Hugo realized the situation was serious and ran out on the sand bank before diving in and swimming to the boy. By the time he reached the boy, he was under the water, unconscious, not breathing and foaming out of the mouth. He reached out and grabbed the boy in the rescue hold and thought for sure he was carrying a dead boy. As he swam the boy began to spit up water. A man came with an inner tube and helped Hugo get him to the sand bank. Then some men grabbed him and held him upside down. Hugo tried to get them to put the boy down, which they eventually did. He continued to spit up water but not breathe. When I saw that the boy was limp I ran down because it seemed we might have to do AR or CPR. When I got there he had just started to breathe. His eyes were glassy and he was not focussing. He did follow my finger when I asked him but could not talk to me. Then someone handed me a bottle of minyak kayu putih (white wood oil). I held the bottle under his nose and after that he was able to give a one word reply to my question. By then a boat had been hailed and we strongly recommended that his parents take him to the nearest medical clinic. Hopefully there was one at the village across the bay. Later we read on the internet that water could be remaining in his lungs and that he could still die if that is the case. All of the training either of us has is what to do until the ambulance gets there. Well, what do you do when there is no ambulance? We thank God that at least to our knowledge, there was a positive outcome to this frightening experience.
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I completely forgot to blog about V’s graduation. She’s been studying for a few years now. I’m not 100% sure what she’s studying but I think it has to do with economics. She had her official graduation ceremony two weeks ago on Monday morning. Then the following Saturday evening they had a service in front of their house to celebrate. The service started at 3:00. After the service, about 5:00, there was a buffet which included pork that had been cooked in the ground with hot rocks (thick layer of fat included-which the people love to eat!) along with some leafy thing (see photo). They had also made some chicken, and pork with sweet soy sauce and some kind of pork soup with bits of pork fat floating around in it. There were baked sweet potatoes, rice and stir-fried vegetables. I took a spot behind the food table and waved a bit of cardboard over the dishes to keep the flies away. V plans to work for a year and then hopefully get a government job.
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With all the “fun” that’s been going on around here, I’ve neglected to write about the other things that have gone on.
Last weekend we hosted two girls from a training program designed to help Papuans. It is similar to the program that my English students are in. This program however, is one year and the students stay in a dormitory. They are taught English and Math along with other important skills and are discipled along the way. Some of the students who’ve graduated from the one year program stay on and learn to make musical instruments. They’ve made violins and guitars and are learning to play them. It’s pretty neat! So we had two girls for the weekend. One wishes to be a chef and the other wants to work for an embassy or consulate. They were delightful girls and helped me prepare a lot of food and therefore learned a lot about Western food. They had previously not eaten much Western food so they were quite interested. We made pizza on Friday night and on Saturday we had another family over who was also hosting two girls and we did a big barbeque with chicken and shrimp and vegetable kebabs (I made some rice because I knew they were totally missing it!). Then we played a fun game together.
Thursday was my last day teaching my English students. Their semester is now done and they will go to their practical stage. We had a slightly shorter lesson and I had them all share their plans for the future. A good many of them hope to become missionary pilots. There’s a program in Wamena run by a former MAF pilot that most of them hope to go through. This program has already had two guys go to America and successfully achieve their private pilots licenses. Another guy hopes to be a pastor and another a teacher in his village. After the lesson we had lunch and then watched Facing the Giants. They loved the movie! Afterwards a few of them spoke and expressed their appreciation to me. Then they sang me a song written by some alumni of the program called The Jungle Blessing. There may or may not have been a few tears shed. Then they prayed for myself and my family. I was moved and humbled incredibly. It was such a treat to get to know these guys!
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Yesterday we were having a nice dinner with some friends when “I’s” niece came to the door with a letter for me. The letter was from the workforce and transimigration department requesting that I appear at their office at 10:00 am the next day to talk about the termination of employment of “I”. Oh great…
“I’s” family feels that we need to give four months wage as severance pay because we were wrong to dismiss her. That amounts to nearly $350. Right… Our boss felt that we should not go but one of our national guys would go for us as they had no right to appeal to this department because they do not deal with day labourers which is what helpers fall under. So he did and the department said that we did not do anything wrong. Then “I” went on to tell them that each month I had withheld 200,000 rupiahs from her pay and that she’d never received that money. A blatant lie. It was that money that she’d used to purchase her handphone, tv, amplifier etc… (it seems that during the meeting she was being coached by her husband and dad on what to say.) When I terminated her employment, I gave her the remaining savings that she had. I still feel that her husband is pushing this because he no longer has a cash cow to depend on. In fact he’s been working as a motorcycle taxi driver as of late… Anyways, the department said they wanted meet me on April 9th to talk about the money that we’d kept back and apparently not given. Our boss is strongly discouraging this and the national guy will hopefully be able to convince them that a meeting isn’t necessary. I may try and have a meeting with “I” to discuss with her why this is happening. This whole situation is rather baffling. Now that they have gone to the department, no other West*rn family will want to hire her again. That bridge has been burned.
