pngbuggy's posterous

Post Assignment Results

A couple of my PNG projects have come to fruition since I've been back in Australia. I wanted to share a couple of my post assignment successes with you!!

Firstly, we got exciting news a couple of weeks back to hear that Digicel Foundation have approved our funding proposal. This proposal took so long to put together, due to waiting on people providing quotes but never showing up etc etc; 6 months in the making at least. However, success at last and Digicel will be helping to fund the draining and filling in of the old pool at the Centre (finally!!!) and building some play equipment in this area, for the students. A pic of the manky pool included for you, in case you had forgotten!! I'll have to get the staff to email me a picture of the finished product and will post that also.

In more great news, Mark, one of the staff (seen in the next picture) has been successful in his application for an Australian Study Scholarship, which I helped him put together. He is still to hear final details, but will be coming to live in Australia next year, to study a Masters of Special Education. What a winner!!!

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Kiva - Loans that change lives

via kiva.org

Hi all,

Apologies for the recent spamming attack! Just to confirm, this is not spam. I was introduced to Kiva today and really like the idea. Microfinance in general has always interested me and this is a great way to be involved. I guess this is giving people in developing nations a hand up rather than a hand out. "Donate" any amount in $25 increments and it will go towards a small microcreidt loan to someone in a developing country, who is trying to improve their way of life. Once the loan is repaid, you get your money back and can either withdraw or reinvest with someone else! Fabulous. Unfortunately Papua New Guinea doesn't seem to be on the list of participating countries, but loads of others to choose from.

Happy loaning!

Lis xx

The Boomerang Phone

On Good Friday I was mugged. This was not a nice experience. This was not a good Good Friday. However walking along by yourself and talking on your phone is also not very smart. I believe this may be Rule 101 of Single White Female Safety classes across the globe. So, the young guy took a punt and got himself a shitty old Nokia phone that was being held together by a rubber band and whose battery lasted about 48 hours maximum. Unfortunately for him, I was not carrying the charger as well. Unfortunately for me, I keep everyone’s contact numbers in my phone. Boo.

I was not hurt, just shaken up by the experience and nothing else was taken except my phone. I resigned myself to its loss. On Easter Monday while I was sitting on my balcony reading my book, a car pulled up at my house and a guy in matching dark denim shirt and pants got out. He was, he said, a policeman and he had my phone. This was all very interesting considering 1) I had not reported the event to the police and 2) I had at no stage told the police where I lived (the joys of being a young white girl in a small town). I am still not sure how he came across my phone or knew that it had been stolen from me, but he did have my phone and the SIM card all intact. He did not have a policeman’s uniform or any sort of ID. On asking what I was required to do, he said it was really up to me, but if I wanted to, I could provide him with a reward. Ah, the amazing workings of a developing country law and order system. “No” I explained “what do you require from me in terms of police formalities, name, address (which he obviously knew) etc etc?” Feeling generally uncomfortable with the whole situation at this stage, I said thank you for returning my phone and I would come to the station the next day.

On Tuesday, I went and saw a friend who works for Community Based Corrections and asked her to come down to the station with me, which she did. We found the policeman who had returned my phone. He was still in his matching denim shirt and pants outfit. He explained that the young guy had been locked up but they had let him go that morning. Turns out my friend knew the young guy’s Mum and was going to have strong words with her (bless). Once again (stupidly) I asked the policeman what he needed from me. And AGAIN he said “well, maybe you could buy me lunch as a reward”!!! Seriously DUDE, no reward for doing your job. Do you need my name and details or can I go now???

This is not the end of the boomerang phone saga.

Maybe two weeks later I was in the office at work and someone came knocking at the door. I recognised the face but couldn’t place it and the guy started talking about taking photos on my camera. I was totally confused. Finally I worked out it was the policeman who had returned my phone. He was not wearing his matching denim shirt and pants this time, so I did not recognise him. Turns out somewhere between rescuing my phone and returning it to me, he had happened across a serious car accident AND had taken photos of it with my phone camera. So he had come to ask to get the photos off my phone for his police report (yes, this is a true story). I said I had never used the camera and that he would have to work out where the pictures were saved. He found them and proudly showed me “this is the blood, this is more blood, this is the skid marks, this is the car wreck” etc etc. Nice!

After explaining that I had no way of downloading the photos for him, he managed to find the tiny little memory card in the phone (who knew!) and took it with him down to the station. He returned this to me a few hours later.

Phone returned, contacts deleted, photos downloaded. Problem solved.

On Sunday 12^th June, my shitty nokia phone was stolen again, literally from under my nose by some punk kid who was at work registering for our Fun Walk. Having not learned my lesson the first time around, I once again lost all my contact numbers. This was very bad timing and I was pissed off. In front of 4,000 people the next day I requested that the person who had stolen my phone to please return this to me as it did not belong to them!! Ha ha.

My boomerang phone has not boomeranged back this time. I have a new phone which cost me K50.00. It has only one Dr Who inspired ring tone, the predictive text does not predict the most basic of words and the battery lasts on average about 14 hours. Who knew they made them so shitty!

Boomerang phone, I miss you.

My Fun Walk

I've been a little slack on the blog posts lately. One reason being that we have come into the wet season in Alotau and the communication networks (particularly internet access) are total mayhem. Which is interesting, because wet season happens without fail every year. Actually on average, in Alotau, it rains 200 days of the year. So Telikom, this is not something new, it's time to pull your finger out and live up to your motto "Always There" because currently you are not!

I have also been caught up organising a small fundraising event. A fundraising event which turned out to be the biggest event Alotau has ever had. What started as a great idea to hold a "walk" to raise some cash turned into an amazing day in which over 4,000 people participated and we raised K20,700 which is huge!! Penny, you would have been so proud of me!!

It was a huge amount of organisation, especially leading up to the day and especially because it's PNG! But very much worth it. I was heading to the fields at 5:30am in the morning on the day of the event and people were streaming along the road heading to the start line. It was such a great feeling. We had organised the Fire Service crew to push 5 of our disabled students across the finish line in wheelbarrows. I looked up at one stage and I just saw this surge of people coming in to the fields behind our students. I got quite emotional - it was the first time these kids have been part of something so big and I was really proud. Funnily enough, it had bucketed down rain all week prior but the sun came out on Saturday morning and kept shining until a couple of hours after we had packed up on Monday afternoon. We were very very lucky! We also managed to feed all 4,000 people with a sausage in a piece of bread without any riots. Actually, the participants were probably more well behaved and more patient waiting in line than Aussie's would be in the same situation.

Suffice to say, it was a great success and so nice to do something for the community before I finish up. I think the community would definitely like me to stay on and organise all their fundraising events from now on (I've already had a couple of requests).

I've included some pics from the day and a couple of articles that featured in the newspapers. We also made it on to the news and myself and Pam (who helped organise it) did an interview on National Radio. Famous :)

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The Huli Wigmen perform in Adelaide . . . just

This article appeared in the paper a month or so back. It's kind of hilarious - nothing like a lack of forward thinking and organisation when it comes to international group travel. Being a cultural group appearing at a world class event, whether the host country will actually allow your traditional dress into the country should probably be a priority consideration.

Just to give you an idea of what is involved in the Huli traditional dress:

- Huli men wear decorative woven wigs of human hair. The hair is the wigman's own, grown over many months by unmarried men living together in isolation from the rest of their community

- The Huli cultivate yellow, everlasting daisies that are used to decorate their wigs; they also use feathers and cuscus fur for decoration

- The Huli men wear a band of snakeskin across the forehead and usually a cassowary quill through the nasal septa

- Kina shells are worn around the neck, a decorative belt and billum cloth cover the privates, and the rear is covered by a bunch of leaves attached to a belt (known collectively as tanket or arse gras)

Border Security, eat your heart out!!

A Story. In Three Parts

Part 2.

Peggy was excited. She was going adventuring to an island paradise off the mystical island land. She was going to see some friends, get on the road (totally flat apparently) and go places where no other person from Peggy’s land had ever been. Ok, well at least no one that Peggy knew closely. She had come up with a good plan (Peggy liked plans and organisation – maybe a little too much!) which, with the help of the mystical island land dwarves and her small but precious artefact, would allow her to visit her Mama and Papa Bear and Little Baby Sister Bear. Her Brother Bear was ripping up some pow pow in his own mystical blizzardly cold land, too far for Peggy to travel to this time around. In hindsight, maybe Peggy’s plan was a little too ambitious, but who is to know.

The mystical island land dwarves were experiencing “communication problems”, a seemingly regular occurrence in the mystical island land. (As an aside, Peggy’s favourite communication device in the mystical island land is the wireless telephone. No, this is not a mobile phone. It looks like your average telephone, but is not connected to the wall. Thereby enabling “the office” to be moved to the side of the road and intense multitasking to be undertaken – talking with wantoks, running a small cigarette stand and chewing your pick me up of choice, tasks often prohibited within the confines of the office building, while still answering those important business calls. Genius. The only downfall is that it doesn’t fit in your bag).

Back to the story. Despite having an excessively wonderful time adventuring, Peggy was starting to get worried. Her calls to the mystical island land dwarves were all met with reassurances but no concrete information. Maybe Peggy was asking too many leading questions, a habit she is slowly becoming aware of and trying to rectify. Either way, the sands in the hourglass were falling and time was running out. Her small but precious artefact would self-destruct very soon, unless something was done. Peggy made her way to the “One Major Point”, the location of her small but precious artefact and the formidable force, The Agency.

Under the impression that The Agency had already worked their indestructible magic with the small but precious artefact, allowing her to continue on in the mystical island land, she was shocked and appalled to find out that no such action had been undertaken. Peggy, with the help of an amazing Princess Friend, spent an anxious day travelling around the “One Major Point” trying to secure the return of her small but precious artefact and prevent its imminent self-destruction. She was not impressed, this was not a task entrusted to her. Actually she was fairly sure this was a task that someone else was being paid to do. She was even more unimpressed when cousin brother hipster asked her to pay the bosses lunch (and lunch is not cheap in the “One Major Point”) for the situation to be rectified. “Girlfriend” she cried, “this just ain’t good enough”. At 4:06pm, the clock off time for mystical island land public servants, no action had been taken by The Agency to rectify the now totally f***ed situation (excuse the French), despite Peggy’s insistence otherwise. The small but precious artefact was now set to self-destruct the following day. Peggy was mad. More than mad, she was furious and frustrated and angry and very very upset. She had a beer and a cry and a swim in the pool with her amazing Princess Friend and tried to work out what to do next.

Peggy and her amazing Princess Friend were resourceful. They had phones and they had numbers, although Peggy had no credit but luckily her amazing Princess Friend did. She made some calls. The people she called made some calls. She made some more calls and drank some more beer. Finally, a breakthrough – a strong and powerful overseer communicated to Peggy. She would air travel to her home land the very next day!

Weekend Adventuring - Part 3

A dinghy day out – went to the South Coast, Mariawata, hired ourselves a dinghy and headed out to Dalami Island for a swim and a snorkel.

Met these great kids! How cute is Brian, the baby in the purple shorts! How unsuited is the name Brian. I got the Monty Python theme song to “The Life of Brian” stuck in my head for the rest of the day. “Brain, the babe named Brian. He grew, he grew and he grew, he grew up to be. . . . “ The boys in the dinghy live on Bona Bona Island (the larger island in front of Dalami). They paddle to school every day. That is cool!

On the way back we bought some crabs at the market (about $1.50 each). We gave the lady a lift down the road to her village. Turns out her name is Lisa. Well, it wasn’t originally Lisa, but another white Australian Lisa had come along and decided this lady should also be Lisa. They became pen pals (confusing!).

Colonisation in all forms I guess . . . . or maybe she just knew that Lisa was a really cool name to have?!

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A Story. In Three Parts

Any resemblance to real life people or events is purely coincidental.

Part 1.

There once was a girl named Peggy who lived in a mystical island land, where the humidity was about 300% and internet access was volatile, to say the least. Peggy had been trusted with a mission, to deliver a small but precious artefact to the other side of the mystical island land. The success of this mission was imperative to her being able to continue living in the mystical island land, which she longed for very much. She employed the services of a high speed orange bird, who promised to take great care of the artefact and deliver it promptly. He even gave her a consignment number for her artefact. In her too trusting way, Peggy put her faith in the animal to help with this important mission.

It came to her attention a week or so later, that the precious artefact had not arrived at its intended destination. This worried Peggy some. Making her way through a sudden rainy downpour and flicking dirt up on the back of her skirt (damn thongs), she went to find the high speed orange bird that she had entrusted her artefact to. At first, the large orange bird looked confused (a response she often received when speaking with the inhabitants of the mystical island land) and denied the existence of the aforementioned consignment number. It then explained to Peggy, in great detail, the flight paths required to be taken by the high speed orange bird. Everything had to travel through “One Major Point” and this sometimes caused delays. Peggy was not satisfied with this explanation, emphasising the importance and preciousness of her artefact. The high speed orange bird’s boss was summoned and made some calls. The precious artefact was located and as they spoke (as if by a miracle) it was being loaded onto another high speed orange bird to be delivered to its destination on the other side of the mystical island land. It should arrive there that afternoon. Peggy was much relieved and informed the mystical island land dwarves who would be receiving the precious artefact, of the news.

Unbeknownst to Peggy, the mystical island land dwarves were under instruction by The Agency, a formidable force. They had received orders for the small but precious artefact to be delivered to the “One Major Point”, the exact same place where it had already been previously delayed. On finally arriving at the other side of the mystical island land, the mystical island land dwarves set about constructing “travel plans” for the small but precious artefact to be transported back to the “One Major Point”. A first attempt was made, utilising the chief of the mystical island land dwarves and his magical ability to travel by air and place the artefact directly in the hands of The Agency. Unfortunately, this first attempt proved unsuccessful and the small but precious artefact was returned to the magical island land dwarves on the other side of the magical island land.

On a bright and sunny day, Peggy received information from the mystical island land dwarves that her small but precious artefact had been delayed further from its final destination. However, she was not to worry, as they were employing the services of a high speed orange bird to deliver it promptly to the “One Major Point”. Despite having lived in the mystical island land for what sometimes felt like many lifetimes, she was often still surprised by its strange and mystical workings.

She received confirmation a few days later, that her small but precious artefact was safely at its destination, the “One Major Point” and The Agency would take over proceedings from here.

Weekend Adventuring - Part 2

Saturday just gone, Matt Matt and I travelled by PMV (local bus) to East Cape to check out some more skull caves. Skull caves are fairly prevalent in the area. In the past, when someone in the clan died, they were buried standing up with their head sticking out of the ground. A clay pot was placed over the head. Once the head eventually separated from the body, the skulls were collected and placed in the caves. Apparently, the skulls of particular warriors or VIPs of the tribe were decorated. There are supposedly caves in the area where you can see these skulls, but they are quite difficult to get to. If there were tribal wars and someone from the other tribe was killed, they would be eaten (not buried).

The caves we visited on Saturday did not have as many skulls as the ones out at Tawali and most of the skulls had been vandalised, stolen and smashed. Apparently there are still issues over these caves - apparently the skulls of one tribe have been buried in the cave of another.

Darren, our local guide whom we woke up from his midday nap to take us out, was also very excited to show as the "crocodile sculpture". A natural occuring sculpture hanging off the side of a huge limestone formation. It was pretty cool!

The trip out to East Cape is an experience in itself, especially on the PMVs. The roads are ridiculously bad and it takes over 2 hours each way. But stunning scenery and great times with the locals. How cute are the two old ladies, my favourites! They had obviously been into town to do some shopping. Most Papua New Guineans will carry a knife in their bag. The lady on the left had just bought herself a new handbag knife and was showing it off and comparing to her older one, which definitely looked worse for wear. The lady on the right also pulled her knife out for a look and it was agreed it was a pretty decent knife (that's what I gathered anyway, they were speaking in language).

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Weekend Adventuring - Part One

We've had a couple of consecutive weekends out and about - both with a skull cave theme! More on skull caves in the next entry. These pics are taken from Tawali Resort, on the north coast of Milne Bay (about a 2 hour, bumpy car ride away). It is only accessbile by boat and tucked away in the jungle. You can't hardly tell it's there, until you pull up to the wharf. It is aimed at divers with some great dive sites nearby. We didn't dive but there was some amazing snorkelling right off the resort. It was beautiful and amazing as the coral shelf dropped off into dark depths below.Aafter snorkelling in the afternoon on the first day, someone asked the Resort Manager if there were any sharks around. He said yes, they had a hammerhead hanging around out the front only last week. Eeek, so glad I didn't run into him coming up from the deep blue depths.

A few pics also from a nearby village where we walked to the skull caves. Always on the ball for a sales opportunity, we emerged from one of the caves, to find an impromptu craft market set up out the front!! None of us having brought any money, we were a little disappointed. Obviously having encountered this before (stupid white man) they assured us that we could pay our guide back at the resort and he would get the money to the people. So, we did some shopping. Win win :)

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