Krikey! The Croc Got Me By the Head!

We've got our very own Steve Irwin wannabe's right here in Wabuku. They prefer to kill the croc first and then play with it...good thinking. Here's a photo of Markus with his head in the crocodile’s mouth! This one was killed a couple Sundays ago – just outside the village! Yikes, they’re coming closer to us.

Death of the 8 ft Python!

You may be thinking that missionaries like me enjoy telling scary, snake stories - and you would be right! If you are afraid of snakes you definitely do not want to look to your left. Don't be too afraid. Its just me with an 8 foot python that was killed right outside the village. Not sure he enjoyed his visit to Wabuku – and he sure won’t make another one!

Trip to the City! (Nominated Best Tribal Comedy)

The big trip to the city started with us heading to Goroka with four men from Wabuku to attend a team translation workshop. The guys would receive training from a national man involved in the translation process and church planting in a tribe in the Islands region of Papua New Guinea. We white skins sat in classes every morning and then applied what we learned in the morning to our own translations in the afternoons. We translated the prodigal son story from Luke – taking it through all the steps so that my coworkers could see how they would/could be involved in the process. It’s not just one person that sees a translation come to fruition. It’s a team effort. My coworkers will be involved in the comprehension checking and content checking – making sure that what I translated actually means what it’s supposed to mean to the people and then making sure that I haven’t added to or taken away from the original content.

Anyway….four of our guys went with us and it was a whole new world for them! One of our guys had flown before but not the other three. They’d all been out to the nearest town to our village, Vanimo, but they all commented on how big Wewak was compared to Vanimo….and Goroka is even bigger than Wewak so their world just kept getting bigger! Some were more overwhelmed by all this than others.

Albert, by far, dealt with the most culture shock – people that looked like him but so many people that he didn’t know – so many buildings and things happening that he’d never experienced before. He sat on the plane next to Jimi on the first flight and just about held onto his leg or pant leg the whole way! He was smiling and said he was fine anytime I asked him, but there was definitely some fear with it! He looked the most shell-shocked in town – just sort of staring off into space as he tried to process all the people, cars and stores. They saw the ocean and things that they’d really not seen before.

Because of changes to plans, we ended up in Wewak for a couple of hours before our next flight up to Goroka. Since we’d be late in arriving in Goroka, we went shopping for shoes for our guys. The Interface campus where we were headed is in the highlands region of PNG – a mile above sea level and quite a bit cooler than our swamp village. The highlands doesn’t have sago palm trees – they get coconuts from a coastal town as opposed to even seeing coconut trees around their villages. It’s a much cooler temperature – mid 80’s during the day and down to the 60’s even at night. (It got down to 45 F one night when I lived up there.) Anyway far too cold for our Sepik guys to be running around with no shoes on. So off we went to the local Walmart, aka Papindo’s, to buy shoes. They each picked out a pair and tried them on….then we had to stand in a different line in order to get the shoe strings for them (a loss prevention tactic).

Actually, before we started shopping, we stopped for lunch. There’s a little fish shop right near town that sells a pretty good plate of fried fish and French fries (chips) or roast chicken and fries. Most of us got the fish but Albert decided on chicken. He was definitely still in the overwhelmed state of things as he sat there. I kept looking over at him – to see if he was doing ok and most of the time he was eating the fries. The last time I remember seeing the chicken, he still hadn’t touched it. A few minutes later, no kidding, I looked over and his entire plate was empty – the garnish, the chicken, fries, everything – including the chicken bones! They gave him a wing and breast portion so it definitely had bones…..but not when he was done with them! He ate everything, bones included! It was so funny – one minute it was there, the next minute, none of it was!

We got on a bigger plane and they all did fine – enjoying the sight from above. Another one of our guys, Paetrik, was like a kid in a candy store. He was a little nervous but so excited. He giggled more than anything! We got to Goroka and they were able to go around town a couple times – amazed at all that was available in town and the huge numbers of people. We went to the Goroka veggie market and two of the guys didn’t even get out of the vehicle! They were too overwhelmed by the huge mass of people selling things to venture out on their own – or even with us. It was great for challenging their world – enlarging the size of it in huge proportions.

Their teacher, this guy from the Islands, is a mature believer who challenged them with questions that they couldn’t answer from their world view. He didn’t give them the answer to his questions although he told them that he knew the answers because the answers were in the Bible. He really got them thinking and started challenging their world view – a perfect pre-evangelism tool! We’re so thankful for the training they received from this guy – in the classroom and outside of it.

Dada cuts her hand... (Rated R for violence)

Saturday afternoon – just finishing my lunch when my co-worker, M’Liss, calls for me. One of the tribal girls, Dada, has cut her fingers with a machete. Ugh….you have to understand that open bloody wounds and I don’t get along very well. My stomach starts turning and I feel faint. I’ve passed out only once – when they were taking my blood and had to try a couple times. Anyway – I went down to help. None of us missionaries have had any medical training. We’re limited in what we can do as this particular province of PNG doesn’t allow us to do anything yet in terms of shots or disseminating medicine. (Our leadership team has been working with the government authorities to sponsor a training course for national guys that we appoint so that medical work can continue even after we leave. This course starts in February for our folks.) So we start off rather limited in knowledge and options. The nearest aid post is a 5 hour ride in a paddle canoe and because sorcery is always tied into sickness – it’s hard to convince them to get medical care anyway. Ok…so now you know a few background things for the rest of the story.

I go down to our verandah where M’Liss and Dada are. Her middle finger is cut right at the last knuckle – closest to her fingernail. It’s crooked – sort of hanging off to the side – definitely broken. The blood has coagulated around the open cut so at least the blood isn’t running down her arm at this point. I only looked at it for a few minutes before my stomach was twisting. After about 10 minutes, I had to actually sit down – or pass out. So I sat down as M’Liss and I tried to figure out what our best option was. If she removed all of the coagulated blood, then it would start bleeding all over again – and neither of us thought the ten year old girl could handle the pain that would be involved in putting pressure on the wound to stop the bleeding. So we decided to try first pouring an antiseptic solution on it to clean it and see how it went from there – leaving some of the coagulated blood where it was. All I did was hold a bucket under her arm as M’Liss poured the solution over it – with my head turned away – and provide moral support. M’Liss did all the work.

Dada didn’t make a sound – she wasn’t crying – she wasn’t saying a word. She winced plenty of times and tensed her whole body up but other than that, she just sat there. M’Liss got a lot of the blood cleaned off. The finger needed to be straightened – the bone put back in place – a little beyond our skills – and again, pain tolerance comes in there. These folks have high pain tolerance but the kids especially would rather leave a splinter in their foot so that it ends up being a huge sore rather than deal with the small amount of pain it would take to remove that splinter. So here we are – no anesthetic for her – no way to numb her hand and yet we needed to do something. So we finally got the wound clean – wrapped it in a bandage – along with the finger next to it – gave the equivalent of childrens’ Tylenol and put her on an antibiotic. The hard part is to see how her aunt – who now looks out for her as her mother died way back in 2004 from breast cancer – wasn’t concerned for her at all. She said it was ‘Dada’s thing’ and went on by. Most of the adults didn’t care that she almost cut her finger off. Another lady in the village who seems to be ‘the lady’ to care for people when they’re sick is taking care of her. Dada has moved from her aunt’s house to this other lady’s house. We’ll see how she does – they do heal in ways that we don’t. But they’re quick to lose bandages and do all the things that a doctor would tell them not to do – like get it wet – hang her hand down rather than holding it up, etc.

It’s a very different story from the standards we’re used to in the United States. She would have been taken to the emergency room – perhaps had to wait awhile but she would have been in a fairly sterile environment – no flies trying to land on the open wound – minimal chance of infection – Novocain or some other anesthetic – stitches – and a wealth of knowledge between the doctors and nurses in how best to handle it all. Not exactly what she has here in Wabuku. Pray that her finger heals – that it doesn’t get infected and that He will be glorified through this situation in spite of it all. We can’t expect western standards of medical care in a country that can’t provide it – that’s the hard part. We can help but the country as a whole is not equipped to provide the medical care that we take for granted. Yet another way that we could easily compare and condemn their way of life to ours but it isn’t for us to judge. We can help and deal with situations as we are able but we didn’t come to build a hospital and care only for their physical needs – we came to care for their spiritual needs. You obviously can’t only take care of those and ignore the physical needs so it’s a hard balance. We want to do both – to the extent that that’s possible and yet without creating paternalism too. We don’t want them to be totally dependent on the white man.

We’re not the answer to all their problems. He is the ultimate answer. Aside from that spiritual need, we feel we should train them and empower them to care for themselves. That means that when we move out of here, medical care can continue without our presence. That sounds logical and easy – but like so many other things, easy to say and harder to do. Pray for that too – that the Uriay people (all three villages) would take this responsibility as their own – and not just look to us.

Your 4 year old daughter or a husband? A glimpse at marriage for a widow…

I was in the canoe – headed back into Wabuku for the first time in seven months – and culture was happening before I made it ‘home’. We had to stop in Bayyo – a village at the mouth of our river where it meets the Sepik river. Several ladies from this village had married men from Wabuku. Because of their location and the intermarrying, we’ve formed a relationship with the people there and see them coming or going – as well as visits they make to our village. Maria, one of the Bayyo ladies, was married to one of our Wabuku men before he died last August. My coworker, Elias, told me that Maria and another of our widows had just married our two village widowers the week before. Maria was one of them but our guys hadn’t asked permission of her clan so Bayyo was not happy about this little arrangement. In tribal culture here, they do an exchange system for marriage. If a guy wants to marry a girl, he has to have a sister to give to the potential bride’s brother. If he doesn’t have an exchange (a sister to give) then the parents of the girl may still be willing to give the girl to him in marriage – for money or a bride price. The brothers of Maria’s deceased husband had already agreed to give Maria to Matiu in marriage without talking to the Bayyo men so her Bayyo family members were mad. They wanted an exchange for her – even though it was a second marriage – and money. That’s the background so that you can understand the scene that I’m about to describe.

We stopped in Bayyo to pick up Maria and her three kids – two boys and a girl, to take them back to Wabuku. Most of the village had come out to the canoe – I was greeting the ones that I knew and shaking the hands of all the kids surrounding me. Maria came out carrying her little girl and had already gotten in the canoe when her brother and sister came towards her with a big stick and a machete. They were trying to rip the daughter out of her arms – threatening Maria with the knife and stick. She had her own stick and was trying to hold on to her daughter and fight them off at the same time. They weren’t trying to hit the daughter – just Maria but the daughter was crying and her little arms were being pulled by the sister while the brother struggled with the Maria. I sat there with tears in my eyes – trying not to lose it as I watched this heart-wrenching scene. People were laughing and more and more were helping the sister and brother try to pull the child away from her mother. This was the reality of tribal life – hitting me between the eyes before I hit the shore of my own village. This went on for 10 minutes or so and finally they were able to get the child away from the mother – although she got a few punches thrown in against her brother with her fist and the stick she held. It was so sad. Neither of them came to Wabuku – she sent her two boys up to stay with their uncles but she stayed in Bayyo with her daughter. The boys sat in the canoe – at times being told by the Wabuku folks to lay down so that other Bayyo family members wouldn’t see them as we passed them on the river.

Marriage and the exchange system is a huge thing here. And add to that their fear of sorcery and how any type of dispute opens the door for sorcery to come in and kill someone, this was a huge ordeal. The Bayyo folks were mad – they had a ‘hevi’ (dispute) with some of our Wabuku men so that clan was especially mad at the new husband until the dispute could be settled. The new husband had to pay a ‘bone price’ (literal translation) to the brothers of the dead husband for taking his widow. Now he had to pay Maria’s family a bride price for her as well. Until all of that was settled, the brothers were extremely afraid of sorcery. These guys got mad and grabbed bows and spears to threaten the new husband, Matiu – to push him into paying this money so that there were no disputes. It was an interesting week as I listened to these two brothers yell and scream at Matiu – although we knew that the threatening was all a sort of posturing. They act like they’re going to fight but it’s all for show really - but it does get the point across to the other guy.

A few days after I arrived back in our village, Maria had run away from Bayyo and come up to Wabuku. She’d left her daughter in Bayyo and run away to be with her new husband. She and Matiu took off to another village to get money from other clans to pay the bride price and bone price to settle these issues. Last Saturday, the Bayyo men came up and had a meeting with the deceased husband’s brothers and the new husband – and most of our village – to settle the dispute. The daughter would stay in Bayyo as Maria’s exchange – and be raised by her family members and when she was old enough, she’d marry a Bayyo man. Matiu paid his money to Maria’s family and everyone was happy, except Maria’s oldest son. He was mad and throwing a fit that his sister would remain in Bayyo. He threatened his mom with spears and sticks – screaming and crying that she had gotten a new husband and that his sister would stay and marry in Bayyo. Folks said that he was mad because his sister wouldn’t return to Wabuku – and some said that he was mad because he didn’t have an ‘exchange’ now – so when it’s time for him to marry, he won’t have a sister to give. Sad all the way around. The mother’s fine to have a new husband but give up her 4 year old daughter so that she can have this new husband. Would you be willing to give up your 4 year old for a husband? It’s hard for me to fathom that a mother could give up her child – to be raised by family in another village so that she could remarry but then I wasn’t born here – and it’s not my custom. (We won’t get into the things that are acceptable in our culture, ie abortion and abandoned children, etc.) That’s just the way it is…

Photos of Wabuku

Welcome to Wabi World!!

Wabi World - It's a place where you can come and catch up on what I'm doing in the tribe. Isn't it awesome that I can keep you plugged into what's happening in Wabuku while I'm on the other side of the world? The internet enables me to get you the latest news from Wabuku in short order as opposed to what I can get to you in my monthly updates. I'm also hoping to post photos from time to time to give you a glimpse into my world.

In case you're wondering...we often refer to our home as Wabiland - although the name of the village is Wabuku. Since I'm from the Orlando area and Disney World/Sea World and lots of other 'worlds' are here, I had to incorporate that into the blog title too!