TISOL Family Fun Day

The International School Of Lae (TISOL) is where the girls go to school and on Sunday May 17, the Parents & Friends ran a Family Fun Day. It was full of traditional games for the kids such as sack races, three legged race (Tiarna and I crashed rather heavily), paper aeroplane competition, tug of war, donut eating competition, balloon relays, and egg and spoon races (one girl didn't quite understand how it was supposed to run and carried the egg in one hand and the spoon in the other and just sprinted!)

Marilyn was the 'first aid lady' so we decided to enter in the 'best dressed family competition'.

(Jenaya had just eaten a Chocolate eclair lollie and was trying to smile as well!)

Kambubu Teachers In-Service

After flying from Buka to Kokopo airport, we hired a car and travelled 3 hours down to Kambubu High School. It is situated close to Rugen Harbour and has a boarding school, large coconut/cocoa plantation and school farm.

View from the Administration steps, looking east.

We completed the same type of training as we did in Bougainville but there was another focus for teachers at Kambubu and that was dealing with the senior students issues.

This time we had a manikin

Marilyn says that she was explaining 'internal anatomy'...

When it comes to the HIV crisis here, I not only was able to give them education on HIV (and scare them with statistics), but also gave them strategies to address sexual issues in their senior schools. Gender inequality is probably a lot of the cause, but especially in the boarding schools, the kids are practicing risky behavior and unfortunately in this country they have not got that freedom because a lot of youth are infected with the virus. Country-wide, I believe it is growing by 60% each year.

I also had the opportunity to have time with the boarding students, it was valuable time spent and they were learning and absorbing everything. I give about 2 hours of awareness and education and it is always followed by 2-4 hours of questions and this is the most rewarding. You just couldn't believe what those kids are going through

Kitchen of the Boarding School, which produced amazing food for us

Bougainville Teachers Health In-service

Marilyn has come back from a trip from Bougainville and Kambubu High School near Rabaul (East New Britain). This is her blog.
I started out by catching the early bird flight to POM (Port Moresby) then a flight out to Buka (nearly 2 hours). It wasn’t the best flight as I was vomiting from travel sickness much of the way!
In Buka, the team went to one of the little SDA churches.

L-R: Jim Yawane (SDA Associate Education Director), Joe Ponduk (SDA Education Director), me, Darren Yorio (CPP Coordinator), James Gahare (Health Manager), Jimmy Frumpui (PNG SDA Church Health Director)

After staying one night at Buka we travelled across the small strait of water between Buka island and Bougainville then 4-5 hours along the coast road down to Arawa. James, Me, Ruth Galen(PAU Health/Nursing Lecturer from POM), Jimmy and Jim

Along the road we had four flat tyres. Here is one of those times.

The training was held at Rumba, SDA Church headquarters in Bougainville.

My experience was nothing but amazing.
As I am the SDA Church HIV Mainstreaming Clinical Advisor (long title for 'Jill-of-all-trades') I was helping to conduct a Health in-service workshop for all our SDA teachers in the New Guinea Islands and if you look at the map on the right side of PNG you will see all those Islands. All together for the 2 workshops, 187 teachers attended. I trained them in first aid (including CPR), HIV and AIDS awareness, women and men’s health issues and communicable diseases - all at a basic level. Other people covered nutrition, lifestyle diseases and more detailed men's health issues.
Most of these teachers or should I say ALL of these teachers have never had any health training of any sort in their whole career. Amazing! We had so much fun together.

Using James as a manikin (mankin) as there wasn't any avaliable.

(Do I need to explain this? hahaha)

Training them in CPR was fun, they had never seen it done and they never knew anything like this existed – that you could possibly save someone’s life like this was overwhelming for them.

Where they live, when someone is sick or a child is sick, most of them are nowhere near any medical facility and they handle it by themselves and in most of the serious cases the person just dies. A teacher told a story about a child that had a broken leg. They just kept them resting in bed for a few weeks until the child felt better and now that child walks with a bent leg the best he can. In most cases of malaria, the child may die of high fever with no way of getting medicine to them.

One of the small groups working on basic senarios they may face at school.

ADRA PNG, through the Church Partnership Program (CPP) funded by AusAID, has provided each SDA school in the Nugini Islands with a first aid kit to fix small things. Now, with the first aid training they will be able to help their children a little more.

Receiving my gift

Remember the Bougainville Crisis that we all heard about in the late 80's and early 90's where the people were at war with each other and the army; brothers were fighting against brother for independence. Just seeing the destruction on the island was devastating, the copper mine closed and is still closed and nearly everything was burnt to the ground and nothing much has been restored till this day near Arawa. But the people are beautiful and they are trying to get back on their feet. They have got so many natural resources that could make them a wealthy region.

After three days of the training we travelled back up the road to Buka and flew out to Kokopo airport to complete another health in-service at Kambubu High School in East New Britain. (see next post)

How to Hook a Fingernail

This is not really a fishing story that involves a fish…that is not the best way to begin a ‘fishing story’ heh?

Sunday, 26 April 2009 is a memorable one for both me and our dog, Sam.

I usually take the lures off my rods when I store them (always a good practice I have learned) but on the last trip one of my guards placed the rods back under the house without taking them off. As I was carrying two of them out to the boat my dog jumped around me and managed to get a lure hook through the side of his nose!

I don’t recommend trying to stop a dog trying to get away with a hook in his nose. But that wasn’t the worst.

After about ten minutes of trying to cut through the extra strong hooks I had put on the lure he struggled again and managed to get the other hooks in his paw. Now that was some ‘doggy screaming’. We had five guys trying to hold him down and as no one wanted to get near his mouth - as he was biting anything he could - that end of him fell to me.

In the immediate struggle after those other hooks went in, he was pushing his foot away from his nose and then getting pain in both areas, I suddenly saw heaps of blood and a ‘little sting’ in my right index fingernail. I thought Sam had bit me again.

Sam eventually just collapsed and let us deal with the hooks. A neighbour had come over with some sharper cutting pliers and cut the hooks off one by one and pulled them through the skin. My hands were just shaking with adrenaline and fatigue.

After this, I had blood all down my arm and over my hands and I went upstairs to wash my hands. I was washing my finger, looking for the bite mark and finally realised that the whole fingernail was missing!

I sat down rather suddenly (no, I didn’t faint!) and called out to Jenaya to get Mummy. She came in saw me sitting down and went down to Marilyn (who was getting water for Sam!) and said “Daddy wants you”.

Two minutes later! No one had arrived to deal with the ‘ongoing emergency’! When Marilyn arrived from me shouting she calmly told me that she saw the nail fly off and thought I had seen it too and she was a ‘little surprised’ at my calmness in continuing to deal with Sam… if only I had known!

Anyway, needless to say we didn’t go fishing.

The day after, at the office with Steven de Klerk laughing at me.

Both Sam and I were on antibiotics for a week or so. Any little scratch up here can get infected very quickly and as Sam had an open wound on his paw we had to stop it getting infected until it healed over.

We are both OK now, although Sam is terrified of fishing rods now. He hides under the table when he sees me carrying them.

The funny thing is… when I was a kid I had read heaps of WWII stories and always wondered what it would feel like to have your fingernail ripped off or bamboo pushed under the nail. I now know the pain of the aftermath but not a build up of expectation… maybe next time! Just another thing to cross off the list of things to experience.

By the way, I have just recovered from losing 5 toenails on my ‘Black Cat Adventure’ last October and now it is a fingernail. (see Brett’s Blog listed under friends)

The next fishing story will include pictures of fish! Hopefully.

ANZAC Day 2009

I have always tried to take my girls to the dawn service for ANZAC Day as I have tried to attend for the last twenty years or so. I feel that a little understanding of the sacrifice that others have made for our current freedom and way of life is necessary for a proper perspective on life.

The girls started attending in prams at Kingscliff and Murwillumbah in Northern NSW where we lived in Australia before coming to Papua New Guinea but this was the first ANZAC day for us in a former battlefield site where there are war dead buried.

On ANZAC day last year I was in transit at Singapore and was planning on going to the dawn service there but the Air Nugini flight was 19 hours late and I was lucky to actually catch my connecting flight to Bangkok. (I always try to leave a large gap between connecting flights with Air Nugini.)

Lae has a large war cemetery that is managed by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and is one of the calmest, relaxing and beautiful places in Lae. (There are also three K9 guard teams to keep ‘undesirable’ people out.) We often just visit on a weekend afternoon and just stroll around and look at the ages and wonder how they may have died. As there are so many troops that are not frontline troops I imagine diseases like malaria, typhoid, dysentery and others took their toll as well as the fighting or it could be bombing. One confronting aspect is the fact that there are only a handful of the hundreds of Indian soldiers buried here are actually named.

The dawn service was scheduled to begin at 5:30 am after arriving at 5 am. It was hard to wake the girls but they were also excited by the candles handed out to everyone when they arrived.

The plastic cups started burning after about half an hour as the candles reached the edges of the cups.

The service was attended by around 150 people and wreaths were presented from the Papua New Guinea, Australian and New Zealand government representatives, RSL (Returned Services League) as well as numerous private individuals and companies.

It was a moving ceremony with the usual poems and also reflections made of battlefields in Papua New Guinea from 1942 onwards.

Unfortunately as we were about to sing the national anthems of the three respective countries there was a power blackout and the PA failed.

The service finished with the sun rising from over the houses and lighting the forest and cross from the darkness as the last of the candles ran down.

Making Lime for Buai (Betelnut)

Chewing Buai or Betelnut (Areca catechu) is a national pastime in Papua New Guinea.

It gives a mild narcotic effect that briefly gives a small 'up' while also allowing small issues like hunger to be 'hidden' for a while.

The fruit from the Betelnut palm is chewed over nearly all of South Asia, the Pacific and even in East Africa.
Although there are many different ways and additions in chewing, there is one essential addition and that is Lime. It is needed for the alkalinity to enable the chemical release of the active ingredients and thus the distinctive red saliva juices!

While at Aluki village the local production of lime was seen.
Collection of mussel shells down at the beach gives a nice soup or stew but the shells are more important!

They are washed and dried, then stacked together with firewood.

The fire is lit from the top and gradually burns down turning the calcium carbonate of the shells into calcium oxide (lime). The shell pieces are collected and stored with this herb (had a smell like marjoram/basil) for a couple of weeks to make it 'sweet'.
It is then crushed and put into bottles. This stack would last them 'a couple of months'.
There is a 'mustard' fruit that is grown. It is this that is dipped into the lime continually and added to the betelnut that is being chewed.
I would just like to add a couple of pictures that Marilyn has found that show the terrible cost that chewing is taking on some of those that chew. It is causing massive extra costs to the health systems of many countries, especially PNG which cannot afford to treat the conditions that are not caused by lifestyle choices and are thus totally preventable. (to be added later)

Visit to Aluki with ADRA NZ

May 3-6 saw Dayan Eager, International Program Director for ADRA New Zealand, visit PNG for a 'scoping' visit. We decided to take the opportunity to visit some of the communities involved in the ADRA PNG Rural Economic Development (RED) Project.
This project works with cooperatives in communities in 5 areas surrounding Lae. Each cooperative has concentrated on a commodity; coffee, cocoa, rice, vegetables and vanilla.

We started the morning off with a visit to Gobadik and their vegetables. We found them constructing a bush material elementary school. This little school will have 140 students in four classrooms. Two of the classrooms can be seen here.


Here is (from left) Raul Schneider (Country Director), Dayan, and Gabriel Ani (RED Project Officer) talking with Stanley (RED Field Volunteer). We moved down from the hills to the coast to Tikaling where they are currently potting up poly bags ready to plant Cocoa beans. The kids looked like they were having fun...more fun than school anyway (which is 30 min walk for them down the road-about 4 km away)
We were offered some refreshments before we left and here is Dayan and Stephen de Klerk - ADRA Intern (on left) finishing off some green coconuts.
After another 20 minutes we arrived at Aluki community to see their cocoa nursery.
It was great to see a lady with her sewing machine walking along, after this came her husband carrying the empty case!As the Cocoa trees take at least three years before any amount of harvest can be collected they are using inland fish farming as another source of income until their trees mature. This was the first fish farm that has been started by the Govt Fisheries Dept in the Labuta LLG (Local Level Government) and so it was 'opened' with great fanfare the week before we visited. The fingerlings are very hard to see but they will give an income within a few months. The feed used currently is termite nests cut from the surrounding bush. Food scraps will be used later. I hope they build a better fence to keep the starving dogs out though!Lunch was provided and then we headed further on to the larger Buso River "just down the road".

Steve, me and Dayan. Looking north to the Rawlinson Range. There hasn't been that much rainfall here recently as the river is 'normally' covering where we are standing - so the locals said.

Looking south while Dayan takes a photo.

Raul being 'King of the Castle'.

Notice the women and kids doing their washing in the background.
Water supply for communities is still a huge need in PNG.
For those who are interested: In the latest UNDP Human Development Index (HDI), PNG ranks second worst in the world (after Afganistan) for percentage of the population that has access to an improved water supply. You can imagine the danger that some of these very fast rivers have for the small children that accompany the women while they do the washing and collect water. There are regularly stories of drownings, especially in the Highland rivers.
After leaving the river it was a quick 40 min drive back to the office.