Apr-Jul: I'll be in the South Pacific.
Archive for March 2006
Far away is spring
Lightning flickered through the pale northern clouds. I thought I was safe enough in my chair on the deck.
An orange cooking fire winked from the doorway of a house down the hill and beyond the fence — a real PNG house with bamboo walls and kunai roof. Cheerful music blared from a radio down below; children shrieked and giggled.
Other children announced Daddy’s return to the red-roofed house, just this side of the fence.
The clouds to the west were very dark, and somewhere a honeyeater warbled. The black calf tied to the clothesline pole made a half-hearted charge at the pregnant cat, and the pregnant cat stalked off where the calf couldn’t go.
A six-legged choir droned unbroken.
Rain started to fall — so soft at first I almost missed it. A house gecko chirped just then.
The calf mooed because the boys got back from milking, and two alien spiders jerked their way through thin air, carefully crafting their webs. The rain stopped, then started again.
The sun had shone brightly during the morning, lighting up bougainvilleas, poinsettias, hibiscus frills, and tall white clouds. Temperatures were pleasant as usual, a little hot only under the sun’s direct rays.
And somewhere, in the midst of all that beauty, I missed spring. Autumn is descending here. Rain will lessen; day-length and temperatures will barely change. Flowers will continue to bloom.
But I know at home are the Bradford pears, the redbuds, primroses, clovers, and warblers. And I miss them. We have so much beautiful here, but it’s a strange beauty — a beauty which I can admire, but to which I do not belong.
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Ramoaaina NT nears printing
This afternoon, I caught up with Pat Brien and Ginny Tomlinson, who were checking pages from the Ramoaaina New Testament. The ladies don’t know the Ramoaaina language; instead, they were searching for ink blots, extra whitespace, missing captions, incorrect abbreviations, and other typesetting errors.
Ginny checks a page from the Gospel of John. She works in the clinic but also enjoys the chance to participate in these formatting checks — a chance to really get her hands on the Scriptures, she says.
Pat, a 30-year veteran, scans Revelation 11 and 12. Many translated NTs contain pictures of things the people might not be familiar with: sheep, wheat, olive trees, or in this case, a seven-headed dragon.
Robyn Davies (Australia) and Lisbeth Fritzell (Sweden) have worked with a team of Ramoaaina translators to complete the New Testament. They began in 1988. As soon as final corrections are made, the Ramoaaina New Testament will be sent off for printing in South Korea.
About 10,000 Ramoaaina people live on the tiny Duke of York Islands between New Britain and New Ireland. The islands are just east of Rabaul, a city on the eastern tip of New Britain, which you can see on this map of PNG.
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Meet Martha and Carle
In between visits to the clinic, all three of us managed to converge in the office for a few minutes today, and we went next door to the print shop to take pictures for the Post-Courier insert we are compiling.
Martha stands on a chair to take a shot down a table full of printed materials.
Carle takes a different angle on the same scene.
Carle and Martha review their shots. We used my laptop because it’s the best screen in the office. I doubt it’s ever been the best screen anywhere before.
As for me, I’m feeling much better. I’m still on a bunch of drugs, and the clinic wants to see me twice a day. But, I think I’ll be back to normal soon. We pray that Carle will recover quickly too, and that his wife stays healthy.
Oh, and happy first day of autumn — or spring for those on the other half of the planet.
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Unwanted attention
Did I mention that I really hate to make a scene? I don’t like attention directed my way, unless I’m onstage deliberately doing something to attract it (be that speaking, singing, or stuffing my tie in a paper shredder).
But tonight they wanted me to come back to the clinic for another nebulizer treatment — sorry, but it sounds like Star Trek — and three adults with families had to leave their homes and go out in the dark and rain to make that happen for me.
When it was all over, the doctor accompanied me home and asked US-June to give me a bell so I could ring for help if I woke up unable to breathe. I’m absolutely certain that won’t happen, but what can you do? June didn’t have a bell, so she called her neighbor and sent her son out into the rain to fetch it. I just wanted to crawl under the rug, but we laughed about it instead.
I am breathing quite a bit more easily now, and I have high hopes for tomorrow. The Post-Courier deadline is approaching quickly, after all.
categories papua new guinea
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Breaking news: I’m not a hypochondriac
I was prepared to tough things out, but today my breathing was still pretty bad, and I finally took US-June’s* advice and called the clinic. I really didn’t want to, thinking that surely I’d be on the mend any moment. But I didn’t come here to lie around sick, so if something could make me better, I decided to go for it. Also, it’s not a good idea to let health problems get out of control here. If anything gets serious, you’re on a plane to Australia. That’s not possible right now since Cairns**, the usual destination, is one of the places reeling after category 5 Cyclone Larry devastated Queensland’s northern coast.
I called the clinic, and after listening to my symptoms, the nurse called back and asked me to come in right away. I did, and she got my medical history, took some measurements (blood oxygen, exhalation, etc.), and then went to consult with a doctor. Her English was excellent, but for some reason I found her pigdin phrases even more reassuring — “Em nau,” as an affirmation and “Yu longpela tru,” when she measured my height.
If I talk much longer about my health problems, I’ll begin to feel like I’m 75. So I’ll make it snappy.
They put me on a nebulizer, which vaporizes liquid medication so it can be inhaled. The process takes several minutes, and you have to hold a tube in your mouth until the medicine is gone. My chief difficulty was that I couldn’t figure out how to swallow, but I also had to stifle laughter as I thought of the caterpillar and his bong on “Alice in Wonderland.” After the first round of that, nurse Sylvia gave me a steroid shot, and then she and two doctors took my measurements again and carried on among themselves.
Dr. Helen finally explained to me that the amount of air I was able to exhale was about 40 percent of what it should have been, which at home would have sent me to the hospital straightaway. I was quite surprised, since I’ve felt that way and worse before in my life, but now I’m on a regimen of oral steroids, inhalations, and frequent checkups.
It still feels a little dramatic, but I’m glad I went. I really hope I can get back to normal soon — as I said, I didn’t come all the way here to be sick, especially with something that could have (and has) happened at home.
Meanwhile, the oral steroids require me to consume extra potassium, so after dinner I ate one banana and two pieces of US-June’s delicious banana bread.
* To avoid confusion, I will refer to the June I’m staying with as US-June. She’s from Longview but didn’t go to LeTourneau. The June I work with will be UK-June. Though she has two passports, her voice and her fondness for cricket still give her away. Speaking of UK-June, please pray for her safe travel over here this week. Top
** “Cairns,” for all you Americans, is pronounced something like “cans,” as in “alumin(i)um cans.” Top
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