Due to circumstances . . .

I'm sure you're familiar with those very professional sounding sentences that we often put in survey reports and other very professional documents: "Due to uncontrollable circumstances, no data was collected in Bubalbok Village." Have you ever wondered what the uncontrollable circumstances were? Professional documents might be a lot more interesting to read if we told the stories behind the uncontrollable circumstances . . .

Due to the arrival of a dump truck, the surveyor did not finish eliciting the word list in Gibidai village, because the entire village climbed into the dump truck and went to market.

Due to the distraction of having a bird relieve itself on the surveyor's clip board, the words for "mother" and "father" were inadvertently not elicited in Koumaio village.

Due to the fact that the people rowing the boat refused to stop rowing, the survey team did not visit Atolok village because the rowers rowed right past it and would not stop.

Due to the unfortunate landing of an exceedingly large bug on the surveyor's hand just as she was marking a GPS point, this point may be marked several metres away from where she was actually standing, because the GPS device may have travelled several metres through the air during the process of removing the exceedingly large bug.

Christmas Eve

Having grown up in the northern part of the US, it never quite feels like Christmas to me when it's warm and sunny outside! Look at all those people wearing T-shirts! But we had a lovely Christmas Eve dinner of cheese fondue (a tradition in my family), using a very high tech fondue pot involving a wok stand and a votive candle. Good friends and good food . . .

My Christmas TreeS

How to obtain a Christmas tree in PNG:

1) Go for a run and keep a careful watch on your surroundings, looking out for any stray pine branches.

2) As soon as you find a nice large branch laying in a field, put it over your shoulder and drag it away before a wild animal eats it. (OK, I don't know of any wild animals in PNG that actually eat pine branches . . . but you just can't afford to take any risks.)

3) Cut it up into several manageable pieces and wire them together with an old coat hanger.

4) Put the whole bundle in a laundry soap bottle surrounded by rocks, resting in a hanging flower pot, and then do your best to cover up the whole contraption.

VOILA!

Is he or is he not sitting?

A couple weeks ago I was sitting in a village writing down a list of words in the Kaser language. It went like this:


J: How do you say, "He is sitting."
Wordlist Guy: "Karimau"
J: How do you say, "He is not sitting."
Wordlist Guy: "Karimau"
J: Oh . . . and how do you say, "He is sitting."
Wordlist Guy: "Karimau"
J (getting really worried now): Mmmhmmm . . . and . . . uhhh . . . how do you say, "He is not sitting."
Wordlist Guy: "Karimau"

It was tempting to conclude that either my ears were broken or I had discovered a culture in which it was irrelevant whether any given action was or was not taking place. The truth, however, is that the Kaser language is tonal, which means that the pitch of your voice can change the meaning of a word. So when you say, "karimau", if you say the last syllable with a low pitch it means, "He is not sitting." But if you say the last syllable with a pitch that falls from high to low it means, "He is sitting." Pretty tricky, huh?

Waiting works both ways

I often feel that 80% of survey is waiting. Waiting for the fog to clear so the plane can take off, waiting for a boat to come, waiting for someone to find fuel, waiting for a truck to pass by, waiting for the village leader to come back from the garden, waiting for a church service to start, waiting for food to cook, waiting for a group to assemble, waiting for the rain to stop. Part of this waiting is the result of traveling in areas where we don't know what we'll find until we get there, which prevents us from making very definite travel plans. But another huge part of it has to do with the fact that Papua New Guinean culture is extremely relationship oriented rather than time oriented. So the church service starts when the important people are ready for it to start, not when the clock says it's time to start. The truck driver leaves when he's finished having breakfast and chatting with his family, no matter what time that is. The group assembles when, and only when, they are good and ready to assemble. This can be frustrating for a person (like me) who is coming from a culture where schedules are dictated by the clock and you interrupt a conversation with your best friend in order to get to work on time. And I have felt frustrated at times, but I have also grown to appreciate the fact that people are more valuable than time . . . particularly when I'm the person being valued. What I mean is that it's still tempting to feel annoyed when I've had to wait for hours for someone to arrive. But that annoyance quickly melts into gratitude when a boat driver waits all afternoon to see whether or not I need a ride, when a Papua New Guinean airline holds the plane for me because it took me a long time to get through customs, when someone spends two days hiking to show me where a village is, or when a truck driver goes four hours out of his way to get me where I want to go. Waiting can be hard for the waiter, but it sure is nice when you're the waitee!

How do YOU get to work?

There was a time in my life when I got to work by getting into my car, driving for awhile, and getting out of my car. That era ended the day I became a surveyor. The days of driving myself down the road have been replaced by all kinds of other days.

The days when I leave my house at 6am to drive to the airstrip and get on a 4-seater plane.

The days when I travel down a river full of crocodiles in a motor boat.

The days when I sit in the cab of a dump truck balanced on a narrow board with four other people.

The days when I stand in the back of a dump truck.

The days when I ride in an ambulance (not because I'm sick, just because it happens to be going in the direction I want to go).

The days when I paddle a boat backwards because the motor is broken. (Why backwards? Yeah, I'm still trying to figure that one out too . . . but that's what the boat's owner wanted, so that's what we did.)

The days when I stand in the back of a pick up truck along with seven other people, five backpacks and several large pieces of machinery, and there is no room to sit down.

The days when I hike across slippery logs, occasionally falling into a swamp or pulling off a leech.

And the many, many, many, many, many days (like today) when I simply walk 10 minutes to my office!

Fred

One day we were on a small island where there were no boats, no engines, no fuel, no fresh water, and no food sources (except pigs). Stranded on a tropical island, I suppose. Except that there are lots of people who live there quite comfortably. They canoe over to the mainland (which takes about 30 minutes) to work in their gardens, wash, and get drinking water. So we could have just settled down and made ourselves some canoes, but we kind of wanted to finish the survey, and the next island was too far to get to in a dugout canoe.

Well, I don't know what your preferred strategy is when you are stranded on a tropical island, but personally I prefer to find the nearest Dutchman and see if he has any brilliant ideas. So that's what we did. On the way back from visiting a school, two of my teammates "happened" to meet Fred, a Dutch sawmill overseer living nearby. He cooked us an absolutely fabulously deliciously scrumptious dinner of tortillas and spicy meat (gourmet luxury items during a survey!) and we spent a very enjoyable evening chatting with him, during which he told us that he owned a boat and he was planning to go to a town the very next day to buy fuel. He offered to give us enough fuel to get to the next island, and take us there in his own boat. Thank you, Fred, for unstranding us! And thanks, God, for sending Fred.