Friday, February 13, 2009

Arrival at First Village

We arrived at our first village at about 4:00. We had a few incidents a long the way. It rained most of the time, since leaving the last house, and thus made the steep path slippery and muddy. It was through lots of deep bush, and the going was slow. One of the girls had become weak and a little dehydrated along the way, and one of the men, slipped with a bush knife, cutting one of his fingers. He ended up going back to our orientation headquarters for stitches. Mohak, our PNG guide, demonstrated amazing skill in using bush medicine, finding plants to stop the bleeding, and leaves to wrap up the finger.
Delores cooking our evening meal.
As I mentioned before, it gets dark early in PNG; usually around 6:30 pm. That was one of the things I struggled with, during our entire orientation. For me, it was hard to communicate when I couldn't see clearly, the face in front of me, to look at their lips as they spoke. We didn't have a lantern at this village, but used little flashlights. Here, Doug is using a flashlight, as he asks the villagers questions. This was quite a remote village. Most of the children were too far away to even attend school, and access to medical care wasn't easy.