First overnight with our wasfamili

On Thursday evening, we headed out to our wasfamili’s house loaded with overnight gear, and ready for a night in a village house. We enjoyed the supper meal of kaukau (sweet potato), tinned corned beef (surprisingly good!), rice, and kindam (crawfish that our waspapa caught himself, with a bamboo spear). We had banana bread for dessert, with sweet tea. We sat with them and “storied” for a few hours after supper, the common thing that people do in the evening, when they don’t have the distraction of television! Storying – a part of PNG culture that I am growing to love more and more. It happens when a group of people sit around together (usually on the floor) and just tell stories. It can be stories of things that happened in the time of their ancestors, events that occurred here during World War II, or maybe about the “crazy whiteskins” and the silly things they do!!! The stories are always so interesting to listen to, and the Papua New Guineans love telling them. We are at the point where we are able to understand more and more, but at times it can be frustrating to not be able to tell our own stories as well as we’d like to. We are encouraged though, that we are getting more and more comfortable with the language, and so don’t get corrected in our tok pisin quite as often J

One of the highlights of the time was watching the kids play with the bubbles we brought for them – they were a real hit! We were so happy, because usually Magdalene and Jeffrey are so shy, and don’t talk much, but the bubbles worked some magic, and they came out of their shells. It felt like a small victory when Jeffrey started talking non-stop all evening, and Magdalene sat in my lap! We went to bed about 10:00 and slept in old US Army hammocks (we kept them on the ground) with mosquito nets on top so we didn’t get eaten alive. We got up around 6:00, and after a breakfast of coconut cookies, Paul went off to the garden with Miani and Jeffrey and learned how to plant banana, taro, etc. I stayed home with Judy and Magdalene and got my first lesson in making a bilum, which is a string bag that all the ladies in PNG know how to make. All in all, we had a great time with our wasfamili, and our looking forward to our next visit with them. We are learning more and more about the pasin of PNG (culture, way of life) as we spend more time with the people, and we are growing to love the land and the people more and more.