Episode 8 - Blues or Maroons?

#pngretold - retelling the events of exactly two weeks ago

Last night there was a big rugby league match in Australia called the series of origins. It’s absolutely huge here in PNG and the atmosphere was buzzing all day with people wearing the shirts and waving the flags and the only question on peoples lips being; “are you blues or marrons?”. We has a sudden increase in aerial sales as people tried to sort out their TV’s for the match. Some locals had set up a face painting stall near to our house, so Lukas and John obliged to their requests. Lukas proudly wore the colours of the maroons on his face, whilst John wasn’t so sure. He left cheek was supporting the Blues, whilst his right cheek was supporting the Maroons! Lukas showed the game on a projector in his garden and invited everyone from CRMF around for a barbeque. It was a great night and everyone had a good time, even if not everyone really understood the rules to the game!

Preparing for the big game!

After the game an off duty policeman was driving home. He was drunk and crashed into three people who were severely injured. The people who witnessed the accident dragged the policeman out of the car and beat him to death. There is very much an eye for an eye mentality here. This morning the police retaliated by burning down the houses in the village. Things escalate very quickly.

I spent my time this morning in the workshop with David and Ricky. It was really good to get to know them better. They’re really nice and I’m looking forward to working with them next year. They’re so eager to learn more and become better engineers, it’s really refreshing! We spent some time repairing a radio and a mic. It was nice to get stuck into some work and get a feel for what kind of stuff I’ll be doing.

Actually doing some work!

For lunch I went into town with John and Johnson (one of the learning technologies members of staff). We took a PMV into town. PMVs are the public transport, old people carriers which stop at designated locations, wait until they are full, and then move onto the next stop and do the same. It was good to experience. We had lunch in Papindo. Papindo is a supermarket, but it also has a café. The café was not too dissimilar to supermarket cafes in the UK. I liked it. The food was good, and it was nice that it was a place that the locals ate at too.

No, this isn't a traditional dish...

In the afternoon Lukas took me to the New Tribes Mission. It’s a large secure village where all the NTM workers live. It has a school, sports facilities, IT support, a clinic and a shop that only NTM works are allowed to go to! It is very good to know where the clinic is, although hopefully I will never need it! Most importantly the play football (or soccer as they call it) every Sunday, so I should still be able to get my weekly fix!

The scene of goal of the season next year?