Episode 16 - A day in the Life

I’m sat on my sofa listening to the sounds of the morning traffic and next doors cockerel out of my window. I sip my cup of tea and wonder what the day has in store for me. Now don’t get me wrong, I have a plan. I even have a carefully crafted scrum board above my desk listing all the things that we as a team need to achieve for the next two weeks. But with all of this in mind, there’s only one thing I know for sure about today – it won’t according to the plan. This is life after all, furthermore, this is life in the self-proclaimed land of the unexpected. Truth be told, I don’t mind this, in fact, I rather enjoy it, even if it does have its challenges. We start every morning with “Lotu”. Lotu directly translates as “worship”. It’s a period of half an hour where everyone who works at CRMF gets together and sings songs to God, reads the bible and prays together. It’s a great way to start the day and a real privilege to be able to do this in my work place. After that, those in my workshop gather around my desk (and the scrum board), and we quickly take it in turns to explain what we each of us did the previous day, what problems we encountered, and what we plan to do today.

The scrum board - a work of love

A lot of the work that happens in my workshop at CRMF falls into what we consider “normal” jobs. These include repairing electronics such as radio’s and solar lamps, as well as planning and also performing installations of solar and radio systems. A lot of what I do at CRMF is not what we consider “normal jobs”. My job is to make sure all of the work gets done. This means making sure all of my team know what needs to be done, and most importantly how to do it, and guiding them when they don’t. It also means that I get all the odd ball jobs that no-one else (sometimes including me) wants, or knows how to do. These include rewriting the solar training course and removing several old antennas from the radio mast. Wherever it is possible I do get the others involved with these too, as it is good training, although the later has been harder as all of my team seem to be afraid of heights…

I don't even know what a twin tub is, but sure I can fix it...

Finally there is the greatest enemy to fulfilling the plan. I call these “Bryans”. They are new and usually urgent jobs that no-one saw coming. I call them Bryans because it’s usually Bryan who brings them to my attention. I am the first line of defence against Bryans. Part of my job is to protect the rest of the team from them so that their plan seems relatively undisturbed. This means working out who best to allocate these jobs to given the work they already have, and then taking up the slack, which is almost always peculiar in form. This can range from hospital sterilisers to our housekeeping washing machine. Our work is very varied which keeps it fun and it’s never hard to see the value of doing each job, which keeps it fulfilling. We are very lucky to do what we do, even if we rarely know what that's going to be in advance. With that final passing thought, I finish my banana, down what’s left of my cuppa and close my bible. It’s time to stop wondering, and find out what the day holds.

Episode 15 - A good day to live

This week my good friend and colleague Ricky had a very serious asthma attack. So serious in fact, that he stopped breathing. Completely. One minute we were laughing and joking together, the next he’s being rushed to hospital. Now when I consider that last point, I realise how fortunate we are. You see unlike most of Papua New Guinea we have a hospital just five minutes down the road, If we had been in one of the remote villages or even just somewhere out of town, we would have been looking at hours or even days and Ricky would have been dead. But that was not our story and our good fortune did not end there. The four students who had come to CRMF to learn about solar and HF radio installation that week knew CPR, and were able to administer it straight away, otherwise Ricky might not have made even the five minutes to the hospital. But Ricky did make it to the hospital, yet even then the story was not over. The nurses who admitted Ricky did not know what to do for Ricky, and there were no doctors on site to help. Or were there?

Ricky and I digging a hole

Remember those four students who went with Ricky? Well they were all Doctors who served rural communities who had come to CRMF to learn technical skills to bring to those communities who wouldn't have access to any technical support otherwise. Once they explained who they were to the nurses, they started to take control and Ricky quickly got the medicine that he needed. With the quick response of the doctors and the prayers of everyone who knows Ricky, he made an exceptionally quick recovery and the next day I was already back to sharing the usual jokes and laughter with him. It really makes your head spin. How quickly things can fall apart, and how quickly they can come back together again. It has made us all stop and think. There is no doubt God was looking after Ricky and he receives all of our thanks and praises for that. It’s been a reminder to us all how fragile our lives are. It also reminds us how trustworthy He is, the one in whom all our lives rest.

The four Doctors (sounds like the name of a band...)

Episode 14 - Broadening Horizons

I always knew that when I moved to Papua New Guinea I would some crazy things. Things I wouldn’t do in England, and things that I didn’t expect I’d do. But now I have done something I truly thought I would never do, particularly in Papua New Guinea – I have joined a gym. Now before you conclude that I definitely must have gone crazy and call for me to be airlifted out of here, let me explain that I haven’t had a total character transplant. My motivation for joining is not that I have become fed up of my stick insect physique and want to become shaped like a bodybuilder, but rather one of brotherhood. Going to the gym is the number one activity for the folks at CRMF to do together and it feels good to spend that time together. More than that, in spite of myself, I have to say that actually going to the gym and working out (or gyming as I prefer to call it) is surprisingly fun! This is in large part down to the guys I go with, and the fact that getting exercise here can actually be quite difficult so finding a way to release my pent up physical energy feels good!

 

Those little dots in the centre of the picture are cyclists - I promise!

There are a few other fun forms of exercise which occasionally present themselves, this weekend was my first Papua New Guinea bike ride! The roads were mostly incredibly bumpy which meant that most of the time I could see two lots of the beautiful scenery. I have to admit I spent more time looking around than looking at the road, so that probably didn’t help! I was more out breath than I think I should have been, but I’ll blame it on the altitude! It was so good getting out on the tracks and stuck into the Papua New Guinean countryside, it’s so stunningly beautiful, I guess I must say that a lot, but it still takes my breath away (the steep incline helped with that too). We decided to turn around and back home by a small group of houses where a small group of people came out to talk to us and share stories. It was lovely talking to them (or mainly listening in my case as my Tok Pisin is good enough to understand what is going on, but not good enough to talk). As we were getting ready to leave a lovely lady gave me a bag (locally called a Bilum) and told me that if my Mum ever came to visit me I had to bring her there so that they could meet each other!

The turn around point

Episode 13 - Walking the Tightrope

In this life we live, there’s an awful lot that we don’t see or think about, but that we just do. We just do what we do and we don’t think about it. We form habits and we fall in to routines. Now depending on who we are may determine how much of our lives are dictated by these patterns, but we all have them, whoever we are, no matter how adventurous we are. And this is no bad thing. Can you imagine if every little thing in your life was uncertain and yet to be discovered? You’d be completely exhausted before you’d even finished your breakfast! These little idiosyncrasies give us stability and allow us focus our attention on bigger more pressing issues. They mean that we don’t have to worry about what we’ll have for breakfast, or how we’ll get to work, so that we have the space to work out how to fix that problem at work, or to arrange that big family gathering. We all have hundreds of these tiny little habits that we do without thinking, like having a shower when we first get up or cleaning our teeth just before we leave the house. They help to keep us comfortable and secure.

 

Guava season is over! What will I eat now!?!

When you leave the life you know behind, you very quickly form a whole heap of new habits, routines and patterns. You form them even when you go on a short vacation. The longer you stay in your new world, the more new structures you need to feel stable and balanced until it levels off and you begin to feel settled in your new place. This happens naturally, and the patterns you form keep in step with your need for more stability. I have many patterns and habits already, but the problem with this subconscious creation of stability forming structures, is that right now, these roots are deep enough, but thinly spread. When you are settled in a place, you will have formed many more habits than you need for life to be stable, so that when one of these is brought into question, challenged or compromised (assuming that it is not one which dictates much of your life), things go on pretty much the same without any loss of stability or comfort. But when you are rapidly creating new patterns to keep up with your increasing need for routine and stability, even the loss of just the tiniest of habits can completely rock the boat and leave you feeling all at sea. It may sound ridiculous (and indeed it is), but I have found that it can only take the local supermarket being sold out of the brand of jam that you always buy. It can feel a little bit like walking a tightrope with only a narrow path of familiarity that one can walk along without being thrown off into uncertainty.

My vertical tightrope

But I’ve learnt that being thrown off into uncertainty and being taken away from my own unique normal that I have created for myself is a good thing. It helps me to grow further into my new world, creates new and wider reaching roots, and drives me further towards being settled into this amazing if sometimes confusing place. But most of all, it makes me think about this changeable world, and reminds me to put the roots of my security and all that I hope for into the one thing I know can and will never change- my God. And this life continues to push me towards God as the source of all things, it continues to remind me where my strength comes from, and it continues to remind me of who I am here for. Of all the incredible blessing that have come along with choosing to come here, and there truly are more than I can count, that is the one thing that I am most grateful for, that I have already come to grow so much closer to my God.

Episode 12 - Food, Film and Fun

I’m sat cross legged on the concrete floor of a small bamboo house. I and the other eight people here fill the small room comfortably. From the dim light cast by the oil lamp in the centre of the room, I can see before me one of two large bowls of boiled leaves and I am prompted to take a white ball that is being offered to me. I oblige and as I do I come to realise that what I am now cupping in my hands is a ball of rice. Not entirely sure what to do next, I pause and look around, desperately hoping that someone else will lead by example. Everyone in the room looks towards the two new visitors to their country in eager expectation.

When I say dimly lit...

Fortunately for me, most of that expectation falls to my Australia friend Anthony as he has not been in the country long, and he is only visiting for a short time. This is fortunate for two reasons; the first being that I don’t really like being the centre of attention, particularly when I’m not sure how to behave, and secondly, because my English instincts might just have driven me to be ever so polite and to muddle through and consequently quite possibly make a fool of myself. Anthony on the other hand, as I have already mentioned, is Australian. As such, he just got straight to the point and asked: “what exactly am I supposed to do with this? Do I eat a little then pass it around?” By their reaction, I suspect that perhaps our hosts were expecting this question, if not, then they still certainly didn’t mind it.

The setting for our meal (several hours earlier)

In fact they were more than happy to explain their etiquette, and seemed delighted at the opportunity to share their culture with us. And we too, were delighted to share in their culture with them. They also seemed to take great pleasure in watching me try to strip a fern of its leaves and then after several failed attempts demonstrating just how easy it was. This cycle repeated more than just a few times! It was such an honour to be there that night. To share in what was a normal meal to them, to share in part of their lives and to come to understand more about their lifestyle and traditions, from tasting every type of kumul (leaves) that you can imagine, to learning how they cook their food, to being taught their etiquette about women not walking in front of men, but behind them, especially at meal times. We were so well treated and looked after from our hosts, well beyond what we had expected when we had arranged to come to Watabung.

The village river

This as you may have gathered my now was not a normal Saturday evening in Papua New Guinea for me. I had travelled to a rural village with some friends from CRMF to show the Jesus film there. They do not have the equipment in Watabung to do this themselves, so we brought all of the equipment and set it up in the local church, for the people of the village to come and hear (and see) about the life of Jesus (in Tok Pisin). I find it some amazing and encouraging to be working with these friends who love God and their people so much that they think nothing of spending their Saturday travelling and working to make this happen, so that people would have this opportunity to hear about God. It was a very popular night too, with the church overflowing with people and lots of people brought to tears as they experienced the life of Jesus in a way they had never been able to before.

Welcome to the cinema

It was a tiring day, but one with rich reward. It was a day filled with new experiences, beautiful scenery, good company, lots of laughter, deeper understanding, and the privilege of knowing that I was able to be part in helping people have a chance to come hear about what God has done for them. In this country more than ever, it seems that if you give a little without expectation, then you receive much, but then God does so love to bless us, and I am very grateful of how He blesses me!

Episode 11 - Finding My Place

Moving in to a whole new culture, new world, new life, leaves one with many questions about how one fits into all of this. This was to be expected and has certainly not taken me by surprise. It will take time for me to really know how to be who I am in this place and I’m happy with that. And even so, I’m lucky enough to know that I am where I’m supposed to be. To know that I belong here because God has placed me here. And I truly feel comfortable here because of that. There may be plenty of things that I don’t know how to do well yet, from small talk, to crossing the road, but that makes me feel no less like I belong.

Even buying baked beans seems complicated

There is however one thing that I do know how to do well here, and that’s my job, so if there was any aspect of life I expected to feel comfortable in, it was that. But transition into a new job is rarely seamless and usually full of stress, so it seems odd to expect this to be the source of normality in my new life. The hardest part, I find, of a new job is not knowing what to do. I don’t mean not knowing how to do your work, but rather not knowing what work to do. There is nothing quite like it to make you feel out of place, like a spare part, like you don’t fit in or really belong. I’ve been very well blessed, right from the start people have been giving me plenty to do, showing me lots of new things and getting me involved in lots of different projects. But there was still time in-between these things, only short, but still time, when I didn’t know what to do. I knew that was plenty of work to be done, I just didn’t what work I was supposed to be doing (not helped by the fact that my primary job is to make sure that other people are doing the work!). This is normal and I knew that, there are processes to learn and working relationships to develop, but this didn’t stop be looking forward to a time when those times no longer existed.

 

They've even had me designing boxes!

That time began this week. I had a series of good conversations with colleagues about projects that needed doing and how jobs were disseminated throughout the group and where responsibility lay for such things. This was all polished off with a meeting with Bryan (the acting head of the workshop, whilst Lukas my direct supervisor is in Switzerland on furlough, and whilst I work out what I’m doing) about all of the ongoing projects that I am now responsible for. Me! Responsible! And it was quite a long list too. There are many roles in a workshop that I am familiar with, but responsibility for overseeing whole projects is not one of them, nor is responsibility something I have sought after either. Instantly as Bryan showed me the list and I looked down it, I fell short of breath. I don’t know that I should be responsible for making sure remote hospitals get the solar installation they need and that it’s specified correctly to power all of their equipment, whilst being affordable, or if I can be responsible for making sure that a group of remote schools get radio’s and transmitters installed before their funding is withdrawn (to name just two of the things on the list). These things are really important and that’s a lot of pressure. I don’t want to mess it up. And I don’t know how to do it. But then 6 short years ago when I started my last job, I’m not sure I even knew which end of a screwdriver to hold (let alone which way to turn it), I’m sure my old colleagues will testify to that! And quickly God reminded me of what He can do in and through me, and that He knew what he was doing, and in a few fleeting moments, my fear turned into excitement, excitement to be part of this, to be doing something that really matters, to be in a place where I had my part to play, a place with room to grow, and a place, where I belong.

Episode 10 - Kompiam

Kompiam. Home to weird looking spiders, stunning countryside and really poor internet. Well okay, that’s pretty much anywhere in PNG. But for the last three nights, it’s also been home to me. Kompiam is a remote village to the north of Mount Hagen in the middle of a bunch of even more remote villages. As well as being home to poor internet, it’s also home to a Hospital that serves the villages in the area, and those are the two reasons that Michael and I went there.

One of the aforementioned views

Wired internet is just simply not possible for a remote village in the middle of the mountains, so the hospital at Kompiam gets its internet via satellite. Unfortunately the connection that the hospital has at the moment is not good enough to meet its needs (and no, we’re not talking about streaming movies, just accessing normal web pages is a struggle). That’s where Michael and I come in. The hospital has bought a new second-hand system (if that’s not an oxymoron) and all we needed to do was to install it (and bring it with us).

Our mighty steed

We flew from Goroka to Mount Hagen with the equipment (the dish itself was already waiting in Hagen for us), and then loaded all of the equipment into a van. We were all set to join it before finding out that there was space for us on the next flight to Kompiam leaving in a couple of hours. We were in a small single propeller plane which flew low enough to give us great views of the stunning mountain scenery. Once we landed the eye candy certainly got no worse as we stepped into the stunning scenery we had seen from above full beautiful landscapes, gorgeous flowers and curious creatures. There is no doubt, I was privileged to be there.

More stunning views

So on to the job in hand. We began first thing the next day. On paper it was relatively simple, if all went well, we might even be finished by the end of the first day we thought. Things did not go to plan. We planned to remove the old dish from its post and install the new dish onto the post. The new dish however, faces a different satellite in the opposite direction, where there is a fence in the way. So much for the plan. So first off we would have set up a new post. A post, which we did not have. So with the aid of David; the doctor who runs the hospital, we had a look around to see if we could find anything suitable. Eventually we settled on a piece metalwork that looked like we could get to work. Unfortunately it was smaller than the stand we were going to fit it to, so the two needed to be welded together. Fortunately however, the hospital happens to have its own metal worker. We explained what we needed and he set to work.

The metalworker... working metal

We got a couple of the maintenance staff who were helping us to dig a hole for the post, leaving us with only one problem. To keep the post in the ground we figured that we would need at the very least five bags of cement, but on the whole hospital grounds, we could only find two. There was a member of staff who happened to be in “town” a few hours away, so we gave him a call and asked him to bring some back with him. The hole was finished incredibly quickly, the post, not so much. It wasn’t quite taking the shape we had expected, but after a little discussion and quite a bit more time, we got something that would work well, if it did look suspiciously like a space rocket, complete with windows! The windows would let water in so we would have to be careful to leave a gap when cementing the post in to allow for drainage, but this wasn’t a problem.

Our very own space rocket!

With the day getting towards its end, we now had a post and a hole, but no sign of our cement. We decided to start with the cement we had so that we would have less to do in the dark if it came to that. We chucked in some extra bits of old broken up cement to help spread out the mixture and to our amazement after using every scrap of cement we had, the mixture completely filled the hole and left just a tiny gap for drainage. Perfect! We could couldn’t have measured it any better! God is good! With most of the day gone, we found ourselves where we thought we were going to start it, but still, we had a bit of time left to fit the dish together ready to put on the post in the morning once the cement had set, and most importantly of all, we had the cement in by the end of the day so that we could carry on in the morning! Incidentally, I still have no idea what happened to that extra cement we ordered.

Trust me, that's what it's supposed to look like

So the next day began, and if the first day didn’t go to plan, then the second day was well and truly off script. Michael was heard to say that in the twenty or so Vsat installs that he had done, never had so many things not gone according to plan. I bet he’s really looking forward to working with me in the future. The day started well, but didn’t have the ending we imagined. We got the dish onto the post (I make it sound easier than it is), did the maths, pointed the dish where we thought the satellite was, and hey presto! We got a signal. We used some software on the laptop and tweaked the dish to get maximum signal. All good. And then we tried to get internet. Not so good. For some reason the modem wasn’t happy, it was quite hot so we thought that it may have started to get too hot (I was). Happily, this coincided with lunch time, so we decided to give it a break to cool down whilst we gave ourselves a break to cool down.

Golly gosh! It actually looks like a satellite dish!

Unfortunately, when we got back things were no better and it was soon apparent that something wasn’t quite right and so we needed contact the manufacturer. Easier said than done. The mobile phone network was down (which is not uncommon as the mobile tower runs off a generator and people steal the fuel), so we would have to use the internet. Except we didn’t have it working yet did we? And we had to take the old dish off because it was in the way of the new one. There was only one thing for it, we’d have to swing the new dish out of the way and set the old one up again. And so we did. And we got hold of the manufacturer and through the very bad connection got some suggestions of what we could try (and some reassurance that with what we had done it should have worked). Inevitably moments after struggling through a conversation with very bad internet, the mobile network came back. So with this new advice, we took down the old dish and set up the new dish once more. And we tried some things. And then when that didn’t work we tried some more things. And then some more things. And then some more things, until eventually we ran out of things to try and time in which to try them. It was clear that something was broken and so we will have to send the suspect parts down to Port Moresby for testing and come back another day to finish the job.

Views like these make bad news easier to take

It’s hard to accept, and on days like these it’s easy to mark it all down as a defeat and a big waste of time, but on these days more than ever, it’s important to remember what our hard work has achieved; we have most of the install ready for next time, complete with rocket like post, and we now know what we face when we come back. I’ve also had the incredible privilege of spending time in God’s wonderful creation and I’ve had one heck of an introduction into the kind of things we face in our work! But it wasn’t all quite over just yet.

Not quite as glamorous as a plane

Six o’clock the next morning we got a lift in a truck to Mount Hagen and I got to bathe my eyes in yet more of God’s amazing creation. The road had recently been redone and apart from the occasional half-missing bridge, was in good condition. It felt like we were making good time, but even so, this journey that took twenty minutes in a plane took us over five hours by road. It’s a good reminder of the journeys Papua New Guineans need to take to get services we consider normal, even when they are connected by relatively good roads! It may have been five hours, but it certainly didn’t drag, it was a pleasure to be there and I feel very well blessed to be in here in PNG.