A little more PNG

The Man and I have been away for the last few days, hence I've been posting things that I have prepared earlier. Here's a bit more about PNG. I'll tell you all, well some at least, about where we've been.

1996 Life in PNG  was different from anything else I had experienced, it could have been another planet. 
I joined up with a group of wives and began to play canasta every Wednesday. Joined the CWA and took part in coffee mornings. A bit of normality in the midst of living in another culture. 
I bought veggies at the local market and tried the different looking vegetables. All green leafy veggies were ‘kumul.’ That word covered a huge variety of greenery, anything from what looked like watercress to the tips of young been shoots.
Generally I could buy tomatoes and cucumbers and potatoes, The local potato was kaukau, a kumara cousin but much sweeter tasting, especially the golden one. 
Apart from the plentiful banana, especailly the tiny ladyfinger variety that tasted divine,  and the  heavenly sweet pineapples we thought that the tropical fruits such as mangoes or pawpaw were a bit insipid.
I missed the sharp tang of apples, juicy sweet peaches, and tangy nectarines.
Andersons, the local, European style, supermarket imported ‘ordinary’ food from Australia, but at a huge cost. Two litres of ‘real milk' sold at fifteen kina, almost fifteen NZ dollars,  So The Man and I got used to long life milk.

GOING TROPPO!

 I may have shared this story before, about how The Man and I got to go and live in PNG

 

The Man put a glass of red wine in my hand. “Busy day huh?”

“Yeah, I feel like Alice in Wonderland, you know, that bit where she’s running very fast on the same spot and getting nowhere”

I’d just finished a week of nine to sixes. Sure it was nice starting at nine and not having to rush about in the morning, but the six o’clock finish was always a challenge, especially on Fridays.

There was always someone wanting to be seen “right now”. Those happened every day; but why wait until five thirty on a Friday before deciding that they needed to be seen by a doctor, especially when they’d been sick all day?

It was well past seven before we locked the door behind the last patient

“I don’t want to play this game anymore” I said half joking half serious” Lets chuck the jobs, sell the house and move up to Tauranga now”

“ You’re on” he said “let’s do it” and he wasn’t joking. Suddenly, I wasn’t tired any more. We chinked our glasses together “ Here’s to Tauranga” laughed The Man, and we talked and planned into the wee small hours.

Number one, ring the kids and share with them our exciting decision.

Number two find the best land agent in the area

Number three get a subscription to the local Tauranga newspaper and start looking at property values.

Number four, Chuck the jobs.

Chucking the jobs was the easy part. Then we put the house on the market and began to work out our three months’ notice. We figured that that was plenty of time to sell the house.  We couldn’t wait;

And we aren’t going to wait until we retire to have that orchard up in the Bay of Plenty, we going to have it now.

The land, agent mapped out a plan for us and began to bring in prospective buyers, he left his card on the bench each time. The little pile of cards grew.

I left fresh flowers on the coffee table and cleaned the doggy nose prints off the windows every morning, and the little pile of cards grew.

The agent phoned “You’ve had an offer” he said, but not at the price you want” “ Can’t sell it that low, can you get them up?”

We waited, fingers crossed. “Sorry folks, they won’t go any higher”.

One morning I said to The Man “do you think we’ll ever sell this thing?”

We kept the garden meticulously tidy and still that little pile of cards on the windowsill grew; seven months later the flood of cards had become a trickle. And we still didn’t have a buyer. It was hard to be excited, and we felt like we were living in limbo land.

“The agent phoned this morning” I said “ He wants to come over, he thinks we should lower the price again” We’d chosen a really bad time to sell, property values around us were falling and taking our hopes with them.

“We can’t afford to sell it for any less“ We told him

“Then I think you should consider taking it off the market for a few months”

We felt so helpless. We didn’t want to get back into the rat race of regular work again, and anyway why get a regular job when we weren’t going to stay. We’d both been supplementing our savings with agency work; at least there was plenty of that. 

The answerphone light blinked off and on, off and on

“John wants you to call him” I said to The Man. “And I’ve got a couple of hours work in the morning. Tea won’t be long; you want a glass of wine?”

I sipped mine as I cooked, thinking about my next morning’s work, planning out my day.

“I just phoned John” The Man said, coming into the kitchen and picking up his glass.

“Bring your wine” he said ”Come and sit down. He’s made us an offer”

We talked, topped up the glasses and talked. Tea got cold and we talked.

“Well” said The man at last,  “What do you think?”

“We’re not doing much else are we” I replied “why not”

We chinked our glasses together, “To New Guinea” he said

“Now, How are YOU going to tell the kids?”

Good news and less good news

On Tuesday I wrote about trying to locate a couple of friends we had lost touch with.

I posted an enquiry on a genealogy web site, one of the members located a likely name and an email , and what was in my  inbox today when I turned on the computer?

Yup you guessed it, an email from them. And how serendipitous is that…

They are moving back to Oz within the next couple of weeks.

Talking or at least writing about genealogy I have decided to give my Harvey research another going over.

OK I know I said that I was going to put it to bed and concentrate on other lines. But something keeps drawing me back.

So today I looked at the 1901 census where I see my grandfather as a ten year old. I trolled through the entire section that he was in and came across two other Harvey families.

You might ask what is the point of starting over?

Well the experts say when faced with the proverbial brick wall go back and check every single detail.

And that is what I am going to do.

A couple of days ago we had an email from the people who look after our property back home in NZ. Seems the hot water cylinder dumped its entire contents all over the floor. 

Ah, it never rains but it pours doesn’t it. We have just about recovered from having the place a painted, and now this. On the plus side in tonight’s emails was one from the insurance assessor saying that there has been no structure damage.

What is it that they say about clouds having silver linings, well maybe not a cloud, but it certainly must have seemed like a cloudburst to the tenants

Not a lot to say...

Earthquake Update.

We are pleased to be able to report that things seem to be settling down.

What a scorcher of a night.

Last night when we went to bed the temperature outside was the same as inside, a blistering 25 degrees.

It’s a  good thing we live on a bit of a hill which means that even on a still day there is a bit of a breeze. We slept with bedroom windows wide open.

Again the media have been agog with the newest royal. No there haven’t been any pictures yet. Reporters grasped at straws interviewing anybody who was even remotely connected to royalty. Even the queen’s ex press secretary.

For goodness sake leave them alone

On the way home we got talking to  couple of young men who were were obviously 7^th Day Adventists on their ‘mission’. OK. It’s not my religion, but you have to give the young people credit for getting out there and doing it.

Two of our best mates in PNG belonged to their church, unfortunately we have lost touch with them.

Hmm I wonder…..

Up to scratch...or not

You know it’s not much fun when you don’t feel ‘up to scratch’

Now where did that expression come from?  Well according to Google 

Years ago, fighters would not start fighting at the ring of a bell; instead the referee would scratch a line into the dirt on the floor. The fight would start when both men stepped over the line. If a man was unable to step over the line, people would say that he was ‘not up to scratch’.

Anyway that’s how I’m feeling today.

After a slightly dodgy night I thought that it would be OK to head into work, and it was for a while.

Note that I said was. I changed my mind about that and decided that I would be much better off at home. Well that’s’ the advice I would give if someone like me rocked up in my clinic. So I took my own advice and came home. 

So my train of thought went rambling and had me thinking about my favourite food when I a kid and home sick. And do you know what that was? 

Of course you don’t.

My friend Vikki only wants red jelly when she’s sick. I crave homemade black currant jam sandwiched between thin slices of buttered white bread. Cut into triangles too. And none of your store bought jam either, only mum’s homemade jam was be good enough. I can smell the rich purple-sweet aroma of it, taste the purple-summer of it. Mmmmmmmm. 

Just the smell of it transports me back to when my parents were at Tama Street and I was about nine or ten. Purple stained fingers from topping and tailing the small purple berries. 

There was something magic about the way that mum turned those sour berries into them most delicious tasting jam. 

Not that I had any of the stuff in the cupboard, or really felt like it either. 

Just give me a cup of spicey aromatic ginger tea.

 

That’ll settle it’

Hopefully.