Marriage Material

Looks like we may have jumped the gun a bit 15 years ago on our vows.  As it turns out Jay was not quite ready yet.  In PNG there are three things a guy needs to know how to do before he can get married.  He has to be able to build a bush house, make a dug out canoe and dig a garden for his wife. 

Jay is trying to making up for it now though.  

 He is learning what it takes to hollow out a tree to make a dug out canoe, mostly a lot of blood, sweat and tears.  (thankfully so far just sweat)

 Agisa, the MAF Programmer here, is his skilled teacher and trying to get him caught up on his skills.  In the area where Agisa comes from being on the river is a big part of life.  They make huge canoes, which at one time would have in part been used for carrying men into battle.  Now a days they are used in big canoe races.  He said the largest vessels can hold up to 60-70 men all standing back to back paddling together, while chanting the call of the their clans bird.  That would be something to see!

A while back Agisa was also showing Jay how to make the palm frond thatching for the roof of their cook house.
We're getting closer, only the garden left.  I think Jay missed his opportunity this morning when I was out there getting dirty.
Mel for the Marshes 

White Out

OK maybe it is not quite like the kind of white out we get at home but it is pretty impressive when the rain hammers down so hard that you can hardly hear yourself talking and the other side of the river is gone from view, blocked by a wall of cascading water.  Sometimes we can hear it pounding way down  the river valley, getting louder as it makes it's way closer.
It is very fun to see what a down pour like this provides.  First it is welcome relief from the heat as the rain washes through and cools it down.  It also almost always brings out the kids both young and old.  The little ones come out to play in the instant puddles (OK the big boys do that too) and the big boys like to get a game of rugby going, other wise known as ooze ball in the pouring rain.
I'm not to sure what this afternoon will bring but I can hear my boys down playing in the river and it sounds like a welcome reprieve.  I think I will go and join them!
Mel for the Marshes

Persistant Pest

We may all be able to learn something from these little critters about persistence and perseverance, however it is much to our detriment that they have such characters.  I was just over in the house next door doing some cleaning up following the discovery of a termite invasion.  It is amazing to see the destruction such a small insect can have in such a short time.
The house is not being lived in permanently at the moment as the last Dr family to live in it moved out the day before we arrived here in Rumginae (I'm not sure what they heard about us).  Since then lots of people have been in and out of it for short periods of time as they visit the station for one reason or another. However the last people to stay, informed us there may be an issue.  They said that when they stood in the tub and turned on the shower they got a shock, not such good combination, electricity and water!
In order to discover where the short in the bathroom was some of the wall board had to be pulled down. That is when they discovered the termites were trying to remodel the house.  All that was left of some of the wall board was the paint, truly amazing, all of the wall behind the paint was eaten away, this made it really easy to take them down.  The walls where also packed about half full of termite tunnels and crumbs and they had eaten away major portions of some of the studs.
Measures have been taken to try and keep the termites out of the house but they continue to reappear.  They enter the house by building tracks from the ground, up the outside metal posts until they can reach wood again.  These trails can be scraped and there will be a new one the next day.  Even when the posts are sprayed and the ground laced with kerosene they still seem to find a way in.  
Our house has evidence of these hungry critters also.  We don't wash the kitchen wall as it is only a paint veneer (thankfully the last people to live here chased them out of there).  We are always on the look out for the tell tail termite crumbs that appear where ever they have been chewing to give them a spray.  Sometimes we seem to be successful and other times the crumbs just continue to fall( not sure how much longer we are going to have a door jam in the bathroom).
One thing is for certain, their craving for a high fibber diet has also taught us to be more persistent.

Mel for the Marshes