Don't Touch!

Don't touch!  That is exactly what Jay heard the other day while out fishing, to bad the instruction came a little to late.  Jay had the opportunity to get out on the Fly river to try his hand at reeling in a big one, while he enjoyed himself, he didn't catch the big one, but learned a big lesson (a little bit the hard way).
Finding his hook stuck in the weeds after a cast he stuck his hand in to see if he could free it, just too late, one of the national men that was fishing with him said "don't touch that plant it is poisonous!" After Jay quickly removed his hand John Timothy went about removing Jay's hook for him.
Nothing more was thought of it until the next evening when a blister began to form on his hand and what he had originally thought was a bit of a sun burn began to get worse!  Over the next few days the area of his hand that had just brushed up against the leaves in the river became very inflamed, blistery and sore.

Jay's hand after a few days of healing

We were feeling badly about what the other gentleman's hand must look like,  however when Jay saw him later in the week he was unscathed.  It helps to know what you are doing, he had avoided the leaves and only touched the stem.

Puts new meaning in the expression, "being rubbed the wrong way"!

Mel for the Marshes 

Budding Chefs!

I like our home school curriculum!  It has the boys doing all kinds of things as we study through the Eastern Hemisphere.  However one of our family favorites has to be the culinary delights the boys have prepared.  Each country we study gives the boys an opportunity to choose their own adventure and I must say the boys choice pick is also the cooking, as it gets them out of the classroom and around food!

Here is master dessert chef! when we were studying New Zealand Cater made us all some pavlova, complete with strawberries and cream!

The man who loves meat, cooked us up some egg rolls as we are on our way through a study of China, definitely a delicious  by product!

Maybe soon I will be able to retire!

Mel for the Marshes

New Pass Time

Okay first of all

NEWS BULLETIN

COCKROACHES CAN FLY!!!

I just discovered this as one came flying through my kitchen and landed with a thud, now they are even more disturbing

Now onto the real blog topic.  Row Row Row your boat;  the boys have been doing a lot of this lately.  One of the families here on station bought a dugout canoe and the boys have been spending lots of their free time out paddling.  At first we heard lots of complaints about sore shoulders and not being very good but they are becoming pretty proficient with it.  They have even packed up a picnic lunch to go and enjoy across the river on one of the islands.  

Truly a boys paradise: freedom, fire, and food! 

Mel for the Marshes 

Graceful Pumpkins

Look at that beauty as it hangs on the fence out back.  I don't think it will be quite ready for Thanksgiving pumpkin pie but we can be patient a little longer.
Now as some of you know, I have been trying to get something to grow here for a while, so it is a great thrill to look out at the fence and see not just one but two pumpkins getting fatter!
I have tilled, turned, rock picked, weeded, composted, and mulched.  I have started little seedlings and transplanted and must say my efforts have been mostly in vain.  For you see this pumpkin volunteered it's self out of the compost pit and grew with a fury.  For this pumpkin I did exactly nothing to get it to grow.  Once the flowers started to open I even went out and made sure the male and females had some contact, sad to say though, that fruit just shrivelled up and fell off.  So I gave up and decided since it didn't need my help to get started it maybe didn't need my help to finish.
Isn't that a picture of grace, something I don't deserve and can't even work for to get!
Mel for the Marshes

Big frog, Huge Heart!

Wow! this frog was pretty cool, certainly the biggest frog that I have ever held and I must say the coolest colour!

Needless to say the day the boys came back in from morning school break with this creature it took us a while to get back on track with our studies.  But that is what it is all about isn't it?  I guess we just switched gears regarding what we were learning about.
 It didn't take the boys long with the aid of the Internet to discover that 'she' was a giant, white lipped tree frog, the biggest species of tree frog.  They also discovered what they would need to feed her and started to thinking about what kind of habitat she would need.
Before long they had a big plastic box filled with all kinds of a frogs favorite things, such as dirt, logs, banana leaves and a water dish.  I found myself once again sewing a nylon screen cover for the top. (thanks Mom for the elastic, I think most of it has been used on the boys various pet homes!)
 While the boys searched online they also discovered that they should not handle her to much and since she had already had her quota of heart failure for one day they reluctantly left her alone.  They feed her some moths off of the screen that evening and brought her into their room for the night should she manage to escape from her cage.
That was the last we heard of her until about 3:00 in the morning when Kaleb came in and asked "Mom can we move her out of our room, she keeps jumping around and thumping an bumping, I can't sleep." And so they learned something new, she was also nocturnal.
A couple of days after catching her the boys noticed that she was beginning to get a sore on her nose, probably from running it into things because her cage was not big enough, and so they made the very tough decision to let her go free as they did not want her to die.
Both of the boys were sad to give her up but Kaleb in particular loves his pets and while he knew what was best had a really hard time letting her go.
All this restored a new determination to build a big cage out on the deck so that when they catch another one it will have a better home.
The boys and I learned many things about this giant frog, (including the fact that it can pee up to a distance of six feet, didn't witness this one!)  but I think the biggest thing that I learned is that my boys have hearts of gold!
Mel for the Marshes

Independence Day

September the 16th is Independence Day here.  PNG was 35 years old this year; and we think Canada is young.  All over the country people took the day off to play games and have fun together.  Rumginae was no exception.  All day people played in the big open field just up the road.  There was basketball, volleyball, and soccer going on all day.  I am not sure how they play so hard out in the blistering sun.  It was neat to see everyone out and having fun playing together.  There were all kinds of things to buy like ice blocks (freezies), sweet scones (kinda like a donut) and all kinds of lollies (candies)  .  There was also very cute children dressed up in traditional gear like this little girl Sylvia.   I think her father took great pride in getting her all dolled up, I'm not so sure she was as keen.  It wasn't long before the bird of paradise, (her head dress) came off her head.
Mel for the Marsh

Dream Team

These are the men and woman that I get to work with every day, they help to make my day so much easier. Let me introduce them to you, I will go from left to right: Agisa is our Programmer, he sets up Matt's and my flights for the week, he is a hard worker and a great friend. Agisa and his wife head up the youth program here and he also is helping with Bible translation work for his village. Nawi is our Traffic Officer, every morning he is getting weather for Matt and I and gets our manifest done up for each of our flights and makes sure that our planes are fueled and loaded, ready to go. Myself in the middle. Uddy is next, he is our Ground Crew. Uddy was one of our agents out in the bush and wanted to work for MAF. He volunteered at our base in Kiunga for several months showing up early everyday, working hard to help out, this did not go unnoticed and is now an employee of MAF. Last but not least is Rose, she is our Base Manager. She is newest addition to our Dream Team here, but is not new to MAF. She has come to us from another base. She too is a hard worker and pleasure to have around. She has really been able to get things ship shape at the Kiunga base. It is a pleasure to work with this team everyday.