If there are things you are curious about, email me at owens@gimpel.tv and I will hopefully be able to respond to them in the blog.
One of the common requests has been for me to provide sort of an idea of the area and the environment.
First I'll write a description. Then I'll link to some photos, and finally I'll link to a video.
We are staying on a fenced in center which consists of homes, as well as all the necessary buildings required to provide the type of services and support we do. That includes schools, administrative offices, translator cubicles, guest houses, auto-shop, joinery, post office, grocery store, clinic, etc. It is very close to a functional small town.
But why have an auto-shop? The vehicles here take a lot of pounding, and the safety requirements of this country are strict, so we need to maintain the private as well as professional vehicles being used. Most every service available to those that live here on center are also available to people who live in elsewhere. We serve the community by having the clinic, and the autoshop and all of those things.
The closest village, is under a mile away. It is Ukarumpa village and the reason we call this place Ukarumpa is because we live so near. A village however doesn't have much more than gardens and huts.
The closest major town is Kainantu (aka K92) and it has a thrift store, a grocery store or two, a police station, and a few other items. The things that this town has, we don't need to replicate here on center. It is a ten minute drive with the current road conditions, but all travelling off center poses a certain amount of risk. Violent crime against whiteskins is practically unheard of, but since we are "rich" we become targets for a small percentage of folks who are less than honest.
The interesting thing is that if a crowd of nationals sees a "raskol" stealing from a whiteskin, they'll chase him out of town. So really when you are surrounded by people you are more safe than when you are travelling on roads alone. We therefore employ precautions when travelling.
These small towns offer little in the way of acquiring important items, but are interesting diversions. The two BIGGEST cities are LAE and Port Moresby. LAE is the closest at 3 hours away. A very tiring 3 hour drive dodging potholes and such.
LAE is a shipping port and has many more stores there and you can get many things you need. But because many people here prefer not to travel, or can not travel there we import items from LAE into our stores here.
The stores provide services for the people who live here, the people of the surrounding communities, provide jobs for nationals, and are pretty much self-financed because they do not keep a lot of useless inventory.
That is a very simple overview of how and why. You may say "I had no idea they had a hardware store." Yes we do. I can buy bailing wire, or a new doorknob/lock. But I can't buy anything specialized... the odds are what you want, you won't find, but what you need, you can find.
There is also an extensive network of lending/sharing amongst ourselves. I need Hair Gel, you have Hair Gel? GREAT! Part of the community here is a WANTED newsgroup where people post things they need. You often get many responses when you post a need there.
I hope that answers some questions.
What do the houses look like? I will post future pictures on this. At this time I'm not comfortable blogging about the inside of a house I do not own.
What does the center look like? Video.
Here is a MAP to go with that video. The map is the center on which we live, and the red line is the path I took in the video.
