new cultural experience - watching cricket... not sure what it is yet, but it appears to be a spectator sport. They have something called cricket 20 which is supposed to be a fast paced version of the sport. So now I assume the sport is typically slow paced. Still, when you see the fanfare of the NFL on a television and then the game is cricket, it's a bit of a let down. Sport is sport however and I will attempt to learn this game's rules.
black santa claus - I instinctively want to say "African American" but a), they aren't African, and b) they aren't American. Seeing a Papua New Guinean dressed in a Santa outfit dancing around was an odd sight.
Commercialism - this people of this country are cash poor, land rich. Land is passed down through the family and they make their living and their food from it. But they do not have a lot of cash. A television station entered the seen about 3 years ago, and thus commercials. This year, cell-phone service in parts of the country became available. So now, on t.v. and radio, there are lots of commercials of people dancing around looking happy and clean with cell phones. It strikes me as odd, however the people who work in town, are living a much different life. I saw a man buy carrots in town. This told me he did not have land of his own, and probably lives in town.
There is a lot of new to experience although we've been here 10 months now. So much is new.
Today at work, a team of us ran fibre cable to the primary school campus. I've never had the privilege of running underground fibre cable. We ran it through dirty muddy pipes into cement junction pits, and kept pulling and running it. It was a lot of physical work, but now the primary school will be able to connect to the backbone network more effectively.
It made me think of some friends who recently went to Africa to do similar work.
During the fibre pull, one of the guys said, "I heard a crack." That's not a sound you want to hear pulling several hundred meters of fibre, when you're on the last length of it. It means the cable might have broken (being mostly glass inside).
So we tested it... THIS is the interesting part.
We put a magnifying lense to the sun directing light into the cable, and then simply glanced at the other end of the cable (far across the center) and it worked!! I'm glad we prayed over that cable!
We got sore, and muddy, and sunburned and we loved it! Sitting at a desk all day is definitely not part of the job description. Getting outside was very nice. Working side by side with Papua New Guineans (it feels awkward to make the distinction, because these men are becoming friends, but I want you at home to understand there is a mixture of culture and race in these efforts), and while we were waiting for this or that, to speak in Tok Pisin a little about our families or our home or whatever it was.javascript:void(0)
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It was my idea of a perfect day.
