Views of PNG

Rev Ann Klavano

Ann's home on campus

A view of the shoreline near Finschhafen

Dancers ready to perform at the synod convention

Sign welcome attendees to the synod convention

Green christmas

Christmas greetings from the sunny southern hemisphere.  I am looking out my study window to lush green grass, bushes and coconut trees.  We are close to the longest day of the year, the birds start singing around 4:30 a.m.  However, this near the equator there is not as much of a swing of temperatures or day length as in Wisconsin or other northern states in the U.S. 

I am ending up staying here on campus through Christmas.  My going out to stay at a village has been postponed until early January.  I will spend Christmas Day with Damaris, another single missionary, who is a doctor at a nearby hospital (Braun Memorial).  The other guests will all be German speakers, but will default to English while I am around.  I am glad they are including me.

I am trying to make use of this quieter time.  I have been working on my Pigin and walking more.  I try to combine this by walking around the seminary housing and chatting with people.  I feel like I am making progress,  especially in understanding what others are saying.  It is still hard for me to initiate conversation. 

The local post office has been closed for several months.  Apparently it was robbed several times, so they are hoping to reopen in a new location that has better security (same building as other government offices).  This means that the seminary mail is held in the main post office in Lae until someone stops in and picks it up.  This person need to have access to a car, so this means that only us international staff get the mail.  I know several people have sent me packages, so it will be a real windfall of items when the mail arrives.

Organization and doing things by the clock are generally low priority here in PNG.  Fortunately it is less of an issue here at the seminary as we have bells that ring at the start and end of classes.  Other events, such as start of Sunday worship, are more flexible. 

I had a chance to send some mail to the U.S. via Rod and Nancy, two other American missionaries.  My mail included a flash drive  of a few pictures of the area.  Niel (my brother-in-law) has agreed to upload them here onto my bog.  Hope you enjoy them

Graduation

Last Sunday was graduation here at the seminary.  It was quite the event!  I had not thought through how complicated a gathering like this is when you there are no motels or restaurants in the area.  Many details were planned out by committees.  For example, the feeding and housing of the honored guests.  These were church officials from the headquarters in Lae and a couple of District Presidents (the equivalent of bishops in the ELCA).  There is a guest house that a few could stay in, but the rest were put in a vacant faculty house.  This meant that people had to clean the house and buy mattresses for the beds.  Since there is no dining hall here, groups of faculty wives were assigned to provide each meal at the houses.  Projects like buying mattresses are complicated by the fact that no national teachers can afford to have cars.  So, the seminary bus made many trips up and down the hill.  Meanwhile family members of the graduates were arriving by ferry and speed boat, so many pickups had to be arranged.

One family, the Tamus, had a gathering for three seminarians from their same District. They had a "mumu" which is a pig roast over hot rocks.  They let me watch much of the preparations, including the butchering of the pigs, the digging of the pig, and the layering of the food and banana leaves.  About 50 people attended, the student housing must have been very crowded.  Most of the guests had never been to the campus before, so everyone was quite excited.  Many of the seminarians come from rural areas that are mainly subsistence farming. Therefore, it is quite an major undertaking for a congregation or circuit (a group of congregations) to pay the school fees.  The students will now go back to serve in the areas they come from.

The service itself was very nice. It was held on in a building that is mainly open air sides (the walls go up about 3 feet). It was a hot day so it was lovely to get the breezes.  The worship service and passing out of diplomas were similar to what I have seen in the U.S.  Afterward they invited honored guest to come up and make speeches.  I was hot and  the speeches were in Pigin (which I am not the good at yet).. I fell asleep but, thankfully, no one seemed to notice.

It is quiet on campus now.  I enjoyed the first few days, but am now getting bored.  I am going to ask around and find a Pigin tutor I can work with on a daily basis.  I am also hoping to spend a week in a village, however, the date has not been set.

Time to get house cleaning - having a friend over for lunch.