Easter Greetings

Where has the time gone?  It is Good Friday here in Papua New Guinea.  I know I should be spending the day in repentance and contemplation, but have decided to work and catching up with friends instead.  Easter is treated very seriously here in PNG - no bunnies to share the spotlight.  Some churches hold Easter Camps, where everyone goes out to spend three or so days in bible study and contemplation.  Several of the faculty here are off helping lead such a camp.

The seminary has no classes today or Monday, giving us a 4 day weekend.  The students don't have the time or money to go home, so we are celebrating together.  I have met a few parents from the area who have to join their children for Easter. Last night we had a nice Maunday Thursdays service.  Holy Comunion is a special event here (6 times a year?) so it is always celebrated with great ceremony.  Many of the women wear Meri blouses (their smock like tops) of white satin.  Most of the time they were sensible colors and patterns.  Many of the men had on long sleeved white shirts, also unusual. The paraments were also of a satiny, glowing material.

Will try to write more later in the weekend

New Photos from PNG

Ann has some more photos posted on flickr covering her first months in Papua New Guinea. See them at http://www.flickr.com/photos/newguineacall/  .

Well, school has started, we are currently in our second week.  I am finding it challenging.  I am teaching 4 classes.  Two of them, English and Library are ones that I expected.  However, I am also teaching two study skills classes that were more of a surprise to me. I have taught study skills occasionally, but when you add in the challenge of a new language it is keeping me busy.  Fortunately I have notes from people who taught the class before.  At this point I am teaching in English still, with some handouts and homework in Tok Pisin.  The students have been very patient about everything.  I got very worried the first week, but am remembering that I can only do my best and trust God that things will work out.

I have a kitten that I adopted from a neighbor.  I have named him Peter.  He is full of spunk, fun and naughtiness.  I kept him inside the first few days to make sure he would bond and not run away.  Now I am working to make him stay outside.  Cat litter is not available around here so indoor cats are a problem.  I do feed him a wider variety of food than I would in the U.S.  A mixture of rice and tuna is a favorite of his.

I was ill for the first time this weekend.  I developed a throat problem that looked like strep.  Thankfully, my neighbor, who is a doctor, was willing to help me, so I didn't have to go to the hospital.  I am now on antibiotics and have healed fast.  Unfortunately I missed church and some other fun weekend activities. Well, time to go review what I should teach in the study skills class tomorrow.

January updates

School will be starting soon.  The exact date is still up in the air.  Originally we were to have orientation for the new students this week with classes starting next week.  However, it has all been postponed a week or two.  We had a campus crisis in early January and the needed preparations did not happen.  The crisis had to do with getting a former staff member and his family to move out.  Here housing is often provided as part of the job.  When a staff member stops working it can be hard to get them out of the house.  I know this is a problem at church headquarters and with the post office here.  The seminary finally served the family with an eviction notice but had trouble enforcing it.  The local police say they have no car or truck that can get up to the seminary.  Fortunately. with the help of other church leaders, they were persuaded to go. 

I will be teaching two English classes this semester.  I will also be helping with the supervision of students giving religion classes in the schools.  My Pigin is still not strong, so I have been paired with another faculty member for the supervision.  I will also get the library up and running again.  I am somewhat nervous about the English teaching, but am also excited to get started.

In early January I went to stay in the village of Suqang.  It was very interesting to see the rhythms of their life.  The is a lot of physical labor involved - growing food and gathering fire wood - but also a lot of time to talk to each other. The family I stayed with had a flush toilet, so it was not completely authentic, but that was OK by me. I was also asked to preach (with a translator).  That was fun and a surprise to the congregation as they had never seen a woman pastor before.

I had an interesting experience riding the ferry back from Lae last Saturday.  While the ferry stops in the village of Booki, one of the passengers asked me if I was going to Finschhafen or Butaweng.  Butaweng is the site of a Lutheran hospital that includes missionary doctors on their staff.  So, I guess my role as missionary was clear.  The only question was whether I was a doctor or a teacher. 

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.