Willie's Village

A warm welcome
Willie, our Tok Pisin tutor, invited us to spend the weekend at his village a short distance from Madang. Head of the village is BigPela Herman and we stayed in his house. Arriving in the heat of early afternoon we sat in the shade of coconut palms, sago palms and trees whose names I have yet to learn to drink water or kulow (coconut milk from young coconuts) and "tok story". Papua New Guineans love to talk and hear about our families and tell us about their lives in the village. It was a great way to practice our stumbling Tok Pisin- all conducted with much laughter and pointing but most of us managed some sort of simple conversation. My two sons may be interested to know that in Tok Pisin "Migat tupela pickinini man. Bigpela Tom na Liklik Jack"  (say it out loud!)

All this with just the men - women are all kept in the background and after a brief greeting they disappeared to carry on with cooking, cleaning and everything else that needed to be done to keep the village going. The men look after the "gardens" (vegetable patch) of which they are extremely proud.  This place is incredibly fertile - place the top of a pineapple in the ground and a few weeks later you have a new pineapple.
Evening came and with it time to eat. We ate well with a generous dinner of rice in coconut milk, chicken stew with ginger and a large helping of unknown vegetables that tasted a bit like spinach.

Big Herman's House

Big Herman

After the rain

 Rain, beautiful rain
After dinner it rained. Really hard tropical rain - the sort of storm that rips the coconuts off the trees and hurls them to the ground like small but lethal unexploded bombs. A blessing to me  because along with the rain comes a corresponding drop in temperature. It gave us a relatively cool night and, in spite of sleeping on thin mats on a bamboo floor I managed a few hours.

Church and a swim
Willie's village forms part of a larger community called Rampi. Rampi is a Roman Catholic area and we were all invited to join in the service (in Tok Pisin) at the local church of St Boniface. I'm not a particularly religious person but went along and enjoyed the singing which had that beautiful Pacific Island lilt. Then plenty tok tok with the congregation after the service.

A late morning swim in the sea off Willie's village was incredible - the live coral begins just a few yards offshore and was full of life. Great time.

Lunch with the whole village (chicken which we saw being slaughtered that morning) lots of toktok, present giving and thanks. A great experience - although I must admit that I was happy to return to my air conditioned bungalow and flush toilet!