A non typical PNG weekend

A very different weekend this week. A sort of "Non PNG" experience in PNG.


Friday night - pizza, nachos, beer and wine on the deck outside the Bartell family house ( my neighbours in the compound here at the Baptist Union). A collection of Aussies, Kiwis and myself representing the Brits. Good night and lots of fun with good company.
Saturday morning and its off to the Hagen Club to play tennis for a couple of hours. Great to be hitting a tennis ball again even though my game would best be described as rusty (if you were being polite). Courts are not too bad - the occasional bizarre bounce off the uneven surface or the odd weed growing on the court - but I've played on worse municipal courts in the UK. Wonderful morning but by 1 o clock its too hot for me to rush about a tennis court. Three broken strings on my only raquet and I'm not optimistic about finding a restringing service out here!!!!!! One of my friends here is off to Oz on Monday so he may take the raquet - get it restrung and send it back to me in Hagen. Hopefully it will be back soon.


A couple of beers and a fish & chips lunch at the club after tennis and then back to watch Australian Rules Football on the TV (not in my place - I don't have a TV). . Its a good job there were plenty people there to explain the rules of this uniquely antipodean sport - otherwise it would have felt like watching a semi organised brawl! We were provided with beer, cheese and pickles during the match - the pickles being supplied by yours truly who has been pickling local veg for the last few weeks! Very tasty.


In the evening I sat at home and watched Episode 1 of "The Wire" having copied the whole series onto the hard drive of my laptop - courtesy of a friend in Madang.

To round it all off I splashed out and bought some very expensive bacon from the Best Buy supermarket - bacon and eggs for Sunday brunch!  So, all in all, a weekend that was as far removed from a normal PNG experience as it is possible to be.

I'm off to Madang on Monday for the VSO PNG national volunteers conference. Be good to catch up with all the other Volunteers out here - see how they're getting on in this weird and wonderful country!



Lukim yu