Adventures in Bathing

(Adventures in PNG Series, Vol. 2)

The other day, the water turned on in the shower, and in short order we heard my husband singing “The Hallelujah Chorus” in a loud, exaggerated vibrato.

“What is he doing?!” my daughter asked me, stifling a giggle.

I smiled.  “That means the water is cold.”

There are many reasons one might take a cold shower here, the two most likely being:

1. Lack of sun the day before, and

2. Too many showers taken before yours.

We, like many people in the world, have solar-heated water.  Lots of homes here, including ours, have an electrical backup heater, but it is quite expensive to run it, so most people do so rarely.  Some homes are fortunate enough to have water pipes routed through their fireplaces or wood stoves.  If the would-be bather is enterprising enough, he or she can start a fire that will heat the water in these pipes before it is delivered to the shower.  Enterprising or not, we are not so fortunate.

So, when the previous day has been particularly cloudy, or a child has taken a 30-45 minute shower the night before (ahem), we have a choice.  Pay for the hot water, or chill out – literally – by taking a slightly-higher-than-room-temperature-if-you’re-lucky shower.

When we were at POC two years ago, hot water was available via bucket showers (top left picture above).  Course participants were tasked with the twice-a-day chore of starting a fire in an outdoor stove.  Pipes passed through that stove and delivered hot water to spickets inside the men’s and women’s bathrooms.  One would fill a portable bucket with water from these spickets, lower the rope-suspended bucket in the shower stall, and pour in the hot water.  Raise the bucket back up and voila – a hot shower!  The flow was controlled by turning a wide shower-head/nozzle on the bottom of the bucket.  It was wise to close the nozzle while soaping up, lest you run out of water before you were rinsed clean.

If you did run out, or if you chose (like I did most of the time) to have a cold shower, there was a regular shower head emerging from the wall of the stall.  One turn of the knob, and from it would flow a glacial-brisk, refreshing shower that actually felt really nice on a typical, tropical Madang afternoon.  (Not such a good idea in the morning.)

In the villages, bathing takes place in the river.  On day one of our six-week village living experience, our village “brother” took Paul and Evan to the men’s bathing hole at the river.  Some girls took Andie and me to another part of the river, downstream from the men.  This was culturally intentional, as men would not want to be defiled by having women bathe upstream from them.  I suppose the women who must bathe upstream in a different village are of no consequence.  Maybe they assumed the contaminants were diluted by the time they reached this particular bathing hole.  Maybe the men never even gave the possibility a thought, but as we were on the coast, logic dictates that surely hundreds of women in dozens of villages do, in fact, bathe upstream from these men.

The other place to bathe was at the mauswara – the mouth of the river where it empties into the ocean.  Because the other bathing hole had an interesting set of complications (a steep, muddy bank to climb in and out of the river, and a 15-20 minute walk back to the house after you were finished – just lomg enough to get good and sweaty again), I preferred to bathe at the mauswara.

For a few days, anyway.

It was at that point that I discovered something very important: the mauswara was the place where I was literally being eaten alive by sand flies.  After about a week in the village, I had more than 300 sand fly bites. 

We counted.

For the next five weeks, I gave myself sponge baths outside our hut, wearing my tankini top and board shorts, of course.  I never set foot at the mauswara again.  Of course, that didn’t mean I never got a sand fly bite again.  They had gotten a taste of something sweet and spread the word to all their friends.  I was a certified smorgasbord of culinary goodness for the entire insect community.

Just as an aside, ocean swims supplied most of the kids’ “bathing” experiences.  :)

The truly frustrating part of living, doing laundry, and bathing the village way is that one never feels completely clean.  Who am I kidding … one never gets completely clean!  Seriously.  I cannot emphasize this enough.  It was probably my number one complaint during our time out there … just this constant gritty, grimy, grody feeling.  Dirt and sweat are a way of life.  The only real respite was the occasional downpour of rain.  On more than one occasion, I got up in the middle of the night to go outside (in my tankini top and board shorts) in order to stand under the gush of rain water coming off the thatched-grass roof.  I even took my shampoo.

It was the closest to a real shower … the closest to CLEAN … I ever felt. 

It was marvelous.

PNG is the first place that I have scrubbed my feet with a stiff brush nearly every day.  Even here in the highlands, unless you wear sneakers all the time (I almost always wear sandals) dirty feet are inevitable.  This pales in comparison to the unpleasant, yet constant, grime of village life, but it is reality.  And no matter how much I scrub, I can never get my feet completely, living-in-the-US-and-walking-on-plush-carpets clean.

Here in the highlands, living in our western-style house, we are still bathing in river water.  The only differences are 1) it’s not iron-smelting-factory hot outside, 2) the water has at least the potential to be warm, and 3) it comes in the form of indoor plumbing.

But, as I said, we rely on the warming presence of the sun, and during rainy season in particular, it doesn’t always make a significant appearance.

In addition to that, there is a constant struggle between wanting your children (and your spouse, for that matter) to be presentably, reasonably clean, and wanting your own hot shower.  I do get my share that are cold.

But I haven’t gotten a single sand fly bite. 

And for that (in addition to many other things) I am grateful.

Adventures in Driving: An Authorized Addendum

Someone in the US who is hoping to come here recently asked the question, “How are the roads in PNG, and are they safe to drive?”

A coworker posted this in response.  I laughed out loud at her perspective-rendering response, and hope that maybe you will, too. 

Posted with her permission [with a few clarifying comments inserted] …

“Is driving in New York City safe?  Driving anywhere requires a set of skills unique to the environment.  For driving to Kainantu, Goroka, Madang or Lae (which I've done heaps of times in my bold red truck while locals shout "meri driva!" [means “woman driver!”  -sharon] in amazement or joy or solidarity or something), the special skills unique to PNG (as opposed to California or New York) are:

1. Pot-hole and land-slip avoidance
2. Raskol avoidance [“Raskol” is the generic Melanesian pidgin word for criminal, thief, carjacker, etc.  It may or may not be safe to assume that the homemade shotgun he’s holding has no ammunition.  :)   -sharon]
3. Pig- and dog- avoidance on roads (if you avoid deer on the road, you may already have this merit badge)
4. Pedestrian avoidance on roads with no shoulder and adjoining residences (if you've driven in Cairo or Bamako you may already have this skill)
5. Not running out of gas (if you live in the wilderness miles from town you may already have this skill)
6. Driving in loose mud (similar to driving in snow, so you may already have earned this merit badge)

7. Waving at people (a common small town skill) [may include gently waving down those would-be riders who think you’re a PMV  –sharon]
8. Occasional river fordings
9. Negotiating bridges with holes in the road surfaces [see photo above of the bridge you MUST drive over to get anywhere outside our valley; we’re hoping it gets repaired before it completely collapses (again)  -sharon]
10. Flexibility to address break-downs in the bush
11. Bush toileting skills [not to mention wisely selecting a location for such an activity  -sharon]
12. Passing large trucks (additional skill:  on roads without painted lane lines)
13. Convoy driving skills  [it’s true that there is strength in numbers  -sharon]
14. Tolerating being hot and uncomfortable and bounced around and dusty; varies depending on vehicle

And, the hardest one on the list in my experience:

15. Token security man recruitment skills [for when you’ve encountered raskols going into town, and need to get back out of town via the same road you came in  -sharon]

If you're from a rural area, the more remote the better, or drive off-road through rough terrain, you already have the balance of these skills.

-Donna Smith”

Adventures in Driving

As I started typing, I was about to say that there are limited roadways in this country.  However, as is the case with any serious journalist, I had to get my facts straight, so I turned to Google to find some statistics.  Encyclopedia of the Nations (http://www.nationsencyclopedia.com/economies/Asia-and-the-Pacific/Papua-New-Guinea-INFRASTRUCTURE-POWER-AND-COMMUNICATIONS.html) tells me that there is actually 19,600 km of roadway in PNG.

I admit, that’s more than I expected to see.  But the subsequent statistic didn’t surprise me at all.

Of that, “only 686 kilometers are paved.”

That’s about 3.5%.  Yeah, baby.  That’s more like it.

I found it further interesting that of the “492 airports, … only 19 have paved runways.”  That’s a whopping 3.9%.  Maybe I’d be better off owning a plane?

It’s not uncommon to start a road trip here with prayer.  The pray-er, if an experienced PNG traveler, usually includes a clause that goes something like this …

“… and as we drive, please guide us as we encounter pigs, pedestrians, and potholes.”

Driving here is very stressful.  Especially on the driver and whoever else feels a sense of responsibility for the people in the vehicle.  You have to be on guard at all times, constantly aware of road conditions that we all but take for granted in the US.

As is the case in many third-world countries (or, I suppose, any country where the motor vehicle to human being ratio is negligible), people use the roads as pedestrian thoroughfares.  Old and young, male and female, alone and in groups, people walk along the roads as if they would be shocked to actually see a vehicle driving on it.  Sometimes they will move out of the way when they see you coming, but it’s smart to not expect it.  Many of them are carrying something – a baby on the back, a cord of firewood on the head, large bilums (string bags) filled with garden produce, machetes.  It’s not uncommon to see gaggles of small half-dressed, barefoot children walking down the road carrying machetes (here called “bush knives”) that are almost as long as the kids are tall.

Pigs and dogs, too, roam the roads.  And should the unthinkable occur … should you hit one of these precious treasures … don’t even think about stopping.  That is very difficult for our western minds to compute … that you wouldn’t stop – that if you value your life, you SHOULDN’T stop to help in such a situation.  The response of the local community wouldn’t be any more tense if you’d hit a person – you have just destroyed something that belongs to them and you will pay.  If you want to get out of the situation with any hope of only paying monetarily, your best bet is to floor it and drive straight to the nearest police post (if you can find one).  Tell them what happened and trust that they’ll protect your life until compensation can be negotiated.

While I’m on animals, I suppose I shouldn’t neglect the bovines among us.  You don’t see them often, but in one straightaway in the lowlands, I recently saw a sign that read:

“Draiv isi isi.  Bulmakau wokabout long rot.” 
(basically, “Drive carefully; cattle walk on the road.”)

And potholes … I think if the powers-that-be were to go back and seriously evaluate those 686 km of “paved” roadway, they just might have to disqualify about 127.3 km for … well, pavement that no longer exists.  :)

There are no superhighways here.  No interchanges, no on- and off-ramps.  No odd-for-North-South-routes and even-for-East-West.  In fact, there is not a single road – no road - that connects the highlands to the capital city of Port Moresby.  The Highlands Highway – the only thoroughfare spanning the northern half of the country, consists of 2 lanes – one going each direction.  Bridges tend to be one lane, with right of way going to whoever is driving away from the coast (presumably so the few heavily-loaded tractor-trailers coming up from the port cities don’t have to stop as they’re driving through the mountains.)  Sometimes potholes leave a section of road as effectively one-lane.  Sometimes portions of road shrink laterally as chunks of asphalt gradually break off and plummet down the mountainside.

There are a few private vehicles out there, but not many.  Most vehicles you encounter on the road are PMVs (Public Motor Vehicles).  Those that drive long distances tend to be vans, while short-distance PMVs are generally open-backed trucks.  Of course, they’re always overloaded, often with several people following the one-appendage-in-the-vehicle rule: hang on, for example, with one foot on the back bumper and the other leg thrown over the tailgate.  Sometimes the people are sitting on heaping piles of burlap bags filled with copra, coffee beans, or buai (betelnut).  Either way, it’s a house of cards, and I fear woe to anyone who follows too close.

Roadside markets dot the highway.  Usually people are hocking sweet potatoes, pineapple, and mangoes, but in some places you may see a table lined with soda bottles.  On closer inspection, you will notice that though these bottles contain a dark brown liquid, it is not Coca Cola.  It’s motor oil.  Quite possibly slightly used motor oil, but with the lack of gas stations (you can drive hours and not see a gas station – best just to fill up in the major cities), sometimes that’s the best you can do and they know it.

On one two-hour trip, I counted no less than 15 skeletons of vehicles along the road.  That’s one every 8 minutes if you’re doing the math.  If your car breaks down, and you have to abandon it, be prepared to say goodbye.  If your car breaks down on my land, that makes it my car, and that bench seat in the back would be a great addition to my house.  If your biscuit-filled tractor-trailer breaks down, let’s just say our village will be sitting pretty for tea time for some months.  These “skeletons” are vehicles that have literally been stripped clean of everything that could potentially be useful, leaving, at best, only the steel frame intact.  In one location, I saw what used to be a bus, stripped clean except for a flap of sheet metal.  One small, resourceful child was using it as a trampoline.

If you ever do take a drive in PNG, please don’t focus only on the road and its hazards.  (Unless you’re the driver, of course.  So, sorry Dad … no matter how successfully you gawked at the sights while managing not to tumble off the winding mountain roads of the American West, I will have to put my foot down here.) 

If you’re not driving, enjoy the view.

This land that was once thought to be a homogenous mass of rainforests sports rugged mountains, vast grasslands, deep valleys, glorious rivers.  Eight foot tall kunai grass waves in the afternoon breezes.  Patches of the hillsides burn dramatically to make ready garden plots.  The higher vistas reveal mountaintops that seem to float in the clouds. 

And sometimes, if you’re lucky, there might even be a stretch of asphalt ahead of you as far as the eye can see.  :)

Adventures in PNG

It’s time for a new blog series.  I anticipate that from time to time I may revisit the “Fun in the Remote Highlands of PNG” theme, but for now, I’d like to move on.

 

Most days here have some element of adventure.  Everything from experimenting with recipe substitutions, to vehicular encounters with pigs, pooches, people, and potholes.  From enduring showers of all temperatures, to racing home to snag the laundry from the line before the bottom falls out of the clouds.  From caring for the neighbors’ pets, to watching bow-and-arrow-wielding men in conflict.

 

I’ve been collecting topics, but if you have a suggestion, or something you’re dying to hear about, throw it out there!  Big adventure, or little adventure, I’d love to respond.

 

Stay tuned.