Our 3 yr old “sister” going into her bush house with a bag on her head. When you think about it… why not?

It was the kind of Saturday morning where I could almost forget that I’m not living in the States. If it weren’t for the sweltering heat already baking the house and the buzzing mosquitoes flitting from my calf to my toe to my elbow, I would forget. I was making the bed while Ray puttered around behind me unmaking it; a run of the mill activity for a mom with a 1-year-old. Just as I was coaxing her away from the straightened sheets, we heard a loud bang. I automatically assumed it was a coconut falling on someone’s house or car, but then it didn’t quite have the resonance of a falling coconut; it was much more explosive. Beyond the sound quality, the bang was immediately followed by shouts, and falling coconuts aren’t usually followed by shouts unless someone was silly enough to be under the coconut tree. The noise immediately jerked me out of my state of forgetfulness and landed me right back in PNG. I tried not to think it was gunfire so close to the house, but I couldn’t help it. I’m always wondering if the random cracking noises I hear are gunshots. Ray shot down the hallway towards the front door to investigate, saving the bed from further unmaking.

As part of our morning ritual, we always open doors and windows to get the airflow going. I followed Ray to the front door where we could see the activity that accounted for the strange sounds. It turned out to be a truck burning just down the street. So we spent the morning sitting on the floor at our security door watching the fire grow and eventually die. Ray held on to the bars of the door swaying gently back and forth while yelling her signature “bah” to anyone who would listen. Cars drove by, people walked by, and none seemed concerned by the loud explosions occasionally being emitted from the burning metal. No police came, no firefighters contained it. Just a truck burning right next to the main road into town with a small crowd of semi-angry people surrounding it. We still don’t know the full details of the event, but we know it was a vengeance burning. Something happened between that crowd of people and the owner of the truck, resulting in the truck’s untimely and violent death. We heard rumors from our village family later that it was the Twisties truck. Twisties are a deliciously processed puff of corn covered in greasy flavoring and we have no idea why anyone would want to destroy their truck. The village stories went a little askew in rumor and conjecture once we got past the basic information of the pick-up’s identity, but rest assured the people in that crowd felt just cause.

Situations like this arise every so often reminding me that I’m not in a place I know. Those moments sometimes elicit frustration when my home culture and PNG culture clash in unmet expectations, but occasionally it gives me a thrill. I love to watch the trucks full of people coming into town, legs and arms mixing up with heads and torsos, and then to watch them flow back out again in the evenings. I love to hear the people laughing and singing as they bounce in the back. My morning runs are more entertaining now that they include men hunting for frogs while taking their morning bath in the golf course pond or boys trying (and failing) to shoot fruit bats out of the mango trees with their homemade slingshots. I see the golf course and it takes me back to the States. Then I see the multi-tasking man washing while chasing frogs and I’m plopped right back in PNG. And it makes me happy.