For the first two weeks of village living it rained. It was very wet. (But at least it was cool!) And we all know mosquitoes like wet. So for those two weeks my wasfamili (host family) wouldn't take me to their garden because "the mosquitoes will eat you". I was ok with that because their garden was about a mile away. But during week four, it was time to go to the garden.
Wasmama (my host mom) took me. The walk was mainly on the road, so it wasn't bad at all. We turned into the garden and there were hundreds of cocoa and coconut trees. They call this part their plantation. We walked up to a shelter, which I found out was called a copra haus. Copra is the word for dry coconut. They use all different forms of coconut, but this is apparently the money-maker. They crack open hundreds of coconut and lay the halves on a grate which is over a fire, and they leave it there for several days to dry. Then they bag them up and sell them to the copra factory.
Copra Haus (stand on that platform to get to the copra)
When we walked up to it, the coconuts were dry and ready for the next step. So wasmama showed me the next step... breaking the dry white insides of the coconut out of the hard shell.
So I tried a few. You cup the coconut half in your hand, and you hit it on a piece of wood (a sturdy piece of wood). And then I found out that if it's stubborn and doesn't want to release, you throw it over to wasmama for her to use her knife to cut it out. Then you throw the empty shells down to be used for the next drying fire.
empty shells
The dry insides now look something like leather... really thick leather. And just by smelling them, I discovered that this is definitely what they use to make those smelly lotions, tanning oils, shampoos, etc.
leather-like insides (photo from Google. You can see more photos here)
After a little rest, wasmama took me down to the actual garden, where they grow potatoes, beans, bananas, pineapple, papaya, etc... and by "down" I mean DOWN. At some points it had to be more than a 45-degree incline. And the garden is planted on that incline.
top of the garden
At the bottom of the incline was a creek. A beautiful little creek surrounded by rainforest. Definitely reminiscent of LOST. Wasmama filled up several bottles with the "clean" water. And it immediately started raining. No, not raining... pouring. And my umbrella was at the top of the hill at the copra haus.
That's when I decided that it was the best day ever. Wasmama grabbed a huge leaf from one of the potato plants and I used it as an umbrella while we waited for the rain to calm down. And I stood in the creek with a leaf on top of my head with rain pouring down. And I decided that would make a great fashion shoot. Too bad I didn't take my camera.
And I took those 10 minutes of waiting to reflect on what the Lord was doing in my life. I thought about how crazy it was that I was standing in a creek, in the middle of the rainforest, not caring that it was pouring down rain, in remote Papua New Guinea, having one of the best days of my life. But then again, it's exactly where God wanted me, so why shouldn't it be awesome?
the creek (this pic was taken on a different, non-rainy, day)
Remember that incline? Yeah, plus the rain... now we can call it a treacherous incline. I held wasmama's hand all the way back up (she practically pulled me all the way), abandoning my "umbrella" so I could hold on to any tree I came close to. I was soaked by the time we made it back up.
Wasmama had collected some food from the garden, so she loaded up my bilum (string bag) with greens and beans, which I carried back down to the village (that mile journey), plus my bilum and an arm of bananas, all on top of my head (the PNG way!).
I was wet, and exhausted. But it was seriously amazing.
No comments:
Post a Comment