Hello and Goodbye

That is kind of how this last month has felt: "Hello PNG ... oh - our month is up. Goodbye, I guess!"

It has been a fast, fast month. I am sitting on our couch looking at our suitcases stacked by the door (I triumphed over our packing yesterday and managed to stuff everything we brought here into two checked pieces, one carry-on, a purse and a back-pack) and wondering how we are already leaving. I am sad, but I am thankful to be homeward bound. Although even as I write that, I feel I am being disloyal to our little yellow Papua-Guinea House, which has definitely become home away from home.

I have two lists in my head. Things I'm looking forward to that I've missed doing while we've been here, and things I've gotten to do in the last month that I am about to start missing. Some of the items or experiences that showed up on each list surprised me. Without further ado ... here they are!

Things I'm looking forward to about going home

• spending time with family and friends
• owning a car
• being able to go outside on my own after dark
• grilling (ok - eating what Mark grills)
• my bed
• having the option of not-from-scratch cooking
  
• our church that is in English and where people don't stare at me when I walk in
• wearing shorts
• not hearing the unearthly sounds that cicadas make - at 6am, very faithfully, each day
• 21st-century internet speed ;)
• things outside of our home/immediate surroundings that I can take Anna to do. We are not normally stay-at-home kind of girls!
• getting things ready for the baby. I have begun mentally nesting :)
  

Some things I will miss

• spending time with our new friends who have become like family already
• the view from my living room
  
• eating fresh fruit and vegetables from Dr Bill's garden just across the yard
• Mark's lunch breaks every day
• taking Anna for walks outside that are punctuated every minute or so by a cheerful "gud mohning", "apnoon", or "gud evening" from Papua New Guinean people wandering around the station
• being able to send Anna outside to play with the neighbour kids!
• listening to the heavy tropical rain fall on our roof while I go to sleep
• hanging laundry on the line
• going to a church where I don't understand most of the words being said or sung, but still see love for Jesus on the faces around me
• a gas stove!
• being forced to slow down the pace of life
• talking to our neighbours over the fence (or across the path, or through the gate, or while our children climb to various heights in the tree)
• the feeling of community; fellowship found in sharing a purpose and ministry here away from all of our homes
  

Neither of these lists are totally exhaustive. But ... it is time to get this little girl fed and dressed, and start loading up our suitcases!

Confessions of a recovering performance-aholic

The last week or so has been an exhausting one. Not because I've been out and about doing more than usual ... but because this baby is sapping my energy! I was bone-tired all through my first trimester with Anna, but by about 14/15 weeks I'd gotten my energy back and felt GREAT. This time round? I got past the 12 week point without feeling super tired; more nauseous than last time (which is a good sign that I kind of welcome!), but all of a sudden I guess it caught up with me. Or the baby had a growth spurt, or something. (I have felt it move a few times, which surprised me since I'm not quite 13 weeks yet. But hey - not complaining!)

All of that to say ... sorry for the absence of updates recently - my usual me-time while Anna sleeps has been spent napping and not blogging :)

We are in our last week in PNG (we leave on Sunday morning). It is hard to believe. It will be a sad day; while this has by no means been a vacation, we have certainly been blessed to spend a month surrounded by so much beauty - in the people we are living with, and also our surroundings. I have been reflecting on the last month and some of our experiences ... thinking about what to include in our update letter when we get back ... and I have found myself struggling.

Mark's 'role' here has been very well defined. He is a doctor. He works in a hospital. He delivers babies, performs surgeries, sets bones, sutures bush-knife injuries, performs manual life-support for patients who should be on ventilators. He has cared for many patients in the last month that would totally overwhelm other residents at his level, and he has done it well. (Not that he hasn't ever been overwhelmed; he just copes with it well and doesn't panic!)

That is Mark's part of our update letter. My part? Well .... I've spent a month cooking and cleaning....? Hmm.

When I was in nursing school in England, I was enrolled in a very unique undergraduate Masters program that was being piloted by the University of Nottingham's nursing department. That sounded pretty impressive when I got accepted. When I was in nursing school in the States, I was on an accelerated 14-month RN-BSN program that had a crazy drop-out rate because it was so intense and difficult ... but I did it - pregnant, and then with a newborn. I have never really struggled with the idea of being a stay-at-home-mom, and have never felt like I "just" stay home with our daughter or that I should be using my nursing license or building my career. But I think that somehow my education and recent school accomplishments still validated me. I have only been out of school for the last two years of my life (except for a couple brief interludes when I met Mark and when we got married), and I guess being in the academic environment and getting my RN and degrees was recent enough that I could still bask in their glow.

Here, though, I feel so far removed from any of that. This is a world governed by rainfall and harvests and hardship and superstition and manual labour and great physical (and spiritual) need. And it sounds much more worthwhile to say that you are stepping into that need as a physician, than it does to say you are keeping house all day! The myriad of simple acts that comprise keeping a family clean, clothed and fed take so much longer here than at home, and I have realised that even if I'd transferred my license and worked as a nurse during this month, I could only have worked a day a week without our home falling into total disarray.

I have been encouraged by a couple of things, though. The first is the affirmation from other wives that it takes everybody longer to do things here, not just me! I am not the only person who begins dinner preparations at 4:30 in order to have a meal on the table by 6:30!! When a family moves here long-term, they either agree that one spouse will work full-time while the other stays at home full-time, or they hire house-help so that both parents can work - and even then, they may both only work part-time.
The second thing that has encouraged me is the fact that as this slower pace, I am able to spend more time just being. Being - with Anna, but also with myself. I can't fill our days with little errands and playdates across town and library trips and aquaruim trips and going to the park and house projects and extra trips to the grocery store to pick up things I forgot and ... and ... And! So we play. Together. We pretend that the part of the living room between the door and the couch is the beach. We have picnics there. We cycle our fruit and vegetables through their two sinkfuls of water - together. We make stories out of the Thomas-the-Tank-Engine-themed playing cards. We make banana-leaf umbrellas and chase lizards until they escape through a crack. And I have journalled, and blogged and read books.

And I do spend most of my day 'just' cooking, cleaning, doing laundry, and fighting an eternal battle against ants in my kitchen. But when I feel mundane, I am reminded by a "big-squeeze hug" around my knees or a hungry husband who sinks into his chair at the dinner table after a long day, that what I do is important. And I am grateful that I can do it!

Our picnic lunch while Dada & Uncle Bill were having an adventure hiking up Last Mountain, details of which can be found here!

My best girl

Here are a couple of her two-year pictures ... enjoy!









(As I took these I was thinking back to this time last year, and marvelled at how much easier it was to take this year's batch. Hopefully this bodes well for her two-year-old stage...!)