The blog's been quiet for a while, but our lives have still been busy! As I'm sure you can imagine, balancing language study and daily life with 3 little kids fills our days to the max! It's been a while since I've shared a lot of pictures, so I'll let them do the talking about what we've been up to! :)
Some kids found a baby bat living in the siding of our house
Corey, a missionary in training in the States, came to visit us for a week in early June
We taught some village kids how to play "Duck, Duck, Goose" but our version is "Pig, Pig, Dog" :)
We hiked 2.5 miles down to a lake to go spear fishing with the village
The people beat a certain poisonous vine and put it into the water to make the fish float to the surface
Clint speared 6 fish!
Snack break at the lake :)
Lance fell asleep in his carrier on the long hike home. We laid him down for a minute when we took a break :)
The kids did such a great job on the hike, even though it was muddy and long!
We celebrated my birthday with some homemade pork burgers! Soooo delicious!
And we played a few rounds of our current favorite game. We've been playing it a lot in our free time :)
As part of his language study, Clint has been building a small house next to ours where we can invite our friends over in a culturally familiar setting
He's made several trips to the jungle with guys to collect materials
These are bundles of roofing materials. The people call it "bobre" (boh-brey)
Our friend Stanli taught us how to sew up the large panels of thatch for the roof
Some teenagers helped Clint hang the bobre on the roof
Almost done! Just needs some walls
Ashlyn has been helping a little bit with medical needs in the village. This guy cut his leg when he was hollowing out a canoe
Watching the river flood one day
We had a language evaluation in early July. So thankful that we're halfway done with language study!
We headed out to our mission base the day after our language evaluation for a break!
Ashlyn passed the 20 week mark in pregnancy on the day we headed out to town
We had so much fun driving around town as a family
Our base is only a few minutes away from the beach
Our base has some AMAZING mango trees that were in season while we were there
These mangoes are called papaya mangoes, and they are the BEST! Not stringy at all and so sweet!
The kids had lots of fun playing on the playground at the base
We enjoyed going out to eat several times at restaurants in town
One of the restaurants at a local hotel has a nice pool that's open at lunch time
Unloading our supplies at the airstrip and watching the plane take off
The water was really low heading back up river, but we made it fine
Back to language study! Our friend, Ambi, is helping Clint translate recorded stories that we have gotten from our friends into the trade language so we can understand each of the words
Our garden has been growing a lot! We have some papaya trees, pineapple plants, watermelon, and bananas that are almost ready for picking
This stalk of bananas is almost ready!
The kids have been enjoying going swimming in the river
Hope you enjoyed a peek into our daily lives out here! :)
Ever found yourself running at break-neck speed through a
tropical jungle, dodging vines, jumping fallen logs, and trying not to impale
yourself on massive thorns? I’m guessing that doesn’t fit the job descriptions
of many men in North America, but it does for the guys in Wabuku!
Hunting trips with the Wabuku men are always an adventure.
And they happen quite often. Our people rely heavily on meat from the wild
animals found around the village to sustain their families. They will shoot
anything that moves, but their main target is wild pig. They also hunt deer,
large birds called cassowaries, a small kangaroo-like animal that they call
“boi”, and large rodents that live in the jungle.
The large bird is a cassowary that one of the guys shot
Clint has been on numerous daytime hunting trips as well as several
overnight excursions. Each one is a unique experience!
Our guys typically hunt with handmade bows and arrows. They
fashion the bows out of a specific kind of wood. The string is a strong kind of
vine.
This guy, Jebri, is one of Clint's good friends and helped him make his bow
The bows are really hard to shoot! The arrow doesn't have a nock, so you have to hold it to the string
The arrows are made from a long, strong type of reed or grass.
Traditionally, their arrow tips would have been sharpened wood, but now, they
make them out of any kind of scrap metal they can find and hammer flat.
They have a variety of arrow tips. The large ones are for pigs.
When they go out to hunt, often a group of guys will go
together, especially if they take their dogs with them to chase the pigs. If
they hear or spot a pig, it’s a mad chase through the jungle to find it and get
a shot before it gets away.
(Let me make a little advertisement here for Chaco sandals…
those things are AMAZING for running through the jungle while chasing wild pigs!
Probably the strangest positive review they will ever have, but there you have
it)
Hunting pigs is pretty dangerous, though. Our guys always
say they look around them for a tree to climb after they shoot, just in case. :) Many of them have stories of getting bitten by pigs.
This guy, Boni, got bit by a pig in a recent hunt
They will sometimes butcher the pigs on the spot, but other
times, they bring it to the village to cut and divide between all of the
families.
Sometimes they will tie the dead pig to a log and carry it. This guy is carrying it on his back.
So far, Clint has shot one wild pig (though another guy had
the killing shot). He has also shot a large rodent called a “miyaeri”
(mee-yaree) and a bird.
After hunting, the guys enjoy retelling the event. They get
really animated! Clint got a fun video of some of the guys talking about the
pig they just shot. At the end, they remember that one of the guys had gotten attacked
by the pig during the hunt, and they hadn’t seen him for a while, so they run
off to check on him. Haha!
Life in Wabuku looks a LOT different than life in America. A
huge part of our daily routine is spent outside, doing whatever the people here
do. We’ve had a lot of interesting cultural experiences so far, and I thought I’d
share a few with you over the next few blog posts to give you a better picture
of life here.
One of the most common cultural events for the ladies here
is scraping sago, which they call “una” (pronounced: oo-nah). The sago palm is
extremely plentiful here and it grows wild, so it’s the perfect staple food. Once
it’s scraped out, the inside of the tree can be turned into a flour-like
substance which can be cooked several different ways.
Most ladies will scrape sago at least once a week, if not
more. The sago will last several days without refrigeration, so they can use it
for a little while before getting more.
The ladies use a specific tool for scraping, which they call
a “name” (pronounced: nah-may).
They swing the name up over their head and bring it down,
letting just the tip of it scrape the sago. They can scrape through a 2-foot
long chunk in probably an hour or less!
When they finish scraping the sago, they take it to a water
source where they “wash” it. They set up a trough with a container at the
bottom (all out of jungle materials, I might add!) for catching the sago.
Next, they put some of the sago scrapings into the trough
and pour water over them.
Then, they squeeze the sago scrapings to get all
of the water to run out of them. The powder that gets caught in the water flows
into the container at the bottom and is the substance that they use to cook
with. The scrapings that remain in the trough get tossed out.
They repeat this process over and over until all of the
scrapings have been “washed”. Then, they dump all the water out of the
container at the bottom. They remove the remaining flour-like substance and
take it home in their homemade sago baskets, which they call an “anto” or “antu”
(pronounced: ahn-toh or ahn-too).
It's a lot of hard work!
Oh, and in case you're wondering, the title of the blog post, "mo una nenema mawi" means, "I'm going to go scrape sago" in Uriay. :)
