The fact that I’m part of a team that has completed almost 15 weeks out on patrol, living and working in villages and communities in rural Western Province, is still a little crazy to me. Back in June when we set out I didn’t really have a concept of what life on patrol would look like, and now that previously unknown rhythm has been my life for a few months.
It’s been good. Full. Challenging. A little strange and quite amusing at times. And I have seen God’s faithfulness and ability to grow my heart to care about more than I thought I could (and honestly, sometimes wanted to).
I thought I’d take a moment to try and paint a picture of what my days have looked like these past few months, and walk you through some of my ‘regular’.
F O R C O N T E X T
We are out on patrol running maternal and child health clinics, as well as helping with the Covid vaccine rollout. Our team is currently made up of 5 YWAMers, two health workers from District Health (they usually work in Balimo and flew up with us), and a rotation of the local Boboa Health Centre health workers who come out with us each day. There’s a lot of different skills and experience in the team and it’s a good crew to be in this with.
Lake Murray is that dark blue dot on the left.
D A Y I N T H E L I F E
Around here my days have started just before dawn these past few weeks, not by choice but rather an internal clock that has gone a bit rogue. I am thankful that dawn isn’t until just after 6am so it isn’t a ridiculous time to be awake, and I can lay on my sleeping mat in the comfort of my mozzie net and watch the sunrise through the window with the knowledge that I don’t need to be anywhere for at least another hour.
Breakfast usually lands somewhere between 7:15 and 8am depending on what time there is damper available to buy at the morning market. Breakfast is also the first time in the morning that everyone is in one place at the same time so it doubles as our morning brief; how many immunisations we need to pack, travel time to the village and anything else we need to know about the day.
Once breakfast is done things progress pretty quickly into go time. Sunscreen and lifejackets on, immunisation out of the fridge and into the eskis, clinic bags and boxes over to the boat and everyone in.
I had very little concept of how big Lake Murray was until I got here but it’s the largest lake in PNG, about 2000 square kilometres in the wet season. That is, well, quite large. We set up clinic in villages around the lake, and depending on the village size depends on how long we are there; some days we’re in one big village and sometimes we’re hitting up to four smaller places to make sure we can see and offer the same service to everyone we can, regardless of whether they live in a village of 500 or 20 people. Our daily ‘commute’ ranges from about 20 minutes to 2.5 hours, depending on where we are going.
Something that always strikes me with this is that these are times based on us travelling in a motorised dinghy, and our commute often represents hours if not days that someone would need to paddle to get to the health centre by canoe.
When we pull up in a village we sit in the boat until we get the a-ok for clinic to happen there, and then it’s unpacking boats and getting everything up to wherever it is that clinic will be located. Where we set up clinic varies in each village. It’s often a community building, school or church, but can also be aid posts, benches with a lakeside view, under someone’s house or on the tarp in the shade.
Each clinic starts with a ‘tok save’ which the translated gist is that you’re giving an announcement and we introduce our team, everyone in it, and let people know what services are available that day. Then we dive into health teachings,
which at the moment is a lot about COVID-19, the Covid vaccine, as well as routine childhood immunisations.
This village cassowary turned up (on the right side) for this education session.
After tok save clinic gets underway in full swing. Parents bring up their child’s clinic book to check what vaccines they are due for, ladies and mummas bring up their own records for family planning or antenatal checks, and there’s a progression of people rolling up their sleeves for the Covid-19 vaccine.
Babies in bilums will always make me smile.
What I love about this photo is that the gent on the left is one of our boat operators (drivers). They often jump in to help out in elements of our clinic, and after a few days hearing us give the information he jumped in to talk the parents through how to best securely hold their kids for vaccination. Super helpful. He also spent a clinic morning helping me with translation while I was registering patients; I learnt some new phrases in the local language but the only one that stuck at the end of the day was ‘please don’t cry’ as he’d said it to nearly every kid I’d tried to get the temperature of.
Clinic can be difficult but there are so many aspects that bring me hope.Each time we see babies and children for their next round of vaccinations and step these kids closer to having received a full set of routine childhood immunisations. Which means protecting these kids from a whole bunch of diseases the best we can, and hopefully meaning that these communities won’t know what things like polio or whooping cough look like.When we are able to offer family planning services in places where they are not usually easily accessible and give a couple the ability to make decisions about the growth of their family.And just watching people line up for Covid-19 vaccines. It’s a longer story for another day but I, my team and so many other health care workers, have spent a lot of time these past few months talking about Covid-19 and even longer speaking about the Covid vaccine. Giving information and answering questions, attempting to untangle half-truths, rumours and misunderstandings and hopefully facilitating people being able to make an informed decision, one that is not based on fear, as to whether they would like the vaccine. Watching people line up to receive a vaccine that helps prevent severe illness and death in communities that could so easily be devastated by this virus just gives me such hope.
…I think it would be missing if I didn’t have a photo of at least one bathroom. This one is one of my favourites; there’s no door so you have to be a little careful where you stand if you’re someone’s toilet buddy but from inside there’s a nice breeze and you get a good view of sunset. Would recommend.
Once clinic is wrapped it’s travelling home to restock supplies for the next day and to start thinking about dinner.
The evening market starts at about 5:30 and the one in Boboa is my favourite I’ve been to. Dinner shopping is broken down into categories: protein, greens, kaukau (PNG sweet potato) and whatever other fruit or veggies you find. There is a lot of fish at the market, but we grab wallaby, pig, or deer when we can find it.
Once back from the market dinner prep occurs, usually involving most of the team, or as many people as there are knives and peelers. When everything is ready pots go on the fire and then it’s just a waiting game until everything is cooked.
At this end of the trip I’ve got to spend a lot more time actively cooking; in the beginning the OIC of the health centre’s wife did a lot of our cooking (we use the kitchen at their house) as we sat and learnt how to cook a lot of stuff we had never eaten or cooked over a fire before. But we’ve now learnt a lot and branched out a bit from our one-pot wonders, although the responsibility not to burn the rice each evening is still something that makes me nervous.
What cuts of pig look like at the market.
We aim to eat as early as we can but dinner is usually at 9pm. The whole team, the 7 of us plus the OIC and his family, pile into the kitchen and sit around the outskirts of the kitchen on the floor to eat, all the food being in various pots and pans in the middle.
It’s self serve for dinner, and then sitting around usually recapping the day before the conversation finds another direction. There’s a lot of local language lessons that happen during or after dinner, but we’ve oddly learnt a lot about camels recently (Did you know that Australia apparently has the world’s largest herd of wild camels? I knew Australia had a lot of them but until 2 weeks ago at about 10pm one night I did not know that).
With dinner finished it’s washing up, bucket showers and then crawling back under your mozzie net, making sure everything is tucked in so no creepy crawlies decide to join you in the night.
Then it’s sleep before you get up and do it all again the next day.
So, that’s a little of my world at the moment. It is full, often stretching, but enjoyable and I feel I am where God wants me to be. I am also so grateful for everyone who supports me in various ways; I am so thankful for your messages (even when I’m not the best at replying), your prayers, and financial support which enables me to be here doing what I’m doing. I love and appreciate you guys a lot!
PS: If you have any questions about what I’m up to or what I have been up to please reach out – I’d love to chat with you! If you would like to consider donating to help support me financially in the work I do here please check out this link for more details.