the land of the unexpected

   

     

 I (Matt) made it back home safe and sound but it was a long 4 days. Part of my job here at POC is to drive. There are only a couple of staff and 2 national employees that can drive our vehicles.

     At the end of each course we make a run up to Ukarumpa (the center of SIL in Papua New Guinea) to drop off the students and pickup supplies for POC. I had never taken the students up before and I had some building supplies to pickup in Lae (the second largest city in the country) so the job fell on me.
    
     We generally take two workmen with us so I chose two guys who hadn’t been in a while, Papa Ganig and Ugal. The three of us loaded up the Hino, a 3.5 ton truck that POC uses to transport students and larger orders, and then all the student sat in the back on foam matrices.
     We left of Ukarumpa Monday morning about 7. The roads around here are always a craps shoot. It is about a 7 hour trip in the Hino with a long strip of unpaved road in the middle. If the unpaved section is in good shape you can shave an hour or more off your time. If it is in bad shape then you can add an hour or more to your time.
     God smiled on us on Monday, the road was in great shape, and I set a personal record! We had enough time after dropping off the students to do some of our work that afternoon. I also had the chance to visit with some of my national friends in the area.
     One of the nationals I visited was Paul, the guy that found the pigs for me. He was concerned that the surviving pig was missing food from the highlands so he sent a huge box of highlands kaukau (a version of sweet potatoes) back with me for the pig to eat.
     PNG is called “the land of the unexpected” and it is true, the most unexpected things happen here. I am beginning to understand this and try to anticipate it. With this in mind I called South Pacific Steel to check on my order in Lae before I arrived and what do you know, they didn’t have it ready. In fact it had not gotten past the quote stage. This is just the way business operates in PNG. I think the reason for this is two part. First, people will tell you what they think you want to hear because it is better to lie to you than to risk breaking the relationship. Secondly, this is not a time oriented culture. They are more concerned about the event. If it happens now or five hours from now it make little difference.
     Long story short, we went to Lae I checked on the order when we arrived. It and another order were not going to be ready until the day we wanted to leave. They kept dragging the time out and we didn’t get to leave Lae until 2:00. Of course the road was much worse going back. They had been trying to grade it in the rain. So, it was not a fun ride back in the dark with a fully loaded truck.
     The fuel light came on a pretty good way from home and there was no place selling fuel. We should not have made it home but we prayed the whole way home and God answered our prayers. We arrived home just before 10 pm with the fuel hand well below the empty line, safe and sound.
    Just another day at the office
     matt