Mumu!

Well, now I finally have some time to update you on my weekend. There were two high school music concerts this weekend that I very much enjoyed. The first was Friday night's jazz concert, and the second was Saturday night's band and choir concert. The kids here are very good musicians, and it was fun to hear what they could do.

Saturday afternoon, I took a hike with a few members of the audit team around some of the area south of the centre. It was nice to get outside of Ukarumpa for a little bit and see more of PNG. We came to this one little village where a big crowd of kids came running out to meet us. They absolutely LOVED having their pictures taken! I got some fun videos of them all screaming and laughing and jumping for joy as one of the other guys was getting ready to take their picture. It was fun to be the highlight of their day!

Today, I went with the audit team to the PNG Bible church just outside Ukarumpa. The service was in Tok Pisin, and the congregation was almost entirely nationals. It was interesting, even though we couldn't really understand much of what was being said. The sermon was about how Jesus needs to be Lord of our lives, we can't be going after materialism or spirit worship (something that was, and still is to some extent, a part of the culture here).

Afterwards, we went to a traditional PNG "mumu". That's their name for a big meal. What they do is they dig a pit in the ground, then put rocks in the bottom. They build a big bonfire on top of the rocks, which heats up the rocks. When the fire has died down, they scrape away most of the ashes and coals and leftover charred wood, then throw bundles of food (wrapped in huge green banana leaves) on top. They lay more banana leaves on top of that, then cover what is now no longer a pit, but a mound, with dirt. Typically they will also stick bamboo pipes in so that they can pour water into the mound through them, which creates lots of steam when the water reaches the hot rocks. They pull the pipes out and seal off the mound as well as possible so that they've essentially created a giant pressure cooker in the ground! About 2 hours later, they'll start digging the food out, and the meal is ready to enjoy. Here's a sequence of the food being uncovered:


The food was pretty good, mostly a variety of starchy items like 3 varieties of kaukau (sweet potatoes), some real yams (not what we call yams in the States, which are really sweet potatoes), some cooking bananas (which are meant to be cooked rather than eaten raw), and this grass/root thing (I forget the name) which I tried, and don't really know what to compare it to. Others said it tasted like cooked cattails, though I can't really vouch for that, as I've never had cooked cattails. If any of you have, well, then maybe you know what this tasted like! We also had some chicken, pork, and sausages to go with all the potatoes. Usually that's about the extent of the course options, but considering that we were a large group of "whiteskins," our host put out some fresh fruit as well. The pineapple was amazing! I don't think I'll be able to enjoy it in the States anymore. It has so much flavor here!

We also tried a few coffee "cherries" that were growing nearby. You would never know that we get coffee beans from them, if you didn't know better. It really does look like a small cherry, with something that looks a lot like a bean seed inside. The cherry part is fairly sweet, and the bean really doesn't have any flavor. Apparently the coffee beans we're used to seeing only get their flavor through being roasted. Speaking of which, apparently the coffee here is so much better than what we have at home, and it's a reasonable price too. (I don't drink coffee, but people who do have told me this) If any of you want me to buy some for you and bring it back with me, let me know, and I'll get a definitive answer on what the price would be.

There's a group that just got in yesterday who will be staying here in the same house I'm in for the next 2 weeks. They're doing a missions trip around the world, stopping in Australia, PNG, Thailand, India, Nepal, the Netherlands, and then back to the US. One of their leaders is named Jacob, and he and I are sharing the same room right now. They thought that would make things easier, having both of us in the same room. All they have to do is say "the Jacobs' room" and it's clear what they mean. The place is quite lively now that they're here. I may get to go out and around the valley with them from time to time too.

There's something here you can be praying about, that I don't think I've mentioned in any of my other posts. SIL members all have to have visas to be here, and I think they're valid for three years. Unfortunately, they are done in a large batch, so they all expire at the same time. Normally this isn't a problem, they just send everything in for renewal processing and within a month or two it's all taken care of. Well, this year, there's a big backlog in Port Moresby (which is where they're all processed) so a lot of people are without valid visas. The government is ok with letting them stay here even though their visas have expired, because the government knows the situation. Members can't, however, leave the country without a valid visa. There are a lot of people who are planning to go back to the States or elsewhere in the next few months for furlough, to take their kids to college, etc. If they don't get their visas on time, they can't go, which is anywhere from a $5000-20,000 loss depending on the size of the family and the number of airline tickets involved. At this point, people have been able to get their visas sometimes just days before they leave, but the whole situation is quite stressful for those with plans to leave. Pray that the offices in POM will be able to process everything quickly and that everyone who needs their visa will be able to get it on time.