Unwanted excitement

 

We had our first earthquake here in the first month.  We were sitting on the couch.  We felt the shudder.  It didn't last long.  Nothing moved much.  Our driver said it was a medium one when we asked him about it the next day.  Easy peasy! Earthquakes are no problem!  It was 5.1 on the Richter scale so small and fairly typical of what we could expect.

Then came Tuesday last week.  We were just in bed and not yet asleep.  The bed began to shake, the window started rattling and then it felt like we were being picked up and shaken violently.  The whole event was probably less than a minute but it was so intense.  Bottles fell over and things fell off shelves.  The fridge and stove both moved, doors swung on their hinges and drawers opened.  It was quite scary.  We were lying in bed through the worst of it debating whether we should run outside, or maybe climb under the bed, and then it was all over.  The adrenaline hit meant it was awhile before I got to sleep.

The quake measured 6.7 on the Richter Magnitude Scale so was quite a big one, in the 'strong' category - no-one at work had felt one that big before in Lae.  In the event the house was undamaged, and we were only shaken up.  I wouldn't want to be in a moving car if it happened again, or walking, but if that's the worst we can expect we'll survive.  There was no damage reported in town.

It has made me conscious though of every shudder.  There have been a few after shocks, but sometimes it's just the neighbours downstairs jumping around.  I've become a bit paranoid but I think that will ease.

One dismal thing about the earthquake that was discovered a few days later is that it damaged the overflow pipes from the swimming pool and now the pool is closed for the foreseeable future - not high on the priority list for fixing it seems.  Sad, as now I'll have to use the gym for exercise instead - the exercise bike has a very uncomfortable seat!  The pic is from a few weeks ago when I was swimming every day.

We don't get out of the office often but this week we wangled an invite to go with some visiting CSIRO soil scientists and the review team from ACIAR on a day trip up the Markham Valley.  It was a bit 'last minute' and permission from AVI was only granted the day before - we breathed a sigh of relief.  One of the CSIRO team was able to point out the discontinuity in tectonic plates where a slippage of around 8 cm had resulted in last week's earthquake.  We could see the line through the rock strata in the side of the Markham River valley (in the pic below).

We had a lovely day out networking with stakeholders in various agricultural industries.  The last thing on the agenda was a meeting with the farmers at Oriori village near Mutzing, held under a huge old mango tree.  Lydia, one of the spokespeople was quite inspiring.  She spoke only in Tok Pisin but we could understand her clearly and she was so passionate.  In the pic below she is sitting on the rug, in front of the wheelbarrow.  The village had provided fresh fruit to have with our lunch - watermelon, pineapple, cucumber and sugar fruit.  And the wheelbarrow had arrived full of coconuts.  We were each handed one with the top cut off to drink the very refreshing juice inside.

It was a picture postcard village.  The residents made us very welcome.

Next week it'll be back to 8 - 5 in the office.  I'm hoping for some progress on my project at a meeting scheduled for Monday and there's always plenty to do.  

I'll report back in a fortnight, Jenny.

Labu Beach

Here are some pictures from our expedition to Labu Beach last weekend.

On Sunday we travelled from Lae Yacht Club to Labu Lake which is behind a strip of beach on the other side of the Markham River from Lae town.  We travelled in a 'banana boat' with another AusVol and two of her mates, the tour operator and her daughter and three crew.  It was a 15 minute trip and we'd gone from busy Lae wharf to a freshwater lake where the only signs of humanity were some derelict pontoons from a WW2 Australian naval base.  This is Labu Lake fed by several rivers and creeks flowing in from mountain ranges all around.  It is placid and the water is cool and clear.  It is fringed by mangroves, palms and thick tropical vegetation.  We travelled up several of the creeks to get a good look at the vegetation, unfortunately the birds were all hiding. 

Emma from Lae About Tours, Steve and me standing on the sandy floor of the lake.  There are  shell fish living in the sand that are harvested by the locals as well as fish in the lake caught in nets.

Local boats taken out on the lake for fishing and also to get to gardens in the bush away from the coastal village.  There are sago palms both local species and other more productive types the villagers have planted.  Sago processing requires quite a bit of fresh water and is done close to where the palm was growing.  There are tracks through the bush to get to the sago.

This is the village school.  It goes to Grade 8.  The children don't see many whitefellas so wanted to get a close look.

A drum to summon villagers to meetings or to warn of danger.  There are 5 churches along this small stretch of beach - one Lutheran, one Baptist and three evangelicals.  PNG is an exclusively Christian country.  The cemetery was all crosses.

A beautiful beach for a swim.  Clear water as warm as a bath, shady trees and a cool breeze.

 Then home to contemplate going back to work on Monday!

and now, about work

 

In the last 40 years it is only when I've been an AVI/VSO that I have worked full time.  So here I am, 12 months short of retirement age, working an 8 hour day, 5 days a week.  I sit behind a desk all day looking at a screen but it's exhausting!  Thank goodness for Wama, our hausmeri, who does all our washing and cleaning.  We only go in to town to go shopping once a week so have to be organised or do without.  We can get some veggies  from stalls (tarps on the ground actually!) along our road and a few essentials at the kiosk at work.  Today, probably because of yesterday's snap public holiday, there was no bread at the supermarket, and no plain flour.  Luckily we had a little flour left  so I've made some bread this afternoon for tomorrow's picnic.  (My next blog post will be about the long anticipated boating expedition to Labu Beach)

I promised news on work - that's why we are here!  The top picture is the view from my desk when Steve isn't in his chair.  And the other is of flowers on my desk - the cleaner thought I needed flowers!  I think I'm making progress on my "Grand Plan" but it's always one step forward, two steps back.  I'm excited about its potential, the IT tech is excited too.  We'll have a meeting next week with my supervisor, the librarian, the IT tech and me to sort out the way forward.  What I'm working towards is an online library of learning resources for farmers and extension workers with emphasis on small files - posters, fact sheets, podcasts and training manuals - that can be easily downloaded.  The remoteness of many communities and the unreliability of internet means finding what you want on line quickly and easily is important, and only needing to download small files - hundreds of kilobytes rather than megabytes - is the way to go.  Once we get all NARI's resources available I'm going to badger and bully other organisations - commodity boards and universities - to get with the program!  I'll let you know how it goes.

I reported in my last blog that the Governor of Morobe Province had died on the weekend of the Morobe Show.  It cast a bit of a shadow over the show celebrations and the 50th Anniversary celebrations a few days later.  

The Honourable Luther Wenge was the MP for Lae and an influential member of the local community.  He was a strong supporter and defender of my workplace, the National Agricultural Research Institute.  So yesterday, when his body was returned to the province from Port Moresby, tens of thousands of Morobians lined the road in his honour.  It had been declared a public holiday, just in Morobe Province, only the day before but we went to work so we could pay our respects along with the rest of the NARI staff.

As so often happens with events here in PNG the published schedule was aspirational when it came to times!  We had been told to expect the cortège to pass NARI Headquarters at 11 am so we were down by the gate well before then, along with all the NARI staff, both HQ and research centre, the children from the local primary school and many local residents.  We were getting updates from a colleague who was in the official NARI car in the procession.  The car carrying the casket didn't leave the airport until after 11 - the fire trucks there had first to give it a watery blessing with their hoses - and then proceeded at walking pace it seemed for the next 25 kilometres.  At around 1 pm there was disbelief, and some mirth, at an update that the convey still wasn't at Yalu Bridge, about half way to us, and then finally some hope that it might eventually get to us when we heard a report around 2:30 that it was at 11 mile - we are at 9 mile.  We initially were waiting standing near a coconut tree in its sparse shade - not under it as that can have deadly consequences.  One coconut did fall while we were waiting and the person sitting closest - less than a metre away! - claimed the prize.  Our friend Lee, who has an office in the NARI grounds close to the gate, fetched some plastic chairs so we could sit and the waiting wasn't too bad.  It was interesting to watch the school children drifting back and forth from the road over the course of 4 hours as all the false alarms came with each lot of flashing lights and sirens.  There was an entrepreneurial soul selling betel nut and another selling cold fruit drinks. 

Just before 3 o'clock the procession finally arrived! All along the Highlands Highway where our building is, and which runs from the airport in to town, there were palm fronds tied to lamp posts and power poles, and strewn over the tarmac road.  People threw flowers over the vehicle carrying his casket as it slowly drove past.   The convoy was several kilometres long and included trucks and buses overflowing with people.  There were people sitting on the front bumper bars of trucks as they drove along the road as well as filling the trays and sitting on top of the canopies.  Buses too were overflowing, with people hanging out of doors and windows and standing on the back bumper bar hanging on tight!  There was Land Cruiser after Land Cruiser  filled with military and police top brass - goodness knows who was protecting the rest of the country! - and most vehicles were daubed with muddy handprints and graffiti praising the late Governor and wishing him well in the afterlife.

After the main part of cortège had finally passed we returned to the office as the crowd dispersed.  It was another 15 minutes before all the vehicles had gone and we were able to go home.