Happenings on the Hill...

This afternoon we had a very sudden strong wind for about 5 minutes. Just long enough to cause this dead tree to fall across the road. Thankfully, no one was hurt when it fell. As you can see in the photo, Hugo came to "help" move the tree. It was too heavy for the car to move it in one piece. It's a kind of iron wood. So there was one guy with an ax, which needed to be periodically sharpened, who was able to cut the tree in half allowing Hugo to move it with the car. There were of course, the requisit onlookers, many of them slightly inebriated fellows who demanded 1,000 rups for their "hard" work from anyone on a motorbike going by. This event knocked out our power for a few hours of course.

After the tree was moved, there were a number of kids playing on a gate that was leaning against the fence on the left in the photo above. Suddenly the fence fell back and one of the children was under it. They immediately lifted up the gate and of course began shaking the child to see if he was ok. He wasn't. The expat dentist happened to be driving by and he stopped and checked out the child who was not very responsive. It was decided to take him to the hospital in Sentani. At the hospital they decided he should go to a different hospital tomorrow because the x-ray technician at the first hospital is on holidays or something. Hopefully he will be able to get the help he may need. Unfortunately the event occurred on land owned by a mission org working here. I'm not sure what the ramifications of this event may be.

Brynne found her bike upon our return from furlough and promptly began riding it, having never ridden a two-wheeler before! There is a larger bike for her in our crate, which is currently in customs in Jakarta.

These ladies are coming home after spending the day in their gardens. They were collecting vegetables for a pig feast for tonight. I'm always amazed at the heavy loads these ladies can carry off their foreheads! The lady on the right is Ibu Mika, Yokben's sister. And the girl in the orange shirt is her oldest daughter Mira.

Yokben has been wanting to go to Pyramid with his wife as her father is very ill and Mere hasn't seen her family in 2 years. He had been going to the airport and checking on the prices of tickets with Trigana Air (local airline). It has been hard for him to get tickets. The price of a ticket to Wamena is about 850,000 rupiahs or roughly $100CAD. I was at the pool yesterday and I met a Dutch woman who was returning to her home in Wamena the next day. She had bought tickets with Trigana but then found out she could go with one of the mission aviation groups instead. Preferring that, she mentioned to me that she had these Trigana tickets to sell.... My mind went racing ahead and I told her about Yokben and his wife wanting tickets. She thought that was a good idea and we went and found him and she sold him the tickets for a greatly reduced price and this morning he and Mere flew to Wamena. From there they will take a taxi (pickup truck) to Pyramid. Mere was so excited about going back home that she couldn't sleep last night!