I met lots of new people. The two that are my age are Bonny and Shamaia (pronounced Sha-my-a). Bonny also came from Australia but Shamaia is a local kid. The next day after we arrived I helped my grandma teach the preps (there are 5 of them, Dodo, Unity and Simon).
In the afternoon it was the school sports day. There were two teams each with 12 people. We joined red for the day. The difference between their school sports and ours is that there is a lot less individual sports and more team sports.
There are lots of wild pigs, a few wild dogs and a few wild goats.
We’ve done heaps of things in just the first week but I’ll just tell the things you’ll be interested in. We went to another small town called Iokos. My dad and grandpa were going to build them. They were going to use old wood but the locals had a budget to complete the project and said they hadn’t spent it all so they wanted to buy more. I thought they were crazy but my grandpa said they’d come a long way because around a century ago, most of them were cannibals!
Dodo learning clapping games
Bonny at the Mu Mu
Shamaia playing games outside her village hut
"Cigarette Bush" flowers on our eyelashes
In the afternoon it was the school sports day. There were two teams each with 12 people. We joined red for the day. The difference between their school sports and ours is that there is a lot less individual sports and more team sports.
There are lots of wild pigs, a few wild dogs and a few wild goats.
We’ve done heaps of things in just the first week but I’ll just tell the things you’ll be interested in. We went to another small town called Iokos. My dad and grandpa were going to build them. They were going to use old wood but the locals had a budget to complete the project and said they hadn’t spent it all so they wanted to buy more. I thought they were crazy but my grandpa said they’d come a long way because around a century ago, most of them were cannibals!
at Iokos we spent time with Elsie and her daughter, Talith Methew
The nearest supermarket is 4 hours away so we always visit the market to get fruit and vegetables. It is fairly smelly and sometimes there’s not much food being sold. Everything is very cheap. The most common are peanuts and bananas but you never see apples, watermelon, rockmelon, cherries of berries because they don’t grow here. Paw Paw is their equivalent to rockmelon.
small market
coffee shop
sign on coffee shop
Mt Hagan market (4+ hrs drive away)
We went on a walk down a very steep hill to get to a river. The track was very slippery and it was very tiring. No one would allow a path like that in Australia. We called it the hill walk.
Every holidays, some kids host a sleepover. There were 9 girls, all 11 or over years old sleeping on mattresses in the lounge room. Here in Kompiam the power goes on at 6:30pm and turns off at 10pm, so we went to bed at 10pm.
We went to the hospital worker Jim’s house to get bananas. They grow in a HUGE bunch with a BIG flower on the end. The bananas here taste different because in Australia the bananas are ripened by gas and here they’re ripened naturally.
