Tyler and Emily in PNG

Saturday night was my final visit with my local wasfamili here at Nobnob. This time instead of me and my roommate going to their home they came to our haus kuk here at POC. This meant me and my roommate had to prepare dinner for us and the 6 them. We had a preparation talk from the staff and a town shopping trip earlier in the week to buy items for Saturday night. We decided to stay with the staples of choice: rice and beef stew. The next big step was actually preparing and making the dinner.

One twist to all of this is since PNG is an event oriented culture knowing their time of arrival is a complete guess. They told us at our last visit they would come in the afternoon. Well afternoon usually means anytime after 5:00 pm. We started cooking my baking dessert, brownies. We brought the fancy brownie mix from the Philippines, White King Brownies. We baked the brownies over a fire in a huge pot. In order to mimic an oven you place 1” of sand in the bottom of the pot. It works really well and the brownies were a hit with the family. We also added store bought Oreo’s. You definitely can’t go wrong with Nabisco Oreo’s.

After the pot oven, we kept the fire going for rice. Most PNG’ers don’t mine if their food is not hot straight off the fire. They eat their food lukewarm most of the time. We took advantage of this and started to cook 1 KG of rice or about 5 cups. Following that, I cut some carrots and one green pepper that I bought from the town market and boiled them down in water before adding the braised steak and onions for the stew. A neighbor kindly gave us a half of an onion to add as well. We warmed that over a slow fire until the family showed up at around 6:30 pm.

By this time it is about dust and we were getting hungry. It is normal to talk and story before dinner. We sat down, discussed the day’s events and of course the earthquake in Japan which caused a tsunami warning here. About 1 hr later, the family was ready to eat. Due to the time of year, it is rainy season and we were praying for a quiet night. Of course, it rained but it did not wash out any plans. The family was perfectly fine with sitting under the overhang of the dorms, out of the rain. We ate the rice, beef stew, and another pot of taro, greens, and bits of chicken that they brought. Believe it or not, every last ounce of 5 cups of rice was gone. And every last Oreo and brownie was eaten. The rain came and we stayed dried within the comforts of the company.

It was a pleasant evening despite the rain. I think I was more pleased by the way all the food came out. The waspapa did comment that he did like the food. He even had two big plates of the ‘gutpela kaikai.’ We have one more short visit where we will give gifts to show our appreciation to them.

Prayer Requests:
3 day survey hike (Mon – Wed)
Village preparation – buying food and supplies for 5 weeks

Praise:
Good Health