Did establishing friendships sound complicated to you? It sure was to me even though I observed it many times. I finally decided to take food to a man who called me friend and had invited me to spend time with his family. His name was Yarsuo. His home was a couple of hours hike from my village and I was welcomed with open arms. They made a big fuss over me. I get that sometimes. I told him I didn’t understand friendships so I wanted to be his friend. They killed a chicken for me and gave me supper and a bed in the haus man. The next day, they said good-bye to me. Little did I know what I had stepped into.
A few weeks later, Yarsuo came to Keu village with nine other people carrying string bags of various types of food. My village people welcomed them warmly and unpacked the food, putting it in piles. After all that, the women of our clan who were my ‘relatives’ brought the hot food they had prepared to feed the ‘friends.’ Some was eaten intertwined with a great deal of chatting between both groups. Some short speeches were made, and the friends left for home.
My clan seemed quite happy about going to their gardens, gathering food, cutting firewood, cooking the food, and giving the food to my friends. But it was dawning on me, how little I knew about friendships. One of the first clues was that they had brought a cooked goat and small pig along with their other food gifts. I thought to myself, “What do I do with all the things they brought?”
One man said, “I’ll take the pig and then kill one in return when we take food back to them.” No one claimed the goat so I cut it into pieces and distributed it to all of my helpers, realizing I would have to buy a goat to repay it, but my village helpers who consumed the goat would contribute cash to me to buy the replacement goat for the next episode.
Some weeks later, my family said it was about time for us to go pay back my friends. I had been searching for a goat to buy with no success, but I heard a man in the area was selling one for $75.00 so I bought it and brought it back to our village where it was butchered and cooked for our return trip. There were about 16 men and women who gathered food for my friends, including the man who had claimed the pig brought to me who had butchered one about the same size and had it ready to pay back. Kathy also accompanied us on that trek with all three of our pre-school children. After most of the event was over, I had another engagement to attend and left ahead of our group. Unfortunately, on the trek back home, a small dog rushed up barking loudly at Kathy and the children and bit the back of Kathy’s calf. She was in terrible pain, but didn’t show it as the children were already traumatized. It didn’t break the skin, but the bruise took a long time to heal.
Lydia is on the right
During that visit, Yarsuo introduced us to his son and told us he would be our eldest daughter Lydia’s husband. Clang! Clang! My alarm system kicked in. Friendships were not about making friends—they were about betrothing your children.
When Yarsuo’s pig had piglets, he and his wife came to the house with a black and white spotted female piglet as a gift for us. This not only ensure that we would have a pig of our own, but hopefully also have a liter of piglets from which we could repay them and have some to give them out to our relatives to raise for the future wedding feast. It was obvious that I had learned just about enough about making friends, but I had to learn one more thing. How was I supposed to end this friendship without causing hard feelings between the two clans?
Before that happened, twenty-two of our friends arrived with food again, and our villagers cooked for them, visited with them, and sent them on their way.
Our first furlough was looming, and we didn’t know for sure if we would be able return to our field of service. It was a great time to settle accounts and end the betrothal. The next time our friends came, we gave them $16.00 which was the going price to cover the chicken they had cooked for me initially and for their gift of the piglet. We told them it was a good time to break the betrothal and we thanked them for helping us to learn some important things about their culture. All seemed to go well with them, and years later, we saw their son working in town and he treated us with great respect, warmth and affection. By then, he was married and had four children. Interestingly enough Lydia got married and had four children as well.
We had never been able to speak Yarsuo’s name. We had to call him “Yogon yariyo=Friend.” Others through the years would approach us and try to give us gifts and say they were our friends, but we were wise enough not to start another betrothal of any of our children. But we did learn that being friends in the Elimbari people group was a business relationship leading to becoming in-laws.
We did have many friendships through the years in the tribe, and most of our friends had a huge impact on us. Take a couple named Pita and Kafaina. In the clan which I was adopted into, his father was my father’s elder brother so that made Pita my brother and his wife my sister-in-law. After living a couple years in Maki and Gorai’s house, I decided it was time for me to live by myself. Pita said I could build right in front of their house, and the villagers all rallied around and built my house for free. Well not exactly free because I had helped many of them gather materials for building their houses so it was a pay-back thing. Still having a low income, we scraped some money together and gave the eight builders $10 each for my tiny house. It was built on two foot posts with a bamboo woven floor, walls woven from reeds, and a sword grass roof. I had one window that looked down the main path of the village. I had a small shelf on which I prepared food and cooked it. After eating I would get out my dishpan to wash the plates, and then I threw the water outside. I used the water that seeped into the village-water hole from a hill behind the haus man. I had a Coleman kerosene lamp, and a tape recorder and a single bed which completed my humble abode. It served me well and allowed me to have such wonderful relationships with my land owners, Pita and Kafaina, and with many other neighbors. It brings tears to my eyes and a great ache to my heart as I think about these wonderful people whom God allowed me to call family.
Our other neighbors directly across the path were Jon and Gorai who had a new son named Samuel and he was joined later by two more brothers and one sister. I spent a lot of time with them and they were happy to teach me the language and culture. Next to them on the left side were Naraka and his family, and on the right side his son Maki. Naraka was a bit older than the rest of us and was like a big brother. Rather than pining away for those we loved back in America, we were able to love and be loved by those who surrounded us in the village.
Americans were a bit shocked when we told them how much we loved the people of Papua New Guinea. But why would they think that, just because most of the villagers were illiterate, half naked, and lived in a strange uncivilized way? But they were dearly loved by us and our Father who sent us to share His truth with them. Later, many of them became believers and served the Father themselves.
Pita and Kafaina had five sons. Pita later became a believer and developed into a fine teacher. I loved to hear him inject relevant culture illustrations into his sermons. Kafaina looked after us with food through the years and two of their sons became pastors. Kafaina was probably the most cheerful giver we had ever met. She divided everything into tenths and made sure she gave one tenth to God. Sometimes, her offering alone would be larger than the rest of the congregations combined. Of course, she didn’t flaunt it, but we knew about it.
After many years of teaching, Pita told me was going to quit speaking because he was losing his teeth. I encouraged him to keep speaking because we didn’t have any trouble understanding him. When he was old, the congregation decided to acknowledge him and another faithful teacher with a big feast and financial gifts. Pita was attending a local wake and teaching God’s Word until nearly daybreak. People said his message was very powerful. He headed home for some reason and collapsed in his yard and went to be with the one he loved and preached about. Kafaina had died earlier from breast cancer.
Jon and Gorai were another notable couple. She was a very shy private woman, but I saw her weeping out loud for a pig that had been killed. She explained to me that it was her first pig and equivalent to a firstborn child so she mourned its death. One night her toddler, Samuel, was crying and wouldn’t go back to sleep. She kept trying to distract him, but it didn’t seem to be working. Finally, we heard her say, “If you don’t stop crying right now, I’m going to ask the white woman to come and get you.” We were awake because huts usually have thin walls. Kathy shouted, “Samuel, you had better go to sleep or I’m coming over there.” Immediate silence!
Often during child birth, people would fill the hut and make it a social event. They would have a fire in the middle of the hut for heat, causing smoke to billow out because the houses had no chimneys. People would be chattering and trying to guess what the sex of the child would be. There was a lot of bantering and laughter. One night Maki’s wife was having her first child and we could hear her shouts of pain during each contraction. I could hear people saying lie down and rest, and others saying don’t let her lie down or the umbilical cord will wrap around the baby’s neck. On top of all that, what I heard the most was, “Don’t let her sleep! Make her walk up and down the path.” I walked over to observe how things were going and I couldn’t be more shocked when I saw the smoke billowing up, people smoking, dogs lying down trying to sleep, rats and cockroaches scurrying around and just the unsanitary conditions compared to a nice sterile delivery room. More culture shocks. Will it ever end? She had a healthy baby boy about 8:30 the next morning.
While living in the village, we never used our truck to do daily things. It was left in the garage at our home on the station. We wanted to let them know that we would travel the way they did, but I told Maki if she didn’t have the baby by morning, I would go get the truck and take her the six miles to the government health center at Chuave, but I didn’t need to take her. Later on, when an occasional expectant mother had been in labor for a long time, I would drive them down to the health center. Sometimes medical emergency cases would show up which were mainly bad cuts from their using knives, machetes, axes or shovels and occasionally wounds from fights. It became apparent that when I took some of the wounded people down, especially after-hours, there wouldn’t be anyone to suture them up. I would hear excuses like, “The doctor has gone to town. The one in charge of the keys forgot to leave them when they went away.” So, gradually I decided to do it myself. Did I have training in suturing? Not really! But I did sew up a few animals, learned how to castrate cats, dogs, hogs, cows and horses. Sometimes I would remove tumors from various animals and people. I usually just sutured them up with a needle and thread.
Then one day, my village son, Tabau, who lived next door, cut two of his toes while chopping firewood. He was in great pain and losing blood and made it over the pig stile to our side of the fence. The truck wasn’t there and there was no way I could carry him for six miles so I told him I’d try to suture him up if he agreed. He did agree so I told him to lie down and put his foot up on the lowest rung of the pig stile while I went to fetch some xylocaine to help numb his foot. I quickly went to the house and drew up xylocaine in a syringe and returned to him. I injected him in several places around the wounded toes.
After that took effect, I got him up, and with my aid he hopped over to my house and up the steps and I laid him on a bench by our kitchen table and elevated his foot to rest on a towel on the table. The xylocaine had done its job so I asked his wife to hold the flashlight over his wound so I could suture him up. He didn’t feel a thing, but his wife got sick from looking at the blood and had to excuse herself. I heard her heaving in the ditch a few moments later. So, I asked Kathy if she could assist me with the flashlight. She was smart enough not to look at the blood and suturing. He had missed his big toe, but almost split his second toe lengthwise. The third toe was nicked, but didn’t need to be sutured. We finished, put medicine on it and wrapped it up in clean bandages. To our surprise, he healed up without any infection.
Before we did that procedure on the table, I had the village leader’s first wife come to me crying in despair. She let me know that her only child had been bitten badly in the neck by our dog which had gone over the fence and evidently tried to kill it. Never get between an elderly mother and her only child. Somehow, she managed to chase the dog away and bring her ‘only child’ to have me suture it up. I had no xylocaine at that time, but I told her I would do my best if she promised me two things. One was to bring her only son every day for medicine and the second was not to remove the bandages from him. She agreed, and I proceeded to find the best way to piece together the tears in what used to be the neck skin of the piglet. That’s right! Her only child was a piglet. We laid it on his back on a towel on the table and with her holding it tightly, I proceeded to suture that sucker up. You are probably wondering how it all turned out! I’m glad to report the patient survived.
Years later, I had a man approach me with his hand held out as if he wanted to shake my hand, but he held it at my eye level. I was a bit confused, but he said “Look at the scar on my hand. You stopped the bleeding and saved my life when I had severely cut my hand with my machete.” The memory of that incident flooded over me and we hugged in a warm embrace.
Margie
There were other times we faced puzzling medical conditions. Once, our youngest daughter, Margie, was sick with a fever. As the fever raged, she stopped eating and drinking. We knew how quickly children can die from dehydration, so we felt helpless living without medical help nearby. She looked so pale and small and we were at a loss to know how to help her. We knelt down next to her bed, laid our hands on her and prayed for her. The prayer was something like this, “Lord, you see how sick Margie is and you know we don’t know how to help her. You gave her to us to look after, but if you choose to take her, we put her into your hands.” Shortly after that she started to improve and remained with us.
Our daughter Lydia woke one morning with red eyes. We thought she might have pink eye, but there was no discharge from her eyes. We put medication on her eyes faithfully for several days, but the eye that was red remained inflamed. Our co-worker, Ron, was going to the small town of Kundiawa, the Provincial Headquarters, and offered to take Lydia and me along to the hospital there. He also was taking another missionary from a different organization along. Unfortunately, Ron put a hole in the truck’s oil pan on a stretch of bad road. There was no repair shop around so he had to remove the oil pan and take it to town for repairs then” return with oil and get the truck running again. We had no idea how long that would take, so the other missionary, Lydia and I decided to catch a local ride into town. But then I got to thinking that Kundiawa hospital only had 2 or 3 doctors on duty most days so maybe I should take her in the other directions to the larger town of Goroka.
After walking from the place where the oil pan had been punctured up to the main road, it seemed best to take her to Goroka. However, our trip with Ron was going to be a free one and now we would have to pay for a ride. I kept thinking over and over in my mind, “This is the way we need to go in order to get help for Lydia’s eye.” We paid our fare and climbed up on the open-bed pickup truck. Not far from where we got on, we approached a bridge which was blocked. The policeman there said the road would be blocked until 5:00 pm.
Undaunted, we got back our fares and walked over the bridge on foot. It was the only road to Goroka and too far to walk and there was a summit over 8,000 ft tall to cross, but we pressed on. After a short hike, a truck pulled up and stopped so that the driver from the road construction company could offer us a ride to the place he needed to check on his workers. We climbed into the cab of the truck and came to the one ford on that road. He let us out and turned around to go back to check on his workers. We had to take off our shoes and socks and wade through the cold rushing water to the other side where we sat down and put them on again.
By then, it was getting warmer and the road was steeper. We plodded on and a dear elderly woman offered to carry Lydia on her back until she reached her destination. After that we walked on for some time getting hotter and thirstier. Another driver from the road construction company drove up and said he had to go to the other side of the summit to pick up spare parts and offered us a lift. He took us to the place they parked their construction machines and invited us into his trailer to have a drink and a rest. After a refreshing rest and drink, we headed out walking again. It was mostly downhill from there and we made good progress.
Another vehicle with tourists was heading up the road in the direction we came from and I told them the road was closed until 5:00 pm. They said that was okay; they just wanted to go to the summit, take some photos and come back again. They said they could help us out on their return trip. We kept walking until they returned and picked us up and took us as far as a small intersection named Asaro. While we were there, we saw some trucks heading to Goroka and hopped on one for our last section of our trip. The truck took us straight to the hospital.
As we entered the hospital, a nurse asked me, “Do you have an appointment to see the doctor, or do you want one?” I told her we needed one, and we didn’t have to wait long before being ushered into his office. We had seen several ‘mini miracles’ already that day, but this one ranked a bit higher in our minds. The doctor had flown up from Australia and was visiting the different major hospitals around Papua New Guinea. He specialized in cases with bad eyes. Wow! We could have grumbled and complained along the way, but God led us to the very place where a specialist had time to take Lydia in for an appointment. She was a child and at that time the hospitals treated children for free. Another mini miracle. He examined her eye and pointed out that she had a little growth on her eyelid which was irritating her eye and making it red. He gave her a shot to numb it and took it off in one try. Had we gone to Kundiawa we would have missed out on his help.
He had given her a prescription for eye ointment, so we headed on foot to the center of town and the pharmacy. We picked that up and shortly afterwards we saw a woman trying to get into the pharmacy. She was shaking the door and I said to her, “What are you doing? She replied that she was trying to get in, but the door was locked. She looked at her watch again, then shook her head and said, “The pharmacies in Paris are open until 9:00 pm.” She looked down at Lydia and was taken by her pretty face and her pig-tails. She invited us to accompany her back to the hotel where she and her daughter were staying. On the way, I told her the story of our adventure that day and added some cultural information for her as a traveler. She wanted us to tell her daughter what we had said to her so we went along and did that. As we prepared to leave, she shoved something in my pocket and we left. To my surprise it was $20 which would help us pay for our fares back to Elimbari.
The mission guest house in which we had stayed our first two nights was in Goroka, but I didn’t have a key to get in so we decided to get on yet another truck and go the five miles to our field headquarters to visit folks and get a key to the guest house. After getting the key, we got on our final truck for the day and spent the night in the guest house and departed the next morning for home. On that excursion I learned so much about being patient and allowing God to lead us in His direction. He reassured me that He knows where we are. By the way, Lydia’s eye healed up nicely.
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