What you won’t see back home

People have been telling us since our arrival that the rainy season starts some time in December and becomes regular and heavy in January and February. We were told, because the roofs here are invariably made of corrugated metal, that there are times when you can’t hear others talking on the phone or even when in the same room.

We even brought along rain gear from home. We have bright yellow rain slickers that we use when sailing in Maine that don’t let a drop of water through. We even brought galoshes (aka rubbers) to keep our footwear clean and dry.

Not that it hasn’t rained in Ukarumpa nor that it hasn’t rained hard for brief periods. It has but we can certainly say that the rainy season hadn’t started on time. Up until now we haven’t used the slickers much but the rubbers have come in handy.


Rain water collection system
 The rainy season seems to have started now. It’s late. It’s almost the end of January and we begin to see regular, heavy rains each day. That’s okay by us (especially since the best water to use is not the river water but the rainwater collected off the gutters of every house). The only real problem we have is when we’re out and about and have forgotten umbrellas or our slickers. A lesser inconvenience is when we have to walk someplace (like from work to home) on the roads which have turned from dirt gravel into slick mud.

I walked home at the end of the day during a brief intermission of heavy rain so I only had to deal with the slick muddy conditions. Of course a number of others were also on their way home. Six months in PNG and it still catches my attention when you see someone happily walking home barefoot.

Here I am, dancing from rocky surface to grass-covered tuffs and back to avoid all that mud, winding my way down the road. Here comes a barefooted person happily making a beeline up the road, sometimes even carrying shoes they’ve pulled off to keep them clean, at the sacrifice of clean feet. All I can think of is how squishy and cold their feet must feel.

And often the person may be a missionary kid (aka MK). You wouldn’t see this at home. The parent would be scolding the child for bringing mud into the house.

What behaviors will I take back to the US from here that will catch someone’s attention?

I hope that my life in Christ causes me to catch someone’s attention, no matter where I am.

Hmmm…

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