Accidentally landing in a (minor) tribal war

Brian and his teammates arrived in Nemnem, a village found in the Bosmun language area, ready to work. The community leaders were already present and a large group of men were buzzing about excitedly in the haus boi, a structure that in many areas of PNG is built to house single men. In this area the haus boi serves a higher function as the “men’s house” where major community and religious events occur with men only. Women are punished severely for entering these types of structures. The first thing the team did in Nemnem was sit down with the leaders to figure out a good time to come together for the presentation on PBT’s new translation project their community was being invited to join. This discussion was interrupted when someone yelled from the bush and all the men ran off intent on a fight. Brian and his teammates were left alone with one community leader who quietly stated it would be safer for them to find another village to sleep in that night.

Animosity has existed between two Bosmun villages, Nemnem and Dongan, for a very long time. On this particular day an incident occurred at the primary school in Dongan where several children were hurt by an out of control young man from Dongan. Just two days before the two communities had come together and found peace about this individual. Dongan promised Nemnem they would control this boy and that no more violent episodes would occur. Nemnem promised to wait for Dongan to deal with the issue without getting involved themselves. When Nemnem was told about the beatings at the school, they felt Dongan had betrayed their promises to take care of the problem and chose to respond in the only way they knew how; by sending a raiding party to Dongan to destroy the property of this boy’s father. It was now Dongan’s turn to feel betrayed after the peace talks and to respond in kind. Apparently they chose to do so right when Brian’s team arrived. The team quickly left the area and spent the night with a family PBT knows well in a neighboring language area.

This seems like a dramatic event to us coming from cultures where retaliation and revenge are not so violently enacted by whole communities. For the people of Nemnem and Dongan this incident was one of many and perfectly normal. Everything was progressing by the book. The next morning a community leader from Dongan called Brian and asked the team to come back to the area. Both Nemnem and Dongan had agreed to call off the fight until after the team completed their work in both villages. So in one day they presented in both villages, spent the night in Dongan, and left the area the following morning where presumably hostilities resumed.

Some of the Nemnem men after the presentation.

In order to be part of this new translation project, the Lower Ramu Project, each language group invited is required to create a board of leaders that includes representatives from each village, dialect, church, and school. Though PBT is involved in the training side of this project, the weight of responsibility is on each language group to organize and direct the project. The Bosmun people are desperate to have God’s word in their language, and despite being encouraged by their willingness to step away from their anger for one day in order to hear how they might get God’s word in their language, it is just one day and one small fight. It will take the work of the Holy Spirit to truly bring them into the cooperative relationship required for this project.

Please be praying with us for our branch as they seek to reach four language communities in a new way with various complications within each group (not all quite as severe as tribal war). Pray specifically for these two Bosmun communities, that they would find love and peace where there is now anger and hurt. Pray that God would open their hearts to His ways of peacemaking through the practice of translating portions of Mark into their language.

Rewiring my brain

I'm 17 weeks pregnant. That's just three short weeks away from the halfway point. I've had three check-ups and each time we've "seen" the baby. First it was a bunch of black and white shadows that made no sense to me. Then it was a bunch of black and white shadows that made no sense to me, but included one pulsating splotch that our doctor said was the heart. I believed him. Finally, we saw the clear form of a baby, and even though he or she looked a bit like a creepy alien, I felt overwhelmed with fuzzy emotions.  

Despite all the baby sightings, this next appointment will be my first real appointment. So far I've been seeing the doctor under "confirmation of pregnancy" appointments. Really?? We're still confirming it after seeing splotches that tell you there's a baby forming (they didn't tell me... it's just my nauseous body confirming it), after seeing a heartbeat, and after seeing the little alien baby outline?!? But, indeed, my first real appointment is in three weeks when I will be halfway done.

The first time we visited Dr. Bolnga I had no idea what to expect. We turned into a small compound protected, like everything else in Madang, with a steel fence and barbwire. The guard opened the gate for us and pointed down the gravel road to the back building. It reminded me of medical offices in the States, in that there are no obvious signs to help guide and direct. There's just the building, which looks unfortunately like all the other buildings nearby, and it's up to your resourcefulness to find the right glass doors. Only there are no glass doors to Dr. Bolnga's building or office. We parked and walked around to the back of the building which faces an empty field and the Astrolabe Bay. After figuring out that the bottom offices belong to World Wildlife Fund, we made our way up the concrete steps decorated with various potted, tropical plants and found the door marked "Hope Specialist Health Care Limited." We added our shoes to the pile at the door and made our way down the poorly lit hallway to the cramped waiting room. It was already full of women and, despite the small air conditioning unit, it was hot. There are no set appointment times, it's simply first come, first serve. So we waited and waited, again not unlike our stateside prenatal visits. For that first appointment we had Ray with us and smack in the middle of the room was yet another leafy potted plant with an oh-so-enticing-to-a-toddler-if-they-could-read sign that said "Do Not Touch." Of course she wanted to touch. She just knew it was forbidden with her toddler radar. While we waited we intermittently kept Ray away from the plant and watched her get cozy with our fellow patients in the waiting room. The exam room was small, like most. Unlike most it didn't feel like an exam room. It just felt like an office with a bed in it. No stark white walls or paper sheets on the bed. No scale. No obvious medical paraphernalia or anatomy class pictures on the walls. Just a desk, a bed with regular sheets, an ultrasound machine that looks like a 1980s computer, and some chairs. In my cultural framework, that doesn't inspire confidence. I'm trained to equate knowledgeable medical practitioners with pristine facilities and paraphernalia. And labelled pictures of the muscular system. 

Dr. Bolnga's office building

We met Dr. Bolnga back in 2011 when I spent a couple of nights in the Madang Hospital for dysfunctional ovarian cysts. He was good then and he's good now. In fact, Dr. Bolnga is one of the best in the South Pacific. He trained in Australia and received the highest score (they call it the gold medal) of everyone that took their final test in the South Pacific Commonwealth nations that year. That means he beat students from places like Australia and New Zealand, and this test is apparently quite difficult. He's good. And though I know this about him, our appointments have felt haphazard and not at all what I grew to expect from my doctor's appointments during Ray's internment in my belly. So they feel wrong even though they aren't wrong. They're just different.

I walk away from each appointment less disconcerted than the last. I'm slowly becoming more accustomed to the vast cultural differences in how Americans treat pregnancy and how Papua New Guineans treat pregnancy as manifested through my highly competent but completely laid back PNG doctor. My brain is rewiring itself to accept this new kind of medical care as "good" even though it looks totally different from what I culturally define as "good" medical care. In the end, I would have no qualms staying here for Baby Garbo's birth if I knew that Dr. Bolnga would be the attending doctor and if the medical facilities he had to work with at the hospital were better equipped for complications. Neither of those is true, so we'll head to Australia with his blessing and thank God that in the meantime Baby Garbo is in unfamiliar, but excellent hands.