it's the small things

I have been making fun of Brian this week because every time he opens the refrigerator he exclaims with delight when the light comes on. It seems such a small thing – a light bulb for your refrigerator. But there is no such thing as instant gratification here in the middle-of-nowhere, Papua New Guinea. When our light bulb burnt out, we soon found that we couldn’t obtain a new one locally. We had to order one from Australia. It took two weeks to arrive. Brian kept a running countdown. “Next week the light bulb should be here.” “This week, the light bulb should arrive.” “Today is the day – I hope the flight isn’t late so that we can get our light bulb before the weekend…” It did come in time, and now when we open our refrigerator, we can see the contents. It’s a beautiful thing.

Likewise, I was absolutely delighted today when I could clearly see the bottom of the toilet bowl. Brian has been up on the roof a lot recently trying to put the final touches on our new plumbing system – one last valve for our header tank which he pieced together from random spare parts. It took him a while to get the configuration just right. Now, at last, we can have rain water feeding the entire house (at least in the rainy season when there is no shortage of supply). Up until now, we have been limited to using “RAM water” (water that is pumped out of the river) for our hot water, showers and toilets. RAM water is usually a murky yellowish-brown and tends to stain things. With the new system, we can use rain water for everything. My haus meri came and cleaned this morning while I was at work, scrubbing away the last of the RAM water stains, and at lunchtime I was shocked when I looked into my toilet bowl and it looked clean.

So, those are just a few examples of how we find joy in the little things here in Ukarumpa.