Here are the four of us along with Eric and Bape who are from a neighboring language. They were also sharing with the village all the different things that go into a translation program.
Here is the crowd that enjoyed watching us eat our dinner.
As night fell you can see the porch where these meetings were conducted lit up by a solitary pressurized kerosene lantern.
We awoke to beautiful morning the two days we were there.
Here we are checking out the school.
The Library
The office had a computer, printer, and photocopier, which is a pretty significant thing for rural PNG. Ryan was quite pleased to see all of this and that the teachers were using it and taking care of it.
The upper grades classroom
The lower grades classroom. You can see that this one is built from traditional materials.
The generator that powers the school and the teachers' homes.
The sports field for the school with the teachers homes in the background.
Here is the water system source. Now for some of you it may look like some old WWII gun turret with water coming out, but believe me it is not. What the community has done is cemented over a spring on the hillside and let the water run into the cistern. That is the part we are standing next to. The bottom of the cistern has a black poly pipe coming out which runs down into the village and at multiple locations. The white PVC pipe coming out of the cistern is just the over flow so that the cistern is always full. The whole system works on gravity.

Here Caleb and I are pumping water through our water filter next to one of the spigots located throughout the village. Even though the water source was pretty clean, we still did not want to take our chances with catching a bug.
Here is what is left of the old airstrip. In the sixties and seventies airstrips were built all over PNG because there was no other way to access most of the country, but with the advancment in roads many places that once had airsrtips no longer use them and turn them into gardens or build houses on them like Kesengen has done. However, with a little help from a bulldozer this one could probably be opened again.
We also were testing cell phone reception in this remote part of PNG. Since 2007 cell towers are springing up all over PNG, which has made communication much easier and more reliable. However, in Kesengen the service is still spotty and most of the time you have to hike to the top of the mountain if you are going to get service. Our communication and technical services department sent us out with a special antenna to test to see if it would boost the signal strength enough for us to get reception. Here we are attempting to use it with the crowd of on lookers. Sorry to say that we got no reception during this attempt.
This is the sign telling people the price per kilogram for sun dried coffee beans in the big coffee bags. This region grows a lot of coffee and we walked though many coffee gardens along our trek. This weeks price is 3.50 Kina or about $1.35. This coffee is then taken to a coffee mill that will roast it and bag it to sell to the public or overseas.
Leaving Kesengen we pile up our bags for our porters to carry. Now before you think that we have just slipped back into colonial times it is a good thing that we had porters carry our bags. First off, the trail ahead was pretty rough and we didn't want to go tumbling off the mountain trails to our deaths and also the people feel it is a gesture of hospitality to help you as you travel though their area.
Finally the view of Kesengen from the road as we climb the trail on our way to Saut.
1 comment:
Thank you so much Brian for coming (and Susan for letting him come!). If you guys hadn't joined me, I never would have gone. You prayed over me, kept me light-hearted when I would have been anxious, asked good questions of the people to help me learn a lot of valuable information, and so much more. You definitely served us and our translation program, and the people will be talking about you guys for years to come! I still hear the names of each of the surveyors (from 2006) almost daily, so you'll be famous for a long time. Thanks!!
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