When we leave Papua New Guinea and head back to the States in the middle of November, we will have been here just a few weeks short of a year. In thinking back through our first year on the field and in anticipation of adjusting back to U.S. culture, we thought we’d share with you some funny things that have become normal for us! Enjoy! And feel free to send us a message and tell us which one is your favorite. 🙂
Things we’ve gotten used to here in PNG (in no particular order):
- Driving on the other (left) side of the road – but, of course, depending on where the potholes are and how big they are, we still might drive on the right side of the road too – there are no center lines on most roads and definitely no rules about when you can and can’t pass someone
- Watching everyone get frisked by the security guards when they leave a store – it hasn’t happened to us, yet! White people never steal things, right?
- Having a small airplane be the mode of transportation to get to doctor’s appointments
- Going to town to buy _______ (it’s possible to fill in the blank with many things – cheese, spaghetti sauce, skim milk, mayonnaise, crackers…) and not being able to find it at any of the stores – just yesterday we couldn’t find any mayo or spaghetti sauce but we did find Pringles potato chips – the choice of flavors didn’t sound too appealing though – seaweed, blueberry and hazelnut, soft-shelled crab!!! We passed on those!
- Seeing more tennis shoes hanging from telephone lines than on people’s feet – okay, maybe this is a little exaggeration, but seeing someone wearing tennis shoes is not very common – some people wear flip-flops but the majority are barefoot – the stores here definitely don’t have the “no shirt, no shoes, no service” rule!
- New favorite snacks for the boys – bush crackers, Solo (a kind of lemonade-like pop), Twisties (similar to Cheetos) , Scotch fingers (shortbread type cookie)…
- Not being able to return anything that you buy from the store – if you buy something then get home and find out it’s broken, too bad!
- Being able to go out and cut down a banana tree to get a whole stalk of fresh bananas (and sometimes finding a little green tree frog hiding there) or having one of the boys shinny up a papaya tree to get a ripe papaya
- Hearing the birds chirp and sing at all hours of the night and day
- Being careful where you plug things in – the voltage is different here and it “wanders” too. Many computers have been killed as a result!
- Driving home from town and having the road filled with people – and then having those same people look at you with surprise that they are in your way – “What’s a car doing driving on this road? Isn’t the road for walking on?”
- Seeing small children with very large knives and machetes – and seeing fires set along the road, in a field or pretty much anywhere is nothing to worry about
- Ants everywhere – crawling across our computer screen and keyboard, on our toothbrushes, in trails on the walls and in our cupboards, in our soup sometimes, pretty much everywhere – we keep them around because they’re cheap pets for the boys!
And the list could go on…
All this and much more encompasses what the new normal has become for our family. And that normal is about to change again as we return to the U.S.!!