{"id":2453,"date":"2013-07-15T00:15:28","date_gmt":"2013-07-15T04:15:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/bart-allen\/?p=2453"},"modified":"2013-07-15T19:45:44","modified_gmt":"2013-07-15T09:45:44","slug":"everyday-life-in-amdu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/bart-allen\/2013\/07\/15\/everyday-life-in-amdu\/","title":{"rendered":"Everyday Life in Amdu"},"content":{"rendered":"

Most of you will never have the chance to come to PNG to visit us in the Amdu tribe.<\/strong> It\u2019s just about impossible to describe life in the tribe so you adequately understand it if you haven\u2019t been here. But in an effort to help you get a feel for what it\u2019s like to live in Amdu, periodically we will share some snippets from everyday life.<\/strong> If you have questions or comments after you\u2019re done reading, please send us a message via the contact page here on our blog. We would love to hear from you!!<\/p>\n

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– All our power comes from energy collected from our solar panels and stored in big batteries under our house. We have a solar powered fridge and freezer, all of our lights are 12 volt so they use much less energy, and we try to charge our computers during the day. Then at night we have enough power to run lights and 12 volt fans if we need them. Our washing machine uses quite a lot of power so we have to make sure it\u2019s a bright, sunny day with lots of watts coming in from our solar panels before we do laundry. There have been a few times when I\u2019ve almost run out of cloth diapers because it\u2019s been too cloudy to do laundry! But for the most part, we\u2019ve been fine with our power situation. Of course we do have a generator that we can use if we have to, but we have to fly in fuel to run the generator so we try to limit the use as much as we can.<\/p>\n

– Many mornings at 5:45 we hear someone blowing a trumpet-like instrument over in the village. We know it has something to do with their religious group but we\u2019re not totally sure yet why they blow it so early in the morning!<\/p>\n

– Another thing we often hear is something that makes a noise that is kind of a cross between a car alarm and a whistling tea kettle. It is quite loud. Just the other day, we discovered that it is a type of leaf bug making that noise!<\/p>\n

– Many things about this place remind us of the Simbari tribe where we did our bush orientation a few years ago \u2013 the clouds that roll in and cover the mountains, the gardens that the people have on the steep sides of the mountains, the muddy, slippery paths\u2026 Normally you can see the mountains directly behind the houses in the village but not this day!<\/p>\n

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– Some of the kids showed Luke and Titus a cool bug that they have since found a few times in our house. If the bug gets onto its back, it can click and snap up in the air and then land on its feet! It\u2019s just a little bug but it\u2019s pretty cool to watch it pop up in the air and flip over.<\/p>\n

– Up until a few weeks ago, we only had two doors in our house \u2013 the front door and another one going out onto the back porch. All the other doorways (including the bathroom) only had curtains\/extra shower curtains hanging in them. Now, however, we have a door on our bathroom and on our bedroom! The other doorways still have curtains or are just open. Making more doors is on the list of house projects to finish!! We\u2019ve been so used to not having doors that it will be kind of weird once the doors are on all the rooms!<\/p>\n

– Luke and Titus are both excited to learn the language with us. They try to write things down in notebooks and they\u2019ve been using new phrases when they are playing with the kids. Caleb likes to mimic things too, and the people love it when he says something to them in Amdu.<\/p>\n

– Amdu ladies are great at multi-tasking. Just about everywhere they go (sitting in the house, walking on the airstrip, hiking down trails\u2026) they are working on making bilums (bags they make from string that is made from the bark of a certain tree). You might liken it to crocheting or knitting. It is common to see the ladies walking steep mountain trails carrying a baby in a bilum, holding a toddler on her hip and having another big bilum filled with produce from the garden. The handle of the bilum rests on the lady\u2019s head and whatever she is carrying hangs down on her back. Girls start learning all these things at a pretty young age. The lady below has a bilum on her head and is working on making another one.<\/p>\n

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– We have lots of little bugs that get in through the cracks in the walls at night. They are interested in our lights. We have done what we can to stop them, but there isn\u2019t too much more that we can do. Most nights it is no big deal at all. We just sweep them up in the morning. Most of the time, though, all we are sweeping is bug wings as the ants have disattached all of the bug bodies and carried them away in the night! I guess you could say it is interesting to see all the wings.<\/p>\n

– The sun can get pretty intense here and during the day outside it probably gets up into the 90\u2019s. There is often a nice breeze though so it doesn\u2019t seem too hot, if you\u2019re in the shade. Most nights it gets down into the 60\u2019s. We don\u2019t have any type of heat in the house so if it gets too chilly we just throw on another blanket.<\/p>\n

– Many people treat their pigs almost like pets. They carry them around in their bilum if they are small or they tie a string on their leg and walk them around. Here is a couple out for a stroll with two of their pigs. \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

– People are often bringing us food from their gardens. We sometimes get so many bunches of green leafy stuff that it is hard to keep up with! Right now we have a whole heap of kaukau (sweet potatoes) too. But they aren\u2019t the dark orange kind you normally see in the States. The skins are purple, red, white, yellowish or orangeish and the insides are usually whitish or yellowish.<\/p>\n

– The people are fascinated with the house they have helped us to build, and the gadgets that we use inside. We don\u2019t take them throughout our whole house, but it is interesting to see an older adult talking to the younger ones (in a language we don\u2019t speak yet), explaining how our stove works (who knows what they are saying) or how our door locks. It is quite a thrill for them to see all these strange things.<\/p>\n

– The people use machetes for everything \u2013 cutting grass, cutting firewood, \u201cpeeling\u201d their sweet potatoes before putting them in the fire to cook and many more things. So, it is not uncommon that sometimes people get hurt. One method for caring for a machete cut is to cover the wound with moss and then wrap strips of bark around it to hold it in place. We do have an aid post in our village so the people can get medicines if they need it but their \u201cbandages\u201d often look like what you see on the lady\u2019s leg in the picture below.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Often it is at the same time fascinating, sobering and sad to discover more and more about the culture of our Amdu friends. But a big part of our job right now is to understand everything we can about the way they live and how they think. Please pray for us as we live and work among this group of people!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Most of you will never have the chance to come to PNG to visit us in the Amdu tribe. It\u2019s just about impossible to describe life in the tribe so you adequately understand it if you haven\u2019t been here. But in an effort to help you get a feel for what it\u2019s like to live […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":392,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2453","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-family","7":"category-ministry","8":"entry"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/bart-allen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/bart-allen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/bart-allen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/bart-allen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/392"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/bart-allen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2453"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/bart-allen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2453\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/bart-allen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/bart-allen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/bart-allen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}