Darryl and Becky Jordan
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Living in the Dark Ages!

March 30, 2007 by

Dupmeyawe cooks corn in his firepit in 2007. There are no stoves in our village.

 

 

 

 

  

 Becky with Andavakya    Andavakya with bamboo tube and firewood

 

People in Wusuaarambya REALLY do STILL LIVE like Americans DID in the DARK AGES!

 Recently this article was sent to us and I compared it to our village life as it is at the present time.

This will boggle your mind, I know it did mine!
The year is 1906.
One hundred years ago.
What a difference a century makes!
Here are some statistics for the Year 1906 :
************************************

The average life expectancy was 47 years.

Only 14 percent of the homes had a bathtub.

Only 8 percent of the homes had a telephone.
.

There were only 8,000 cars and only 144 miles
of paved roads.

The maximum speed limit in most cities was 10 mph.

The tallest structure in the world was the Eiffel Tower!

The average wage in was 22 cents per hour.

The average worker made between $200 and $400 per year .

A competent accountant could expect to earn $2000 per year, a dentist $2,500 per year, a veterinarian between $1,500 and $4,000 per year, and a mechanical engineer about $5,000 per year.

More than 95 percent of all births took place at HOME .

Ninety percent of all doctors had NO COLLEGE EDUCATION!
Instead, they attended so-called medical schools, many of which were condemned in the press AND the government as "substandard."

Sugar cost four cents a pound.

Eggs were fourteen cents a dozen.

Coffee was fifteen cents a pound.

Most women only washed their hair once a month, and used
borax or egg yolks for shampoo.

Canada passed a law that prohibited poor people from
entering into their country for any reason.

Five leading causes of death were:
1. Pneumonia and influenza
2. Tuberculosis
3. Diarrhea
4. Heart disease
5. Stroke

The American flag had 45 stars.
.

The population of Las Vegas, Nevada, was only 30!!!!

Crossword puzzles, canned beer, and ice tea
hadn’t been invented yet.

There was no Mother’s Day or Father’s Day.

Two out of every 10 adults couldn’t read or write.
Only 6 percent of all Americans had graduated from high school.  

Eighteen percent of households had at least
one full-time servant or domestic help.

There were about 230 reported murders in the ENTIRE U.S.A. !

Now I forwarded this from someone else without typing
it myself, and sent it to you and others all over the United States, & Canada
possibly the world, in a matter of seconds!

Try to imagine what it may be like in another 100 years.

IT STAGGERS THE MIND, EH ?

This was my truthful response.: 
Thank you for these figures. I would like you to have some figures from our villagers here in PNG in Wuzarambya.

Keep in mind that we live in a village where they still wear grass skirts, Andavakya carries firewood.  Freddy wearing a grass skirt have no stoves or refrigeration, no electricity and no running water. There are no cars or paved roads here. So here are the true figures for 2007.

2007 in Wusuraambya, Papua New Guinea 

The life expectancy in our village is 55-57. 

 

 

Kandakuriya with a new bush knife.    Carrying Firewood and garden produce is woman`s work Baagamwoi  carries bamboo.  They use bamboo for cooking, carrying and drinking water, house construction and making fences. Bagamwe and Palitnja carrying the bread, bottles, and bananas that we gave her.

 

 

 

There are no bathtubs in our village – only the cold river!

 

Baby on the rock Swimming in the cold river  Erinn and Lindsey swim in the cold water. 

 Woman Washing Sweet Potatoes   Women wash their clothes at the creek. 

 

 

 

 

There are no telephones in our village. 

 

 

There are no cars and no paved roads.  

Village trail 

 

 

 

The villagers can walk 3 mph.

 

Lady returning from her garden  A woman carrying produce up to her village

 

 

 

The tallest structure in our village is our house.  

 

 

  Our front yard neighborhood 

 

 

The average wage is $100 per year. (You figure it out!)

 

 

There are no accountants, dentists (or toothpaste), veternarians, and mechanical engineers here.

 

None of the births take place at "home" rather in a grass hut on the ground away from the "home" because a "woman’s blood contaminates everything including food".   Tabatha`s baby.  She carries it on her back in this bilum.

 

 

Baby sleeping in string bagSo 100% of all births take place in our village in a grass hut with the sister or mother of the lady delivering being the mid-wife.


There are no doctors here – only the missionaries. We do have a nurse’s aide and an aide post. The government nurse’s aide is present 6 months out of the year but he never has medicine. 

Wusuraambayan  villagers cannot buy sugar or flour.

They grow chickens and charge 3 cents per egg when they sell them.  

 When the rooster crows, it is time to wake up in the village. Watches are rare in the village.

 

 

They grow coffee to sell to Goroka town and receive 25 cents per pound for it.  (When you buy PNG coffee at Starbucks, think of that!) 

 Women carry the coffee.  James up in a tree picking coffee. 

 

 

 


All the women here wash their hair once or twice a month in a cold river with a yellow bar of soap. There is no shampoo here.

All the people in our village are POOR. They earn about $100 USD per year from selling thousands of pounds of coffee. Jeman cleans and dries his coffee.

A young girl puts out her coffee to dry in the morning.  Every night she has to but it back in bags.  It takes about 10 days to dry coffee.  Old woman processes (removes the fruit from the coffee "bean") by hand.

 

 

 

 They have no shoes and have never had a brand new piece of clothing.

 

This woman is carrying product from her garden up to the village where she lives.  Bagamwe and Palitnja carrying the bread, bottles, and bananas that we gave her.

 

 

 

We give them second hand clothes.  

 

Selling clothes.  More teaching  Freddy eating greens from a pot lid near the fire.

 

 

The five leading causes of death is is tuberculosis, emphysema, influenza, pneumonia, and child – birth (mother as well as the infant.)

The PNG flag has 5 stars to represent the Southern Cross.

 
The population in our hamlet is about 67 but in our language group of Wuzarambya, we have 4000 living in 15 different hamlet of approximately 4 rugged miles.

 

Willis at his house    Mesu eating sweet potatoes

 

 

 

Crossword puzzles are not invented here yet.


Ice tea is non existent as there is no refrigeration or ice and the villagers would not drink it without sugar. (My husband makes a pot of tea with sugar and milk for the villagers each day and sets it on our porch for whoever comes. It is a real treat.)


I remember one time in 10 years that we have lived here when a man brought in beer from Goroka on a Cessna 206 plane. The men got drunk and the result was a 4 year old girl getting cut with a huge bush knife. She had to have stitches.  Kandakuriya with a new bush knife.

 

 

There is no Mother’s Day or Father’s day here.

8 out of every 10 adults cannot read or write. (We have 70 in our literacy class now.) Their language was not written before we came.

 

Community School  Becky corrects Luke`s dictation.  Female literacy class  Enias checks his dictation.  Jaakurya teaching the female class at church.

Luke learns to write for the first time.

 

 


Less than 1% of our villagers go to High School nevertheless graduate.

 

 

 

.
All the men have full time servants here at no charge – THEIR WIVES! The men have between 2 and 4 wives at the same time. The wives carry 100 pound bags of coffee on their back to the airstrip and work like dogs in their gardens all day long just to feed their families. They carry heavy loads of firewood home each night to keep the family warm and to cook over.

  Buukwaya carrying firewood

 

 

We have had between 7-14 murders here in the last 10 years.

So what is your opinion?  Do we live in an enviroment of 100 years ago or 500 years ago? Food for thought!

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More Posts:

« Literacy
Living in the Dark Ages! »

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March 30, 2007 by

Please pray for our Wusuraambyan friends who are very poor that they might find "riches" in knowing Christ as their Saviour!  The believers are teaching the third set of Chronological lessons and will finish in a few weeks.

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More Posts:

« Living in the Dark Ages!
The completion of the Third Wusuraambyan Evangelistic Outreach! »

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Darryl and Becky Jordan

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