Gud nait olgeta,

9:45 p.m. on Thursday here. I had a quiet day yesterday and a busy one today. Lots of malolo (rest) yesterday, including a heavenly three-hour nap under the fan. (Do I really have to go back to work at that news organization in two weeks?) I spent today in Madang town with the two Pathfinder International ladies, Jil (Papua New Guinean) and Jennifer (American). It's been a bit of a struggle to arrange my visits/interviews with the limited truck schedule to/from town, but today was great. I was able to be there all day. They're trying to hammer out all the details surrounding starting up an NGO, and there's lots of them. Buying a secondhand car that's still in good shape. Finding office space. Finding decent housing for Jil. Getting estimates from the nearest city, Lae, for possible cars -- they have to fly there and back in one day. Renting a Toyota Hilux so they can go out in the field. Finding a driver. Figuring out who from the Departments of Health and Community Service will be coming with on this "field trip."

I recorded while they discussed some of the challenges of setting up this program: government inaction, trying to set up reproductive health services in a predominantly Catholic area, health care workers from "outside" coming into a different region, adolescent access to reproductive health services, men acting as family decision-makers and controlling women's fertility and the biggie, sexual and gender-based violence. Wife-beating is a big problem here. Big.

Tomorrow we're scheduled to go out in the field to a nearby village. Jil and Jennifer will gather "pre-test" questionnaires from a few villagers who are willing to talk about what, if any, health and family planning options are available to them. It will be another full day.

I think I will schedule a half-day introductory dive session for Saturday with the dive shop at Jais Aben Resort. (Thank god for credit cards, since I'm nearly out of money.) Then we have a barbeque Saturday night, then I leave Sunday.

After I rode in the back of BRG's pickup truck back to Jais Aben this afternoon, I grabbed my bilum (string bag) to sit down on the jetty and write in my journal about the day's events. Also had my recorder. I started recording the sound of the water hitting the shore at high tide, and then my friend's adopted daughter and her four friends came down to the jetty to see what I was doing. After some prodding, they started talking about what they saw in front of them. One person would hold the mike and another would listen through my headphones. I monitored the recording levels. They loved it. Pushed and shoved a little bit over who would get what next. 40 minutes of heaven -- they laughed and ducked under all the wires and hung from the trees while I took pictures. We finished up our "recording session" as it got dark. One of the girls, Marianne, braided two little braids out of the wispies the wind had pulled out of my ponytail. (Wispies, a.k.a. heat-induced 'fro fuzz.) It was a nice end to the day.

Had dinner with my compadres Benjamin, Sindana and Yat. (Side note -- last night we had a wonderful 40-minute discussion about whether PNG is a poor country or a rich country. They all said rich, because of the fact that Papua New Guineans own 97% of the land in the country. It's one of only five countries in the world, all of them Melanesian, where land is owned by the people of the country. PNG. Solomon Islands. Vanuatu. New Caledonia. Fiji.) Manrico the Australian left for Port Moresby this afternoon, so it was just the four of us. Benjamin and I stayed at the table for a long while talking about race relations in the U.S. and what life is like for black Americans. I tried to explain some of the things I've noticed or heard about, including the sensitivity of using the n-word, but felt completely inadequate at explaining an experience I've never had. I also resorted to English for the first time to explain some of my thoughts... Not sure why Tok Pisin wouldn't do. I guess I wanted to make sure I got my words as right as I could.

Why is race so sticky? It's really not much of an issue here. I mean, I'm stared at constantly, but that's a given because I'm one of a few white people in a black-skinned country. I've said that before. I chafe at being called misus, but my aunt Delta told me after I explained the slavery connotations that it's a frequently-used term referring to everyone, not just whites. Masta, the equivalent male term, is a little more uncomfortable. So is pikinini, the word for children here. What matters here is clan affiliation. It's not a coastal vs. Highlands distinction either. It's a specific hauslain (extended family) and then the clan within that hauslain. The guy I rode with on the plane to Goroka had told me how upsetting it was to him to have an Aboriginal man in Cairns, Australia call him wantok. He said to the man "You're not my wantok. We may have the same skin color, but you're not my family." I think if he were from the U.S., he'd probably have the opposite reaction. Just my opinion... But then again, during that conversation about the Australian government's treatment of Aboriginals the other night, Benjamin, Sindana and Yat were all very, very sad to hear how the Aboriginals had "lost" their land. They clearly identified with them.

I was very excited to find a book in the BRG collection called Yali's Question by Deborah Gewertz and Frederick Errington. Ms. Gewertz was my anthropology professor for a class I took at Amherst College, and the second person to mention PNG to me. (First was Ms. Faber, my second grade teacher, who was a missionary here way back when.) She's done her research in the Sepik River region, known for its intricate carvings. The book is about the Ramu Sugar Corporation and how it's changed life in PNG. I plan to buy it when I get back home, but I'm trying to read what I can in my spare time. Haven't gotten through the forward yet... I remember Deborah Gewertz being very upset when I wrote her an email to say I was going to PNG through the Peace Corps back when we got our posting notification in late 1998. She didn't think volunteers were doing much to help the people of PNG. I wonder if she still feels the same way.

Time for me to sign off. I still have to do my 6+ pages of journaling before I sleep, and I'm pooped.

S.