Saturday Visitor

I originally wanted to title my post "Unexpected Visitor," but that isn't entirely accurate. My PNG friends tend to show up on my doorstep right before I'm leaving for work on weekdays and anytime on weekends. They're unexpected in the sense that I never know when they'll show up or what requests they will have, but they're expected in the sense that I know they will keep showing up.

Today, right as I was about to get start on my Saturday housecleaning in earnest, I heard a really faint sound coming from the direction of my front door. I almost didn't check, but when I did, I found my most frequent visitor standing there with a toaster. She had picked up the toaster from someone's trash pile and wanted to see if it worked so she could sell it. (She doesn't have power at her house.)

After determining that the toaster seemed to get hot, but the locking mechanism was broken, she got down to the real subject of her visit. Her mother-in-law went back to where she's originally from for the funeral of an uncle and got really sick, so sick in fact that they're already trying to figure out how they're going to afford a coffin.

I asked if she'd had any medical care and my friend said that her sickness is caused by someone doing sorcery on her, and they've only been using traditional medicine (and presumably traditional spiritual rituals) on her. Apparently she even became unconscious (or something similar; Tok Pisin is so ambiguous!) a few days ago, but they managed to revive her by rubbing her with stinging nettles!

She wanted to know if I would buy a coffin (about $100) and she and her family could work for me to pay the debt off. I want to help, but I feel kind of used, because this particular friend asks me for money all the time. I prayed for her and told her I'd look into the price of wood for a coffin (she thinks it will be cheaper if they buy the wood and build the coffin themselves). But I have to wonder, what would she and her family do without me (and others) here to give them money every time they have a need? What do people in other parts of PNG, without a community of foreigners to ask for help, do?