Changes, Part 2

All the changes I wrote about last time were about food... That wasn't intentional, but food is a big difference here. There are no restaurants, and you make pretty much everything from scratch.

My "normal" has changed in some ways that don't revolve around food. Here are a few more of them:

1. Water - Clean water is a precious resource. Each home in Ukarumpa has a water tank or two that collects rain water from their roof. During the rainy season, it fills up, hopefully with enough water to get through dry season. During dry season (which is now), you're always conscious of how much water is in your tank, and do your best to conserve, so you don't run out.

That means shorter showers and using river water for your laundry. (The river water is pumped to houses, but can be really dirty at times. It's still a shock when my laundry comes out dirtier than when I put it in!)

The twin-tub washer that uses river water

Hot water can also be a precious commodity during dry season. Why? Because its always cloudy and there isn't enough sun hitting the solar panels to heat the water up. I've learned to pay attention to the weather, so I will know if I can have a hot shower or not!

"The tank is overflowing! Quick, take a shower!"

2. Driving - People drive on the left side of the road here. Driving around Ukarumpa is easy because there are few cars on the road, and the gravel roads are bad enough that you can't drive very fast. Out on the real PNG roads, driving can be a dangerous game; you have to dodge people, animals, other vehicles, and car-eating potholes that are in your lane.

The main (and only) highway between Madang (on the coast) and the Highlands (where I live)

Although the actual driving here is very different from home, how much I actually drive or even ride in cars is more of a difference. At home, we use our cars every day; here I ride in a car only about once a week.

I can walk everywhere I need to go - work, the store, post office, church, library, friends' houses, etc. Ukarumpa is less than a square mile of land inside the fence, so I can walk anywhere I am allowed to go and back again.

Ukarumpa

3. Internet - We have an internet connection here (as evident by me writing this blog :-) ). While it has its problems occasionally, overall it's pretty good. The big difference between here and home that has changed my habits is in cost. Where at home there is a monthly fee, here I pay around $.20 per MB of my internet use (any page I open, anything I download or upload).

So I surf without loading pictures, don't watch videos or download files. Before downloading anything, I think about how much it will cost me and if it's worth it. (A 6MB song would be $3.20 for the download, on top of the cost of the song. A 100MB album is about $20 in download fees, more than the cost of the album itself.)

I'm looking forward to getting back to the "land of free internet" as we call it around here, but I know it will be an adjustment to surf the internet with pictures turned on and not feel wasteful.

4. Clothes - To be culturally appropriate in PNG, women need to disguise the outline of their thighs. The easiest way to do this is by wearing a skirt, but a long top or shorter skirt over jeans also works. After dressing this way for two years, I'm going to have to get used to the fact that wearing jeans (without a skirt over them) in public is not indecent!

Yes, this outfit looks weird, but without the skirt, it's immodest.