For the last month the Seventh Day Adventists have had open air meetings on the sports ground across the road from us. In all fairness, it has been nothing like some previous events of theirs, either in volume or length of each day’s service as they’ve usually finished about 8:30 p.m. Nonetheless, some speakers were loud enough to make conversation a challenge, so it will be nice to have our evenings back.
On two occasions in the last couple of years the SDAs have led the Hagen community in organising a massive clean-up of all the rubbish and filth that gets dropped around the town. Since the town authority seems incapable of doing the job itself, it is falling to the churches to keep the place clean. The SDAs took the initiative, organised their folk and vehicles to transport the bags of rubbish to the tip, and made the town look much cleaner and nicer. At the end of this month the Lutherans are celebrating the 500th anniversary of the reformation. With due acknowledgement to the SDAs, which was nice, they also organised a clean-up of the town, which took place yesterday morning. Eric Eribiang, our Administration Manager, is very much involved in the Lutheran Church, so he was authorised to use the MAF truck to transport collected rubbish to the tip.
Nicki and I went for a walk first thing in the morning and intended to join in to tidy up around our compound, but by the time we got back, they’d already done the job and moved on. It was very noticeable driving to church this morning how much better the town looked.
Walking, running or driving in town or around the area it is now sadly commonplace to get children and youths call out, “Waitskin”, “Waitman” or, for Nicki, “Waitmeri”. In Tok Pisin “Wait” is the colour white and is pronounced the same, so you can work out what the words mean. I can’t recall seeing or hearing a child corrected by an adult, so they continue doing it. Yesterday, while out for our walk, a woman deliberately walked up to us with her young child saying, “Waitman, waitman”. Children who are unused to mixing with white people are often nervous, so this woman was deliberately freaking her child out. What sort of woman does that sort of thing to their child?
Fortunately, the vast majority of people are pleasant and greet us with a smile and a friendly, “Hello” or “Good morning”. The name calling behaviour irritates and annoys; it’s unnecessary and backward. Not infrequently when youths do it they’re drunk or have been smoking marijuana, so we just avoid and ignore them. Now put yourself in the position of a single young woman working for MAF (or anybody else for that matter). She was driving past the airport terminal concentrating on the potholes when a well-dressed man in a suit yelled out, “Waitmeri!” She ignored him, sensibly, so he yelled out again, “I said, ‘Waitmeri!’”. Behaviour like that is inexcusable in any country and against any race. It is rude, vulgar, ignorant, abusive, intimidating and whole lot more adjectives.
Any country that wants to drag itself into civilisation will have to rise above its citizens calling other people names. Then I look around the world and don’t see many countries that are dragging themselves into civilisation. If anything, it looks like we’re all heading back to the stone age and tribal warfare, hopefully not nuclear. PNG can provide global education on tribal warfare if required, albeit with conventional weaponry.
Tomorrow is the start of the annual pilots’ meetings. They’re always a lot of work to prepare for, and I will have to work evenings next week to complete my sessions. It’s good to get everybody together to cover the legally required training, rather than doing it piecemeal with other checks throughout the year. The interaction always provides a more thorough refresher of things like emergency procedures, knowledge of procedures and air law, or safety management system and so on. By themselves these topics would be pretty tedious to review, but delegate them out and encourage creativity, and we usually have some very enjoyable sessions.
The Flight Operations department has a very efficient and effective assistant, Doris Kelwau. She is excellent and highly appreciated; without her Flight Ops would definitely not function as well as it does. For the last couple of years Doris has been working at an Australian TAFE (Technical Further Education) Cert. IV course in Business Administration under MAF sponsorship. She completed her assignments and heard that she’d passed the course a couple of months ago, but last weekend her certificate arrived. I formally presented to her after our morning devotions on Tuesday. She had every reason to be proud, and we are all very proud of her.
Have a good week, hopefully without anybody calling you any names!
On two occasions in the last couple of years the SDAs have led the Hagen community in organising a massive clean-up of all the rubbish and filth that gets dropped around the town. Since the town authority seems incapable of doing the job itself, it is falling to the churches to keep the place clean. The SDAs took the initiative, organised their folk and vehicles to transport the bags of rubbish to the tip, and made the town look much cleaner and nicer. At the end of this month the Lutherans are celebrating the 500th anniversary of the reformation. With due acknowledgement to the SDAs, which was nice, they also organised a clean-up of the town, which took place yesterday morning. Eric Eribiang, our Administration Manager, is very much involved in the Lutheran Church, so he was authorised to use the MAF truck to transport collected rubbish to the tip.
Nicki and I went for a walk first thing in the morning and intended to join in to tidy up around our compound, but by the time we got back, they’d already done the job and moved on. It was very noticeable driving to church this morning how much better the town looked.
************
Walking, running or driving in town or around the area it is now sadly commonplace to get children and youths call out, “Waitskin”, “Waitman” or, for Nicki, “Waitmeri”. In Tok Pisin “Wait” is the colour white and is pronounced the same, so you can work out what the words mean. I can’t recall seeing or hearing a child corrected by an adult, so they continue doing it. Yesterday, while out for our walk, a woman deliberately walked up to us with her young child saying, “Waitman, waitman”. Children who are unused to mixing with white people are often nervous, so this woman was deliberately freaking her child out. What sort of woman does that sort of thing to their child?
Fortunately, the vast majority of people are pleasant and greet us with a smile and a friendly, “Hello” or “Good morning”. The name calling behaviour irritates and annoys; it’s unnecessary and backward. Not infrequently when youths do it they’re drunk or have been smoking marijuana, so we just avoid and ignore them. Now put yourself in the position of a single young woman working for MAF (or anybody else for that matter). She was driving past the airport terminal concentrating on the potholes when a well-dressed man in a suit yelled out, “Waitmeri!” She ignored him, sensibly, so he yelled out again, “I said, ‘Waitmeri!’”. Behaviour like that is inexcusable in any country and against any race. It is rude, vulgar, ignorant, abusive, intimidating and whole lot more adjectives.
Any country that wants to drag itself into civilisation will have to rise above its citizens calling other people names. Then I look around the world and don’t see many countries that are dragging themselves into civilisation. If anything, it looks like we’re all heading back to the stone age and tribal warfare, hopefully not nuclear. PNG can provide global education on tribal warfare if required, albeit with conventional weaponry.
************
Tomorrow is the start of the annual pilots’ meetings. They’re always a lot of work to prepare for, and I will have to work evenings next week to complete my sessions. It’s good to get everybody together to cover the legally required training, rather than doing it piecemeal with other checks throughout the year. The interaction always provides a more thorough refresher of things like emergency procedures, knowledge of procedures and air law, or safety management system and so on. By themselves these topics would be pretty tedious to review, but delegate them out and encourage creativity, and we usually have some very enjoyable sessions.
************
The Flight Operations department has a very efficient and effective assistant, Doris Kelwau. She is excellent and highly appreciated; without her Flight Ops would definitely not function as well as it does. For the last couple of years Doris has been working at an Australian TAFE (Technical Further Education) Cert. IV course in Business Administration under MAF sponsorship. She completed her assignments and heard that she’d passed the course a couple of months ago, but last weekend her certificate arrived. I formally presented to her after our morning devotions on Tuesday. She had every reason to be proud, and we are all very proud of her.
Have a good week, hopefully without anybody calling you any names!
