Village Prep 101

We talk about ‘village trips’ fairly often, but you might have wondered what exactly they are and what’s involved in preparing for them. Well, wonder no longer, because that is the focus of this blog article…

Papua New Guinea is a wonderful and beautiful country and we feel privileged to live here (especially during the 5—6 months we used to spend buried in snow and ice). But it’s also very rugged – it is filled with ravines and mountains and rivers, covered with dense jungle, and often sparsely populated. This is likely why it is also the most linguistically diverse country in the world with more than 840 different languages spoken.

Much of the country is so remote that the only way to reach it is via bush plane or helicopter. This is certainly true for the Domung speaking people we work with. The Domung people live in 10 different villages scattered among the rugged Finisterre mountains. They are subsistence farmers and they grow all the food that they eat. There are no grocery stores or trade stores. There are no roads in or out of the area, so we cannot travel to a nearby town if we need something.

We have to bring with us everything we will need for the duration of our stay. And we have to use a helicopter which is limited in both space and weight capacity. So when we prepare for a village stay, we start planning several months in advance. Initially, we:

• Coordinate with our aviation department to book helicopter flights. This involves lots of conversations to find a date that works for everyone and hopefully combines our flight with another flight to be more efficient and save everyone money. These dates move around a lot since the helicopters fly not only for our mission organization but also for several others in country.
• Notify the school of the days the boys will miss classes so the teachers can prepare learning materials for them while we are in the village.
• Coordinate with people in the village to let them know when we plan to come and what we hope to do while we’re there.

About a month or so in advance, we:

• Prepare language learning lesson plans and goals.
• Prepare materials for training workshops we want to run.
• Preprint all the language learning tools we’ll need (flashcards, wordlists, etc.)
• Make a daily meal plan (we have to pre-plan and pre-pack all of the food we’ll eat).
• Make a packing list for other supplies (clothes, TP, medicine, toys, games, toiletries, etc.)
• Start shopping for bulk food items and putting them in boxes.

About 2 weeks prior to our departure, we:

• Pack the items we have ready and weigh them (the helicopter is quite limited in both space and weight so every kilogram counts).
• Estimate weights for items we cannot yet pack (food like eggs and homemade granola, clothes that we’re still wearing, etc.)
• Make a spreadsheet to keep track of every item we will be bringing and how much it weighs.
• Dehydrate meat and vegetables to eat during our stay (this saves weight in the helicopter and preserves the food so it does not have to be refrigerated). We can buy (or receive as gifts) a limited amount of a few types of garden produce that helps stretch what we bring.
• Finish shopping for food and other supplies.

A few days before we leave, we:

• Pack the last of our clothes.
• Have the boys pack a few ‘special things’ in their backpacks and weigh them (and inevitably repack them and reweigh them since they can’t bring everything they’d like to bring).
• Prepare our house for departure (clean it, secure valuables, plan for someone to watch our dog and chickens, etc.)

Also, when we prepare for one village stay, we actually need to prepare for TWO village stays. Since the helicopter cannot carry enough food and clothes for any stays beyond about 3 weeks, we actually have to do much of this for the NEXT village trip we have scheduled as well (which is usually a couple months away). This is because when the helicopter comes to pick us up, it’s usually empty and we can ‘front load’ it with supplies we’ll need for the next village trip. We store it in the village and hope the rats and cockroaches don’t get to it before we come back again. We have to keep very detailed lists of everything because, as you can imagine, it is impossible to remember what we’ve sent or kept out there. We’ve learned the hard way!

Currently we are in the midst of repacking things for about the fourth time, because our plans keep changing. Because Jon had to postpone his trip twice and eventually cancel, we weren’t able to frontload everything we were hoping to have for this upcoming family trip. (Like two more camping chairs we picked up at a moving sale recently). So we’re sorting through things, deciding what we absolutely need, what we don’t, what we can frontload for our June trip instead, etc. And rewriting all the lists we made when we planned and packed for the previous trips! Yes, it’s a lot of work. And it takes a lot of time. We try to see it as part of our ministry – because although it doesn’t always feel like it, it really is. We cannot serve the Domung people without planning and executing these village stays.