September 9

Death Adder's head

A man came in with a snake bite today. He brought the culprit. After looking at a book we have called Venomous bites and stings in Papua New Guinea, we identified the snake to be a Death Adder. Most of the venomous snake bites in this area are from Death Adders. We’re lucky in that we have antivenom if we needed it. The man is ok and we are keeping him in observation. Don’t think he was envenomated. Death Adders cause neurological symptoms instead of blood symptoms. Then the rest of medical cases are more TB cases. I would say about 90% of patients are TB cases. All the complications I’ve read in books, we have—such as TB spine, loads and loads of TB glands, TB joints, TB lungs, TB meningitis, TB abdomen…..etc….

The weather is very pleasant recently—cloudy and breezy. The rain has stopped which is nice as the clothes are getting dry instead of damp and mouldy. I’m getting used to not having electricity all the time. Here everything is recycled and used in all sorts of ways. No bottles, cans, papers are thrown away. All syringes used for patient’s medicine are recycled (of course the needles are thrown away). They’re very innovative and can think of ways to reuse things. Empty drug bottles are used to collect patient’s urine when we need it. We have to be economical in many ways. They stuff their food inside a bamboo to cook over a wood fire, empty bottles are used as asthma pump spacer…etc….

This weekend has been very restful. For me going to the oil company base camp to do emails is wonderful. So nice to hear from people, to know how family is doing and to know that people are praying for me. Also it is so nice to be eating vegetables at the camp canteen.



Christian Life Centre

Church is nice too. Nothing like seeing beautiful butterflies flying around the pulpit. Today we had a sermon on Father’s Day as last week was Father’s day. Apparently, in the past there has been a fair number of missionaries from the Pacific islands to PNG so you can see their influence. One of them is that in church, the men sit on one side and the woman the other side. In the middle aisle, if married couples want to sit, they can sit together in the middle. The other influences of the pacific islands probably is the language and music. I saw this guy playing these small guitars that I’ve seen Hawaiians play. They also use words like ‘talk stories’ which I know the Hawaiians use. They sing beautifully here. One of these days I will record their singing and put it on the blog. There are fellowship meetings twice a week and also a prayer meeting. So spiritually I am not deprived at all.