A New Family

Day 2: I met my new mamas today! Breakfast was more of a celebration this morning, as the three "aunties" of the house came to meet me for this first time. They all gave me big hugs and told me how they have been praying for me and how they are my mamas now too and I am their family and always welcome to come see them. Whats theirs is mine and they want to make me feel welcome here and are absolutely thrilled I am here. They understand english but cannot speak it, so Ruthie and her friend Martha help interpret for me. I am starting to learn some basic Pidgin though, and it is becoming easier to understand what they're talking about. The three aunties of the house come every monday, wednesday, and friday and take care of the cooking, cleaning, laundry, and watching the babies. After breakfast Ruthie and I calculate some figures on how many of each medicine is used a week so Bill knows what to order for a three month period. Ruthie knows some excel but I get a chance to teach her some shortcuts so she will be faster and more efficent when I leave. We finish up there and head to the medical supply building to organize the HUGE mess of supplies. Thats all the medicines, gloves, syringes, etc. that Lori has for the clinic. During this time Bill comes to tell us one of the men fainted while they were working a project so Lori was treating him at the clinic. He was showing all the signs of Typhoid(which I'm now thankful for getting a shot for before I came). Afterwards we head to the house to wait for lunch and Amo is there with his friends watching Cheaper by the Dozen..it seems strange for them to be watching movies like that here and I am even more surprised when Ruthie and Martha start talking about people like Taylor Swift and Jacob from Twilight(who they tell me they like better than Edward). Ruthie owns all three of the twilight movies and they decided we should watch them friday night and have a sleepover.

Now comes the best part of my day..Bill comes into the house and tells me Lori called and said is doing a surgical procedure on someone if I wanted to come to the clinic to watch. So i head to the clinic(which is literally right outside of their house) and head back to the examining room where a guy in his mid 30's is laying on the table with a fatty deposit the size of a golf ball on the inside of his thigh. So all I could think was how cool it would be to cut out of my own leg but I wasn't sure of how I would feel about this procedure. the poor guy looked about sick to his stomach laying there as she poked him all around the lump to make sure he couldn't feel anything. Then she starting slicing down the middle and pulling back three layers of skin. His leg is gushing blood and I'm getting my face as close as I can(believe it or not mom and dad) so I can see everything she's doing. So I'm not going to get into the nasty details but she cuts all the fat out and asks the guy if he wants to see it but he just shakes his head no and stares out the window away from what's going on. So Lori sews him shut and I head back to the house for some grub.

After that Ruthie, Martha and I go hang out in my room for a while and they ask to see pictures of my family and friends from home. They were asking all sorts of questions about what life is like in America. They were very curious about what the dating life is like there, and told me what dates are like here. If a boy asks them out they will go to dinner or into town with them and bring along another girlfriend who stays with them the whole time. If a boy invites a girl to his house to meet his parents and she goes to his house then they are married. Most people don't have marriage ceremonies like we do and that is their definition of it. They also are curious of what snow is like..things we take for granted in our every day lives are so interesting to them. I'm looking through my stuff from home for things to show the girls when I get to the big bag of candy I brought for the boys. I'm sure the girls would appreciate it more so I open it up for them and they have their first american candy!! They had tootsie rolls, dots, and tootsie pops for the first time and they loved it. We also gave all the aunties some candy..they didn't share with the boys!

Bill then comes to get us to head into town to go to the grocery store. Now the store is very small and just has basic things for sale, all of which are priced differently based on their size. There is no formal way of measuring things..like a pound of chicken is X amount of dollars. There can be two heads of lettuce almost the same size and one is 20 cents less. It's just based on what the people think it should be priced. It is funny to see that they have candy bars behind glass shelves because that is expensive for them. I'm starting to get used to being gawked at by literally EVERY person within 100 yards of me. Alot of people come and shakes Bill and the girls' hands along with mine, curious of who this white girl is. It's amazing how many people will look me in the eyes here and smile at me, even from across the street. So I've learned to just smile and wave at everyone...so this is what being a celebrity feels like? After that we head to the market..finally! I have been excited to do this the whole time. While driving there Bill tells me the ground is all still very muddy from the rain the night before and we were going late so it won't very busy...we get there are there are well over 1000 people there? So I wonder what it's like when it's busy! There are hundreds of people sitting on the ground all over the place with blankets laid down in front of them. They have different fruits and vegetables laying there for sale. I have to be careful with my bag the whole time so make sure no one steals from me and can't take any pictures there because it's a bad time of day and that camera will be a target. Bill even had to pay one of the vendors there to watch the van to make sure it did not get broken into. Afterwards we got to drive around the town and up to the Goroka College which is the biggest college near the city.

We then head home and get dinner ready for Bill and the kids since Lori is still at the clinic. She is still with the man suffering from typhoid from earlier today and he is not getting any better so they soon take him to the hospital. A few hours later we find out he kept getting worse and was throwing up blood so Bill goes into the hospital to pay for him to get treated because the hospital will not help him until he pays $10. Also, because Bill is white the hospital will pay more attention to the man he is there for. Lori gets a phone call an hour later and tells me that his lungs eventually filled up and the doctors couldn't do anything to save him.