After Work Today

Swimming in the warm tropical calm with pink sky and full moon.

Doctors, Bush Medicine and Meditation

Well, I guess the varieties are different, the ones in Australia versus those in Kavieng (whom you tell what is wrong with you and…well, it is all relative to the patients they generally see and also a real bonus if they don’t give you amoxy), but in the end it all kind of feels the same; that they have nothing to offer me that is useful to me, that they don’t really listen, that they don’t really link anything up. That the best treatment of all, self-medication, is meditation. Meditation not medication. Kinesiology seemed the best. And I wonder what it would tell me now. But the people in the pathology lab at Kavieng haus sik really are quite good at taking blood and they are very nice and one of them is also called H and they do not splatter my blood all over my shirt and themselves like the other woman. I quite like going to see them. I tried some bush medicine this evening.

It’s Not Like This on the Discovery Channel

How many times have I thought that? It’s been a crazy week, even by Kavieng standards. So, there was no other option to sack him. And it is sad, but wow, what was he thinking? What the ^#*! Aren’t I supposed to be zipping around in fancy boats playing with colourful fish, doing all kinds of sexy things? Instead, waves of lingering mystery illness as I address village meetings to cope with serious crazy goings-on and wonder where all this is leading. But….there are really good things happening, and it does feel so worthwhile. And the responsibility feels so great. And I just have to get healthy again and have lots of energy for it all. And get rid of demons. And…I have just been asked as I sit here: What can you do with two tonnes of vanilla (because we do seem to have quite a lot)? And now he is doing pirate impressions of the Disgraced One.

A Sunday Morning

Writing reports on people and fish and trying to explain why reef closures are working in some places and not in others. Listening to classical Indian music tapes. Eating walnut bread with precious last supplies from Australia. Eating delicious tropical fruit salad. Drinking fake health food store coffee, which seems so special. Needing to be by the fan as Kavieng just seems to be getting hotter (was it really this hot one year ago?). I might have to go and buy some of those second-hand fifties dresses. Looking at the atlas, at Pacific islands, Australia and Indonesia, and listening to explanations of the best surfing. Looking at the expanse of Australia, tracing it down to Melbourne, even to Bendigo. Reading your blog and thinking of you. So you have a new job! And I have these wonderful images of your garden. And I do kind of miss the Western World. I will have to get on my orange Eco Bike and go for a swim in the tropical blue. Next weekend it will be a village guesthouse on a small island, just the two of us. If there are waves it will be paradise for you.

Long Time

I don’t mean to neglect this blog, but…my head feels so full, my life so full, my house so full. And I don’t know how to write it all down. And really there are lots of stories. And I am often quite confused about things. And it is so so hot. It seems hotter than it used to. And really we need a surf shack by the water and a boat, as a change from the purple house sometimes. Although we do have Eco Bikes now, which were Magic Bikes; one orange, one blue, where different parts fall off each day. But they get us to the market to buy all that fish and to the water to check the waves, and just to stand there and gaze out at the water, the amazing blues, the flying foxes, the ospreys, the jumping fish and the painted tropical sky. And all those hellos. “Hello Masta.” It is all feeling very challenging. I seem to be going through a process of peeling away layers of me, trying to discover how there is no me at all.

Excuse Me, I Need to Complain...

…But I don’t know why. So I do it, as I just realise the actual numbers on the bill as I am at the Telikom window anyway. “We didn’t get a phone bill at all last month and now this month we have credit.” “Yes, that’s because you didn’t get a bill last month.” “But if we didn’t pay anything at all then how can we have credit?” “It’s because you didn’t pay anything last month.” “Oh, ok then.”