March 2013

Hard to believe we've been in Kompiam for about a month now. It's a magnificent place to say the least.  At an altitude of around 1600m, but only 5deg off the equator the climate is almost perfect t-shirt weather everyday.  It's the wet season at the moment and generally sunny in the morning and buckets down in the afternoon with anything from 25-75mm most days. Often we wake to find ourselves up in the clouds. At night the sky is pitch black and the only sound is the continual roar of the Sau River in the valley below.

Been a busy time settling in and trying to get on top of things. Getting the highschool going and keeping up with the food has been a full time job for Wendy. The girls are making friends and settling well and happy to have their own little puppy called Sandy. School work is keeping them very busy, but they enjoy trips to the river for a swim, learning new sports and games, and are also going to start up a youth group with some of the other hospital kids up here. Russell has been kept busy with lots of different projects from IT, to sourcing new project funding, helping out on the new houses, and traveling to Mt Hagen for supplies. He had the chance to fly out to one of our remote aid posts at a place called Mangao and amazing experience flying out through the mountains and visiting this remote village (not to mention landing on a 420m airstrip on the side of a mountain).

Everyday is little different, with new challenges and new opportunities.

Installing solar hot water on the new house

The river crossing before Kompiam

Looking down the valley

Ready for School

The swimming hole

Our new puppy Sandy

Wet Season

Yowali Manda

Swimming at the river crossing

View from the airstrip

Sunrise

Taking Off from Kompiam

New life at the hospital

Flying to Mangao aid post

Mangao air strip, 420m on the side of a mountain

Kids at Mangao

Mangao

Mangao airstrip

Flying back into Kompiam

Arrival in Kompiam

After a slight delay in visa's, we finally flew to PNG on Tuesday the 5th of March.  Pretty good trip all the way through to Port Moresby and then on to Mt Hagen, with no major dramas. We ended up with 123kg of luggage, only 8kg over our 23kg each allowed, which wasn't too bad for 2 years and considering about 35kg was school books. We stayed in the Baptist Union compound in Mt Hagen and spent the full day Wednesday shopping, organizing phones, bank accounts and lots of other little jobs.

Thursday morning we finalised the shopping and then packed up the 3 vehicles for the trip up into the mountains to Kompiam. It took just on 5 hours to make the trip with the road condition deteriorating quite a bit towards the end. The last bridge before Kompiam was washed away a few months ago, so the final 4WD challenge of the journey was a bit of a hairy river crossing. Exhausted, we all arrived safely in Kompiam and all the staff out to greet us and some happy reunions. Spent the next few hours unpacking and getting things sorted before a welcome dinner. Long day, but nice to finally get to the destination.

Spent today (Friday) getting sorted for school next week and continuing to unpack and get ourselves sorted. The girls have already started hounding us about pet puppies and adopting some baby guinea pigs so we'll see what comes of that. Lots to do with work happening on many fronts from new hospital buildings, houses, school developments etc etc. Looking forward to what lies ahead.

We will try to update the blog on a monthly basis moving forward starting at the end of March. 

Traveling light?

Packed ready to leave Mt Hagen

Muddy water (and roads) with all the rain

One of the new houses under construction

The new hospital building

The next addition - pediatric ward