Bobiufa

Bobiufa

Life has many twists and turns but the road to Bobiufa is bouncy and dusty on dry days and a muddy, slippery track this morning. We’ve settled in small housing cluster called Bobiufa among the Bena-Bena people. It’s a large house with beautiful landscaping and quite secluded.

We had many friends welcome us back and much help settling into our new place. Susie Leo spent hours yesterday removing the cockroach eggs from the house, a blessing for which I cannot describe my thankfulness. We got a washing machine installed, and though we have so much more to move to get the office up and running we are trying to move quickly so that we will soon “be back in business”.

Tony and Danny, my brother Bob’s sons, arrive tomorrow. A pig kill and mumu has been arranged by PNG friends who also have provided for a ride to the coast for them for the final week that they are in country. I plan to keep the camera rolling while they are here and capture as much of their adventure as possible. I try to look at life through their eyes, as though I were new here and I do realize how many things will be a surprise to them. We plan to use their muscles to move a few more things and then take them for a Mesem “nature walk” as we visit friends down in Morobe.

Right now I am using a “hot spot” in town where I can buy a card and get 30 MB of data for K20. Our Internet trips will be fewer and fewer now that we are farther from town until we can get a landline. I like the quiet aspect of the place and yet I confess I am a bit afraid of the lonliness that can set in when one is confined to a small area behind a fence and can’t communicate much. Unlike the village where we have people with us 24/7, Bobiufa is great for Tony to study and an excellent place to read books and do gobs of work, but not such an easy place to get to know the neighbors. The house is by necessity quite secure, being behind a gate, which is behind another gate, and has a steel bedroom door.

There’s a lovely coffee garden behind the house. In many ways it is the perfect retreat center. Feel free to drop in. I will have a coffee pot waiting for you and perhaps, extrovert that I am, happy for the company as well.