Keeping up with Beth

Our first day on outreach was amazing. Despite the fact I am not good at early mornings, I managed to force myself out of bed just in time for breakfast and with enough time to make lunch. We had our meeting and before I knew it we were off.

In the Optometry department, we are able to leave the boat everyday to enter the village to run tests. It’s a really beautiful experience as you can see how the village works, be truly heartwarmingly welcomed into it, and manage to aid peoples vision.

Our first day wasn’t too busy. We have the challenge, each day of transferring our stuff from the main cruise boat to the little jets, and climbing ourselves onto it and then travelling over to which ever village (Torobina) we’re visiting for the day. Groups split up across each village each day, so everyone is in different locations and arranges themselves rather than the entire crew emptying themselves into the small villages.

As these villages are so remote and these people are entirely responsible for themselves rather than having any government standard set up, there is no proper dockalnds or docking area like we’s expect. Rather there is a patch where they put all there boats, that is completely mud, And you just have to trench through it. I heard someone this evening say we must look like princesses, and its absolutely true. These villagers are so used to it, you watch them just walk through it so carelessly, but we’re all there moaning and whining and laughing our way through. We were aware that these landings weren’t going to be easy, but until you really experience it you never know what to expect.

It’s an experience though and you just have to embrace it as it happens.

Once we were set up we just do simple introductions to the people of the community before starting our work for the day.

We serve the people, helping them gain vision, and assessing what they struggle with. We had a couple of people from around the area so communication wasn’t too much of an issue, and many of them actually understand basic english.

Our day died down fairly early around lunch time, which gave us a couple of hours to interact with the villagers and the children, and to get to know each other. I think having an easy first day and having time to hang out with each other was very beneficial and gave us a chance to get to know each other and grow as a team. Thats never a bad thing.

I had another interesting chat with the guy from the mountains, and we chatted about our faith, and the differences from PNG to the UK and how PNG is almost entirely Christian, or at least sets itself on Christian morals, where as the UK used to be based in the Christian faith but seems to be drifting further and further towards an ergonistic idea.

It was an interesting chat to say the least. I also learnt, whether he meant to express it or not, he has a passion for the younger generation. He loved learning from kids and was telling me thats the best way to language learn. He interacted with them so purely that you could tell he wanted to raise them up and have them grow to be independent strong people of faith, as he is.

I had another conversation with a guy on our team, who has a passion for gender equality, and seeing that break through across png. Thats a problem I hadn’t even considered among the people of PNG, but obviously its a prominent problem. I didn’t really notice too much til they pointed out but we had only seen male patients up til that point, and one woman. We tried to reach out to the women, ask if they needed any help with their sight or anything, but they all denied our help. It could have been they didn’t have bad eye sight, but you would expect a few older ladies to just want to be checked. Our leader said they just have a culture of fear sometimes around men, so genuinely to be examined by a man could be scary or just frowned upon by the community.

Either way, we couldn’t serve the women of that community that day. I also noticed to prominent physical space they kept between them. The men started congregating one side of us, on this frame that was probably fairly comfy to sit on, whilst the women sat on the ground separately with the children generally sitting by them – or playing games with CE. I hadn’t even figured the consequenses of this. On the surface it seems okay, like its okay for men and women to hang out separately, but when thats the culture engrained in them, that women have limitations that men don’t, I was wondering the next day over the same thing, how deep that idea ran in their culture, of men and their superiority. But it’s reassuring, to have a man from this culture- all the men on board the ship actually, who grew up in PNG see the dangers and be so passionate about changing it and seeing equality spread through out the country, and serve them as well. We were trying to figure out whether its best the men disappear and the ladies just take over so the women can feel safe with seeing us, but we needed a couple of translators and we had only one local woman.

The next day was the same with the gender gap, I noticed. The women’s fellowship of the village performed a beautiful song for us before we started, but as clinics began, I saw the women bring out a mat to sit on. After about 15 minutes I looked over to the PHC (Primary Health Care) teams queue and saw that the queue was full of men with their children. It’s amazing that men are so involved in their children’s lives, and that they take as much responsibility for the upbringing as women, but the women with their children were all sat on this mat with their children, waiting for all the men to be seen first. There wasn’t any form of first come first serve equality of the genders. It was men are served first then women. I’ve noticed that men tend to have the healithier looking bodies compared to females, which maybe is a significant sign of this massive issue among the people here. But that day in Aniadia we managed to serve several women of the community by providing glasses which is awesome. Whilst its super heartbreaking to know that there is so much going on behind the scenes, and that there is no guarantee we can change these villages and their cultures, its so good to be able to go in, and try share our hearts and to serve them and offer what we can for these people to hopefully improve their cultures.

I also have found there is no negative energy around breastfeeding here. That’s an encouragement and something we can definitely pick up on as a culture. Of course, they don’t have access easily to alternatives like we do back home, but even so, they understand the necessity of feeding their child as a priority, and won’t hold back from that. And no one comments. Back home its a big fight for appropriation of breast feeding, but being here- a country that statistically has high rape crime numbers, its very good to know that breast feeding doesn’t affect that number… that’ something we need to learn to accept and move forward in in western culture.

Our next day was supposed to be our day to visit two communities, however after some complications with the tide and different boats reaching us at different times for different people, we were held back from that. We were all super disappointed on our team to know we couldn’t help these people who had been expecting and so hoping for us, but sometimes things happen, you just have to know God’s got the plan.

We started in Upati and set up in their church. It was a beautiful building, with a fairly unsteady feeling floor, however they had decorated it and it was amazing to be able to use their space. I was changing between V/A and helping one of the optometrists to put the data in the ipad so he could focus on the lenses and all his stuff. He was awesome and trying to educate me the whole time. A couple of times they would be talking and certain words would come up, he would tell me what they meant, and teach me some of the language, and other times he would tell me about their conversations. Every time a new or unique eye case came in for example a cataract or Ptergyim he would bring me over to point it out and show me what it looked like. It’s amazing to be so close and watching the work and picking up generally how it works and what they are doing.

There was one guy from the village who had his glasses when we arrived and came over. In the last outreach apparently he had taken a dugout canoe all by himself- while he was nearly blind and could see nothing, a couple of villages over to be able to see the optometrist and be able to get his sight back with a pair of glasses. It’s amazing how for granted we take so many things like the visiting the optician and being able to even buy reading glasses anywhere. Yet these people travel ages on boats by themselves with a hope. The fact he was able to transform himself was a miracle and then to know he could see with his glasses, and was still using them and came up to see the people who helped him is so powerful and testament to the work being done by YWAM. We also had a man who had had surgery already in one of his eyes for a cornial scar I believe, and the optometrist said that glasses wouldn’t help in that eye, but we could make the vision in his other eye better. But just to check we tested both eyes, and were amazed when he said the glasses were helping the eye from the surgery! After thinking that the surgery was all that could be done, but the glasses helped the bad vision he had in that eye it was amazing!

I didn’t get to join in too much with the CE stuff, but they did do school screenings just to check the eyesight of the kids and generally keep them occupied whilst they get vitamins and to help deliver the polio medication. It was a beautiful village and we had been greeted with a lovely arch way and the village singing a song as we pulled up and arrive. It was a beautiful welcome and we were each given a little flower crown- thats the best way to make me feel like a princess.

In the afternoon, as we were trying to wait for our boat to go to another village, the CE leader came over after a discussion with the women which they have in each village, about health in all its forms- physical health and their mental health. They had discussed domestic violence and that topic as they do- to encourage the community that that is not how it was meant to be and that it shouldn’t be acceptable, and the women said that there was a big problem with that there. It was super awesome to see that the leader wanted instantly to discuss that with the men, and try to give them an understanding of how to healthily express your anger, so she came over and asked a couple of the men from her group, to gather the men of the village to have that conversation adn change the stigma in this community. It’s such a hard sensitive topic to approach. Back home its not easy still, but we all know its wrong. We as a culture don’t approve of it and are happy to call out and stand with those victims. In communities like this, in a country where its seemingly engrained in them that male dominance in every way is okay, it seems like more of a challenge. How do you go up to a group of guys, as an outside, and explain to them that their culture, and their ways have consequences, and try and change their thinking. Especially when you only have a small limited time for that. We can’t stay and watch a change and encourage it further than it already has been. That conversation is all we can share until the boat returns another outreach.