Purpose Asia

     Ever since I was little I couldn't resist a good story. Well, apparently my new Papua New Guinean friends can't either. This week I got to go with a group on an overnight hike to a village about 3 hours' walk away. We came to the village in the afternoon and by early evening we had bathed in the river, set up our mosquito nets and bedding for the night, and met our host family for the evening. In most places in Papua New Guinea (PNG) people like to gather in the evening and   "stori"   which is just to chat together -- talk about your day, life, politics or tell actual stories. People will gather and chat and every once in a while you'll hear someone call out " nau yu stori " (now you talk) and someone will pick up a new thread of conversation.       Our host family and village friends were no different. As soon as we emerged from the house to wait for dinner to finish cooking all the children of the village came out and...

I’ve been in Papua New Guinea for a month now. We’re on outdoor cooking weekends now. We have no access to the kitchens and must cook all our food on open fires all weekend for the next few weekends. We've made everything from local foods such as kaukau (sweet potato), taro, and local greens with tinned fish, to steam baking banana cake and tortillas over an open fire.  My village living partner and I have been having great fun experimenting with local foods and with trying our hands at new ways to cook over a fire. It's hard sometimes to get fires going with the high humidity and rainfall here but my village living partner is a trooper and is amazing at getting fires going. This training is meant to prepare us for the village living phase of our training where we will be doing all of our cooking every day over an open fire. Thankfully, right now we still have access to running water, bathrooms and a "regular" bed at night. However, they’re slowly weaning us even...