Purpose Asia

“S-A-K-S-A-K” A brown hand carefully points to each letter as the woman before me sounds out each letter.  “ Saksak !” * She says, looking up at me triumphantly. Huge smiles spread across our faces as we celebrate another word that she has conquered.   Our heads nearly touch as she wrestles with another word and steadily works her way through the sentence. Soon she reads me the whole sentence and we both feel the thrill of how much she has accomplished. I bend once more to show another woman how to form the new letter she is learning today. She grips her pencil in concentration and slowly traces the new krai (sound) on her paper. Soon she is confidently writing the words the instructor is dictating for practice at home. I laugh with the man sitting next to me as he raises his hand to declare that he has four words in a row in the Bingo reading game. It brings me such joy to see how happy he is that he can read the words he has on his card. Sin...

Photo credit to Randy Lider, aviation Rain splashes on the dirt road outside my house and plunks on my tin roof.   Little rivers of runoff rush down the hillside toward the river wandering lazily outside the center. The tall Jacaranda trees release their own shower of delicate blue, trumpet-shaped flowers.   I’m back in Papua New Guinea (PNG). It’s hard to believe that I arrived back here only a few days ago. I spent over 30 hours traveling between my hometown and my new home here. I hopped to San Francisco, Los Angeles, Brisbane (Australia) and Port Moresby (PNG) before climbing into the final small aircraft that would take me home to my beloved highlands. I wondered as we turned from the coast and headed up and over the mountains what it would be like to be back in Ukarumpa (the translation center where I live). I wondered who would meet me at the airstrip, what it would be like to transition back once again, what it would be like to reintegrate into work,...