Al had a forceps and was helping to hold the suture tight as I sewed…
Plumeria, also known as frangipani, is a genus of flowering plants in the subfamily Rauvolfioideae, of the family Apocynaceae. Most species are deciduous shrubs or small trees.
1962, July 6 to Estelle
Letter written by Ina Erickson from the Malalo Mission station to Durward and Estelle Titus Box 224 Route1, Carlos MN USA
Dear mom and dad,
We were coming home from a trip to Lae arriving about 10 PM. We were about halfway up the Malalo hill and I was thinking how nice it would be to sink into bed, since I had a lingering headache from being seasick, when some of the school boys met me as they were coming down the hill. They were all excited as one of the boys had injured his leg very badly. He had about a 5 inch gash, almost to the bone on his shin from a bamboo stick he had stumbled on in the dark. They knew enough to put a tourniquet on it so he lost very little blood. They carried him up to the house and they put in the leaves on the dining room table and laid him down on the table. We had a big pair of gloves for surgery, which I had baked in the oven and some sutures, and needles which were small for the tough skin so I had a really tough time with the needle. I didn’t have any thing but cotton to sponge the blood with as I was working, and I soon found out why nobody uses cotton because it’s stuck all over into the sutures, on to the skin and inside the wound.
Al had a forceps and was helping to hold the suture tight as I sewed with all knots in the suture and bent the needles. The Novocain has worn off before I was through, so I just taped the last inch with Band-Aids and sent him to the hospital the next day. It was a pretty sloppy job but maybe it will heal.
Thursday as I was treating some patients on the back step, we heard some loud yelling. We ran to investigate and found one of the boys dormitories had caught fire. I had my girls washing clothes, so we dumped all the clothes on the table and grabbed all our pails and wash tubs. There was a creek several thousand feet from the building so they formed a line passing the buckets down. At first everyone just stood and cried or looking and not doing anything. Al got some action and was able to save the foundation. 16 boys lost all their cooking pots, school books, bibles, bush knives (1) for cutting their way through the bush which are about 2 feet long and 2 1/2 to 3 inches wide, walking shorts, lap laps, and white shirts. Laptops are especially hard for them to lose and they’re white shirts as they use these for special occasions. They lost their sleeping mats and blankets. Their meager possessions were real treasures and some of them wept. Everyone was in school, so thank God that no one was hurt, since the building was a bush building and it just went up in one big woosh!
Schoolboys holding up a sleeping mat at Malalo
We decided it was best not to give them anything, but to let them learn to meet their own emergencies. We were issued material for about four dresses and some clothes for the kids and a shirt for out at Christmas time. We still had so much that we brought with us that we gave each one enough for a lap lap so they have a change of clothes. We love you so much.
Thank you for writing.Love Ina, Al and kids
Weaving a sleeping mat or basket. Prepare the reed, roll them up and weave.
One of the bush houses or dorms at Malalo
Dress in white shirts and white lap laps for special occasions such as a church service, communion or baptism.
You Call That A Knife …
Time to turn my discerning eye for all things cross-cultural and today it has landed on the PNG Bush Knife. Ahh the Bush Knife. Anyone who has ever been to PNG will know about these babies. Also known up here as a busnaip in Pidgin or a big-f@%#-off machete in English.
They are the ubiquitous New Guinea weapon come all purpose implement of choice here. Some how managing to leech into every corner of the country. There seems to be a bush knife for every man, woman and child. If not I am sure that during the next elections some politician will be giving them away free to get people to vote for him. When driving into town you would not be able to get there without seeing some guy on the side of the road walking with a big bunch of bananas over one shoulder and a bush knife swinging by his side.
Don't get me wrong I am not saying they are bad. I think they are great. I have got one in my laundry ready for all those bush knife related activities. PNG is probably one of the only countries in the world where it is expected you have a huge monster knife. In the first few weeks that I was in the country, before I had fully got my kitchen set up with all the pots and pans, resting up against the wall next to the washing machine was my bush knife. The guys in the office made a special trip out to a certain hardware store because they sold the best bush knife.
Mine is looking decidedly dodgy now after all the weeding it has been doing. That and being used to chop up the compost heap when I throw on a new load of scraps. But once I have given it a bit of a sharpen with a file it can be back to use for more traditional purposes like trimming the hedge or lopping off useless limbs from the guava and frangipani trees.
The average Joe Blow will probably more likely be cutting down bananas, a sugar cane or getting a ripe pineapple. Which reminds me I need to ask Martin if his haus meri took the ripe pineapple underneath the guava tree the other day, cause I will be pissed off if someone else has nicked it. There is a saying some of the other ex-pats have here, "how do you know when your pineapple is ripe? When it has disappeared".
Other good uses are more gardening related activities like as I said using it for weeding, edge trimming on a footpath and cutting grass. Although the last task here is not really suited to the bush knife and a special sword like knife called a sarep is required for this, which has a blade close to a metre in length. You don't want to be standing behind someone when they are swinging these around. Watching them being used though is impressive.
I am sure every week there would be scores of people checked in to local hospitals requiring a bit of repair work from a bush knife related injury. That is of course if they make it that far. On the front page of the Post-Courier a couple of months ago there was a story of a couple in a village in the southern highlands who had an argument, which obviously got a bit vicious, because the end result was the wife came out missing a head. Lesson learned: Bush knives don't kill people, people do.
