Fred and Edna used to have to walk to Lae which was an eight hour walk

1963 March 15

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, Willa and Martin, Mickey Lain, Jennifer,
It is getting dangerously close to someone’s anniversary1, and I don’t think we’ve sent our best wishes, and congratulations. What is it 28 years? That is a long time to put up with each other.

Thank you so much for all your work on the program at First English. We surely do appreciate any promotion of the spreading of the gospel. It is very heartening to have our home people so interesting what is happening in this part of the world.

It surely is a different world. The people at home have provided the mission with enough money so that we can live comfortably. At first the missionaries lived in the bush houses like the natives, and cook their food over open fires like the natives do, but the toll and mental and physical health was so great that better living conditions had to be provided. Refrigerators were a luxury at first, but it has proved to save both cost of food and in health so they are now standard equipment.

Can you imagine carrying up a refrigerator up the Malalo Hill?

Electricity has enabled us to work at night and what is more important to have school at night. The boys and girls can study their lessons in a screened lighted school room instead of hunched over their small kerosene lanterns if they are rich enough to own them, or their fires if they are not. The bugs bother them so much that they wrap in their blankets. Or most of the mission work was done on foot and one had to walk days in miles to get supplies, now most missionaries are supplied with vehicles of some sort or another. Fred and Edna used to have to walk to Lae which was an eight hour walk and get what food they could carry back to get their mail once in 2 or 3 months. Now we have the Victor and can go in every week. We have people that take their vegetables like taro, long tough green beans, pumpkins, bananas, pineapple, coconut, pit pit (that grows something like corn in a long slender husk but doesn’t have kernels like corn and taste like cauliflower), fish, sometimes eggs, and occasionally a pig. They can take their goods free but must pay nine shillings for a round-trip ticket- roughly 1 dollar. They sell them in a native market. Someday I will have to send you pictures of it.
This letter continues with the packing for a bushtrip which I posted so not including it here.

Malalo yard facing west or away from the ocean view. The only flat area around so lots of activity happened here such as playing, feasts, celebrations, the Christmas pagent etc. You can see the footpath that leads from coming up the Malalo hill past the church and dispensary on the left and leads towards the staff housing and trails to the mountains “behind” Malalo as Ina describes in her letters.

Al’s main task now is to make the New Guinean church of Malalo independent of the missionary.

1963 March 15
To Gertrude and Lawrence Rasmussen, 112 Jefferson,  Stevens Point, Wisconsin, USA 1

Dear Gertrude,
Surprise, nothing really has happened to us, except that I can’t get my husband to sit down long enough to write letters. I’ve been writing the last few form letters and he wanted to write the next one. This was well and good as I am most certainly not the literary member of our family.

Last November, I started to remind him that it was time to get a letter out for Christmas, yes he agreed it was, but well, he just never got to it. It seems every time he goes to the office he has a bunch of men waiting to talk to him over one problem or another. I have been suggesting and threatening and what not and still don’t have any results. I even addressed an air letter to you and left it on his desk. But I still didn’t have any results. Now he is off again to the Buang mountains for another trip. I decided that I would write another letter just to let everyone know that we are still alive and that we are still interested in our fine friends at home. We just won’t mention the fact to the Bingsu, and maybe just maybe he might still get a Easter greeting out.

We have had our ups and downs with malaria and hot weather, but as a whole we’ve been quite well. Over the school holiday of December through February 1 we had so much company, but hardly a day went by that someone wasn’t here. Malalo is a popular vacation spot as we have a lovely swimming area free from sharks, and many beautiful views from our lofty mountain home. It was so lovely to have everyone come as we would never see them otherwise. We go for weeks without seeing any white faces. As we get to know and understand our brown neighbors this doesn’t bother us much anymore. But it is wonderful to be able to sit down and talk fluently with someone, however. I guess that is one of the things that we missed the most.

Thank you for being so good about sending out our letters. Many people have commented that they do appreciate them, so I thought I would tell you.

You are pretty brave to learn to drive, and then to have the nerve to drive in winter weather. We’d like to have a picture of your new house if you have one to spare and also would enjoy a picture of the Rasmussen’s also if you have one.

It has been so hot and dry this season as a matter fact, this has been the dryest season that many people can remember. Our people have had a hard time getting enough food, as their garden didn’t produce. After three months of very little rain it has started to rain more again, but we still could use a great deal more.

Our fruit trees have continued to produce so we could supplement the diet of our school boys and girls with a little fruit. They have had to walk back to their villages every week to get more food, as the gardens here are completely ruined. Those that live too far have been working for us some and then we pay them in brown rice. We are afraid we’d have to close the school until the drought had ended. So many of the boys and girls were hungry. We’ve tried to help them but feel this is one of the problems they were going to face if they are going to be a self-sufficient nation, so we didn’t give them any food, which of course would’ve been the simplest thing to do. They have worked things out for themselves pretty well and we didn’t have to close the school.
Al’s main task now is to make the New Guinean church of Malalo independent of the missionary. His job is to work himself out of a job. It’s like we’re dealing with growing children. They often want the privileges without the responsibilities, but with God‘s guidance and patience maybe someday this will be a reality.

One thing we are working on now is to learn to pay for their medical attention. Now the government and mission furnishes all the medicine and hospitalization. What we are going to try to do is to collect two pennies from each person that come for treatment. With the money we will buy food for the native workers in the dispensary. They now get a salary about $20 a year paid for by the Malalo congregation. Our doctor boy left as he could get more money from the government. We will have two nurses returning, from their nurses training, so we want a little more for them so they will stay. Whether the people will continue to come if they have to pay their two pennies a visit, I don’t know but we do think it is a necessary step forward.

As these people have to learn to pay their way as they can, they will resent us more and more. We know we will be unpopular, but definitely feel it is the wrong thing to keep the people depended any longer. Please pray for wisdom and courage in these new steps.

God’s blessings to you and yours.

Love in Christ
Al, Ina, Paula and Tom

School children with Tom in the middle and I believe some of Gideons children to the right of Tom. Based on Tom’s size perhaps taken late 1963 (when everyone is eating again)

Footnote:

1 Rasmussen, Gertrude, and Lawrence from Stevens Point, Wisconsin, USA. Erickson’s met them in Stevens Point during Alvin internship. They had 2 sons. One son John, went to St Olaf who was killed in a car accident. They were strong Christian people. They had agreed to spread newsletters from PNG. The Erickson’s went back to Stevens Point when on Furlough in 1968. They returned the letters from Malalo to the Erickson’s who had given them to Estelle Titus for safe keeping.

Sawet Sawmill owned and operated by the Malalo congregation.

1963 March 28

Letter written by Alvin Erickson from the Malalo Mission station Alvin and Louise Erickson, Box 1327, Glendive Montana, USA

Dear mom and dad,
Hi from Victor! We are just on our way down to the sawmill. The captains wife was just ready to have a baby so neither he nor Ina is along.1
Thank you for your fine letters. I am so sorry for not writing more often. We got tape recorder that plays 7 inch tapes. I think Browns have one so we will send you a tape when we get it. Some we ordered.

Lately we have been thinking about building a wharf. We’re trying to secure a big iron box about 5‘ x 4‘ x 4‘. It was left over at Salamaua 2. We will bury it in the sea with a big iron pole sticking up out of it. It’s too expensive to get a pile driver over here so this is the next best thing. We’ll have to see if it works out especially in a bad sea.

The sawmill had no wharf so everything had to be loaded by canoe. Often loaded on a boat that was bigger than the Victor like the Simbang another mission boat.

We’ve kind of wondered about rare metals,- what are they doing now, if they’ve got anything going yet. On the tape, I hope to tell about the mountain trip. It’s so refreshing to get up in the cool mountains. We’re so glad to hear Helen‘s 3 back is better and hope you are all feeling better now that spring is arriving.

Fred Scherle is in Rochester for a back operation. It was successful and he will be coming back to New Guinea come September. We have set up a slight fee for our dispensary. It is only two cents but at least it will help our girls to have food. A real drought has hit New Guinea and we have asked a German organization (bread for the world) for help to feed our school boys. We killed our big bull several days ago to help out. We’ve been making good use of all the tools you sent. We really appreciate them.

The local government leaders have been accepting their responsibilities quite well. Some get confused between what is just a bad custom and what is breaking the law.

We haven’t straightened out our investments with Helen 3 lately. Maybe you could talk to Helen and see what money there is to be invested and then write a few suggestions. After 1 1/2 years we are starting to see the light of day. God has kept all of us and has been very gracious towards our shortcomings. We are rapidly finding ourselves in the midst of the most exciting and challenging work.

May the beauty of the goodness of Christ fill all our hearts and bring us rejoicing before his eternal presence.

All our love Al, Ina, Paula and Tom

 Footnotes:

1 Metegemeng the captain of the boat Victor. His wife is mentioned. He died of colon cancer while we were at Logaweng and before we visited Malalo with Estelle in early 1973.

Metegemeng’s wife with some of her children and Kristin who was born August of 1963. This would have been her baby being born that Al is referring to in this letter.

2 Salamaua (German: Samoahafen) was a small town situated on the northeastern coastline of Papua New Guinea, in Salamaua Rural LLG, Morobe province. The settlement was built on a minor isthmus between the coast with mountains on the inland side and a headland. The closest city is Lae, which can be reached only via boat across the gulf.

History[edit]

In the 1920s prospective gold miners used Salamaua as a staging post to explore for gold in the inland areas. Gold was discovered at Wau and miners came from all over and made for the goldfields via the rough Black Cat Track.

The town was captured by the Japanese on 8 March 1942 during World War II and later retaken by Australian and United States forces led by General Douglas MacArthur on 11 September 1943 during the Salamaua–Lae campaign. During reoccupation the town was destroyed.

Today the villages of Kela and Lagui occupy the site, as well as holiday houses that are mainly owned by expatriates based in Lae. From Wikipedia

3 Helen is Alvin’s sister and she handles the financial affairs for Alvin and Ina Erickson state side.  

Helen and her children Greg and Vicki