Church and Mask festival

Today we attended the local Anglican church for their morning service. The priest died last year and hasn't been replaced, so the locals are running things themselves.  Many of the congregation come from Rabaul, where their church was damaged in the eruption in 1994. The acidic ash from the eruption has made sure what remained of the church, has rusted away.
The service was a bit difficult to follow and seemed a bit ad hoc. Mainly conducted in English with some Tok Pisin; this would probably put a lot of locals off as most conduct their daily lives in Tok. English is not the main daily language, although many young people speak it.

 The fella preaching is a church warden from Lae, who is working in ENB.

Craig a retired judge who lives in Kokopo, took the photo of the congregation. As you can see lots of young people! The guy in white shirt was kind of a worship/ service leader.

The people were very encouraged that we had turned up; "expats" in the church! I had to stand up and tell them why we were in Kokopo and what we were doing. We had biscuits and cordial after the service, while there was an informal discussion about the state of the church building and repairs needed.

The day before we spent most of the day at the Mask festival, which has been on since Wednesday. Saturday was the grand finale, when all the groups attending for the week, performed for the last time; there were nearly thirty groups on the last day. I took many photos but can't put them all up on the blog.
The final act was a group of students from the local Vudal university, performing what they called a Pacific islands dance; an amalgamation from of many tribes and islands. It was a hit for the crowd.

One item everybody came to watch was the mud men dance. It depicts a tribe in the Highlands who were attacked by another tribe, their only escape was to hide in the swamp near a river, until the attackers started to leave. When they emerge from the swamp with mud all over them, the attackers, think they are spirits and run away.

The attackers arrive!

Chase the villagers away.

 Declare victory.

 The Mud men emerge.

Chase the attackers away.

There were lots of booths around the festival grounds, Fresh Produce were going to have a booth until it was decided  Neti and I were going to Lae.

Suzanne, Spence and helpers manned the diabetes screening booth for several days. 

Melanesians, along with many other Pacific people, have a genetic predisposition to Diabetes. as a consequence life expectancy in PNG is low. John the Vice Chancellor of the local university (Vudal), said they had one of their lecturers died last week, aged 52. Dying around early to mid 50's is fairly common; people seem reluctant to change their lifestyles, to get on top of Diabetes. Not many people live past 65 here.
 One problem Susanne faces is the lack of disposables (sterile pricking devices, test strips, etc) used for testing. If anybody reading this wanted to help financially in someway, then I can put them in touch with Susanne! Debbie, Susanne's friend brought some stuff with her when she came from NZ last week but the shear volume of people needing testing, causes supplies to be used up fairly quickly.

I (Christine) enjoyed the church service enormously. The people were very welcoming and ensured we had a rough idea of the format of the service. Some of the service was in Tok Pisin and then translated into English for us. Before leaving NZ I had decided I wanted to find a church that worshiped out of their own PNG culture and was intrigued to see what that would be like. While there was an Anglican format to this service, culture will out!! The songs were hymns and songs of praise but with their own simple (more relevant) words inserted. During communion the bread and wine are taken from the back of the church to the front accompanied with dancing and singing thus turning what can be a somewhat sombre time into one of sheer joy! Lovely! church PNG style!
David (standing in for the priest) has promised to get some of the young people practicing so we can hear more of their own songs of praise.

The guard (Felix) next door went as part of a second vehicle (essential for security) to a logging camp about an hour away. When he returned later that day I took my Tablet (and Iceblocks) outside so he could show me and the House Mary where he had been. It was fascinating to be able to see the trip on a map and on google Maps. The logs are guided closer to the ships by men standing on the logs, then a grab crane lifts the logs onto the ships. Because of the incredible depth of the sea so close to the land the ships pull in just a few meters from land. Maybe one-day we will be able to visit the place for ourselves.
Three new VSA's arrived this week (2 NZers, 1 Brazilian) bringing our numbers to around 18. All very exciting.