Round, round, get around...

Happy New Year! New year’s eve often evokes memories of years past and I was thinking this year of 2000, people were uncertain about the predicted effects of Y2K, we were living in Germany, and Brent was deployed. I remember distinctly on New Year’s Eve, standing in the frigid, icy air at the gas station filling up our car, with our two, young sons in the back seat, “just in case” things went south and we couldn’t get gas for awhile. Twenty-four years later we’re in PNG. You don’t know where life will take you.

This week I wanted to showcase some of the interesting forms of transportation around here. It is definitely an eclectic mix as well as a tribute to the power of good mechanics and the need for them. One missionary we met grew up here and his dad worked at Ukarumpa’s mechanic shop. The man we spoke to said when he returned as an adult to work here in translation, his dad had long since retired but was very interested in learning, not so much about the work his son was doing, but he wanted to know which vehicles were still making the rounds on center. A number of people on center have vehicles of some type, helpful for families with a lot of little kids and in the rain, and most of the pilots have motorbikes to make the 2 mile trip off-center to the airfield.

The primary mode of transportation, however, is walking. I asked one local national about her Christmas plans and she said she was going to visit her mother. When asked where the mother lived, the woman said, “Far, far, 10K or 20K!” My initial (U.S. auto-centric mentality) thought was that’s not very far, until I realized the woman would be walking both directions and carrying anything she was planning to take.

An option for people who can pay something is a variety of “PMV’s” — Public Motor Vehicles which take all shapes from an enclosed van (although people still pack in and often are hanging out the open doors), to a covered truck bed, to an open truck bed (pictures below).

A verse I like is in Job 23. Amid the trials and uncertainty Job was facing he makes the statement, “But He knows the way that I take…” (vs. 10). It is great to know we don’t flail blindly into the future, but God’goes before us. Praying for God’s guidance and blessing for each of you in 2024!