Harvesting coconuts
.

New missionaries, even those who have read and studied about other cultures,
are frequently monocultural.  ~ Challenges in the Mission Field
.

I was offered a position with the World Bank in Papua New Guinea (PNG). The country was 10 years into independence from Australia and sorely lacked the infrastructure to function well. Some years earlier, I had accepted a position working in Somalia – sight unseen. Big mistake! While there were some good times, that year turned out to be the hardest of my life so far and I ‘knew’ it on Day 1. Thus, at my own expense, I decided to pay PNG a visit in order to get a better sense of what my life would be like there.

Before traveling there, I contacted the University of Minnesota International Student Center to see if there were any students from PNG. They put me in touch with a young man. I contacted him and we went for coffee together. He told me that his older brother lived in Port Moresby and gave me his contact information. When I got to Port Moresby, I contacted the brother. He invited me to join him and some of his friends for dinner at a restaurant in the mountains behind the city.

People were quiet in the taxi that we took to get to the restaurant. Why? The drive was harrowing. But once we were settled in at the restaurant, the conversation was lively. As I was eating crocodile for the first time, I asked the older brother about his life. He told me that he had grown up in a small village on the south coast of the island and that they had no roads to their village at the time; that their only form of contact with people outside the village was by boat. That, by itself amazed me, having grown up hearing Dinah Shore sing, “See the USA in your Chevrolet.” And, yes, my family owned a Chevrolet.

Then he went on to say that he had vivid memories of when the road had been built to his village because of all of the life-altering changes that came with it. I asked him about the changes. He said one of the most dramatic was that, for the first time, they had to wear clothes. I asked him how that change came about. He said that with the road came the missionaries. He paused for some time. Then he looked me in the eye and, with tears in his eyes, he said, “You see, with the coming of the road and then the missionaries, we learned shame.”
.

Let go of shame. It’s not your fault. ~ Alan Watts
.

PNG countryside

Photos by Barbara
Papua New Guinea