The First Day in the Bush

I consider the first day to be the first FULL day.
The night was miserable. No pillow plus little support from the one inch thick mattress made my neck scream in misery. I woke in the middle of the night and had to use the filthy bucket toilet. (definitely not going to fly when I live here long-term) and in the morning I got my first bucket shower. The freezing water was not awesome.
I longed for better times out and about. And I got them.
Lindy took Kristen and I to where the women were making saksak, a starch similar to flour. After sitting down and talking a little with the women, Kristen asked if she could try sigrapim saksak (scraping saksak) out of the sago tree. They let her and after a bit she passed it off to me. It was hard work and we weren't very good at it at all. It involved taking a pick-ax like thing and hitting it againt the inside of the tree to scrap it out into a bunch of little splinters.

The next step in the process is wasim saksak (washing) where you put the splinters into a mesh and pour water over it. then the splinters are wrung and the water drips white. A finer mesh better filters the white water and it falls into a canoe. In this process the baby IS the bath water. The canoe is then covered until the excess water evaporates and a powder is all that's left behind. The powder is the saksak.