Done! ...ish (Packing for a Helicopter)

There's really always an -ish at the end of done here in PNG.
We've spent most of the week in final preparations for our trip out to the bush.
But what does that mean?

When (if) you get your helicopter confirmed, you get a weight allowance.
Ours was 360-385kgs.
Then you gather and weigh yourselves and your cargo.

We weighed all four of the people flying and marked down those numbers. Then we gathered up all our bags and weighed them individually. Every single one. If it was a unique bag it could just get a description and it's weight. If it was a random box, it needed a number, it's content, and the weight.


Everything needs to be marked by priority. So if they say, "well, actually you only get 350kgs" we can cut the least important things without undue stress.
We always bring more than enough, so that if they say, "You have 400kgs", we can fill that birdie up!
(Because we're paying for the helicopter either way!)

So we weighed ourselves and our cargo and found ourselves over 360kg with things that COULD NOT BE CUT. (clothes, food, diapers, personal body fat, etc) So then we had to go through everything again. Do we need a full jar of peanut butter or can we scoop some out? How many boxes of crayons do we really need? We have dehydrated meals in jars but maybe we could find one plastic jar and use sandwich baggies... Instead of bringing coffee and sugar and milk, maybe we can bring a serving to dump in a french press for each morning. No extra. Instead of two mosquito nets, maybe James can fit under ours...
Considering we're hiking in to another village from our helicopter landing point, cutting out ounces at a time is fairly reasonable.



We spent Wednesday compiling most things. Thursday, everything. Thursday we went shopping for the non-essential cargo. Rice and tin-fish and ramen noodles to provide our translators with during this time of famine here in PNG. Thursday night, we took home the bags and did the oz cutting game. Friday morning, we re-weighed everything and crunched the numbers and finally found ourselves at a good weight.


So once you're at the mark with essentials and busting over with non-essentials ranked by priority, you're done! ...ish.

We could use a gift for our host family and for the people who carry our cargo into the other village (because that is not happening on this pregnant woman and her husband's back!) So we need to go pick that up... We're thinking about phone credit cards, which can be hard to get out in the village but are slips of paper so weigh nothing.
I'm sure there'll be a last minute thought or two but that's the way it always is!

Monday morning at 10 am, we'll be out at the hangar, waiting for our 10:45 pick-up. They could be early. They could be very very late. We live in PNG and there's really no telling. Our cargo comes in and what gets loaded, gets loaded, and the rest goes back into town.

And then we're off!!