Going Home at the Right Time

Well we were planning on a 7 week trip for our first venture into the Mum area. But instead we ended up calling in a helicopter to pull us out at week 5.

To me this reeks of failure.

But that is untrue.

And furthermore, it's a lie.

It's a lie Satan uses to try to attack my marriage, my ministry, and my self-image.

And the only thing you can do with such a lie is name it thusly and speak truth.

1. Seven weeks was an arbitrary length of time.
   "How long do you want our first trip to be?"
   "Idk? Like 2 months?"
   Seven was a number chosen based on when our supervisor would be in country to meet with us before and after our trip.
   So shortening the trip just means we guessed wrong.
2. We're not headed out early because we can't handle village life.
   We LOVE village life. But the house we were living in wasn't IN the village. It's a 15 minute hike from one village and a 5 minute hike from another.
   So
   - We can't kick James out to go play and enjoy some free babysitting
   - In times of great sun or rain, we're pretty much stuck in the house.
   This aspect of living deserves its own blog post.

There is a certain amount of stress that one bears in settings like being a guest. Depending on who the host is, that stress level will vary but eventually, even with a very low stress level, you'll need to get home.

The stress of living in the village (or at least near the village) was very low. The stress of living in that particular house, higher.

But we reached a place where our stress cups were brimming and even on an otherwise amazing day, the littlest thing had us overflowing.

And we have a toddler.

So THAT’S not good.

(The overflowing stress, I mean, I'm pretty fond of the toddler most of the time.)

So when my husband said we needed to leave before seven weeks, I had to submit.

(which is weird, because usually we're totally on the same page or my husband is serving me sacrificially, so I don't oftentimes find myself needing to submit to his authority as the head of our household.)

But pride had me holding to this goal. And even after we called for the helicopter, pride still had me believing we could have made it seven weeks. Which is fine. Pride can exist in my person, but I don't need to make decisions by it. (And a good thing I didn't, because by the time the helicopter came, we needed it.)

The lie that going home "early" is failure, the pride that makes that an unentertainable concept… Not calling that spade a spade could have had me put stress on our marriage, threaten the longevity of our ministry by risking burnout, and risk hurting our kids emotionally because I overreacted to something stupid.

Lies are dangerous.

We (my husband) gauged our stress levels, observed how quickly we were to anger even on an awesome day, and decided that the best thing to do for our emotional and relationship health was to head home to rest and regroup.

That isn't failure!

That's a recipe for success!

The link above, and here again for your convenience, elaborates on that what was stressful.  

The Good, The Bad, The Future

There were two parts of village living. The really really good part. And the really really not good part. 

The really really good part. 

Here we are in the village. Living the dream that's been motivating our choices independently and as a couple for the past ten years. After having coffee in the morning, we go out to do language learning. Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday are market days. We have bush food sold there for breakfast. Sometimes a tapioc cake, sometimes a plantain topped with ramen noodles and greens, occasionally a fried ball of bread. We go around asking what each thing is:
"ñɨ mum?"
And asking how much it costs
"ñɨ pamata?"
And asking to buy a couple
"arkɨta mut muŋgriman"

After market or on not-market days, we often take a 15 minute walk to Katiati. Someone usually comes to grab Marissa from me and carry her. Everyone loves to hold the white baby. And we sit on someone's porch and learn language. Sometimes asking what things are, sometimes asking what people are doing, and sometimes just learning whatever they're in a mood to teach us. We get to know people. We make friends. James runs around in the village, usually screaming when some child tries to hold him, which is any time he falls down, which is often, because he plays hard. 
Around 10, we go home for a snack and work on lunch and do chores. 
In the afternoon, we'll go out again. Sometimes to Katiati again, sometimes to Aringana, sometimes to Kakrasapai, (which is very close but more of a boys town, so much less comfortable for me.) 
Visiting people under the cool of their morota roofs is a lovely way to spend time. 

The really really not good part

Some days it's too hot and clear to make the 15 minute walk in full sun. Some days it's too rainy. So we sit in our house. We try to study our language data, but we have a toddler with fierce cabin fever. Even when he's not fussy, he's ramming into us with the full velocity of his love. He has so much energy and it's all exerted in a physical way and he knows not his own strength. 

We're literally sitting on our cargo. So when we're not reprimanding him to stop grinding his head into our leg (we've finally nearly broken him of the head butting habit), we're telling him to stop touching the stuff that's everywhere. 
Also we have an infant, who gets into less trouble but is teething and is no less demanding. 
We could go under the house which is the only shaded area nearby, but Regina is under there and the velocity of her affection far exceeds James. So we'd have to shorten her tether to give the kids a safe place, but she would whine the whole time and James would walk up to her and she would reach out to him beckoningly with her sharp claws and then James would be crying and Jacob would want to, in an appropriate albeit misguided protective fashion, beat a dog for "attacking" his son. And it's more trouble than it's worth. 

We LONG for the day when our house is in the village. We don't have to walk. If James wants to play, we can open the front door and let him out. We're not sitting on our cargo but our stuff has a place and a home. And so do we. 


Ironically, on our last couple of days there, this "village life" happened. We were in Aringana for a while and the kids finally got over trying to hold James and they were playing happily. And when we were ready to head back to the house, we were told to leave the kids there, they'd bring them by later. For HOURS, James was playing happily instead of getting snapped at in the house. We were able to get work done. It was so nice to have time to ourselves and not be constantly fighting with James. 
Now that we're back in town, we again have a shortage of opportunities for James to go play for hours, but we have electricity and with it a wealth of distractions. (Yes, sometimes Daniel Tiger babysits my son. It happens. I have a full time job and I work from home). We also have places to go that helps break up the monotony of his day, (where the real trouble in the village came from not having a place to go). So compared to (true) village life, I wish we were in the village where James was running around socializing (though Daniel Tiger does teach valuable social skills!) 
But that house just wasn't working for us!

OUR house is being built now! They broke ground while we were there. We're sending out treatment for the posts and nails with one of the translators on Monday. Then at some point we'll be sending in the tin roofing (the trees they use to make roofing isn't plentiful there so it would take a long time to get enough roofing to cover our house) and other odds and ends like hinges and gutters. They hope to be done in February, which is after our Annual Meeting and before the Director, who accompanies a newly allocating couple out to tell the village that we're there on PBT business, will be headed out of country!
So we'll have a nice break for the Holidays, and time to scramble in packing and prepping for the next trip!


Stay tuned for a post on our house, our floor plan, and our colorful head of construction!  

Language learning with no classroom

Ok so how do you do it? How do you go out and just learn a language?
Well, I don’t know how YOU do it, but this is how WE’RE doing it.
(which is not “best practice” but whatever.)

So first we learned some power phrases:
I came to speak Mum.
What is this?
Hello. Where are you coming from?
(Asking from whence they come and where they're going is polite like asking “how are you?”)

Then we use those phrases!
So we got words like dog, pig, stick, stone and like house, garden, and village.

Then we mimic words we don’t know.
“Baby saywhatnow?”
And they translate.
“Oh. Baby cries.”

But you can only go so far asking for words.
Imagine the following:
You're sitting at a birthday party. You’ve asked and received the words: Balloon, hat, streamers, cake, decorating, sing, light, candles, etc.
And then someone walks in and immediately begins talking to your language helper.
“I cannot believe this. Tracy said she was going to help out and she totally blew me off and I have a hundred things to do and this thing is supposed to start in an hour.”
Ok, well, despite your impressively long list of elicited words, you understand not one of hers.

So now we enter into the phase of asking people just to talk amongst themselves and when we can delineate a word from the plethora of syllables spewing from their lips, we mimic it. And then they translate!
Bonus points for recognizing a word and mimicking the following unknown word!
We also really like when they use names or Tok Pisin as it breaks up the Mum and gives us something we definitely know. It sounds like a recorded voice message with a macro.
“hello we have a very important message for ELIZABETH SMITH. Please call us back at your earliest convenience.”


Right now our language learning level is a Level Zero Plus. That means we can use 50 words correctly! We’re nearly at Level 1, I think another week will have us there!
Then THE BOOK says the time to get to the next level is the sum of the time it took for the two steps prior. So 0-0+ is 1 week, and if 0+-1 is 2 weeks, then 1-1+ will take 3 weeks and 1+-2 will take 5 weeks!
Fibonacci sequence style!
So it SHOULD take 32 weeks of in the village language learning time to feel competent enough to do our jobs in Mum (Level 3).
At least, that’s what THE BOOK says….