One more PNG Post!

I’ve now been back in Ohio for 2 1/2 weeks since my PNG trip. I am getting back into a routine working at the hangar here in Coshocton, but I thought you might like one more PNG blog-post!

One of the things that impressed us about our time in PNG were all the cultural differences we saw. Ukarumpa is a real melting pot! We were staying in the “village” of Ukarumpa, which is an SIL centre in Papua New Guinea’s eastern highlands. It was built back in the fifties for the purpose of housing missionary support staff, and to provide a base for SIL’s Bible translation activities throughout PNG. As a result it is called Little America by most people who know of it! We felt like it was very much Papua New Guinea when we flew in from an Ohio winter at the start of our trip, but after a few days there we felt very comfortable and able to easily see how “American” it all was. Even though it has a very obvious American influence, it does have a really interesting dynamic, with many different nationalities represented there. It was always good talking to the kids of some of the families we spent time with, and hearing how easily they accepted the fact that their school classes were often made up of Indians, Koreans, Europeans, Americans, Australians, New Zealanders, as well as PNG Nationals and a host of others. This mix of so many cultures in such a small area makes for a very interesting place!

Ukaumpa from the air

As much as we were able to, we made the effort to venture out of the base and explore the beautiful countryside around Ukarumpa. Tyler was fantastic, taking us on guided tours every weekend we were there! There were some fantastic reminders that PNG is a tropical island,
probably my favourite being the amazing fruit that grows all over the country.
The Weaver’s (like many) have a pineapple patch at the bottom of their garden, and it was absolutely the best tasting pineapple I have ever had! I think if there had been nothing else to eat I still wouldn’t have tired of it! But beyond the “tropical island reminders” I saw some amazing similarities with Scotland, and I really felt at home as we explored the Highlands.

Pineapple's growing at the bottom of Tyler's garden

It was good to experience the roads in that area of the country as well! Some of the pot holes we had to drive through were way bigger than anything you could tackle with an Astra estate!

Many of the rural communities we saw still have a very strong tribal tradition, and they operate much as they have for hundreds of years. The family unit is very strong, and words like “orphan” or “retirement home” are unheard of – the family looks after itself, caring for their old and young when they aren’t able to care for themselves. This type of society has a very strong appeal for many, and we often heard stories of people who had left for the city to study and work, then had come back home and were happy to live a subsistence based lifestyle in their village.

Agiann's grand-daughter running by the fish-pond

Often subsistence farming provides the majority of the food used by villages, and we were really blessed to be able to spend time in Aggian’s village (no idea if that’s spelt right, but his name is pronounced “Agg-ee-ann”) not far from Ukarumpa one Sunday afternoon. We had a guided tour of his small-holding, where he showed us his rice fields, corn, peanuts, squash, pineapple, banana, ginger, sweet potato, sugar cane and a host of other crops, as well as his goats and the fish pond he dug by hand and stocked with a tilapia type fish that his family enjoy for dinner! It was impressive to see how self sufficient he was from a relatively small piece of ground, and it was even more impressive when we found out that all his crop tending is done by hand without a John Deere in sight!

Rice growing in Agiann's field

After our tour we were treated to a Mu-Mu; a mu-mu is a traditional meal often cooked as a celebration or for a big family gathering; we were honoured that Agianne and his family would go to such an effort for us, and it was a real treat to be able to eat with them outside his meeting house.
The mu-mu is basically a big slow cooker; a pit is dug, and stones are heated on the fire until they are hot. They then go into the hole, are covered by banana leaves, all the food is added, and more
banana leaves cover the top. Soil is piled over it to seal everything in, and a couple of hours later you have a feast ready to be dug up! We had brought meat (some chicken, lamb, and sausages) for them to cook, but other than the meat, everything we ate was from their garden; rice that had been milled that weekend, corn that was picked then put straight into the “oven”, and cooking
bananas picked just for us.

The Mu-mu is opened!!

Thank you so much for all your prayers and concern while I was away from Heather and the kids; we really appreciated the support we had from so many people. Thanks also for your interest in PNG, the people there, and the work that MAF and other organisations are involved in – please keep them in your prayers.

What do the planes do?

While we were in PNG it was a real privilege to be able to spend lots of time with people who are the “end users” of so much of what we do. All too often at MMS (or for anyone in any “support” role) we work hard on a project, and then see little or nothing of what happens after the plane flies off. It was great to be able to spend time talking to people who rely heavily on aircraft, so I thought I would share some of this with you.

One of SIL's Kodiaks takes off on a trip into a remote part of PNG

Tommy and Connie Logan have been bible translators in PNG for the last 22 years, and have spent much of that time living in a remote village that might be accessible by foot… if you fancied spending days hacking through dense forest and travelling on tracks and trails that would challenge even the fittest. The only practical way for them to get to their village is by air, and it is fair to say that the Bible translation work they have accomplished over the last 2 and a bit decades, just wouldn’t have even been started if aircraft hadn’t been available to fly them in and out. The task they started out on all those years ago is almost mind-blowing to think about. They didn’t have Rosetta Stone to help them out; they had to learn the language from scratch, documenting everything from the alphabet they use, the grammar system they use, how words are spelt, how sentences are structured; all this before they could even think about translating anything into the Kasua tongue. It was a privilege to hear them talk about their work in such a humble way, and to hear of the deep bond they have with “their village”.

Tommy & Connie Logan, Bible translators with the Kasua tribe in Papua New Guinea.

We were also blessed to be able to go on a short helicopter flight with a Finnish translator who works in a village high in the Finisterre mountains in eastern Papua New Guinea. It only took us around 20 minutes to fly there from Ukarumpa, but as we flew over steep ridges, dense forest and flooded rivers, it was obvious that her work would have some serious obstacles if it weren’t for the helicopters and planes that SIL use to transport their translators around.

A Bible translator is dropped off by helicopter at the start of a 7 week spell in a remote village.

As well as spending time with the SIL missionaries who we were living with at Ukarumpa, it was great for Mark and me to spend time with some of the MAF families who work in PNG. As well as traditional “mission aviation” operations like supporting bible translation and church planting, and providing emergency support to missionaries, MAF have evolved along with the changing situation in PNG over the last few years. More and more churches are becoming self-supporting within their communities, and local people are taking on church leadership roles; this has brought about a shift away from traditional “missionary” roles in many situations. Remote communities and limited access make it very difficult for these communities to support themselves. MAF are heavily involved in providing support in a very holistic way, by helping ferry coffee and other local produce out of these communities to be sold. This help lets villages raise the money needed to provide schooling and care for the next generations. As a coffee drinker it was also great for me to see how much hard work, by so many people, goes into every cup I drink!

Coffee being loaded in MAF's Twin Otter at Appa, PNG.

It was great for us to get such an amazing opportunity to see first-hand how the work we do in aircraft maintenance plays a part in so much varied mission work around the world. Thank you for the support you give us, and the way you play a part in this “big picture”.

What were we doing in PNG?

So for the last 3 weeks myself, Mark Beckwith and Jim Newman have been working with SIL Aviation. Mark is another of the MAF / MMS apprentices going through the programme just now – he is about a year ahead of me and is expecting to be sitting his exams towards the end of the summer. Jim is an experienced mechanic and one of the training staff at MMS where he has been serving for a couple of years. Before that he served in Bolivia with World Gospel Missions, looking after their Cessna 206. Jim and his family are from Texas originally, so he also fulfilled the role of our “token American” on the trip!! It just doesn’t seem right for two Brits to be telling people that we are from Ohio without having an American accent somewhere in the mix!!

Last post I mentioned that the plane we were to work on was a Beechcraft King Air 200, which has been part of the SIL Papua New Guinea fleet for the last few years. One of the advantages of having the King Air is that it’s pressurized cabin and twin turbine engines make the trip to Cairns, Australia much quicker more comfortable. Often this trip has to be made for Medevac flights when someone falls ill in the more inaccessible parts of PNG, where medical help can be difficult to come by. (While we were in Ukarumpa, two aircraft had to be sent on separate medevac trips to Cairns from the SIL Ukarumpa base, and aircraft were put on standby to do the trip a couple of times as well).

The King Air showing off it's collapsed landing gear.

Last April the plane was on a training flight when the pilots realised they had developed a fault with their landing gear. After going through all the procedures they have for this kind of situation, they came in to land with the gear in as secure a position as they could make it. The landing was successful, but on taxiing back to the hangar the main gear collapsed. As far as landing gear failures go, it doesn’t get much better, with such slow speeds and a nice soft grass strip! It did manage to do a fair bit of damage to three or four of the frames that make up the skeleton of the fuselage just beside the door at the rear of the plane however. It also damaged the two skins that cover this area. This was the project we travelled out to work on, and the first week and a half were spent preparing for and then rebuilding this structure.

The damaged area we were to repair; you cn see the space where 3 damaged frames have been removed from the belly.

The two skins had to be specially made by Beechcraft for us, and although they had been ordered last autumn, they still hadn’t made it to PNG by the time we arrived. One skin arrived shortly after us, and we were able to do the prep-work on it ready for installation. Unfortunately the other skin was the one that had to be installed first, so when it didn’t show up until 2 ½ days before we were due to leave, we were under a bit of pressure to get as much done as possible while we could. The other factor that slowed us up with installation was the sealant – because the King Air is a pressurized aircraft, every seam has to be buttered up with sealant, and every rivet has to be driven with a dod of sealant on it to ensure that the plane stays airtight, and doesn’t leak when it is pressurised.

In front of our handiwork...

As it was, we managed to get all the structural work done, both skins installed with sealant, and enough rivets to hold it in place on the aircraft. We were a little disappointed that we were having to leave Tyler with 1500 or so rivets still to drive, but pleased that we were able to do 400 or so man/hours of work that the SIL Aviation guys would otherwise have had to fit in around their day to day responsibilities.

Home from Papua New Guinea!

Well it has been nearly 6 weeks since my last blog post; since then I have covered 9000 miles there and back, 15 time zones, 2 equator crossings and two date line crossings, and have had three weeks of fantastic experiences in Papua New Guinea.

Most of the work that MMS does happens here in the hangar in Coshocton Ohio, but from time to time a mission agency will get in touch and ask for help working on an aircraft that is unable to come here. Last year the King Air 200 operated by SIL Aviation (part of the Wycliffe family) suffered a landing gear collapse shortly after landing. Thankfully no one was injured and the damage was much less severe than it could have been, but it was still bad enough that quite a bit of work had to be done repairing the landing gear (which was the root of the problem) as well as the rear fuselage which took much of the weight of the aircraft when it went down. Tyler Weaver, one of the engineers at the SIL base in Ukarumpa, had completed his training at MMS some years ago, so he saw an opportunity for a rapid response trip and contacted us with the request.

Mark, myself and Jim having a look at the job in hand when we arrived in PNG

There are a couple of reasons why Rapid Responses are good experience for the apprentices at MMS; obviously the work that is being done on the aircraft is good training for us as we prepare for our FAA exams, and the broader the experiences we get, the better for us. Another reason why it is good to go on rapid response trips is that it gives us experience of working in an operational “field” environment. There are many different Christian missions operating aircraft and each one has a different way of doing things, a different fleet to operate, a different approach to the kind of flying they are involved in, and a different set of environmental challenges to be tackled. The third reason why it is so beneficial to go on RR trips, is that often they take place in areas away from what we are used to and the experience of living and working in a different culture, climate and situation is really valuable, as many of us prepare to serve with mission organisations around the world.

A MAF caravan lands behind the SIL Kodiak that flew us into Ukarumpa.

I am just home a few hours ago, still jet-lagged from my 45hr journey and am enjoying catching up with Heather and the kids after just over 3 weeks apart, so I won’t be telling all in this blog post, but hopefully over the next wee while I will be able to fill you in on some of the details and tell you a bit more about the work we were doing, some of the different ways we saw aircraft being used, and some of the cultural differences we were blessed to experience while we were in PNG!

Thanks for checking in!!

A quick update from the Swanson's.

Andy, Jim and Mark are getting on really well in Papua New Guinea. Repairs on the airplane are going well however, some of the parts they need are still in the USA so they may not get it completely finished by the time they leave but they are working hard regardless. Andy has been posting some pictures on facebook and I have selected four that you might like to see. A little of the scenery where they are, a nearby village, the King Air they are repairing, and the guest house where they are staying. They may be in a random order but I am sure you can work out which description goes with each picture. We are managing to communicate through email and try to "facetime" ( a new way of communicating via apple technology ; 0) every four or five days. Time on the Internet is very expensive for them so communication is limited but definitely much better that it would have been in the past.

Life here in Ohio is continuing on. The weather here is so variable. Yesterday was freezing and today has been a taste of summer and I went out without a jacket! The first of February (tomorrow) is the start of my Parent and Toddler group so I would appreciate your thoughts and prayers as this new adventure begins. We are meeting in our church hall and I have spent most of the afternoon today moving chairs and tables to set up. I really should be in my bed now so I am as fresh as a daisy in the morning LOL! The children are coping well considering Andy is away. Matthew has been displaying a lot more challenging behaviour this week compared to last and is keeping me on my toes! Abi has managed to pull the toilet roll holder off the bathroom wall and has left two rather large holes - Andy will have a little jobs list when he gets home I think!

I hope you are all keeping warm this cold winter. I believe temperatures are set to plummet again here in Ohio tomorrow.

Love in Christ

Heatherx