Independence Celebration!! Just fantastic to be involved with this. My group were great at kitting me out with custom dress and were uber keen to learn a haka (I don't really know any hakas....). But was great fun teaching them to sing Pokarekare ana and then changed e te ariki into a haka and whammo! Maori item in the middle of a PNG culture night. (As one group member said "We longer eating flesh and are glad that other countries are safe to come here now so we celebrate their culture too"...!)
Akia painting us up...
And spot the white girl....
I swear I'm not actually this white but it is an extreme flash photo!!
Following the cultural night we had a day of sport which started well. Classics such as Coconut shotput, and then this relay of running to collect a coconut, husking it and then scraping. Despite my practicing at husking and scraping I was still added to the kids race (kids and foreigners) and then delegrated the running leg. I completed this complete with an epic slide finish as I delievered my coconut to the scraper person. Running in mud isn't a problem but stopping is!
Firelighting and bow and arrow competition were followed by the not-so-traditional tug of war and limbo. Tug Of War would have made a southland easter camp proud as it was torrential rain and nothing but mud to stick your feet into, and much yelling and yahooing!!!
Finally it was flying fox time, which everyone LOVED! Certainly wasn't OSH approved and I lamented that I have been corrupted by OSH safety standards but then thought it was ok as Im still alive....anyway, no-one died and i only had to look away a few times as kids fell off the ladder and dropped into the creek below.
Heading out to Port Moresby in 2 days time to wait there for a few days until i fly to Australia. Have had a mission trying to organise this but are thankful that we have just found out we can go. The other option was a 4 day boat trip!
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