Following the Beat of the Kundu Drum

Some may say that PNG follows the beat of a different drum. Some rhythmic patterns in my volunteer life are the same. Saturdays on the boat with Jan to snorkel the colorful reefs. Sara in the market selling vegetables from the Highlands. Volunteers popping in and out the VSO office. The neighborhood children screaming and the roosters crowing. Rides in crowded PMVs and in the back of Marleen and Jolanda's Nissan. The desire to take 3 showers a day, but resisting because you know you will be sweating again in 5 minutes.

In a place where progress is painfully slow, relative changed has occurred in the last 2 months...at least through my eyes. I am most hopeful for VSO's new country director. The special education coordinator for the Creative Self Help Centre has returned after 5 months of unexplained absence. Shantica, my neighbor who has to be around 7 or 8 years old, is now chewing buai. The addition of two big families to my compound has given reason for a "mini market" to be established under the clothes line. A wontok of the family that lives below me sells heaps of buai, peanuts and ice blocks from a feed bag spread across the grass. I have opened up my spare bedroom to Roselyn, my friend and deaf education teacher, who is having housing trouble. And my couch to a volunteer who is here in Madang as a "political refugee" from Vanimo. My dear friend Alex with the European Union has left along with other international development workers.

Most importantly, I have decided to follow the beat of the kundu drum. It took a meeting with my program manager to open my eyes to see that I am making progress in my placement although it looks quite different than progress in other settings outside of the PNG and development context.