Skip to main content

Mando, Papua New Guinea

The completed classrooms - last day in Mando



Me and newborn at Goroka Hospital






Our PNG "home"

I am starting my new blog to share the amazing experience of being a Rotary volunteer in Mando in the Eastern Highlands Province, Papua New Guinea. Mando is an absolutely beautiful village, in the mountains about 2000 metres above sea level, and approximately 60 km from Goroka. How did this happen? A few years ago, I met a remarkable woman with a vision, Wendy Stein, who wanted to make a difference and bring hope to people whose life expectancy was the second worst in the world. I promised to help her project to bring better educational and health facilites to this village and last month, my husband Jim and I were part of the Highland Dream team. Essentially, Jim was involved with building three new classrooms - no mean feat without a supply of water and electricity. I established a women's support group and taught classes in jewellery making, knitting and crochet in an effort to supplement their family incomes as subsistence farmers. I also experienced other aspects of the project - painting blackboards, sorting library books, making library borrowing cards, cooking, painting signs , taking photos ... Although I have no medical training, I had the great privilege of watching a volunteer doctor from Cameroon perform cataract operations with great dexterity and care (one every 15 minutes) and even greater excitement when I happened to be at the birth of a healthy baby girl! Other members of our team were involved in building a piggery and a chicken coop, organising the school library, literacy lessons, assessing children with disabilites with the hope of establishing a special needs class in 2009, vaccination days, hospital and medical clinic visits. Together, I think we were able to meet our goal of helping to "make dreams real" for these wonderful people in Mando village. We made many friends and we will never forget the warm and close relationships we developed with individuals we worked with - both Australian Rotarians on the team, and the local people in Mando. As one of our team summed up " It is a privilege to help this community - a proud and dignified people" . This is just a tiny glimpse of what we did - I wish I could post all my photos!






Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Thanks for reading my blog and please share your thoughts about my blog post by leaving a comment.Your comment won't appear immediately as comments are verified before publication in an effort to reduce the amount of spam appearing. Anonymous comments will not be published.

Popular posts from this blog

Gourd Art

Last week, I rediscovered a few gourds "drying" in our garage... In fact, I was searching for them after doing a doll making workshop where we transformed gourds into doll bodies, with the addition of polymer clay and apoxie sculpt.  I have researched a little to identify the gourds I have - they seem closest to the water jug shape gourds. The gourds we used in the workshop were Chinese bottle gourds.  my gourd doll - a flower child /hippy fiddler?  Workshop dolls - Christmas sprite by Jane Lambert , and my doll  Flower doll also completed in the workshop by Lee Hennequin  Balloon seller - gourd art doll by tutor, Janice Laurent  Working with gourds made me very curious about the history and cultivation of gourds. A  gourd   is a plant of the family  Cucurbitaceae  or the fruit of the two genera of "calabash tree" .  The term refers to a number of species and subspecies, many with hard shells, and some witho...
1 comment
Read more

Countdown to Christmas 15 - Diamonds Forever!

How much would you pay for a Christmas  fruitcake?  The world's most expensive fruit cake has been estimated at $1.65 million. Yesterday, I wrote about the less than positive term "Christmas cake as it is applied to unmarried women, so again it amazed me that  in Tokyo, this most exquisite and expensive Christmas cake was created. It took six months to design and another full month to construct. The beautiful cake is fully edible ... that is except for the 223  real diamonds  used as decoration. This cake was part of an exhibition called Diamonds: Nature's Miracle  and was one of 16 exhibits showcasing creative ways with diamonds . Apparently, the cake was auctioned, fetching $1.65 million US. While there have been other very expensive diamond encrusted cakes since this one in 2005 with estimated values of up to $75 million, this Japanese designed cake was the forerunner of the extravagant diamond studded wedding cakes in the higher price r...
Post a Comment
Read more

Countdown to Christmas 20 - Fruitcake song!

There are many songs about fruit cakes  - not all of them referring to the Christmas cake we know and love.It is really surprising to learn via Google that there are 89 listed songs with references to Christmas cake or fruit cake - not all of them complimentary.   Probably one of the most famous folk songs about Christmas cake is Miss Fogarty's  Christmas Cake (a favourite sung by The Irish Rovers).  This first recorded comical Christmas song was written by C Frank Horn in 1883 in Pennsylania, as a variation of an Irish folk song, 'Miss Mulligan's Christmas Cake' . The chorus might give you the hint that Miss Fogarty's cake was not for the faint hearted or those who suffered from a weak stomach.    Chorus : There were plums and prunes and cherries, There were citrons and raisins and cinnamon, too There was nutmeg, cloves and berries And a crust that was nailed on with glue There were caraway seeds in abundance Such that...
Post a Comment
Read more