Day 11
This was our last day in the village because of the changes in our travel plans for going out.
Originally our hope and plan was to go to Ambunti on Wednesday afternoon to have a MAF flight pick us up. But . . . as usual, there is nothing that is easy in PNG. MAF is currently with only one pilot flying out of Wewak instead of the normal two, which meant that Wednesday was the day the pilot had to not fly to stay within regulations. So, it was either fly out on Tuesday and miss a full day in the village or fly out on Thursday and have no margin for any delays that would cause us to miss our Air Nuigini flights Thursday afternoon. We all met and decided on Plan B. We were not going to fly out, but drive out by taking a very long canoe ride to where the road met the river in Pagwei and then taking the road to Wewak.
Our big event on this last day was a canoe trip to a neighboring village named Sanopian where we have one of our satellite schools. This is their summer break so the school was not in session, but the whole village still came out for a visit from the Americans. We toured the school area and took a very large group picture. One of the highlights was when Alin took out his guitar and led in several songs. They don’t speak as much English in this village, but the kids loved following some of the songs with actions.
Hauna Village facilitates seven schools in seven area villages that would have no elementary education without our teachers. It is a partnership with the village providing the land and trees, and we provide the sawmill. The village then provides the labor to erect a school classroom. Hauna trains and pays the teacher to live in the village for the school year. It’s pretty inspiring.
Later, we decided to visit Jay in the clinic. It was fun to see him in action. Shortly after we left the clinic, an amazing thing happened. A canoe came up with three young men. One of the young men was being carried by the other two with a very serious injury. Just like the friends bringing the crippled to be lowered through the roof to Jesus, these two friends brought their friend to the only person who could help—Dr. Jay.
They quickly set up a makeshift surgery room because this young man had a very a deep cut in his shin. Jay worked with all of the nurses to carefully sew each tendon and each muscle and completely clean the wound. If Dr. Jay had not been there, at best, this man would have been crippled for his whole life. But more likely, he would have either lost the leg or died from the massive infection that would have surely set in. We were thankful for God’s provision.
That evening, a parade of people began coming to the big house to say goodbye.
Our plan for the next day was to take the 60-foot dug-out canoe with two outboards, leaving at 4 a.m. which makes for a short night. About 2:00 a.m. it started to rain. And it rained hard…