Babies

Reuben has mastered the 'football hold' position for feeding his precious 'baby'.

Our Papuan Home

This is on the main street of Sentani. Notice the guy selling newspapers by the road, and the enormous pile of rubbish awaiting collection. Rubbish is either dumped roadside, burnt or thrown into the river headed for Lake Sentani. We're exploring ways to reduce and recycle our waste!

This is our street, to the left. There is no street signage, so we say after the second big mosque on your left, past the police station, turn left just before the bridge.

While we were in Malang, the government paid for our road to be sealed, which is great for bike riding, and makes walking through the neighbourhood more pleasant.

The road winds its way past several houses, a pentecostal church, lots of coconut trees, gardens, banana trees..

..and a pinang and ice-block stand. Pinang is a narcotic which is chewed and then spat out, very popular with Papuans of all ages. In PNG it's called betel nut.

The river just behind our house.

There are tropical fruits everywhere. This one is called chocolate fruit; the seeds are dried and used to make cocoa.

We have pineapples growing in our garden.
The kids don't seem to care that the yard is dirt.

Soren is really into card games at the moment.

Playing in the yard

I am sooo thankful for our little yard where the boys can play happily in the afternoons. Here Soren has constructed a clothes line, washed some of his shirts under the tap and hung them up to dry, Reuben his trusty assistant.

Nesting

Philip and Soren get busy planting some flowers in the long-neglected garden bed at the side of our house.

Playing with Riski

This is Riski, our house-helper Ibu Anik's 7 year-old. One day she brought him to work and the boys played a bit together.

Digging for 'pets' (snails and worms).

Check out the Mick Jagger lips.

'Eh! (look!)' Reuben makes up for his lack of language ability (English or Indonesian) with his charm and devastating good looks.

Checking out the action on the street.

A new mountain, a new home

View from our second floor balcony.

Philip did a heroic job of walking/motorcycling the streets looking for 'to rent' signs while I tried to keep the kids entertained back at the guesthouse. Our new house is a short walk to language school in one direction and Soren's kinder in the other. Fantastic.

The boys enjoy the small yard, and lots of space to play inside.

The house came with basic furniture but it was still quite a task getting it set up. A wonderful new friend lent us his motorcycle for a week, and took us in his car to a big electronics store.
The house was full of dirt and dead critters when we moved in. Taps, toilets, powerpoints and the water pump were broken or missing. Figuring out what on earth was going on with the workmen became a cross-cultural comedy of errors, but after 10 days of no reliable running water, I was running out of laughs!

Now it is clean and functioning, we love our new home.

Random house shots

The view from our street.
Psalm 121:
A song of ascents. I lift up my eyes to the hills--where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth. He will not let your foot slip--he who watches over you will not slumber; indeed, he who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. The Lord watches over you--the Lord is your shade at your right hand; the sun will not harm you by day, nor the moon by night. The Lord will keep you from all harm--he will watch over your life; the Lord will watch over your coming and going both now and for evermore.



The study.



Soren's room.



Making friends in the front yard.

Side porch.

The river which is right next to our house. Fantastic!

Soren playing with Uriah, his new buddy, in the guest room. In Indonesian houses (our house is quite Indonesian in style), this is the room at the front of the house where guests are received and entertained.



The view of the neighbourhood from the front porch.



We have two bathrooms, both with a bak, which is a kind of tub that you splash yourself from. Very refreshing!



The laundry is in the garage.



View of our house from the road.