Life in a village.

The pastor of Gihamu ( Gee- ha- moo) village invited us to spend 5 days working with his church. We accepted his invitation and packed our bags.

After an hour road trip we arrived at the village, where we met the Pastor and his family and were shown our home for the next 5 days.

We were instructed to place our bags in the house and then come for a tour of the village.

We met many of the villagers and enjoyed the breathtaking beauty of the village.

Our house did not have running water, but there was a spiket a short distance away where we could get water.

 And since there was no running water the house did not have a toilet either. But no worries there was a pit toilet for us to use. Although the toilet looks lovely don't let this deceive you. This toilet was nothing more then a deep slit in the ground, and was full of all kinds of bugs. Also it did not have a door, so to find out if it was available for use one would simply approach and call out.

We had an over abundance of fruit during our stay, as soon as the villagers learned of our arrival we had children of all ages showing up at our door with bags of fruit. We had the best pineapple I have ever tasted, passion fruit, something like passion fruit which we called sugar fruit, bananas, oranges, and mandarins.

when we asked the villagers what their favorite food was the most common response was cow-cow. Pastor Paul said his favorite way to eat cow-cow was roasted, and he promised to roast some for us. One day I saw through the open door of the hut Pastor Paul making a fire and digging a pit, so I went out to investigate and learned how to roast cow-cow. First you make a fire and heat up some rocks.

Then you dig a hole and line it with banana leaves.

You then put the hot rocks into the hole and cover them with another layer of banana leaves.

Now you are ready to add the cow-cow.

 You then wrap it all up with more banana leaves and leave it to cook. A couple hours later Pastor Paul brought us a platter filled with freshly roasted cow-cow. We would now get our first taste of  cow-cow. Cow -cow tastes a lot like a sweet potato, only it is very dry. It is very filling after eating half of one I was quite full but I still had to eat the other half. So I mashed it up in a bowl with some water, which made it much more enjoyable.  Cow- cow may be the villagers favorite food but my team and I much preferred stew. Stew is a mixture of cabbage, carrots, ginger, and onions, all cooked up to gather. It was the most delicious thing I ate while in PNG. We ate rice, greens, and chicken with our stew.