Alright, so furlough happened, and we just got back what? a little over a month ago? I wasn't sure we would come back...
So backstory: over the years I've been in Ukarumpa, I've had many friends. Because of the nature of our community, people come and go all the time, but generally, my circle of friends contains a significant amount of overlap. In other words, I become friends with Bob, a year later I also become friends with Fred. Some time after that I become friends with Hank. Bob leaves, Fred and Hank are still around and by the time one of them leaves, I've also become friends with new arrivals Ed and John. And so it went for a long time.
Last term was different. Already as far back as 2018, I started losing friends at a rapid rate. One after another they all left, and new relationships were not developing in the normal way. I was older, new people coming in were younger, young enough for the age difference to be a barrier.
By 2020, most of my friends were gone. And most of them had left unexpectedly early. Some simply never returned from trips back to the US. Most were gone for family reasons of various sorts--one left because his kids had all graduated and gone back to their home country and his wife couldn't handle the idea of living so far away from them. Another left because one of his kids was struggling with life in PNG. Some left during the pandemic and lockdowns. At that time there was widespread uncertainty about what we could expect here in PNG and some people chose to go back to their home countries and ride out the storm there. As everybody else was leaving, (and almost nobody coming in), we decided (along with a few others) to extend our field term by 1 year.
So there I was losing friends at a terrific rate, and then there was a management crisis at the AutoShop and I reluctantly agreed to manage the shop for 2 months until another guy came back from furlough to take it over again.
Do I even need to tell you what happened? He never came back.
I ended up managing the department for a year. A very difficult year. We were badly understaffed, we were overworked, we had to deal with terrible supply chain problems, and at the end of that time, I got a negative review from some guy in middle management who decided to wait until I was on my way out the door before letting me know that there was any kind of problem! I was completely blindsided by this, and because of my mental state at the time, took it far more seriously than I should have.
So! I was losing all my closest friends, I was stuck in a job I didn't want and was not very good at, my home country of the USA was in all kinds of political turmoil, the whole world seemed to be in a tailspin. Things just kept getting worse and worse and I began to think it was time to quit. I guess I became depressed. I was certainly burned out. Absolutely, positively, burned out. I had a very hard time caring about anything or getting excited about anything. I just drifted along, kind of numb.
So finally we were off, and I for one was not at all sure that we would ever return. For the first 5 months of our furlough, I could not face the idea of speaking at churches. We visited friends and supporters, we did a 7,175 mile road trip all over the USA visiting people, and that was good. I might go so far as to say that was even somewhat healing. We based ourselves in Waxhaw, NC, which is a convenient location for us--our organisation has a training/maintenance facility there, and also has long term accommodation available. We also have friends there and it's a (relatively) short drive from there to our supporting churches and family in TN and also to family in FL.
During that first 5 months, I hung around with people I knew who had also ended up in Waxhaw, and gradually my healing began. I threw myself into my US hobbies and put Ukarumpa and PNG out of my mind as much as I could. I spent time with old friends; when we were in TN, I told the kids dozen of stories about various adventures I had when I lived there. We spent time with my brother and his family, some of the best times we have ever had with them.
At the end of that first 5 months, we left the US for the UK portion of our furlough. I'm sure I've explained this before--my wife is from the UK and when we go on furlough, for visa reasons we usually will do 5 months in one country, then 5 in the other country and then go back to PNG. We find that this gives us adequate time and opportunity to visit the people and churches we need to visit.
In the UK I got covid, (pretty sure it was covid, I never did take a test to find out) and that put me out of action for 3 months. I started off and just sick and in bed and feeling terrible, but then after that, for 3 months I was pretty much unable to leave our flat due to terrible pain in both knees, both ankles and both feet. I bought myself a pair of crutches just to be able to get around the house. I didn't know for sure what was wrong with me but when I was better we took a trip to visit friends and one of them told me that what I had experienced was one of the known forms of long covid.
While we were in the UK we made plans to go back to the USA in order to visit our churches there. So instead of going back to PNG as we normally would, this time we went back to the US, visited our supporting churches in TN, spent time with my brother and his fam, spent more time with my parents and just generally managed to get done all the things I had been unable to face doing before.
At some point, I no longer wondered if we would go back. At some point, it just became an accepted thing that was going to happen, and something that I was even looking forward to.
And so now we're back in Ukarumpa. I'm gradually developing new friendships while staying in touch with a number of those who left. For the first time in several years I am not even the assistant manager of the shop. I'm just a mechanic/road rescue guy/buyer/other.
Life goes on!
Today I found myself working on part of a motorcycle which belonged to a Papua New Guinean friend of mine. He actually died while I was out of the country and so now I'm fixing this part for his heirs. But I was struck today, looking at this part--it's been sitting here at the shop waiting for me to come back and fix it since before he died several months ago, and when I finally returned and got going on it, it only took me about 10 minutes to repair. I don't know why that thought is sticking with me, but for some reason it is.
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