Cellulitis: 0/5, Would Not Recommend

 So I had big plans.  We had a three day weekend a few weeks ago (I've lost track of the days since) and I really wanted to get a ton of stuff done on a friend's motorcyle.  I need to do the work on my own time because he has already paid me with an old parts bike.  A lot of the work is done already, I just need to do some electrical rewiring.  Not really difficult, but time consuming.

Sunday, we went down to the local river to witness some baptisms, several missionary kids (MK's) and some PNG kids all got baptised that day.  Because I have a high pain tolerance, usually wear shorts and just generally don't care much when I bump into sharp things, my legs are covered with scars and usually sprinkled with fresher cuts, welding burns or other wounds.  If 8 inch high pygmies were a thing, I suppose one might suspect that I had blundered into a small raiding party of such individuals. At the baptism, I noticed that a number of flies were quite aggressively clustered around one of my leg wounds, and try as I might, I could not keep them away from it.

Monday, (the holiday), I woke up feeling fine and determined to get a lot done, but no.  By 9:30 or so, I was feeling ill, by 11 I was vomiting, lost my appetite, feeling generally bad all over, and the wound the flies had been clustered around was clearly infected.  Fast forward a couple days and nothing had changed, except that my right leg was all mottled red and clearly not right.  The left leg was also affected, but not as badly at that point.  Reluctantly, I agreed to go to the Clinic.

So Friday we went to the Clinic.  Over the past 20 years, I have spent very little time at the clinic.  I am generally healthy and generally find that my immune system is capable of handling quite a lot.  But this one was different.  Before long, the Clinic Staff had determined that I was suffering from cellulitis.

Cellulitis, for those who--like me-- may not know, is a bacterial skin infection.  It is not at all uncommon here, where there are some particularly nasty strains of such bacteria.  It enters though breaks in the skin and I could have gotten it anywhere, possibly at the baptism, or possibly from water splashed up onto my legs from riding through a mud puddle on the way to work (there have been days recently when I arrived to work with a thin layer of mud puddle mud on my legs from the knees down).

So!  I had daily appointments at the clinic for probably 10 days in a row, where my condition was closely monitored, I was pumped full of  anti-biotics by IV, injections and orally, blood work was done (my white blood cell count, which should normally be under 10,000, was all the way up to 19,000--numbers which meant nothing to me, but which certainly caught the attention of the clinic staff), my legs were carefully wrapped with bandages to protect them from further infection and also to deal with draining fluids.

If you are imagining something disgusting at this point, let me assure you, it was probably worse.  I did not recognise my own legs, covered with weird blisters containing fluids of various unhealthy looking colors, rags of dead skin still clinging to living tissue underneath, swollen legs, swollen feet, (I had to take the laces out of my shoes in order to be able to wear them), and I was ordered to keep my feet elevated as much as possible, which has left me more or less bed ridden for a few weeks now.

I am pleased to report that things have improved a lot since those early days.  Currently, I'm still supposed to be keeping my legs elevated, but the swelling has gone down, the fluids are mostly drained now, the dead skin has been carefully cut away, revealing nice, healthy new growth underneath, my white blood cell count has gone back down to 7200, my legs are still wrapped up, but the right one is almost reconisably my leg now and the left is following along pretty nicely, though still significantly behind the right.  Still no word on when I will be able to return to work, but hopefully not more than a couple weeks from now.

Our dedicated nurses and Dr. at the Clinic have really been a blessing to our family during this time.  We thank the Lord for sending these people!

Oh, and cellulitis is no fun, avoid it if you can.

BAPTISMS! Am I qualified??

      Ukarumpa doesn't have a church.  Okay, that's not quite true.  As the Body of Christ, we, of course, are the Church.  But the members of our community come from all over the world, from many different cultural and denominational backgrounds, and as you can imagine in a missionary community, there is a higher than average number of ordained pastors per capita.  But there is no "church" as you might imagine.  We have a meeting house where we meet on Sundays and usually one of the aforementioned pastors will speak, or a visiting pastor might be in town and he'll speak.  But we don't have a regular pastor or a regular church staff.  It's all done by members of the community, which is either fantastic or really awful, depending on what you need, I guess.

      So some time ago my kids (all three and without any pressure from me) let me know that they all wanted to be baptised.  I was happy about this and thought that probably the next time we were in the US or the UK the kids could enroll in some kind of pre-baptism training (just like I went through when I was a kid and got baptised) and hopefully God would provide a pastor or a youth group leader who they would want to baptise them.  I said all this to them.

       "But Dad", they said, "we want YOU to baptise us!"

        Now I know that the correct should have been unbridled joy at the thought of such a wonderful opportunity, but no!  I was freaking out.  Was I qualified to baptise people?  Didn't you have to be a pastor?  At least a youth group leader?

        I'm ashamed to admit it now, but I put them off.  We had lots of stuff going on and no time, etc., and I knew it wasn't great to be putting them off, I mean, I really didn't want to "quench the Spirit" so to speak.

       Time went by.  And then several other kids in the community decided that they wanted to get baptised, and my kids decided that they did, too.  I knew I should be excited, but I was filled with dread.  What if I got it wrong?  What if I accidentally swerved into heresy?  Who am I to be baptising people? I'M A MECHANIC!

       The big day came and over breakfast I let my son know what I was thinking.  "What if I get it wrong?" "Dad", he said, "that's silly!  You won't get it wrong."  And of course I knew he was right.  Looking back at Bibical baptisms, there's no great long liturgy that needs to be memorised and delivered in iambic pentameter.  It's just stuff like the Ethiopian who said "Hey look!  Here is water!  Why shouldn't I be baptised RIGHT NOW?!"  And of course Philip baptised him.

        So, at 2 p.m., we and about 50 other people made our way down to a local river.  One of the pastors from our community gave a short talk about baptism and the 10 kids who had chosen to be baptised that day were baptised.  Some by the pastor, some by their dads,  My kids were the last, numbers 8, 9, and 10.

        We decided to go in birth order, which seemed to make sense. My son and I walked towards the water.  At some point it sank in what we were doing and I started crying.  I stopped at the edge of the water, facing away from the crowd and tried to regain my composure, but all to no avail.  Others saw me and they started crying, too.  It was either a really special time or a real mess, depending on your point of view, I guess.   I'm super thankful that my kids were not embarrassed by my tears.

       I spoke to the crowd, and it was hard because I was crying and couldn't stop and my voice broke and it was a disaster, but a special and holy time.  "I'm not a pastor", I said, "by God's grace I am a mechanic!"  I paused and spoke to the crowd again, "I hope nobody will be offended if I ask my wife to help me."  There did not seem to be any objection, especially as I was so emotional, and my lovely wife came forward and asked each of the kids the questions we had agreed to ask them and together my son and I walked out into the river.

      So that's how that went!  In the end I realised what a special thing it was to be able to baptise my own kids.  I am thrilled that they have made public their commitment to follow Christ and I love them all very much!  Pray for MK's (missionary kids).  We love them, but like all kids, they do have their struggles, some more than others.  

      These photos were all taken by Anita McCarthy, who is a great photographer.

Motorcycle And Small Engine Guy, And Also Other Stuff

 

         Like this big Astra 6x6 cargo truck.  It needed a battery cable terminal replaced and I was the guy who heard about it first and who felt most able to just get right on it:

 

       Just to give you some idea of scale, the bottom of the window in the door is almost 7 feet off the ground (over 2 meters for you metriqistas.  Like that?  I invented that term, just now, on the fly.  You're welcome, world). 

        That's all for now!

Post Earthquake Shop Clean-up

      So I mentioned last time that we have just returned from furlough.I know, I know, we are supposed to call it "home assignment" now.  Call me a traditionalist, I still call it furlough.  Maybe I like feeling connected to the generations who called it that before me.

       Anyway, so while we were gone, (several months ago) there was a huge earthquake that really shook up Ukarumpa.  Thankfully we don't have much in the way of big infrastructure to crumble or fall down, but there was lots of little damage.  We were amazed to come back and find our house almost completely unaffected, but my work area at the AutoShop was another story.

      See those shelves?  The upper ones that are almost completely bare?  When I left, those shelves were groaning under the weight of a large collection of motorcycle parts.  The earthquake threw almost all of them right down on my floor.

      Several of my friends offered to clean the stuff up for me, but asked them please not to, because I knew that if they did, I would just have to go through it all again to get it organised. And so it sat, knee deep in some areas, until we returned to PNG.

     When we got back, I was told I had a full month to try to get it all reorganised.  Part of the reason why everything fell down was because the parts were all stored in a rag-tag collection of old cardboard boxes of various sizes.  To make my job a little easier, I decided to make the shelves a little deeper, make them a lot sturdier, and then make up a bunch of plywood boxes to replace the cardboard ones.  Here is how the first set turned out:

     I'm definitely not a carpenter, but I think these boxes turned out pretty nice.  As you can see if you click on the image, they are sensibly labelled with things like "Headlights #1"  "Scrap brass - heavy" and so on.  The workbench beneath the shelves is also tidy, and perhaps most remarkably, here is the floor: 

     I'm aware of the fact that many of you are thinking, "it's still a mess", but trust me, it has been many years since so much of this floor has been so clean.  The other side of my motorcycle lift still looks like this: 

     So as you can see, there's still a ways to go.  Believe it or not, most of the 9-10 engines visible in this picture were neatly stowed away at one time.  I would very much like to have seen this whole avalanche of motorcycle engines have come cascading out from where they were!  It must have been something to behold and must have made an awful racket as well.

      Anyway, in all I ended up making 30 bigger plywood boxes and I think 3 smaller ones.  Some of the labels started getting a little goofy and I began to get "clean up fatigue":

 

 

 

     Not done yet, but at least I have enough stuff cleaned up to be able to start doing regular work and can do more cleanup/organising between those jobs.  The sharp eyed among you will notice that the tops of the workbenches still look pretty cluttered.  You are right, they are. But my main lift is cleared, the secondary lift is cleared, that's more than enough to get us going.

         Andrew, in Ukarumpa

About 10 Minutes...

      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.

Greetings from Ukarumpa, Papua New Guinea!

We were last in the US and the UK in 2017.  For fun, I've included some photos from that time in this update.  It's almost time to repeat the experience, which brings us to the subject of this email: You know it's time for Home Assignment when... 1) All of your electronics have technical problems. 2) Your clothes have holes in them. 3) There are few clothes left for your children to grow into. 4) Your youngest will soon be the age your oldest child was when you last left the country together.

5) You find yourself reading 'Watching the English' because you can't remember how to interact with people from your home country. 6) You realise that some items at the bottom of the freezer may have been there a long time. 7) You look forward to exploring places that are different from the ones you see every day. 8) You haven't seen most of your extended family for over four years.

9) You don't have any non-expired bank cards in the same country as you. 10) You really want to be able to thank people and churches in person for their faithful and generous partnership in your work. 11) Your prescription glasses are no longer a good fit.

12) You long to catch up with friends in person, after four years of computer-based communication. 13) Your spices aren't tasting too fresh. 14) You realise it's been a very long time since you had a proper holiday/vacation.

Our current plan is to be in the USA from February to June and in the UK from July to November.   We won't book tickets until nearer the time: due to the pandemic, flights are often cancelled, and the availability of different flights can also change.

We hope to see you next year!

Andrew and Clare Koens, with Levi, Heidi and Eowyn

2020! (I know it was a long time ago)

      Okay, so it's been a while.  My thinking, back in the first half of 2020, was to wait until the pandemic was over and then write up a little report on "how we survived the pandemic in our neighborhood".  But alas!  Stupid pandemic won't go away.

        I'm biting my tongue firmly, staying away from the politics on this.  Do I have opinions?  Certainly!  Quite strong ones, and those who know me well can guess which way they probably lie.  But I'll steer clear, there's way too much politics going on out there.

        So, 2020!  How did that go for us?

        Well, in March, I believe it was, there was of course the obligatory lockdown.  All our employees were sent home and all our departments were closed.  We bent over backwards (financially) to continue paying our employees at least part of their pay for as long as we could.  

        Everything was quiet.  Nobody knew what to expect.  Nobody knew what to do.  I eventually got bored and went back to work.  Why not?  Nobody else was there, it's not like anybody was going to infect or be infected.  Besides, the dogs still needed to be fed, and there is always something to do at the shop.

        None of us knew what was going to happen next.  There was speculation that we would all end up leaving one way or another.  Or that there never be a way to leave at all.  Some people were highly stressed, others adopted a wait-and-see attitude.  Since everything was shut down and I couldn't get parts, I turned to a long term project that I had been sitting on for a while and built this: 

 

 

       New floors, new heater channels, ATV wheels and tires, it was by far the biggest car project I had ever attempted and I learned a ton.  In this picture it's not even done yet, it eventually ended up with a fiberglass "Baja" kit (new fenders, trunk lid, etc.)  Fortunately/unfortunately we opened back up again before I was finished with it and so it's still not quite done...

       The car itself is a 1969 VW (australian market model) that had been given to me by a friend who left some time ago.  I had grand plans of making it into a car for my wife to drive since her old Mitsubishi bus was out of comission, but other events transpired which made that unnecessary.  I'll get into that in another post.

       So as I say, we finally re-opened and things returned more or less to normal.  Hard times hit the Auto Shop and we lost first one manager, then another and I once again found myself managing my department, a job which I really do not like for various reasons.  

        So yeah, things are more or less normal for us again now.  Our local store is still requiring masks, but that's just about the only place locally that is still doing that.  If you go to the city of Lae you pretty much have to wear masks any time you go into a store, but not restaurants.  Some of my Papua New Guinean friends have sat down with me and asked me what the big deal is, since most people here who have gotten the virus seem to just get better again.  Certainly tuberculosis and even pneumonia, (both fairly common here) kill a lot more people.  And that kind of made me think: culturally, PNGians are much more used to death than people are in a lot of other countries.  There are lots of reasons for this that I don't really want to get into here, but it's true.  And a disease which kills so few of those who get it just doesn't seem like a big deal here. 

        For us here in the workshop, the biggest headache has been shipping!  Stuff that used to reliably take a month or 6 weeks to get here from overseas now takes much long--6 months is not unusual!  And it doesn't seem to matter what method you use for shipping, it all is taking forever, though there are some signs that things may be starting to improve, thankfully.

        Guess that's all I have to say about 2020 for the moment...