Pray for Rain!
We are blessed with 2 water tanks! The metal one holds around 9,000L and the plastic tank holds around 5,500L. Currently (24th Sep) they are at about 60% capacity, which should last us another 3 weeks or so.
Across PNG for the past 2 months, we have been experiencing the effects of El Niño creating a drought in much of the country.
In our home town of Telefomin, we haven’t had significant rain for 3 weeks. That might not sound like very long, but Telefomin is a very wet place, we normally get around 3m of rainfall a year and we rarely go more than a couple of days without rain. It’s only been “spitting”, a very light rain, every few days, just enough to dampen the dust down on the roads (which is a huge blessing) but not enough to provide a family with drinking water for a day.
For the past 2 months we’ve only had significant rainfall every couple of weeks, as a result the ground, which is usually soggy, has dried up to the point of having large cracks in it (see pictures, below).
People have also been burning the dry grass in the incorrect belief that this brings rain. As it is so dry, what would normally be a small grass fire easily becomes a bush fire, with many people’s gardens having been destroyed, and the sides of mountains being lit up with fire at night. This also has lead to so much smoke in the air, that’s it’s created a sort-of smog, reducing visibility for the pilots (see picture below) and making it uncomfortable to breathe at times. Occasionally, when the wind stops, you can watch the ash falling all around!
We rely on the usually dependable rainfall to fill our water tanks and water our garden, along with the rest of our community. We are very blessed with 2 large water tanks, with a total capacity of around 14,500L, which, with normal usage, would last us about a month. We’ve put additional water-saving measures in place, like not mopping our floors or using fresh water to water pot plants, and washing bedding, towels and other linen less frequently so the 60% capacity in our tanks currently should last us at least 3 weeks. Our local PNG neighbours’ tanks are dry and are having to walk to the river to collect drinking water.
Our pilot neighbours had a leak in one of their tanks last month, so Ryan had to isolate the leaky tank and pump the rest of that safe drinking water into their other tanks. Then he figured out a way to truck water from our empty transit house to fill up their remaining tanks. It took him most of two days, but he got them an extra 3,000L of water, then our wonderful Facilities Team got them a new 9,000L tank from Kiunga, a mining town about an 8 hour drive along our new road. Thankfully they managed to install that in time for our last big rainfall! But one of their other, smaller tanks seems to have sprung a leak, so we have another issue. Thankfully, we have some of our Maintenance Team in Telefomin right now, so hopefully that can solve this new problem soon.
Please pray that the whole of PNG would receive significant rainfall by the end of the month, enough to fill up everyone’s water tanks. Please pray especially for Telefomin to get a massive dump of rain to clear the smoke out of the air. And please pray that the effects of El Niño would end so we can get our regular rainfall back!
Whilst walking up the airstrip, at the start of Sept, Koda & I were inspecting the burnt grass. Ryan had been asking the community to cut the grass for a couple of months, thankfully it’s done now, but their decision to burn it was very risky to MAF and added even more smoke to the hazy air.
The grass fire on the airstrip got a bit close to the MAF base and aircraft. To avoid the risk of the planes getting cooked, the base staff asked my friend Joyce to rake the cut grass away from the area where the aircraft is parked overnight.
When returning to Tele at the start of the month, we could see all of the bush fires and their smoke in the hills surrounding Telefomin as we entered the circuit to prepare to land.
This picture was taken by Capt. Josef, our newest neighbour, not far from Telefomin airstrip at the end of Aug. The layer of “cloud” he’s flying above is actually the smoke that we were living in!
Our garden has cracks in the drainage ditches and all over from the lack of moisture. You can see them here in the sides of our dry pineapple patch.
This crack is in our back lawn, almost 1m long, and there are some near the posts holding up our house. We know the moisture level in the soil has affected the stability of our house (which was build in the 60s originally for SIL/Wycliffe Bible Translators) because some of the doors stick now when they didn’t before! Our house is moving imperceptibly.
