The High School has around 400 students, and a beautiful purpose-built library, but the shelves in the library are quite bare. These school books I helped to deliver will go a long way towards encouraging the students to read to improve their English.

Balus is tok pisin (Melanesian pidgin) for airplane. In Telefomin we are often spoiled with beautiful rainbows around our home and our “balus”. Here are a couple of photos Ryan took recently… (Click to see more)

We’ve had some of our maintenance team in Telefomin this past week doing some essential maintenance. Our Swiss neighbours have had plastic liners put in their 2 metal tanks, to stop the leeks due to rust, and the floor at the base has had some much needed repair work. In the photo, right, Eugene & Steven, our two Traffic Officers, are pointing out some of the big ruts in the cement floor which makes pushing trolleys loaded with cargo rather tricky.

There are a few small commercial airlines who fly into Telefomin regularly. One of them had a stone unfortunately damage their Twin Otter recently. As they know we are based here full-time, they contacted our boss to ask if we had any accommodation. The transit house, which Shiv looks after, played host to 2 pilots and 4 Engineers, the latter who stayed for the whole weekend to fix the aircraft. Thankfully they were successful and the Twin Otter flew out on Monday, much to their relief.

We are here to serve the remote communities, but it’s nice to be able to help our aviation neighbours too!

This is Andrew, he drives one of the handful of motorbikes which putter around Telefomin these days. When we first moved here 3 years ago, there weren’t any motorbikes at all! We joke that they are Telefomin’s version of Uber as we often see passengers on the back.

This is our “brother”, Lukas. His Mum is Mama Cathy, the lady who helps clean our house. Lukas pops round quite regularly to help out with some big jobs like cleaning out the drainage ditches in the garden and washing the outside of our house, he’s a real blessing to us!

Lukas loves to say hi to Ray the dog when he comes over. They all laugh when Shiv says Ray is like her baby, but Lukas takes his role of Ray’s Uncle, very seriously.

PNG ladies love their gardens. The vegetables bring life to their families and the flowers bring joy to their hearts.

I have been blessed many times with beautiful bouquets of local flowers, like these which were waiting for us when we returned home back in October.