How are you all going? We've had a busy few weeks, and lots of ups and downs as we continue settling in. I've heard from a number of people that "you won't feel normal until at least a year".... So I suppose it's only to be expected?
Anyway, we had a great week last week, with the arrival of my Mum / Grandma Alison (aka Gamma Assis, or the much preferred Gamma Ayii). She and Niamh had a ball, and we loved showing her around Pt Moresby as much as possible. We had a few nice daytime coffees and morning teas, and Mum was able to see the places and meet the people we've been talking about. We were planning on going to Loloata Island on Saturday, but were thwarted by our first cold, wet and windy day since we've been here! Ok, the forecast said 24C, but honestly it felt much cooler!
Again, we were very sad when it was time for her to go, although knowing that we'll be seeing her and the rest of our friends and family in just 2 weeks definitely made the goodbye easier. We're very excited about our trip home! Flights are booked, ready to go. The only thing I'm not looking forward to is the 10 hour transit time from here back to Adelaide - without Dan!
We've had a breakthrough on the nanny front, although I should be happy at the moment I'm feeling like a bit of a shit to be honest. I'll give you the reader's digest version. After a week of moping and stressing that we'd never ever find another good nanny, I called the lady regarding the second nanny, hereafter referred to as Mary Poppins. I asked if there was anything we could do to help her reconsider - eg if it was too far, extra money for transport, flexible hours... anything? Well, we found out that the reason she was reluctant to leave her current employer's compound was because of an incident that occurred a few years ago on a PMV.
"PMV" stands for Public Motor Vehicle, and is Pt Moresby's answer to public transport. I'm going to segue briefly, because it's important to the story that you understand how dire these things are.
The first thing to know about PMVs is that they are privately owned, and there are no regulations governing the type, safety or condition of these vehicles. Once the driver pays a nominal registration fee for his mini-van, ute, truck... whatever.... then he picks a route, paints a number on the front and collects as many fares as possible - pocketing all the profits. They then run them into the ground. You will often see them with every window smashed, doors off, and people hanging from the doors and out the windows. They also don't obey any of the road rules. I saw about 3 of them, one behind the last, mount the kerb and drive along a busy footpath! A busy elevated footpath, a good metre higher than the road..... 2 wheels on the footpath and 2 off. They were very nearly airbourne!
Here are some images of PMVs I found via google....
Interestingly, when I google image searched "PMV Port Moresby", this came up. Make of that what you will....
PMVs are a nightmare and a death trap. Another amusing PMV related anecdote. Recently, one of the main mobile phone companies here ran a competition for PMV drivers in partnership with the road safety department. The rules were simple - all PMV drivers in the country were automatically entered into the competition. Then, if they were caught speeding, overloading their vehicle, driving drunk or on drugs, being violent or stealing from their passengers, they were removed from the list. At the cut-off date, all those names remaining would be entered into a draw and 10 drivers would win a trip to Australia to watch a rugby league grand final.... There were only 50 drivers who qualified for the final draw!!
Anyway, poor Mary Poppins, being an ordinary Pt Moresby citizen, has no option but to catch these PMVs, and put her life in their hands every day. Well, one day a few years ago, she was sitting on one, reading a book and minding her own business. Suddenly a man came up, grabbed her purse, and chopped her over the head with a machete, which lodged in her skull. Apparently she was lucky to survive, and since then is "very nervous" about catching PMVs on routes that she is not familiar with. Poor woman, I can't even imagine how terrifying that would be.
She very kindly agreed to meet us, and we all hit it off really well. Niamh in particular warmed to her very well. Her current employer came to the meeting and couldn't sing her praises highly enough. Mum was also there, and agreed she's lovely. Ticking the boxes all round. I agreed to find her someone from the hotel to walk to and from the PMV stop with (her main concern) and if at all possible find someone who lives near her so that she could actually catch the bus with them too. Her other stipulation is her hours - she works full time only... At the time I thought it wouldn't matter. Then we had a trial day and everything went well with that too. She said "(My current employer) and I are like sisters, and I know we will be like that too". She's very very involved with her current family, and I know she's really going to miss them. She really is such a lovely person.
But... (and this is why I feel like a shit) I don't know now, after our trial day, if I can handle having someone in the house with me 5 days a week. Even someone as amazing as Mary Poppins. We're taking the weekend to make a decision, which is awkward, especially since Mary Poppins' current employer called me on Friday to say that she would love to come and work for us next year. Dan tells me I need to be a bit more detatched - see this as a business thing rather than personal, but I feel overcommitted already. I think part of the problem is that I've never dumped anyone (or been dumped for that matter!) and I'm not used to this icky feeling. Not that I don't want her, but if I decide that she's not quite right for us I feel as though I have to take her on regardless now.
Anyway, in the blog as in my mind, I'm going to ignore that for now.
The other big thing this week is that Niamh has been really sick. I'm trying to think.... I think this is the sickest she's ever been. Which makes us lucky, because she's really not all that unwell. A few days ago, I noticed she was just a lot quieter than usual, and at the kindy club a couple of the other mums commented on how she wasn't her usual pleasantly marauding self. That night I checked her temperature before bed - 38C. She slept badly all night and in the morning her temp was 39C. When I brought her into our bed she was crying and said "Mama.... skin.... hots". Poor little chicken. Just a few days earlier I'd heard about a paediatrician who was quite good, apparently trained in Melbourne. I was so surprised, I forgot that they don't run on the Aussie system here. You don't have to go through a GP to see a specialist! And in fact, I think he's more like an American paediatrician, who is actually like a GP that specialises in children. So I rang up and booked an early appointment.
I was pretty scared, and I know Dan was too. In fact, he was a lot more scared than I was, because this is the sickest he's ever seen her. Also, I think I've had the "benefit" of seeing really sick kids before. I knew that since she was still alert and interactive, interested in what was going on around her, that she wasn't too bad. Still, it's scary here. Things can turn bad quickly with kids. Things like meningococcal can kill in hours.... As I said on facebook, I'd have felt much better if the Women's and Children's Hospital were just 5 minutes away, as it was from our old house.
The clinic we went to this time is MUCH nicer than the dive where Dan tried to impersonate a dead person. We were the only ones there when we arrived not long after the doors opened, and were seen promptly. The paed looked in her ears (using a strange technique) and throat, listened to her chest, said he couldn't see anything unusual and ordered some blood tests. Biscuit was so good, she didn't even cry. Then we waited for the results. I held my breath but was relieved to hear that she didn't have malaria, and that her white blood cell count was normal - meaning that a nasty bacterial infection was less likely. We went home to keep an eye on her.
I was almost happy when she developed a runny nose and a cough later in the day, so I thought that might explain things. That night she was crying out every 10 minutes or so, so I brought her into the spare bed, propped her up and watched her all night in case she rolled over. I got hardly any sleep but she slept relatively well. Then despite hammering her with nurofen and panadol, her fever still hung around 38C all day. Finally, after she pulled at her ear once, I decided to go against my not-treating-family-members-especially-children policy and looked in her ears. Bloody hell! She had an absolutely awful infection in her left ear. Poor little mite! I was furious that we'd paid a paediatrician 500Kina (about $200!!) to miss an extremely obvious cause of her fevers. Luckily before we left Australia we bought a whole stack of childrens' antibiotic suspensions in powder form (without the water added). I started her on antibiotics yesterday lunchtime. Her temp had come down by bedtime (but still spent the night with her propped up again) and then all day today her fever has gone.
Dan's been a little bit unwell too. He thinks the Malarone (antimalarial that he's required to take by his company or face instant dismissal) is making him unwell. He has a litany of complaints that he is blaming on the malarone, but I'm a little bit skeptical. I think a lot of it may be due to stress (partly because I'm feeling the same way, and I'm not taking malarone) but he's pretty convinced otherwise. Apart from that he's great, still enjoying work. He's out at a work BBQ tonight, but I was more than happy to stay home with Nini and enjoy some time to myself.
Well, I thought I'd top off this monster blog with some Post Courier hilarity time!
This was under the "Careers" section of the newspaper. I just want to know what the hell he did!!!
(Courts is a homeware chain shop - sort of like Harvey Norman, but not as good)
This one, I have to confess I also find hilarious. This is front page stuff in PNG. Pastor Kingal seems to have been some sort of celebrity evangelical minister here, and unfortunately was killed in a car crash this week. It seems that Christianity is taken very literally here.....
Best of luck to them. As an atheist, I don't think this is much more ridiculous than many of the other religious rituals that our society undertakes, but I do have to wonder what their "end point" is going to be. Will they take decomposition as a "no"?
That's it from me. Have a great week, and hopefully I'll see some of you in Adelaide. We'll be there for the first 2 weeks in November!
Can't wait! Bye, and thanks for reading!!! :)
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