Daboto is the last airstrip I visited. Nathan says it is his hardest airstrip because the margins are so narrow–pilot to English translation: it’s short, so you have to land in the right place and stop quickly; it’s sloped, so it feel like a roller coaster; and it’s narrow, so you have to land right on the center line so your wings don’t scrap the mountainside. Fun huh?
Do I have a soft spot for the kids? I think so.
This is some kind of wood (Sandalwood maybe?) that the local people try to sell at the market in the “big city.” We weren’t able to take any of it out with us this time, but they were sure ready to load the whole place with it!
I loved being in Daboto. The people were are really friendly. I also learned a new greeting! ”Aba aba aba aba aba aba” It means hello or something. But it’s fun to say!
I thought Pagamba was a roller coaster…and then I went to Bugalaga. (Isn’t that a fun word to say? It would make a good chant at a sporting event. Buga-laga! Buga-laga! ) Bugalaga starts of at like 14% slope, “flattens” out to 8% for a brief second and then goes up to 24% slope. That is nuts people, nuts.
We had to circle for 40 minutes before we could land so that the clouds would clear. We we finally landed, the people we so excited and told us that they prayed and prayed for God to move the clouds so that we could land! Praise God! He answered their prayers!
Looking down the runway from the top, you don’t even see the second hill. Although, in the Kodiak, we’re off the ground before then anyway 
How cute is this little house??? I want to live there!
This kid makes my heart happy.
This guy makes my brain happy–love his shirt! And now I have the Blue Clues song in my head.
This guy really wanted to talk to me but we have no common language. So it was a lot of smiling and gesturing and giving the thumbs up. He was super sweet.
Nathan is checking on ticket prices for these guys. Ticket prices are based on distance travelled, so it can vary depending on how far you want to go.
It was a wee bit cloudy…
Maybe Nathan is showing them his golf swing? No idea.
I somehow managed to take 226 pictures in Bugalaga. And these are only 12 of them. Maybe you should just come visit! Then you could get the whole experience! (plus, it’s beautiful here and we’d love to see you…but you’d better hurry because we leave in 31 days for America! Yowzah!)
Pagamba reminds me so much of Pogapa that I’m already getting them mixed up in my head.
Pagamba is where we visited on this last trip. (Maybe say it three times to yourself so you don’t forget: Pagamba, Pagamba, Pagamba. Not Pogapa.) I’m a little in love with all of the kids there. They all smiled shyly at me. If I waved or smiled back, they would giggle and look away. Such sweet little babies!
Pagamba starts at 8% slope and then goes up to 20%. It’s like a roller coaster. A fast, bumpy roller coaster. But one glance at the cute rugged pilot’s confident face and you know that you will stop before running into the hill at the end.
“Let’s go sit on the runway with [dad, uncle, cool neighbor] and then we’ll squat and hold our bows just like him. It’ll be SO AWESOME. And we will be SO COOL!”
Kids are the same all around the world, I tell ya.
“No white lady, I will not smile until you put your camera away.”
Which he did, four seconds later when I waved at him.
Finally some smiling kiddos! I learned the secret. Show them their picture after you take it and then they are all smiles.
This is only 6 of the 166 photos I took in Pagamba. Thank goodness for digital cameras! :) If you want to see the rest, you’ll just have to ask me. And I’ll tell you more than you ever wanted to know about Pagamba (or is it Pogapa?)
Every time I fly with Nathan I am struck by the vast mountainous jungle that is Papua. It seems to stretch out forever. And there’s nothing down there. Sure there’s a little village here and there, but so much of Papua is untouched by human hands.
Taking off from Nabire. 6:30 A.M.
Sunrise from the air, just after take-off.
Overhead the Nabire coastline.
50 points if you can find the Nabire MAF base in this photo!
Stay tuned for more pictures from all of the villages we visited! They were all new to me. So fun to see new places!
I finally got to go flying with my pilot today after several cancellations due to weather (fourth time is the charm right?).
Many, many more pictures to come…if the internet lets me upload them. Fingers crossed!
This might be my favorite new thing to do in Photoshop….
This picture (over-exposed sky)
Plus….
This picture (under-exposed forground)
Equals…
This picture! So, this is the first time I’ve ever done this in Photoshop, so it’s not perfect, but it is more what this scene looks like in real life.
Cameras, double exposures and Photoshop are pretty amazing, but how much more amazing are our little eyeballs that God created that can take all of that information in at once? My expensive camera can’t do it, but my eyeballs can! (My mom would probably argue that my eyeballs and I were much more expensive than my camera…true story)
I’ve been thinking a lot about this moving-back-to-America-while-we-adopt thing lately. Sometimes I cannot wait to get there and just want to press fast-forward over the next 39 days, but other times I want to enjoy every last hot and sweaty minute we have left in this country that we have come to love. In any given day my thoughts go like this:
“What I wouldn’t give to eat at Chipotle right now…39 days!”
“It’s so gorgeous today, I love this weather! Only 39 days??”
“Oooo…cheese! America has awesome cheese…39 days!”
“Am I going to be totally out of style in America now?? Probably.”
“Will I even fit-in in my home culture anymore? Probably not.”
“Tropical white sand beaches?? What are we thinking moving back to America?”
“A whole country of people who speak English! 39 days!”
And on, and on.
Sigh…love America, love Indonesia.
On Fridays, after all the airplanes are tucked into bed for the weekend, we like to ber some olah raga around these parts, if you know what I mean.
Wait, you don’t?
See if you can figure it out:
Did you figure it out??
We play sports. Properly you’d say, “Kami berolahraga.” but in Englonesian, you say, “We ber some olah raga!”
Our favorites are ladder golf, badminton and ultimate frisbee!
Since we are leaving for America, we are more in the packing phase not the “let’s get some projects done” phase…but this one was fun and relaxing, so I did it anyway!
Remember those blank, white, still-in-the-plastic canvases above my bed? They sat like that for about 8 months. 8 months! Seriously, that’s pathetic.
Anyway, so I finally got around to doing something with them! With the help of my artist/friend/neighbor, Heather (she advised, I painted) they are completed. Now, they look like this:
They aren’t quite as florescent looking in real life, I promise. More of a softer orange. Why orange? Because that’s the complementary color to all of the blue I’ve got going on in this room. It helps warm the place up a bit!
Someday, probably not until we return from America, but someday I will actually hang them on the wall rather than them just resting on our headboard. But that’s a project…and we’re not doing projects right now.
We wanted to take some family photos with our little puppy doggies before we give them away (sniff).
Easier said than done.
This last picture was the best one of the bunch. I love the expressions on each of the dog’s faces. Ha!
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