outback to jungle

Musings on experiences of volunteering in Papua New Guinea with some gratuitous domestic social and public comment

Friday, February 10, 2006

shopping

Asde mi go long ton long kissim telepon na bank na kaikai= Yesterday I went to town to get my telephone on, and go to the bank and get groceries. The ANZ bank has a security "airlock": You enter the door into the "airlock". When it is closed, another door opens to let you into the bank. On exiting you go through the similar system on the other side. Security seems to be the biggest industry here. There are security guards on the doors at the supermarkets as well as patrolling the aisles. Asde I had to get some cleaning materials and I bought anti-bacterial soap, another mop head, two loaves of the best bread in town, a dozen beers -very nice brew, and some potatoes and pumpkin. Oh and some mosquito coils. I took notice of the junk that they burn - it is so gross. Betel nuts come in a shell and these litter the streets even though they are biodegradable and the coconut husks and these along with the red spittle and plastic bags and cardboard seem to be the main ingredients of the rubbish piles. I commented to Roger, another friend, that perhaps rubblish had to be burned daily to prevent disease. Can you imagine a dozen or so piles of stinking rubbish being burned daily down Pitt Street Mall in Sydney? Or people spitting out their red spittled betel juice from the buses? I'll try to work out how to post a picture and put it up. As for bare feet - I take my sandals off at the door as I used to do in Newtown - I can imagine the germs. My sore leg has almost healed. It has a bit of a welt but it's closed over and the pus has cleared up - I looked up pus in the dictionary to check the number of ss and I see purulent = containing or producing pus. I didn't know that.

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