Everyday life in Madang

As there is as well a time between the fully packed weekends I would like to write something on everyday life in Madang to let you know what I am doing when I am not hanging around on a beautiful beach or in the jungle.

Accommodation:

After having shared flat with Franziska for a month I am now living together with Fabienne in a house on campus. It is a three bed room with a large bathroom and a nice veranda. My room is quite big with an almost luxurious queen size bed and lots of space for my yoga-mat when doing morning workouts. I am really glad I did not have to go for the option in the girls dorm with doors closed at 10 PM...

Food:

We prefer to cook ourselves rather than eating at the staff mess, where the food is with too many calories, meat and fat with too less fresh veggies. So we are cooking on our Gas-Oven (which is essential du to the frequent loss of electricity) a mixture of typical European style food and local dishes: one day Pasta with Tomatoes, cougettes and eggplant, or a good “BohnenBrock” (Bean-Potato-hotpot), on another day ‘gaden kaikai’, a variety of taro, yams, tree and farn leaves, carrots and ginger, cooked in selfmade coconut milk from a scraped dried coconut with Chili and Fennel seeds. Very often we also cook with Sago flour, which is produced from the Sago Palm and sold in Bamboo tubes at the market. We make Pancakes out of it, either savory with pit-pit, a blossom from a specific type of reed, which is cut into small pieces and then fried in the pan together with the sago. One of the sweet options is the banana sak-sak, sago with ripe banana-mesh and coconut cream- yummy!!! Of course the people here also like snacking, and there are several options for that. Very popular are pieces of fried kaukau (sweet potato), cooking-banana or flour balls. Less fat, but as delicious are fire cooked yams or taro pieces, sometimes one gets freshly grilled octopus pieces or mussels on a skewer (which is not my favorite though).

But also Bread and Cheese are on the nutrition plan. Normally we only get wholemeal toast, but sometimes I treat myself with a real Westphalia “Pumpernickel”, which is available now and then at the Expat-Minimarket. And in the mornings we have our Muesli with fresh fruit. Meat has become rare, as it is simply to effort-intensive to go into town, just for a piece of meat to cook. Meat and Fish are therefore my primary choice when we have dinner at one of the three restaurants in Madang: The Madang Lodge, The Chinese and the Resort Club.

Social gatherings:

Although there is not much ‘to do’ here in Madang, we often have gatherings organized. The custom is then that we meet at one person’s house and everybody brings along something to eat or to drink. Somehow it all works out and we can enjoy a nice feast. Franziska’s and mine Carrot-kaukau-salad has already become a legend and we are specifically asked to bring it along. Here we have some pictures from an evening with the PNG-studies department of the University and this is an anthropologist’s lunch meeting at our house. But also Movie-Evenings in smaller groups or spontaneous cooking sessions with the people on campus are very frequent.

Mark, the head of PNG Studies faculty here at DWU and Juerg my professor

Fabienne chillin in our living room

evening out in the Madang club











Franziska & Frauke at Locklain's Party last week

Day’s structure:

My day is structured around a bit of sports and the commitments at the DWU:

Alarm goes off at 6 AM in the morning. I put on my running gear (running tights plus loose shorts over them to comply with dress customs), MP3 player and go for a 25mins running round on campus. It does not sound much, but after 15 minutes in this climate one is already soaked in sweat – just imagine exercising in the Sauna. After the run I do about 20mins with flexible rope (Zugseil) training, before having breakfast and a shower. At 8AM I am in the library or the classroom for the Tutorial sessions. At about 10AM everybody meets at staff morning tea, one of the few meeting appointments that are always kept on time ;-). It is a great opportunity to catch up with people and organize appointments. For me it is a bit like the traditional Buehl IT breakfast apart from the fact that the Culinarium rarely supplies fried sweet potato with the coffee... :-)

For lunch I go back to my place or have a Sandwich with Franziska at her flat. Between 4:30-5PM the library closes and on Tuesday and Thursday I am being picked up to go to Honor’s house (an Australian medical researcher). There I am giving a Fitness Workout Class for a group of about 10 girls, both PNGs and Expats. On the other days I go for a short run on campus around 7PM with some small exercises to follow. It sounds like a lot of sport, but it really isn’t. One can not be active for a long time, it’s simply too hot and too humid for this. So I have to do two shorter workouts per day to remain at least a little bit fit. After evening workout I cook something and check my emails or learn Pidgin-English. Sometimes we go for a beer at the Madang-Lodge, if there is a kind person to drive us around. Usually at about 10PM I am glad to go to sleep.

Life at DWU encompasses this fascinating existence of two worlds: When I come back from the library or the tutorial, there are often sing-sings and dances practiced in the green in front of our house. Some of them are initiation-rites, so I did not take a picture of those. But it is amazing how quickly it becomes normal to have a coffee to the sound of drum rhythms and voices singing an unusual melody in an unknown language.

em tasol, yupela stap gut olgeta! that's all, g'day mates! :-)