Challenging Environments

What a crazy past ten days it’s been! Ten days of extreme contrast.

February 17-21 were my final work days this trip and I finished gathering 61/64 sociolinguistic interviews and one special 4-hour recording by Tonny before I left. Conducting the interviews really improved my Ende. It was 16.5 hours of actively interacting in Ende with lots of different people in the village. Not only did I learn a lot about the language but I also learned a lot about the people in Limol, their histories, their families. 

On Feb 22, we set off for Kapal in the 40HP community dinghy. No goodbye feast this trip, save a delicious fish and rice meal at Wagiba’s the night before. My send-off was happy and quick. Plenty of hand shaking, and picture snapping before we were off racing down Taolang road to get started in the dinghy before it got too hot. We made it to Kapal in record time - the huge engine sucked up 15L of fuel. 

Once in Kapal, I mostly hid in my room away from the constant staring of the Kapalians. The MAF plane came right on time on the 23rd and took me straight to Daru. Musato met me at the airport.Tobest drove us to town. Pipiato and I did the shopping while Musato got us some lunch. We ate then delivered the goods to Nixon. I was walked back to Tobest and I spent the rest of the day reading and sleeping. A quick hop to Port Moresby on Saturday, and another to Brisbane then Canberra on Sunday meant I was at Nick and Penny's house safe and sound and happy only three days after leaving Limol. Besides some unpleasant encounters at the hotel in Moresby, this was the best trip out of Limol ever.

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