Elad’s blog

Here is a small tragedy that happened in Lae’s Rainforest Habitat, a really cute little zoo thingy. A few months ago their mail tree-kangaroo felt thirsty. It went down to the pool, leaned to drink, and got instantly decapitated by the massive crocodile that lurks this pool. This is the main reason that on my tour of the place, I only got to see the poor widow and the small child it left after him. I did, of course, see the fat and fatal crocodile.

The highlight of the place was, though, other strange animals. Plenty of wierd birds - from dwarf cassowaries (yes. They look just like a, uhmm, dwarf cassowaries) to birds of paradise (PNG’s symbol, look at their flag) in many different types and colors (including gold). The people there - like everywhere here - were really enthusiastic to meet an Israeli jew. The guard took me personally to a guided tour, let me into some cages to take good pictures (ahh, those tree kangaroos. Amazing animals.) and even brought especially for me to hold a 3.5meter python snake.

I travelled there together with Otniel, the boy that escorted me (Pastor Eric’s arrangement, of course) while in Lae. I slept in Eric’s house (in fact, in Otniel’s room). This house is also being used as a school - people from all over PNG come for the courses Eric and his wife Rubina are giving. Two-year concentrated seminars on the Torah and on Judaism, both introductory and advanced levels - four years of preparation after which the people return to their villages to spread the word… By the way, many here believe that King Solomon’s mines were at PNG (it took the ships 3 years to come back to Jerusalem, so they must have travelled really far). Others think that the tribe of Benjamin is somewhere in PNG; and others just like us.
Of course I gave the necessary lesson about Israel and about Judaism - the night before I even translated to Eric the order of the Haftarot from a hebrew bible he has in his house, so he knows which parts of the prophets we jews connect to any Parasha in the Tora…

After the small rainforest-habitat visit (a free walk through the nice campus of Lae’s technological institute was included) we travelled to see a nice small village of the name Jifasin. This village is different than the ones in the mountains - the huts are not built directly on the ground, but on timber logs, a bit higher; this prevents the pigs from coming in.

When I reached the village they were just having a sing-sing to mark an agreement about a bride-price. Thus, everybosy was playing drums, a big meal was being prepared, and it was all very cheery. I got to see the traditional cooking, went a bit to the river at the back of the village (Yes! No need to install showers at the village!) and got to see how they wash their dishes - you pick up some mud to create a small pool at the middle of the river; this mud serves as a filter so inside the pool you have clear standing water that you can use.

The people there were so happy and enthusiastic with my arrival, that they kept offering me presents - from clay pots used for Banana-cooking to dozens of Bilums. I did leave the village with some extra string-bags - refusal was not a real option, there.

Back in Lae, I had dinner with another Israel-loving family. I explained to them a bit about the politics - why Sharon’s disengagement plan is actually about demography and this sort of things.

On a bus-station in the way from the village back to Lae a small pocketlifter tried to reach my wallet. He was very unfortunate - the entire bus started yelling at him, how he dares touch an Israeli. The poor guy mistaken me for an Australian - it is so good to be in a place where everybody really loves us!

This entry was posted on Friday, July 22nd, 2005 at 8:43 and is filed under Travels, Papua New Guinea. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.