Duncalfes Online - A Letter Home

A Letter Home: 15th August 2010

Dear All,

Various tasks are being crossed off my list; in some ways they seem more like hurdles that have to be jumped before I leave. The only major one now outstanding is going to Port Moresby from Monday to Thursday to do some training there in controlled airspace with two of the students, and to refamiliarise Rick Velvin with the procedures there.

A couple of senior men in the CAA (now rebranded as CASA-PNG - Civil Aviation Safety Authority) have asked if we can do some flight recurrency training with them while we're there, so it looks like it'll be a reasonably full few days.

In order to make progress with tidying up my desk and the administrative things that needed to be done I'd asked somebody else to take my place flying on Friday. Since the weather wasn't very nice it was a good decision and quite unlike the very nice day I enjoyed on Thursday flying out to the west of the country.

Towards the end of the afternoon I began to feel a bit unwell, and opted on something reasonably mindless to do - sorting out my e-mail. I reduced the Sent box from 500 to 0! I only hope that in my enthusiasm I didn't get rid of anything I might want later. Too late to retrieve it now! My Inbox is also reducing but that takes more time to deal with.

Feeling below par continued overnight and into today, nothing specific, just feeling a bit nauseous and with a major loss of energy. I abandoned any thoughts of running or going to the gym today. I started re-watching the film Dances With Wolves last night, and I'll watch the second disk this evening. One of the best films ever made in my opinion.

The Seventh Day Adventists are having a major event on the sports oval across the road. No problems with them doing that apart from the volume of the music and the speaker. After asking them to modify it last weekend it had crept up again so I found the telephone number of the SDA president in Hagen and asked if he could do something about it. The volume last night and today (starting at 7:30 a.m., and one of the very few days when I was still in bed at that time) was better, but still intrusive. Anybody who likes close harmony, sugary-sweet, barber-shop quartet style, well-and-truly-American music would be in their element. I'm not!

Now Sunday morning and I'm feeling nearly back to normal. The bucket in the bedroom can go back to the laundry, thankfully unused! Some aspirin taken with breakfast finally put paid to the headache I had all day yesterday, but not attempted before due to the drugs known irritant effect on the stomach lining.

I did, however, decide to have a quiet morning at home rather than go to church, and since the SDAs have also been quiet this morning, it's been a pleasant time. I've started thinking through and preparing some of the talks that I'll be doing in the UK - I think it's the first time I've managed to do that before leaving PNG and it'll take quite a lot of pressure off the first jet-lagged week or two.

Eight days to go and I'm sure Misty is aware of the impending desertion. Ever since Nicki left she has hung around me and looked mournfully at me. I do actually wish I could bring her with me, not only because I'm fond of her as one usually is of a pet, but because I really enjoy having a dog around and would enjoy taking her out for a walk by the river at Blackwater. However, transport costs and quarantine requirements make it impossible, so she'll just have to wait for our return.

Dances With Wolves was finished last night and, as on the two other occasions I've watched it, I woke up thinking about it this morning. In short, it is the story of an American army officer who, after being injured in the Civil War, chooses to go to the frontier, the wild west. He finds his post deserted and in time gets to know the local Sioux Indians, begins to learn their culture and values, and completely changes his ideas about them. It's a brilliant study of cultural adaptation, but also one of the most profoundly moving and disturbing films I know.

America, Land Of The Free, has been built at high cost. I remember visiting Cherokee in North Carolina and learning how several treaties with the peaceful, agrarian people were broken (not by them), ending in the Trail of Tears - their forceful deportation to Oklahoma.

This is a rather heavy way to end a weekly letter, but it does reflect a very profound longing I have for a world in which peace and justice walk hand in hand. Until then, or at least until next Sunday, (whichever comes first) I hope you have a very good week. :-)

Michael

please enable browser's Javascript to use the Hit Counter tool.
Powered by