Hello Madang

At last I have arrived and am too slowly acclimatising to the heat outside the air-conditioned chalet that I am sharing with a volunteer teacher during our week’s training and language learning.

The town is attractive, if not it’s buildings which are generally corrugated tin prefabs on legs. We have the Pacific ocean on one side where my gated and barbed wire protected resort is (google ‘madang lodge’) and twenty minutes walk across the peninsula with all its luxuriant greenery and great trees to the lagoon side where the VSO office is. No seagulls but plenty of fruit bats of the same size and equally noisy hanging about in the tallest trees and whose excrement is apparently even better as a paint stripper so I’m happy to have my sun hat. 

Yesterday I spent the day touring all the supermarkets looking for a larger chess set but very few people knew what a chess set was and one could not be found so I guess I won’t find many players, I also had a disastrous game with Felix – a Philippine volunteer.  There is a temporary drinking ban in force following some youthful street fighting although it only seems to apply to teenagers and poor people, the rich and the ex-pats can continue in our protected enclaves although at £2-50 for a bottle of beer it is still not cheap.

My employer, who I have yet to meet apparently feels unable to find me safe accommodation and is going to pay for me to stay at the resort which I guess detaches me from my working colleagues but we will see how it works out. VSO say it is definitely unsafe to venture out after sunset and even the small busses stop running at night and in the day time we are advised to keep clear of the shanty town areas, to beware of pickpockets and not to go out of town alone.

Anyway all the people I meet on the street are very friendly and helpful and once I am used to the heat I can see myself enjoying the stay

So much for now – will enclose photos if the internet signal is good enough today or may have to wait and see what the office connection is like later in the week

 

view from VSO office

 

roosting fruit bats

 

path from reception to restaurant - Madang Lodge

 

My chalet