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Imagine if you will, that you have survived three months of Peace Corps brainwashing training in the beautiful Papua New Guinea Highland’s town known as Goroka. With training finished you and your unbridled enthusiasm head for the airport to get on a plane that looks like a tin can with an engine to make your way to your new village where you will spend the next two years.

Fast forward a little, you have landed in your village, spent a day or so offending people with your horrendous grasp of the local language, met the Chiefs, and are generally full of optimism. On the third morning in your remote village in the rainforests of New Guinea there is suddenly a large commotion outside your door and you can feel many eyes peering at you through the open slats of your bush hut. Instead of finishing off breakfast with an audience watching you go out front to see what’s happening.

Breakfast in the bush house.
 

Initially, it seems as though a few of your new neighbors are dropping by for a chat, some tea, and maybe for a heartfelt discussion pertaining to, “Whether it is true that the US really sent a man to the moon?” Upon further inquiry with your broken language skills you discern that the group has actually come to your house that morning to see if you “might have something to remove an object.” First, you assume it’s just a common splinter, or at most maybe a tooth from a dog bite. So, in your best Peace Corps can-do spirit you go and get the tweezers out of your brand new bright red Swiss army knife. When you come back the crowd gasps then goes silent as they see the tweezers and then they give a look that crosses cultural boundaries which says…uh, gee – I don’t think those tweezers will quite work for what we have in mind.

Standing on your porch confused, not knowing if you offended someone, you try to glean what on earth the problem could be. While engaged in a new conversation about “object removal tools,” at first you don’t notice or see a thing, then out of the corner of your eye you glance at something a little strange…does that man, oh no he couldn’t, OH yes he does, why that’s a long stick hanging out of his head and it appears to be an arrow.  Sheepishly, the man comes forward and suddenly you realize that the Swiss army knife tweezers, while tough, are no match for what now stands before you.

Papua New Guinea arrows - handle with care!

Greetings and welcome to the Peace Corps, I don’t remember anything in training, or even in the famous book, “Where there is no Doctor,” that even slightly resembled this situation!

Not what you want stuck in your head.

Apparently, the man was out bird hunting and, of course everyone knows when hunting birds you had better angle your bow when shooting and never, under any cicumstances, shoot straight up. Well, this guy had become the new poster child for why you never shoot your arrow straight into the air because that is what he did and now it was lodged in his head. I must say he was in amazing spirits for someone with an arrow in his head. After much commotion we were able to get on the walkie-talkie type radio and he was evacuated.

We never did get his name but from that day forward he was referred to as “arrow-head.” Now, you must know, in Papua New Guinea, or at least in our village, the hilarity of any event was directly related to how much pain someone experienced. E.g. stubbing your toe on a rock was funny, but losing an appendage now that was pee your pants hilarious. Lucky for everyone involved the gentleman was okay and he even told us that he had a GREAT trip to Lae (second largest city), although, we are pretty sure he is not allowed to hunt anymore.

Even these young guys know NEVER shoot straight up when bird hunting.
 

Next post will be Friday (7/06) and will be the second part of “Buying in the BVI” which was submitted by our first guest writer. Coming up next week two posts that I have in the works are, “Do you find yourself trapped in a Cubicle?” and my answer to the probing question, “Why do you travel?”