Grace Chew’s Blog

13/3/2009: Day 30, Kikori Hospital

We went for our first general ward round this
morning, and found out that they’ve been
unusually quiet these few days. Well, all the
better to rest and make bilums! With Dr Manar and
her English accent here, and our return to
standing ward rounds, it’s starting to feel like
we’re in a hospital in England again (and I can’t
help thinking about Kapuna’s sit-down ward
rounds). Later in the day we found that an
incision and drainage that was scheduled to be
done was cancelled because the boil burst by
itself (…) and we were just going back to the
house when we met the daughter and son from the
Chinese family that runs the Jackson store
upriver, who’d asked us before to come over for
the daughter’s birthday dinner – they’d come up
to walk us down to their house! So we got our
things in order and walked down with them, Ruth
and the two of them chatting away and me trying
my best to follow the flow of conversation.
They’re a Teochew family from a village-town in
Guangdong province some 5 hours away from
Shenzhen/Hong Kong, and their extended family
have made their livelihood in PNG setting up
stores around Kikori. It was quite surreal
walking down from the hospital to their
store-cum-house while receiving all the open
stares from the darker-skinned people passing by,
and to know that I’m in PNG but be surrounded by
very Chinese-y things – from karaoke and TV
programmes (they have satellite TV) in Mandarin
and even Teochew, to tea in the little Chinese
teacups, to a proper Chinese meal, with homemade
shark’s fin soup, homecooked Teochew dishes
(including delicacies like congealed pig’s blood,
pig’s liver and kidneys), and lots of rice. Ruth
and I were fed full to the brim, after a month of
not having proper Chinese food!

They’re definitely a testament of how versatile
the Chinese are – they came here not knowing any
English or Pidgin and had to learn as they went
along when they got here, yet prospering in
whatever situation they’re in. They take
discarded shark’s fins, which the locals don’t
have any use for, to dry to make shark’s fin
soup; the mother makes tofu (hard and soft)
They’re also very generous – they make friends
with all the “foreigners” who come, and are free
with gifts – Dr Manar and Dr Ovoi have been
invited in for Sunday lunch of the famous Teochew
porridge, or as he called it “water-rice”, and
some hospital staff sometimes get free cans of
Coke when they pass or when they buy something
from the store. They were very generous to us too
– meat of both raw and tinned variety, canned
drinks, onions, tea-leaves, etc. Very pai-seh,
yet I think we’re welcome company, especially for
the daughter who’s about our age, and spends her
time here mainly in the shop. We’re definitely
going back, to perhaps buy more things and chat
(at least Ruth will chat more than I will!) with them.