Saturday, October 25, 2008

Matches & Machetes

I have a younger sister that lives in Papua New Guinea with her husband and 4 children.

The other day I received this email from her:

"We are starting into rainy season, but thankfully the mornings are still mostly bright and sunny. Starts raining about noon. So feel like we need to take advantage of the nice morning weather more. K just came in looking for matches. Her and B and usually a village friend or 2, make a fire almost every day :-) Must seem weird to you for a 3 year old to be asking for matches....and even weirder for her mom to give her some :-) but hey, that’s life here. Nothing to burn down outside, plus all the kids grow up around open fires in their huts and playing with fire. My kids do know they can’t play with matches in the house or without permission."

Well at least if they are playing with matches it means that they are not playing with their machetes - yes, they also play with machetes.

Awhile back I got this email:

"B almost got 2 toes chopped off a couple weeks ago. Him and his village friend were digging a ditch in the backyard and his friend accidentally hit B’s toes. My shovels are kept very sharp….we always told our kids to wear boots if using a machete, but now I guess that will need to include shovels as well."

3 comments:

CanadianGrandma said...

I would be afraid that their clothes would catch on fire...being a grandma, I guess I am more worried about grandchildren who like adventures. I do recall that a couple of my kids loved to play with matches...hmmm...

Karla Cook @ Roads to Everywhere said...

Kinda blows your mind, doesn't it?

Anonymous said...

Different lifestyle... I remember when they were at my cabin and three of the kids went across the lake on little motorized boats, started a fire and roasted marshmellows - I think the kids were 11, 10 & 9. I made my husband go over there afterwards as the 9 year old was in charge of putting out the fire and he said he put one can of water on it - I envisioned all the trees going up in flames (it was out).
Rhonda