Wagang Village : Series 2 (Part7)

Sunday, 26th of November

Continued on from “Wagang Village : Series 2 (Part6)”

A day in hospital…

During my 1st week in PNG I was in Port Moresby doing 5 days of language (Tok Pisin) training and an induction into the local cultural. This training was conducted by an organisation called “National Volunteer Services” (NVS), the PNG equivalent of Australian Volunteers International (AVI) if you like. Marcus and Egma were two of the NVS staff I became friendly with during this first week in PNG.

The Pacific International Hospital where I stayed, is located right next door to the old offices of NVS. I found out during my stay in the hospital that the offices had been moved to another suburb of Port Moresby. On my way to Moresby I decided that I would try and make contact with Marcus. I started asking some of the hospital security and maintenance staff if they might know the whereabouts of Marcus. Guess what? I was told that although the offices of NVS had ben moved that Marcus still resided onsite. First thing Sunday morning I put the word out that I wanted to make contact with Marcus, that day if possible. Throughout the day I reminded the security staff that I was keen to meetup with Marcus and they assured me that as soon as he turned up they would send him up to my room.

At 7:00pm one of the security guards managed to locate Marcus. When the security guards mentioned that a “Robert” wanted to see him and this “Robert” was in VIP Room #1, Marcus had no idea whom they were talking about. But once he saw me, the surprise and joy I saw on his face, made the effort to track him down well worth it. Marcus and Egma both hold special places in my memory bank as they are both my 1st PNG friends !! We spoke for about an hour and as it was nearing tea time, Marcus agreed to come back in the morning. Note that at this stage I had no idea how long I was going to be staying in Moresby.

For dinner that night, I ordered from a menu from one of the local chinese restaurants. Not bad for a chinese meal but a chinese meal nevertheless. I suspect strongly that the MSG thing is not quite the issue in PNG as it is downunder. I dont know how much MSG was in the food but it certainly had that “chine-sey” flavour to it.

And how was my 1st full day in a PNG hospital ? Booooooring!

Over the years I have had my fair share of hospitalisations and on a few occasions have been a hospital patient for extended periods. Night times in hospitals are the worst and certainly the longest. Nights seem to go on forever, the plastic mattresses, the coughs and the splutters, the buzzers going off and of course the nurse rounds every couple of hours.

A sleepless night…. nothing like it to feed that obsesive thinking and get that can of worms in the head wriggling around! But hang on… hospitals have lots of “nice” drugs, all sorts of goodies and for free! That’s my thinking anyway. The first night I got something to help me sleep and I slept. The 2nd night I wasn’t so lucky. After asking the nurses twice for something and subsequently being forfotten or just ignored I started to get very irritated. Made a decison to stay awake just to show them!! One of the nurses come out and asked me if I was OK and boy… did I give it to her! Bob the “nice” guy isn’t always the nice guy. The addict within is very much alive and kicking! What is the one word that comes to mind to describe my childish behaviour? Sulking!! I grown man sulking : a sorry sight indeed.

I did end up getting some sleep - at around 3am.

Hospitals!!