Injury, Surfing, the Moi and Thanksgiving

So much activity in a weekend. Injury: On Saturday we ( Mijo, Nick and I) went with the dorm kids to Kali Biru, a river of blue 2 hours away. Beautiful, serene and apparently a bit dangerous. Mijo was slipping into the water off the little wharf when she stepped on something really sharp...she has quite the deep cut on the bottom of her foot and is at the moment limping around with the help of a crutch. Before this accident we all had been jumping into, floating down, and swimming against the current of this amazing river. A local man was also using the river to clean his 7 foot python which he has stripped of skin and was preparing to cook. Wally told me that it is really good eating. Surfing: Scott in the meanwhile had gone with friends to go surfing. I don't really know if this was the first time he had gone surfing but it sounded like it wasn't exactly the quickest activity to learn. Maybe a bit like snowboarding, the first time out just a lot of pain and frustration. The Moi: Traveling with us to the river was a family who are with New Tribes. They work with the Moi people here in Papua. This tribe is isolated and small. As he began to tell us some of the details of this tribe like; 8-10 year old girls are married off to their 20-30 something husbands to be raised. How often the girls run away and how often they are beaten to learn to stay. How aggressive and verbal this tribe and how little respect they have for personal boundaries and possessions. How the tribe just walks into your house and stands around just staring at you and taking things if they want. How little each on is responsible for their own children but how everyone in the tribe feeds, corrects any child who is closest to them. How interested they are to hear about the Creator whom they recognize but don't really know. Papua may be one of the last places on earth where the indigenous people still live as they have since they arrived here. There is a huge struggle to help them learn to navigate the raging river called the rest of the world. Unlike Kali Biru, it isn't that beautiful, not so serene and very dangerous. Most seem to jump in or get pushed in without the skills to navigate, let alone retain their cultural dignity. Tragically, most injuries that happen don't just cripple but destroy.
Thanksgiving: MAF is a multicultural group of people so to celebrate Thanksgiving we picked a neutral date. What is similar though is that it involves eating well and being thankful. This we can do any time and we did yesterday with all 70 of us. We ate well, we were all thankful.