Julie showed me a photo. ‘This is my Aunty; would you like to marry her?’ Holding out a photo of an attractive young lady in shorts and T shirt on a tropical beach. Coconuts and Palm trees making an idyllic scene.

I have no idea what influences were at play. Miles from home, lonely and trying to cope with a different culture. I heard myself say,’OK’.

     I was experiencing a cultural shock of immense proportions. My mental condition being overloaded and close to breaking point. Catapulted from my UK home, to a remote mountain school in the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea.

As a VSO Volunteer my whole life had undergone dramatic changes. I was not coping too well. Accounting maybe for that ludicrous reply? But it appeared I was committed.

     I would collect her next week on the students Saturday shopping trip. Sometimes I took the truck into town an hours drive away for the students to shop. My new wife, Piu, would be waiting for me outside a store there. I began to ask many questions about her. She had it seemed never been to school and certainly spoke no English! Papua New Guinea has at least 800 indigenous languages, with a village on one mountain having a different language to those on the next mountain and even the valley below.  To counteract this a language called’ Pidgin’, had sprung up and was used extensively throughout the land. I had a Pidgin Dictionary, but had no idea of how to speak it. I had only been in the country a few weeks!

     With my wife’s imminent arrival I must get started and learn some Pidgin. Easier said than done. On the fateful day I collected her I had studied it for hours. Writing down useful phrases that might relate to people in our situation.

What would we talk about? “This is my house.” Maybe,”Do you have sugar in your tea?” I was really nervous, terrified in fact. Later it transpired,she had been too!

     My house in the school grounds was like a garden shed. One bedroom, a room to eat and relax in and outside, the kitchen. The house stood on short legs, supposedly to stop rats and insects. However I kept a hammer by my bed to swat the giant Cockroaches that invaded by night. Not that I needed a palace as I wasn’t there much.

The most useful word in pidgin, friends told me was ‘maski’.Covering all situations, from a crisis to an excuse.

Now hearing it spoken around me, I realised that I could recognise many words. Though their spelling in my Dictionary might be unusual. My desk became covered in notes in the language, phrases and sentences to cover all occasions. Realisation came to me that it might be possible to get by with improvisation. Not a sensible idea. As the local people came to look at me I tried this technique and got deeply into trouble. I told the local villagers that any robber who tried to break into my house had to have sex with my door! I told my wife’s father I wanted to eat a baby! Hastily I sped back to my Dictionary for assistance.

     Piu tried to help me, pointing to things and saying their name. But after she had pointed at virtually every boy in the village and called them her brother I was in despair. How big was her family! I learned that there were proper family and the rest were part of her extended family. So proper family were ‘tru’ and the rest were not. But this extended, including father, mother, brother and sister. There was a word for close relatives and another for the rest.

Culturally it was not good to refuse a close relative a request. Including donating the clothes off your back even.

     Piu’s lack of knowledge and understanding of my lifestyle. Plus my inability to explain things well caused a few difficulties. Lighting our gas cooker nearly became the death of us. She turned it on and then wandered about, found the matches and lit one! She was most distrustful of it after that!