Third World Smell | Previous Challenge Entry

how it works

TITLE: Third World Smell | Previous Challenge Entry
By Lizzy Ainsworth
08/02/10
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I disembarked flight DJ191 in a terminal only a few hours flight north of Brisbane. I was actually surprised that the plane had even pulled up at the proper gate; last time we had simply disembarked on the runway, an interesting welcome to the capital of a foreign country. I could scarcely believe that I was back, the dream that I had held onto, since the first trip I had made here in 2006.

I made my way through the airport, with my travelling companions, an older farmer about 80, and a single girl from the city; both had years of experience on me, and I was glad they were with me.

Finally we stepped out from the relative shelter of the airport and onto the street. The smell that assailed me was my friend, though probably not the nicest smell in the world. It was the smell of diesel engines backfiring, humidity mingled with the crowded bodies who were chewing and spitting the national drug, betelnut; it was the smell of Port Morseby, Papua New Guinea.

My family had always said I had needed to be a missionary in some third world country, this comment induced from my strange taste in food and even stranger sense of smell.

My sense of smell was not very highly developed and neither was my taste; I always needed someone to sniff the milk, feel if the ham was off and taste the cream. Unless it was REALLY off, I would usually eat it and end up spending a fair amount of time in the toilet.

This sense of smell and taste came in quite handy in PNG, when the toilet facility happened to be quite a smelly drop pit and the locals, not knowing what exactly went in sandwiches, made us baked bean with jam, and tuna with peanut butter specialties. When it came to eating the very unfamiliar sausages wrapped in red plastic and sausage rolls from the local bakery, I pulled up the stops. Even I could sense that something was strange. The men in the team choked only half down each and handed out the rest to our bodyguards.

So while my third world sense of smell certainly has its diarrhoea downfalls, it has advantages in some countries.

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