Greetings this week from Telefomin in the far west of PNG.
As I write it is a cold, drippy morning and we’ve just
arrived home from church where we were very glad to have sweater and coat on
throughout the service. Cloud is hanging down over the mountains, though there
are occasional glimpses of the ridgelines. It’s a good day to be on the ground!
The weather has varied quite a lot during the week. On
Friday we had to work quite hard to get back in the afternoon. Although we’d
had reports that the valley was clear under the cloud, finding a gap between
those clouds and working our way down was quite difficulty, but managed in the
end.
In contrast, yesterday (Saturday) we had two charter flights
to Vanimo and back, bring the governor of Sandaun Province and his entourage to
Telefomin for the funeral of a local leader, and then taking him home in the
afternoon. The weather in the morning was bad, with pouring rain that delayed
our departure by the best part of an hour.
Like most PNG events, time-keeping is not rigid and when the
time to take everybody home arrived and then passed, we were wondering whether
we’d have time to go to Vanimo, an hour’s flying time away, collect our return
load and get home. At Vanimo there were more passengers and a lot more cargo
than expected, plus a lot of people milling around who wouldn’t do as they were
told and consequently slowed the whole process down when we wanted to be as
quick as possible. In the end we sorted everything out but they probably got
the impression I was a grumpy pilot. More frustrated by the lack of cooperation
would be nearer the truth.
The flight back to Telefomin was the nicest late flight I’ve
done in a long time. We went through some rain showers soon after departing
Vanimo but then it was beautiful all the way to Telefomin and we landed at 5:50
p.m. with the valley wide open and the sun still shining.
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One of the nicest things about Telefomin is how quiet it is
over night. There are more vehicles here now, but they could almost certainly
still be counted on the fingers of your hands. There’s no loud music, no
drunkenness (it occasionally occurs, but rarely and not during this visit so
far), sometimes the sound of rain on the roof, or maybe the scurrying of furry
visitors in the attic. Yes, the house does have some other occupants apart from
ourselves, but they appear to be keeping themselves to the roof space and not
our living quarters.
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Flying regularly is always a welcome break, though I have
tried to keep up to date on at least the most important emails. Thursday was
officially a day off, though several hours were spent at the computer. Tomorrow
I’ve arranged another ground day to keep on top of things, but also to manage
the follow up to an incident where the nose wheel of an aircraft was damaged
when the pilot had to abort a take-off. Nothing hugely serious but a nuisance.
Organising an engineer to travel to the airstrip where the aircraft was damaged
is not all that easy. It’s not a long way from Telefomin, but it is a very long
way from Mount Hagen and our engineering facilities.
*******************
Nicki has kept busy with minutes that she took at the last
leadership team meeting, keeping up with her other admin work, and next week
hoping to do some more translation of some bible teaching material. Despite
fewer distractions time still seems to go quickly and there’s always more to do
than time to do it in.
Some local pigs have found their way into the garden of the
house we’re living in. Both of us have chased them out several times but the
ground must be nicer this side of the fence than outside. Fortunately they’ve
only dug up what was previously vegetable patches rather than destroying the
grass.
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It’s only a few months since we re-opened the Telefomin base
and I’ve had multiple comments from people at airstrips as to how glad they are
that we have an aircraft and crew based here again. Other operators do fly into
some of the airstrips, mostly from Kiunga, carrying trade store supplies, but
MAF is certainly held in higher regard.
When we first came to Telefomin the only means of
communication was HF radio. Now the mobile network functions more than it
doesn’t. It’s by no means 100% reliable and there’s no signal today, but was
working the rest of the week. The MAF satellite connection is working
reasonably for internet, though closer to the old dial up speeds than
broadband. During work days, when the signal is shared with the Hagen HQ, the
internet speed drops to barely usable. Out of hours though, it does quite well.
Power supply has also changed. We have our very own solar
system, not with personal planets (with or without alien life forms). This was
installed a few months ago and while it hasn’t done away entirely with the need
for a generator, especially on cloudy days like today, it has reduced the need
very greatly.
Even in remote Papua New Guinea times are changing.
The view from the veranda.
