At the end of our first week back, it is
good that the jet lag is over. It hit fairly hard this time, me especially,
proving yet again that there is no rhyme nor reason as to why one time you get
over it quickly, and another time you don’t.
Our flight from Singapore to Port Moresby
was three hours late leaving, making our transfer to the domestic flight very
marginal. A young woman greeted us off the aircraft, showing that it was known
that we were due on the first Moresby-Hagen flight, but there wasn’t a great
deal she could do to expedite us through immigration and customs. We made the
flight, just, but two of our bags didn’t, arriving on the second flight in the
early afternoon.
As always, we were both straight back into
work. Once we’d collected our bags we went up to the office, I was immediately
called into some meetings and Nicki got on with her work, driving back to town
mid-afternoon. Unfortunately, our car broke down for her on the way, the clutch
stopped working! She managed to get it into first gear and limped the rest of
the way slowly.
*************
Some friends, Larry & Ruth Nicholson,
were staying with us that first night home. They’re normally based in Aiyura,
but were passing through Hagen and it was our only chance to catch up. Larry looked
at the car and bled the clutch slave cylinder, and though he couldn’t get any
fluid to come out, the clutch has been fine since. I’m hoping that the MAF
mechanics will have time to check the system while we’re in Telefomin this
week.
*************
I was due to do two flight tests on Monday
with two First Officers who’ve just been trained on the Twin Otter. Over the
weekend I’d had a text to say one of them needed a bit more training, and then
on Monday morning the other called in sick. What with jet lag and needing some
office time, it probably wasn’t a bad thing, but the checks have had to be
rescheduled and there are the inevitable knock-on effects in that neither FO is
available to fly until the flight checks are completed.
Having started with meetings on Friday, more
followed last week, with an Operations Team meeting on Tuesday and a Leadership
Team one on Wednesday.
*************
Nicki worked very hard to get everything
ready to come out to Telefomin for a week on Thursday, and it is from Telefomin
that I’m writing this email. It is so nice to have some consistent time flying
and to get my head back into actually doing what we’re here to do!
Having said that, one of the flights on
Friday wasn’t so pleasant …
*************
The apostle Paul wasn’t afraid to state
things bluntly. In his letter to his friend Titus he quoted a Cretan as saying,
“Cretans are always liars, evil brutes, lazy gluttons.” To be that blunt in
today’s churches would be decidedly non-politically correct!
Friday’s first round out of Tabubil was to
take a man’s body back to his home community of Kopiago for burial. Kopiago,
home of the Duna people, is a place with a reputation and one of a very small
number of communities where I would really prefer not to spend a night. A long
time ago one of our aircraft was hijacked there; they don’t look after their
airstrip; people crowd around the aircraft and won’t follow instructions to get
out of the way and out of the parking bay; and so on.
They lived up to their reputation on
Friday. The grass either side of the centreline must be a metre high, certainly
much too long and grounds for me to close the airstrip for further operations
until it’s cut.
A huge number of people crowded around the
aircraft, even when the coffin had been removed, along with the passengers and
their bags. They wouldn’t move back when the pastor arranging the passengers on
the backload asked them to. They wouldn’t get out of the parking bay when other
leaders asked them to, nor when I did the same. When I raised my voice most
just stood looking at me as though they were deaf and incapable of
understanding the instruction: “Get out of the parking bay”.
Eventually some semblance of crowd control
was established but only after making threats to leave all the passengers and
cargo behind.
Once the aircraft was loaded and the
passengers were on board, two men climbed into the cabin and demanded to be
taken to Tabubil saying they had urgent business. They refused to leave the
aircraft following polite requests, less polite requests, warnings that they
would be arrested and charged by police at Tabubil and similar requests by
those responsible for the charter. Once removed, one demanded that other passengers
shouldn’t travel if he couldn’t, and when denied that, threatened very
aggressively to damage the aircraft.
Eventually he was taken away and some local
people were obviously embarrassed by the situation. For now, the airstrip is
closed to MAF flights until the grass is cut and an effective way of keeping
people out of the parking bay is put in place. I don’t anticipate either will
be completed in the near future.
To return to Paul’s non-PC statement about
Cretans (and recognising it is a generalisation), my non-PC statement about the
Kopiago people is: “The Dunas are always uncooperative, aggressive and awkward.”
The silly thing is, if the two men had
asked nicely when the load manifest was being prepared and passengers and cargo
weighed, we did have space on the aircraft and could actually have taken them.
Being uncooperative, aggressive and awkward when the aircraft was ready to
leave didn’t help themselves at all.
Oh, the joys of working as an MAF pilot!
The next round, taking building materials
for a church from Tari to Tekin was much more pleasant and much more the norm
for rural PNG.
*************
A weekend away from home should mean an
opportunity to relax without needing to think about all the chores on the ‘to
do’ list. That’s true up to a point, though the solar electricity system has
given us some challenges which we’re only just mastering.
Yesterday (Saturday) evening, we had a
Skype interview with a MAF UK event where they wanted a real live pilot and his
wife to answer some questions about what we did and the work in PNG. I didn’t
mention anything about Friday’s challenges at Kopiago!
*************
Nicki is looking at Facebook as I write and
we’ve just had a good laugh from one of her school friend’s post that her
granddaughter had just asked her if she wrote with a quill when she was young. We have yet to field any questions like that.
May all the people you meet this week be
pleasant, kind and helpful.
