November 26th

Nicki and I have enjoyed a quiet morning at home this morning (Sunday). There was a baptism service scheduled at the river, followed by a service back at church, followed by the annual general meeting. Inevitably it will run on late if all of this is squeezed in to one morning, so we decided to opt out.

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Irene, our friend who helps Nicki with cleaning, not only of our house, but also of other MAF houses in between guests, is in hospital with typhoid. Nicki visited her yesterday and reported that she is improving, but it’s hit her hard, as expected with a disease like that. It’s endemic in PNG and two children of one of our families were diagnosed with it last year, but made a good recovery – no doubt helped by the requirement to be vaccinated against it.

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Our car is off the road with a problem with the clutch cylinder. It had some trouble a couple of weeks ago and we hoped it had been fixed, but it looks like a new cylinder will be required. Not being a mechanic in any way shape or form it isn’t something I’d be prepared to do, so it’s waiting for Wednesday when the MAF car mechanics have a slot to fit it in. For the meantime we will use one of the MAF vehicles for any travel.

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Last week had a bit more flying than usual with four days out of the office. Monday was the most interesting, not so much in what was carried (building materials), but in what those supplies were for – a new classroom in one community and a new ward for a health centre in another.

On Friday the weather was very bad in the morning and one round had to be cancelled. Around midday, however, it rapidly started improving and come the afternoon was near perfect flying conditions with good visibility and a high layer of cloud. The airstrips were very wet, so needed to be treated with caution, but apart from that all was straightforward. One round, the most important, took one of the families that Nicki has been teaching Tok Pisin out to Dusin, and brought a young family back who have just finished their own bush orientation with the Nazarene mission.

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Our patch of rhubarb was supplied with a good load of compost yesterday, so will hopefully provide a good crop again in the near future. Considering how much vegetable matter goes in the bin, it’s amazing how it rots down to not even half full. I’ve used some of the compost mixed with tea compost that we bought for the garden earlier in the year, plus some garden soil, to make a potting mix. I don’t know why I haven’t done it before, but we now have pot plants on our veranda, including Amaryllis bulbs that proliferate wildly around the flower beds, but which make a very nice display. One flower head is just finishing and another will be open very soon.

Also out of the garden was a good crop of lemongrass for my latest batch of lemongrass and ginger cordial. It’s our favourite drink, Nicki particularly likes it mixed with pineapple juice made from the boiled up skins and centres from fruit she’s cut up, and either like this or by itself, it is very popular with guests as well. I don’t know if it’s possible to buy lemongrass stalks in the UK, but I know that the Green Bottle Company make the cordial (much too sweet!) as that’s where we first came across it.

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Tickets home have been ordered for next March. We decided that rather than travel on Monday, we might as well leave on the Saturday and get back two days earlier. Travelling over the weekend won’t make any difference to the programme here, and it gives us more time to get over the jet lag before we have our first church meeting to go to. So, we’ll arrive back on Sunday March 11th, and depart again on Wednesday June 27th.

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Having had a cold and then flown most days this week, I haven’t been able to keep up with my running. It’s amazing how quickly the edge goes off the stamina! I decided to go up Rondon Ridge this morning, which is always a steep climb, but my pace was substantially down on what I’ve done before. I’ll be able to run a bit more this week and I hope get the stamina (and energy) back to where it was.

That’s just about it for this week. Dave & Karina Mills are coming for a quick visit this afternoon (he’s the doctor from Kompiam hospital I’ve mentioned many times before) and it’ll be good to catch up with them. The intention is for us to go out there at some point, but we haven’t slotted it into our diary yet.

I hope you have a good week.

November 19th

Benedict Allen made the news in the UK at least. The intrepid British explorer, whom I admit I’d not heard of before, goes missing in the Highlands of PNG. Eventually he’s located at an airstrip north of the Porgera gold mine. I flew past it on Thursday afternoon and, if I’d known he was there, could easily have picked him up. If I’d done that then I’d have deprived the Daily Mail of its sensationalist publicity when they arranged for a helicopter to fly out from Mount Hagen on Friday. I would not have lost any sleep whatsoever if I’d done that. Unfortunately I knew nothing about the man until after I returned.

It’s dangerous to judge when I don’t know the whole story, but my initial reaction has been, “What an idiot!” What sort of person in their right mind (presumably) disappears into the sort of terrain he was exploring without a satellite phone, GPS and an emergency locator beacon. Not to do so is negligent, plain stupid and has the potential to put other people’s lives at risk when they start searching.

Or was it just a carefully orchestrated publicity scam? The cynic in me doesn’t rule out that possibility.

One thing was accurate, there is a tribal war going on in the area between the Hewa and Paiela tribes. The latter have a reputation for being violent bullies. The Paiela airstrip has been closed since the late 1990s, I’m the only MAF pilot in PNG to have ever landed there, and none of us enjoyed the experience for two reasons: firstly it was high altitude, short and flat and difficult; secondly, because the people were generally so unpleasant and difficult to deal with.

I’m sure that Mr Allen will make a substantial income from his tale as to how he heroically survived, not just the trek, but also his brush with the savages of the Highlands. I’m absolutely certain that the Daily Mail’s interest will be confined to how much it can make out of the story.

My assessment remains the same: “What an idiot!”

The place he was rescued from is where some New Tribes missionaries chose to leave some years ago because the community was so dysfunctional and violent. It’s where sorcery and witch hunts occurred that led to the murder of many women that I commented on before.

A few months ago in a Weekly News I recommended Jonathan Kopf’s book, “Canopy of Darkness”, I continue to recommend it and if you do read it, you’ll understand a bit more of what our intrepid explorer blundered into.

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On Thursday I flew to a very remote community where the Sepik lowlands begin to climb up through the foothills of the Central Ranges.

The airstrip is generally serviced from Wewak, in the past by the GA8 Airvan. Since the airstrip is a difficult one, since we’ve had the C208 Caravan based in Wewak it hasn’t been possible for the bigger aircraft to land there until the pilot gained sufficient experience.

“Please get the aircraft to come back,” was a plea from the villagers when I landed. Six people have died and the health centre and school closed directly because MAF hasn’t been going there. Six people who couldn’t get to hospital, and the heath workers and teachers unable and unwilling to remain in a place that remote without air support.

Why weren’t we told? Why didn’t a message get through to us? If I’d known and if MAF as an organisation had known, then we could have done something about it. But we didn’t, and six people died. Maybe they’d have died anyway, but I don’t know that, and I feel frustrated and sad that people whom we might have been able to help, weren’t helped.

I will be working to get the aircraft back there as soon as possible.

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On the home front, I shared my cold with Nicki, so as I recovered, she got worse. Today I’m nearly 100% again, just a slight chesty tickle, and Nicki is well on the mend from our first colds in many months. Hopefully it will have boosted our anti-cold immune system so that we don’t get another for a long while.

Organising air tickets for next March is now in hand, and by next week may well be confirmed. It moves everything nearer.

November 12th

It’s two weeks since the last update, mostly because not a great deal had happened that made for comment. Let’s look back over both the last 7 days, as well as the last 14, and see if last week’s assessment still stands.

The closure of Mount Hagen airport during the general elections seems an unlikely event to build relationships with the local community. The traditional landowners in the area are the Yamke clan, and when they asked all businesses at the airport to cease operations because of issues they had with some of the candidates, MAF complied. Later on, MAF senior managers were also involved in the settlement process.

Through this, the Yamke leaders realised that MAF is not a business, but a mission and a not-for-profit organisation. Since they are local to Mount Hagen and unlikely to use our aircraft, it’s not really all that surprising that the villagers in the area knew nothing about what we do.

To cut a fairly long story short, the churches and leaders in the area decided they wanted to hold a week-long tent meeting to honour MAF. Various MAF staff have led the evening sessions and the community has held a collection for our work.

Nicki and I only managed to get to the meeting on Monday night. As I was flying on Wednesday and Thursday I didn’t want to be late to bed, and both those nights the meetings ran on very late. Come Thursday and Friday I felt unusually tired, the reason for which started to become apparent last night as a slight cold developed. Apart from lack of energy and a bit of congestion it’s not been a problem, but being fairly quiet at home has definitely been the best option.

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While in Mount Hagen MAF has enjoyed good relationships with the local community, our partner organisation, Christian Radio Missionary Fellowship, in Goroka has had serious problems in the last couple of months with a gang of criminals, so-called raskols. The latest and most serious incident came when a gang of about 10 armed men invaded the home of one of their families. Fortunately, nobody was hurt, and “stuff” can always be replaced, even if it is costly and highly inconvenient.

We’re all hoping that the gang have now crossed the line of what will be tolerated by the local community. Missions are targets like anybody else of opportunist criminals, but a home invasion raises the stakes considerably, and certainly some local people have expressed outrage, and a sense of shame, that an incident like that has occurred.

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Our plans for next year are gradually coming together, and this weekend I’ll write an email to Siama, the Dutch travel agency that we use to book our tickets. Usually they can come up with quite a reasonable deal. While it may be possible to find cheaper flights by hunting around online, it is so much easier to let somebody else do the research and have all the connections linked within the one booking.

We’re planning on arriving in the UK on Tue March 13th and leaving again on Wed June 27th, depending on the availability of seats. We’ll see if there might be an opportunity to cross the pond and see Andrew, Querida and the boys during that period, but nothing has been arranged yet.

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Richard gave us a surprise phone call yesterday. The great move of all their stuff from our house to their new one was about to take place. Richard was wondering where our car keys were so that it could be moved out of the way, but since Dave & Jane look after them, and they were away for a few days, it had to be worked around.

By now he and Bekah and not-so-little-anymore Ithaka will be in their own house, though no doubt with plenty of unpacking still to do. Even if we weren’t around to help, it was good that our home could be used for storage, while Bill & Maggie were able to cover their board and lodging until their house was ready!

So, a bit more to comment on this week, but my cold is inhibiting much creative thinking and writing :-(

October 29th

The pilots’ meetings are over for another year. At the end of them, and particularly after two days flying on Thursday and Friday, I was more than ready for the weekend. The best part of ten hours sleep over Friday night was both very unusual (for me) and extremely welcome.

 As usual, the amount of effort that went into preparing for them was worth it in the end. There was good interaction and as the Country Director (Todd Aebsischer), Operations Director (Doug Miles) and Finance Manager (Geoff Boer) were all way in Cairns for regional management meetings, there were some vacant time slots as each of these would normally take a session. With a bit of leeway it meant that we weren’t under pressure to fit everything in, so there was more time for discussion and for everybody to catch up with each other.

After having the meetings in the Goroka area, either at a mission station just outside the town, or at Aiyura, last year, this year we’ve held them back in Mount Hagen, where they always used to be based. It’s worked well; there’s been less time spent travelling and, particularly this year, the venues have been good. In the past we used the Highlander Hotel, but last year their quote was very high, whereas this year it was much more reasonable, so we used one of their function rooms and enjoyed some excellent pizza from their restaurant on Monday evening.

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 A couple of weeks ago Todd recommended a book to me called, “Turning the Ship Around”. His brother is a senior officer in the US military and coming up for promotion. Todd had asked him what was on their required reading list and this was one of the titles. Although his brother is not in the navy, this account is nonetheless on the reading list.

 The author is now a management consultant, and his style and method was born out of his experiences on the USS Sante Fe. When he took command it was reckoned to be the most dysfunctional ship in the US Navy. It’s somewhat scary to think that a nuclear-powered hunter-killer submarine was in that state! Anyway, he relates how it went, to quote, “from worst to first” by encouraging all levels of the crew, officers down through the ranks, to take responsibility for their roles, rather than expecting to be told what to do.

I recommend it. It’s easy reading, but very interesting and, because it’s born out of front-line experience, carries an authority that a theoretical management book is less likely to. I haven’t tried reading too many management books as they’ve never caught my interest when I looked at them, so this is definitely more attention-grabbing.

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Our garden is making good progress. The hedge is clipped right down its length and through Brandon & Sharlene Coker’s garden next door. Neither of them enjoy gardening so they are happy for me to use my hedge clipper through their patch.

 On our main flower bed, I’ve thinned out the rampant cannas and gingers, removed loads of amaryllis that had proliferated wildly, put in some other plants for both colour and shape from other parts of the garden, and eradicated as many weeds as possible.

 This afternoon I picked a very good load of rhubarb, which doesn’t grow brilliantly well in a warm climate, but still provides a reasonable crop every now and then. A rhubarb crumble is on the menu for this evening’s meal. We usually eat midday on Sundays, but it was the annual Thanksgiving service at church this morning and the guest speaker went on for over an hour. By the time we got home we decided a snack with the main meal later would work better.

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If any of our sons had been badly cut with a bush knife while attempting to break up a fight, and ended up in hospital for a couple of weeks, I cannot imagine that Nicki and I wouldn’t be on the phone every day, maybe more if necessary, to them, especially if it wasn’t possible to visit them.

There’s a family we know who live in a village on the outskirts of Mount Hagen. The father is uneducated and virtually illiterate, the mother can read and write a bit. Their oldest son has been in Port Moresby for a couple of years trying to find work and recently has had a job with a security company. Their second son has just finished his grade 12 exams and is waiting for his results. Two younger daughters and two still younger sons complete the family.

It was the oldest son who was injured and he has been phoning Nicki, or she has phoned him, just about every day this week. Nicki has passed on his phone number (he’s using a phone from another patient as he doesn’t have his own phone) to his family, and also provided them with some phone cards so they can afford to call him. As of this morning, he has not had one call from either his parents or extended family. His parents obviously can’t visit him, but extended family members in the capital haven’t either.

We saw his parents in church this morning. Nicki passed on the phone number (again) and both of us made it very clear that it was their responsibility as parents to speak to their son, to encourage him and to let him know he isn’t forgotten.

Nicki rarely gets cross, but this has been one of the rare occasions. She commented this afternoon that if he’d been killed, money would have come out of the woodwork to ensure his body was brought back to the village for burial. However, he hasn’t been killed and they can’t be bothered to find a way to call him. Grrr!!!

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The internet has been poor for the last few days and at the time of writing there is no connection. We had a problem with our phone line that was sorted out very quickly after we reported it, but now I can’t connect to get our internet account recharged. Grrr again! Hopefully it will be restored soon so that this is the Weekly News for Oct 29th and not the one for Oct 29th and Nov 5th combined.