NEWS DESK
| Oxford Business Group

LONDON UK - Papua New Guinea confirmed its first case of Covid-19 on 20 March, involving a foreign mine worker in Morobe Province.

This prompted the government to declare a two-week state of emergency commencing 24 March, which has since been extended by two months.

News of the first case caused some urban residents to rush to stores to stockpile groceries, raising questions about food security in the event of prolonged disruption to supply chains.

Restrictions currently in place include the suspension of domestic flights and incoming international flights; a ban on movement between provinces except for approved cargo, medical supplies and security forces; and home quarantine for everyone except essential workers.

The government’s swift actions were calculated to prevent PNG’s limited health care infrastructure being overwhelmed by community transmission cases.

This is also a threat in other Pacific Island nations, which already have to contend with dangerous outbreaks of mosquito-borne illnesses, such as malaria and dengue fever.

As of 3 April, PNG had yet to report any further cases beyond the mine worker, who was transported to Australia for treatment. This suggests that the containment measures are so far proving successful.

By comparison, Fiji, the second-most-populous Pacific Island state after PNG, has seen seven cases, out of a global total of over one million.

Already a central pillar of the national economy, agriculture will be an even more crucial sector during the global Covid-19 pandemic.

Since he was elected prime minister by members of parliament in May last year, prime minister James Marape has advanced an inclusive growth agenda.

Its focus was on using more of PNG’s resource wealth to diversify the economy and develop other sources of job creation and foreign exchange earnings, such as value-added agri-business and tourism.

PNG’s economy remains largely dependent on revenues from the extractive industries, leaving it vulnerable to downturns in the commodities cycle.

Marape has consistently highlighted the potential of agriculture to offset this and become a new growth engine for the country.

The prime minister told Oxford Business Group that PNG has the potential to emerge as a “food bowl” for Asia if it can develop a viable commercial agriculture structure.

While the country has developed some agri-business success stories – notably in palm oil, but also coffee and, more recently, dairy and vanilla – most agriculture continues to take place on smallholder farms at the subsistence or semi-subsistence level.

Approximately 85% of the population still relies on subsistence farming to meet daily nutritional needs.

Government estimates indicate that up to 30% of PNG’s vast landmass has moderate to very high agricultural potential, but only 4% is currently used for commercial agriculture.

Putting in place the right incentives and strategies to unlock land for efficient mass production will remain one of the key priorities of the administration, once the Covid-19 disruption subsides.

Notwithstanding long-term challenges, the subsistence focus of most agriculture in PNG may prove to be beneficial as the country faces the prospect of supply chain disruption due to the pandemic.

With international flights and cargo movements currently constrained, PNG may have to rely more on local produce if the transportation of goods into and within the country becomes problematic.

James Rice, group CEO of Paradise Foods, told Oxford Business Group that most of the population should be unaffected by supply chain issues as they are accustomed to consuming their own produce.

“The challenge is in the two big cities of Port Moresby and Lae, which rely on imports as well as food coming down from the Highlands.

“We are already seeing a shortage of fresh fruit and vegetables from the Highlands in the cities, but not yet a shortage of imported food. Other non-food items are still arriving in PNG with only a slight delay,” Rice said.

One factor working in PNG’s favour is that local food manufacturers have long maintained large raw-material inventories, to hedge against shipping disruptions or foreign exchange shortages.

While Covid-19 containment measures will have a detrimental effect on overall economic activity, there are signs that well-known local food brands may experience an upturn in PNG, at least in the short-term.

Paradise Foods reported that sales during the last two weeks of March were 20% higher than expected, as urban residents stocked up on provisions.

Before the Covid-19 crisis hit, PNG was already pursuing a policy of food self-sufficiency that has seen it strengthen local production capacity for items such as bottled water, canned fish, poultry and the local staple of hard biscuits.

Consecutive governments have viewed food import substitution as key to providing a much-needed boost to foreign exchange reserves.

To this end, the Marape administration announced in August 2019 it would allocate K200 million annually for an agriculture incubation program to achieve food self-sufficiency by 2025.

Although GDP will be impacted in the short term by falling global demand for oil, gas and minerals, these continued efforts to boost local food production should provide long-term fiscal and social benefits for the largest Pacific island economy.

Rev James Chalmers (Tamate) - his name & the names of many other heroes of PNG will be remembered forever

DANIEL KUMBON

WABAG - Today, 8 April, is the anniversary of the untimely death of Rev James Chalmers – ‘Tamate’ – who was killed and cannibalised along with Rev Oliver Tomkins and local missionaries on Goaribari Island in Western Province 119 years ago.

When I think about their horrible deaths, the names of four friends come to mind who were all posted to serve in the Western Province at some stage of their careers in the 20th century.

They also served in Western Highlands district when Enga sub-district was still a part of it.

Three of them were adventurous young kiaps and the fourth, a wantok, was a policeman who was posted to Daru as soon as he completed his training at Bomana Police College in 1975.

Unlike the missionaries who went ashore on Goaribari Island armed only with the word of God, my four friends all carried guns.

My heart sank when John Gordon-Kirkby sent me a photo of his painting of Tamate’s grave in a lonely place between a dilapidated squatter building and what appears to be a buai stall.

I heard about Tamate’s life story on a school social science radio broadcast many years ago at Kandep Primary ‘T’ School. And now, thanks to John, I had a painting to look at.

How I respect these brave early missionaries and explorers who came to Papua New Guinea on sailing ships.

All three of my kiap friends, Phil Fitzpatrick, Chips Mackellar and John Gordon-Kirkby, live in retirement in different parts of Australia – South Australia, Queensland and Victoria respectively.

Daniel Kumbon's wantok, Inspector Peter Pyaso, taken in Port Moresby in 1977. The other young man is Daniels's classmate at the NBC's training centre, Kiri Nige from Simbu

My other friend was a policeman, Inspector Peter Andan Pyaso, who was killed by my own Enga people at the remote outpost of Lapalama in Kompiam district in 1992 when he went to stop a tribal fight.

He had flown there on a fixed wing aircraft. His body came home on the same plane.

Peter Pyaso was from my own village of Kondo in Kandep. He was first posted to Daru after completing his training at Bomana police college in 1975.

He was a bright young man but his mother could not muster enough money to pay his school fees to do Form 3 at St Paul’s Lutheran High School in 1974. His father had died when he was in primary school.

When he was gunned down, Peter had just been promoted as commander of police mobile squad 9 in Enga.

I met Phil, who I correspond with often, in Noosa in 2016 when I was in Australia for the Brisbane Writers Festival. I met John Gordon-Kirkby in my village during Christmas of 1975. I haven’t met Chips Mackellar yet but am just reading a digital copy of his book ‘Sivarai’ published in 2013.

Chips wrote of how intrigued he was to see crocodiles attack people and how people attack crocodiles which, in the end, eat each other.

When he served in Enga from 1972 to 1974, tribal fighting worried but didn’t affect him. Chips must know that nothing much has changed since people still destroy each other, but now with high powered guns.

Even if Coronavirus comes to Enga and threatens to wipe out the entire population, some people won’t put down their weapons. They must know the virus will kill them both before they kill each other.

People must appreciate the efforts of missionaries who brought messages of peace to our shores. Rev James Chalmers came all the way from Scotland to serve people in the South Seas only to end his life so violently.

Imagine Fr William Ross walking into unexplored highlands country from Madang knowing that other missionaries had been killed by hostile tribes.

And the eight missionaries, included five German Catholic sisters, who had to walk over the mountains to reach Mt Hagen when they were escaping from the Japanese in the Sepik during World War II.

Tamate was killed on this day in 1901 along with Rev Tomkins, a chief and nine missionaries from Kiwai Island, including a young mixed race man from the Torres Strait islands.

They were killed at Dopima village on Goaribari Island - clubbed, beheaded and cannibalised.

The Rev Pitoi, a United Church pastor from Western Province wrote an article about the life of Tamate which was published in February 2018.

Painting of Tamate's grave by John Gordon-Kirkby, 1974

There are lots of sources I could use to write about Tamate’s life but Pitoi’s piece talks about a reconciliation process that began in 2018 and which documents on video the activities of Rev Chalmers before he and his party were killed.

Pitoi said the documentary would be taken to the United Kingdom and shown to the descendants of the missionaries in preparation for their participation this year of a reconciliation and treaty signing ceremony backed by the United Church and senior political leaders in Gulf Province.

Because of the coronavirus outbreak, I have not been able to find out if the documentary was made but it seems the United Church delegation could not go to England because of the current state of world turmoil.

Among other activities, the project was also going to retrace the footsteps of Tamate through the villages he introduced to the Gospel.

“From Suau to Daru, the group will document by video the entire trip, reporting on the indigenous church that has grown from the blood of the martyrs,” Pitoi said.

Tamate – a rendering of the name ‘Chalmers’ - was born in 1841 in Ardrishaig in Argyllshire, Scotland.

He was converted in 1859 and was influenced for mission work after a letter from a missionary to Fiji was read out in his Sunday school class.

In 1864, aged 23, Chalmers enrolled at the London Missionary Society College in Highgate. He married Jane Hercus the following year and two days later was ordained in Finchley Chapel.

He sailed from England en route to Australia on 4 January 1866 aboard the John William. A year later he was at Rarotonga in the Cook Islands, but disappointed to learn that most of the local people had already become Christians.

Chalmers busied himself reaching out to alcoholics, broken families and ministering to whoever needed help. He also began to teach native teachers and pastors.

Chalmers learnt the local language and grew popular with the people who pronounced his surname ‘Tamate’. The nickname stuck.

Seeking a more challenging place to work, Tamate was tasked by LMS to work in Papua. From Suau, on the border of Central and Milne Bay provinces, to the Western Province, Tamate worked tirelessly to bring the gospel to the people.

He was instrumental in settling disputes and so successful in his dealings with the local people that his assistance was often sought by colonial officials.

It is said that the cessation of forced slave labour (‘black-birding’) to Australian plantations is attributed to the efforts of missionaries like Chalmers.

Apart from his mission work, Tamate was an explorer and took risks venturing into unexplored areas. That was how he began work around Goaribari Island where he and his party met their deaths.

After the massacre, the British navy based in Australia was tasked to punish the murderers. It is believed that hundreds of people were killed in retaliation. These events caused anger and bitterness among the local people.

While there are many versions to the story, the fact remains that innocent people died and a consequence has been an apparent hostile atmosphere on the island. The curse on the land was widely believed to be the result of innocent blood being spilled.

The saying, “the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Gospel” is true in this case where a thriving United Church exists in villages where Chalmers and many like him lost their lives for the sake of the gospel. Indeed, the blood of the martyrs speaks.

“When we as Christians humble ourselves and come before God in true repentance, even for the sins of our forefathers, God will hear from heaven, forgive our sins, and He will definitely heal our land,” says Rev Pitoi.

“Doing it right and doing it God’s way will ensure Gulf Province rises up delivered and blessed to take her rightful place as a leading province in PNG.”

Old duffers on PNG Attitude have quite a bit extra to chew over in these troubled times....

PHIL FITZPATRICK

‘No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money’ - Matthew 6:12

TUMBY BAY – There has been a lively discussion about capitalism and neo-liberalism on PNG Attitude for a number of years now.

Most of it seems to be among the blog’s cadre of old duffers ruminating about their lives and the current state of the world.

Papua New Guinea is often used as a kind of meme because that’s where many of the old duffers spent significant parts of their lives.

PNG is also a reference point because it continues to be home to one of the most rapacious forms of corporate plunder imaginable.

I use the word ‘discussion’ rather than ‘debate’ because counter arguments are thin on the ground. The rejoinders are pretty tame from those correspondents game to stick their head above the parapet.

At best they are gentle jibes about overt pessimism. John O’Brien’s 'We'll all be rooned', said Hanrahan" is often quoted.

The obvious conclusion on PNG Attitude is that while the discussion is often lively and interesting it is ultimately a case of preaching to the converted.

There’s nothing unusual about that. The promulgation of any idea always comes up against the hard armour of counter ideology and very seldom penetrates it. When it does it is usually in times of crisis and existential threat.

Like the one the world is going through right now with Covid-19.

Who would have thought that the continuing discussion among PNG Attitude’s old duffers would bloom and spread like it appears to have done?

Many people everywhere are now asking themselves, “Do we really want to live in a savagely unequal world dominated by the endless, growth-addicted quest for profit over everything else?

“Do we want the corporations and their malevolently egoistic owners to push the planet beyond the limits of liveability to ultimate destruction, with or without viral pandemics?”

Some people say that now is an opportune time to choose a better course for the future. Explicit in this call is the idea that humanity and capitalism are largely incompatible.

At least that’s what some people say.

Others say nothing.

Some are waiting until the crisis is gone and the world can get back to normal. That this ‘normal’ is decidedly abnormal doesn’t seem to register.

It’s pretty clear now that leaders like Scott Morrison are in this camp. Once the crisis is over all the socialist measures he has used to combat the virus will abruptly end.

It will be interesting to see whether the political capital he has built up from handling the crisis will allow him to survive the savage economic and social reversal he intends to implement.

As a Christian he clearly believes, despite Matthew’s wise words, that it is possible to serve both God and money at the same time.

At least in Australia we know what to expect from our leaders. In Papua New Guinea things are a lot less clear.

It seems that, regardless of what happens, leaders are going to blunder on as normal without an intermediate stage.

They are making the usual positive noises and promises with absolutely no intention or ability to carry them out.

The extent of their planning does not seem to have progressed beyond the old hollow rhetoric and spin they apply to everything.

A political promise is something quickly forgotten in Papua New Guinea.

As the right wing British comedian and commentator, Simon Evans, says, “Apathy is all”.

There will be no socialist revolution in Australia, Papua New Guinea or anywhere else.

People have long been tranquilised by technology into a state of compliance. And, besides that, as Evans gleefully points out, they are now all too fat to get off their arses to do anything anyway.

At best, in the final analysis, it will give the old duffers on PNG Attitude a little bit extra to chew over.

I guess we have to be thankful for that at least.

ANTHONY GALLOWAY
| Sydney Morning Herald

SYDNEY - Australia will send charter flights carrying tonnes of urgent medical supplies and other support to Pacific island nations to help combat the coronavirus pandemic.

The deliveries come as the Pacific Islands Forum moves closer to agreeing on the creation of a "humanitarian corridor" to keep medical and food supplies flowing amid travel and movement restrictions, and China steps up its aid to the region.

Australia’s prime minister Scott Morrison recently told G20 leaders Pacific island nations and Timor-Leste must be a "focus of international support".

The Morrison government will look at how to use its $2 billion infrastructure lending facility, announced as part of the Pacific "step-up", on projects that help the region recover from the pandemic.

The $1.4 billion in foreign aid earmarked for the region this year will also be used to help island states prevent and combat outbreaks of Covid-19.

Unlike other places in the world, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has kept all essential personnel in the region and all its posts remain open.

While there have been no major outbreaks of the virus in the South Pacific, there are growing concerns from governments in the region that many island states will eventually confront a major health crisis on top of the crippling challenges they already face due to the global economic downturn.

The Asian Development Bank has warned Covid-19 will smash countries across the Pacific that rely on international tourism, with economic growth to fall by 0.3% this year.

Fiji's capital went into lockdown on Friday, just ahead of a spike in cases over the weekend taking its total to 12.

The Australian government has advised its citizens in PNG, which declared a state of emergency since last month, to leave as soon as possible.

Australia has been sending medical supplies and other support to Pacific island nations but many have placed further restrictions on travel and movement over the past week, highlighting the need for a special agreement from the Pacific Islands Forum, an association of regional governments, to keep routes open.

China has been sending its own medical supplies including protective equipment to countries including Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Vanuatu and Samoa, and has committed small sums of money to some in the region. It has also been trying to send supplies to Timor-Leste.

There is growing concern within Australia's intelligence agencies about Beijing's growing influence in the South Pacific and its recent propaganda efforts, including claiming the US Army brought the epidemic to Wuhan, the centre of the outbreak.

MICHAEL DOM

Sampela taim mi save tingting planti tumas 
Long wanem as tru bilong ol kainkain bikpela hevi
I bagarapim sindaun bilong yumi ol man meri
Kuru bilong mi i kamap ston, na het bilong mi pen
Na sampela nait mi painim hat long silip

Long apinun mi bin wokabaut igo long strit maket 
Mi hamamas long lukim ol wanwan mama salim  banana na kumu
Wanwan man meri tu ol i raun painim kaikai
Mipela tok halo long ai tasol na igo bek gen long haus
Grisim kumu long kokonas em i kamap swit moa iet

Long bik moning mi kirap long gutpela silip tru
Mi sekim PNG Attitude na lukim Deni Tokunai long Twitter 
Em putim piksa blong ol maket mama
Sanap insait long sting baret wara na hapim ol kaikai blong ol
Long ples we polisman ibin kikim igo pundaun

Mi lukim baksait het blong ol mama na ai wara i kirap nating
Lewa blong mi bruk olsem tomato long ston bilong baret
Em ino wanpela bikpela hevi bai bagarapim yumi
Nogat, emi liklik pasin nogut tasol, liklik pasin nogut
Olsem liklik binatang nogut i save bagarapim kaikai

Em wankain olsem Covid-19 na yumi poret na wari 
Dispela em yumi tok olsem emi bikpela hevi
Tasol olgeta i stap wanmak aninit long ai bilong Anutu

BAKA BINA

PORT MORESBY - I smiled at the petite cashier and she smiled back at me.

I collected my goodies and saw the cashier still wearing that beautiful smile for me. I smiled back with a glint in my eyes.

But it was over for me. I swallowed my pride and turned away from this kaksi.

I needed to get my ego adjusted over a flour ball and Coke so was halfway into it with one eye on the phone's FB page.

The messenger icon showed someone had in-boxed me.

I popped it open. There was an attached video. I clicked on the video and next minute was scrambling to cover it up.

The idiot had inboxed me porn and I was smack in the middle of a haus kai with people who had eyes in the back of their heads looking at me.

The darned phone's volume was way up and you could hear the gasps and sweet nothings go up to the roof.

I could have done better to switch it off. Instead my hands were all over the screen. All eyes were on the phone.

It was hot property number one and me a persona non grata.

I was sure someone was calling the police that very moment.

Me and my ego. A lauto should know their place.

Did I ever believe that a cute cashier would seriously smile at me? I was sure she was smiling at me.

I did turn heads and some misplaced smiles in my heyday, and still believe I could do the same in my current state of affairs.

I now wear shirts that shriek as they hold back my expanding form. Misplaced ego, I think.

Now I am in deep shit because someone got onto my ego to inbox me a darned porn and I was not being clever to open it in a public space.

Darn, dammit, me and my ego. I need to grow up lauto.

I walked out of the haus kai with lots of eyes on my back with a few accompaniments of ribald comments.

I was awash with rivers of shame.

You that forwarded me the porn, maybe we should conference that with NICTA and the police.

Glossary

kaksi - PNG slang for a cute person
FB - Facebook page
haus kai - A place dispensing cooked food
persona non grata – unwelcome person
lauto - Local PNG slang for an elderly person
NICTA –National Information and Communication Technology Authority

NEWS DESK
| Adventist Record | Extracts

SILVER SPRING, USA - Adventist Aviation Services (AAS) in Papua New Guinea has ceased operations until at least 1 June.

AAS quality and safety manager Colin Dunn said the coronavirus outbreak had significantly impacted the operation.

“With the South Pacific Division banning all expat travel, the Australian government calling all citizens home and shutting down most overseas travel, along with many airlines canceling or severely restricting flights, and PNG banning all except specialised personnel, AAS can no longer operate,” Dunn said.

A skeleton staff continues to work in accounts and security and to provide basic care for the hangar and aircraft.

Dunn has asked for prayers for the staff impacted by the shutdown.

Meanwhile, the Covid-19 outbreak continues to cause disruptions across the South Pacific Division including at Fulton College in Fiji, which encouraged all students to return home if they were able.

The administration and staff at Fulton have been in constant contact with authorities in developing their response plan.

On campus, the staff continues to supervise approximately 170 students from across the Pacific, as well as students who cannot go home because of the Lautoka exclusion zone.

Access to the college is restricted to essential services and visitors are granted entry only if they receive approval by college administration.

In Vanuatu, the country’s president, Obed Moses Tallis, declared a state of emergency on 26 March which closed all churches. Members are worshiping in their homes. The Vanuatu mission office closed until 14 April.

The Indonesian border at Wutung in PNG was closed two months ago because of the apprehended danger of coronavirus

HENRY IVARATURE
| Asia & the Pacific Policy Society

CANBERRA - With a surge in Covid-19 cases predicted for Indonesia, the possibility of the dreaded virus entering Papua New Guinea from West Papua Province is a real concern amongst observers and the government.

Two months ago, the Governor of West Sepik Province, Tony Wouwou, closed the PNG-Indonesia border post at Wutung in response to the Covid-19 outbreak in Wuhan, China.

The Wutung border post is about 50 kilometres from the West Papua capital of Jayapura which has a population of about 314,000.

The border post is a very busy one, not only for people of greater Sepik but Indonesians and other nationalities travelling to and from Jayapura.

PNG and Indonesian solders guard the border with the former also on the look-out for Papuan separatists, who have been waging a guerrilla war against Indonesia.

Despite its closure and further reinforced by a state of emergency in PNG, people continue to covertly cross the PNG-Indonesian border daily, into West Papua to sell vanilla beans and other produce.

PNG’s Treasurer Ian Ling-Stucky described the vanilla trade “too dangerous for the nation”. The border posts lack health surveillance, monitoring and quarantine facilities so these daily illegal crossings could become an entry point for Covid-19 into PNG.

On 2 April, Indonesia had recorded 1,790 Covid-19 cases with 170 fatalities. But mathematic modelling experts in the United Kingdom caution the data as ‘understating the true scale of the infections due to low rate of testing and a high mortality rate’.

They think as many as 34,300 people may be infected, ranking the country ahead of Iran. Because of the slow response to the outbreak, health experts say a surge in Covid-19 cases is expected, and could turn the country into a Covid-19 epicenter.

On 27 March the first recorded fatality of Covid-19 in Papua was reported in the city of Sorong, its westernmost city. The Papua region had three recorded cases of COVID-19 and 19 cases under surveillance on 25 March.

Of those under surveillance, nine people were in Jayapura and six were in Merauke, a West Papua town located some 80 kilometres away from Weam in the Morehead district of PNG’s Western Province.

These numbers and a report from The Jakarta Post about Papua Province lacking medical equipment and testing kits, plus illegal crossings are troubling PNG leaders.

East Sepik’s Governor Allan Bird reckons the number of Covid-19 infections in Indonesia is frightening some Indonesians to flee from it. He is very worried about its consequence if it leads to an influx of Indonesians across the border.

The porous nature of the 750 kilometre land boundary between Western Province in the south and West Sepik Province in the north, which is largely unguarded is also of little assurance in keeping the virus out.

Moreover, authorities are unable to detect traditional crossers, smugglers, refugees, or guerrillas along the length of the border. As in the past, many West Papuans fleeing Indonesian rule, can easily cross into PNG.

In 2018, confrontations between the West Papua Liberation Army and Indonesia’s security forces resulted in thousands of people being displaced. An estimated 10,000 West Papuans crossed over in 1984, and thousands more could be expected.

Papuans regularly cross the border at various points between Wutung in West Sepik and Daru in Western Province. Some cross into Kiunga and make their way as far as Lake Murray. Kiunga is the port town of the Ok Tedi gold and copper mine and capital of the Western Province.

On the outskirts of town is a small army base which is now closed and condemned as a health hazard by health authorities.

Other facilities also condemned due to lack of maintenance and disagreements over funding responsibilities between the national and provincial authorities are the correctional services facility, the police barracks and the Daru general hospital.

The village of Weam in the Morehead district is close to Merauke, a large town across the border in West Papua. Villagers frequently travel to Merauke to buy food and diesel fuel.

The only establishment of note there is the Bensbach eco-tourism lodge which is frequented by tourists, anglers, and birdwatchers in an otherwise isolated and almost forgotten part of the country.

But reports of Covid-19 cases in Merauke and Jayapura and the fear of the virus crossing into PNG has had the government arrange for soldiers to be deployed to these border posts in Weam, Daru, Kiunga, Wutung and others.

Other measures under the two month State of Emergency include the building of Covid-19 centres, and subjecting travellers from these areas to closer scrutiny, surveillance, monitoring, and tracing.

An indefinite ban on traditional border crossings remains in force. It applies to villagers in Western Province, the Autonomous Region of Bougainville, and West Sepik Province.

Eleven Treaty villages from Daru and along the Kiwai villages have also been banned from crossing into the Torres Strait Islands since February 2020.

And let’s not forget, Daru is a hotspot for tuberculosis. It not only has the worst infection rate in PNG but the strand of tuberculosis in the region is also drug-resistant.

It is not hard to imagine the devastation Covid-19 could wreak in the Western Province – on people with tuberculosis and others, especially with a general hospital that has been condemned as a health hazard.

The government has declared Covid-19 a national security crisis and has invested significantly in public awareness, tracing and testing suspected cases.

It is aware of the poor capacity of the country’s health system to cope in a pandemic and is working with development partners to prepare facilities and equipment, train personnel, and prepare to deal with a Covid-19 outbreak.

The threat of Covid-19 entering PNG through the border with Indonesia is very high. The defence of the borders is a national government responsibility.

Going forward, maintaining an intensified long-term border surveillance and monitoring program along the border with Indonesia is critical.

This means that the government’s Covid-19 budget must be availed to procure adequate supply of masks, gloves, medical and personal protection equipment.

It must fund coverage of testing the proposed sample of 1,000 people and perhaps consider province-wide rollouts of testing.

It must fund awareness efforts to educate people on the dangers of this virus and on the importance of social distancing, personal hygiene, and avoiding crowds.

It must fund the allowances of authorities on a timely basis. There has never been a time when the consequences of inaction could decide the fate of many Papua New Guineans.

The threat of Covid-19 entering from Indonesia is real, and not to be underestimated, and controlling the border is a crucial way to mitigate that threat.

BAKA BINA

PORT MORESBY – “Soluhoto, tell you father that his phone is ringing.”

“Dada, mum says your phone is ringing,” Soluhoto called from under the house where she was looking for insects while watching me weed the aupa garden.

“Go, bring it down. You can see me in the garden. Who was it?”

“It was Uncle John, he asked that you return his call,” she yelled down from the steps.

The house went silent and I waited for my phone. Ten minutes later my daughter brought it down.

“Sol, where is the phone.”

“You got some FB friends who are active now!”

“What!” The hairs on the back of my nape stood on their ends.

“How did you open up my phone? Where did you get the password?”

“Eeh, I watched you key in your password. It opened up the phone and I was on my Facebook page.”

“And why did you open up my Facebook page then?” I asked in a harsh voice. I was annoyed.

She said nothing and stood in front of me with the phone and a bemused smile.

I now had goose pimples popping up in short order all over my hands and a wave of sweat forced its way across my quivering head.

It was those Facebook friends over-reaching, some salacious.

Recently I’d been sweeting up some of them with nothings and had taken to keeping a guard over my phone’s password.

Usually I didn’t have passwords on my phone and computers or, if I did, simple ones like the letters of my names.

This had changed recently. I was now FB active and had gone to passwording, some very difficult. I was getting FB messages you would not want a child to see. I did not want Soluhoto inhabiting my phone and computer.

I threatened to chaff her ears.

She was just getting to her FB page but there was nothing wrong with that, was it?

Before I started using passwords, she could get onto it and she knew it was okay back then.

She could access her FB and she was good for me reading her page.  She was sure the same arrangement was in place even with the passwords and phone.

It was the wicked smirk and the glint in the corners of her eyes that worried me.

Me trying to chaff her for opening my phone with a password she was not supposed to know, I think that bit bruised her ego.

The child did not say anything.  She quietly gave me the phone but I saw a sneer and her eyes, though watery, had a sheen and sparkle.

I was in a head spin. Just yesterday did I not get messages that included attached porn? That I had mistakenly opened up in a haus kai?

I tried to remember if I blocked those who sent me porn - there were two I remembered blocking.

When I left the phone this morning, there was no more of that but I’d been in the garden for nearly two hours. That is a long, long time in this social media era.  Oh dear, oh dear, dear-dear me.

Soluhoto went back to the house. Then, at the bottom of the steps, she called out.

“Da, when your FB friend say she wants to dolly you, what is she saying?”

The gust of air that came with that word forced me flat on the ground. It knocked me out.

She put that stress on the word – dolly .… no, lolly. Dammit, darn her, the neighbours heard that too or am I imagining that…. dolly… no, lolly.

I looked through the gap in the fence. My neighbours were in small talk at their patapata. They had smirks on their faces. Did the smirks include this breaking news?

Dolly … no, lolly … searching by a lauto!  Ha! Some lauto!

“Soluhoto! What did you say just then?”

It was that voice from the kitchen that had me more worried.

I looked for an exit from the garden.

I imagined myself going up to the house.

I envisaged that behind the door, like the bilong that lauto of a long time ago, Grass Roots, Agnes, she was going to be standing there, waiting in ambush with the oft used sospen.

For Ma, it was going to be her best shot at getting back at me for the 101 things that often times I did wrong to her and she had been holding her breath, waiting for her chance.

Em nau. I can hear her grinding her teeth and tightening her grip on the handle of the sospen.

What for?

Do I think she is one of those dumb ones? Do I wish she is one that does not understand the synonym for a blow work out?

Boy oh boy. First thing first. I flip through my FB messages.

Confirm.

One. There are several requests for flex credits.

Two. This headshot of a woman with a man’s name wanting to do a dlolly workout on me and she/he was down the street waiting for me. Shoot!

I need only to acknowledge the message but that is not what it was meant to be. Was it? Already it was World War Three in the planning.

I needed to find short answers in quick order.

Three. Darn, there is even a nude of one from Madang. Shoot! Can she send me that? I am a virtual stranger. Oh shoot!

Did Soluhoto see this? What is she telling Ma right now?

Oh, sweat me a river….

Some of these women of FB are really confused.

No, someone like me (a lauto) must be really confused to befriend these women.

But now it is that sospen that is waiting in the house. I am x-ing them now.

Glossary

aupa - vegetable
dlolly - combination of the words dolly and lolly (for this story)
em nau - there now (that’s it)
Grass Roots - A cartoon character of the 1970s and 1980s created by Bob Brown
haus kai - place selling cooked food
lauto– elderly person (slang)
Madang - A province with main town of the same name
meri bilong - wife of
patapata - bed of planks outside the house, usually with a shelter or under a tree
sospen - saucepan, pot with handle sticking out the side

GEORGIE BRIGHT
| Australia Associate Director, Human Rights Watch

SYDNEY - Even before the coronavirus, the fragile health system in Papua New Guinea was underfunded and overwhelmed, with high rates of malaria, tuberculosis, and diabetes among its population of more than eight million.

Access to hospitals is extremely limited, with 80% of the population living outside urban centres.

Prime Minister James Marape has acknowledged the country has only 500 doctors, less than 4,000 nurses, and around 5,000 beds in hospitals and health centres. The country reportedly has only 14 ventilators. A Covid-19 outbreak would be catastrophic.

To date, there have been two confirmed cases of Covid-19 in PNG. It could be that PNG will be spared the scale of the pandemic seen elsewhere such as Wuhan, a dense urban area with a mobile and older population.

But Police Minister Bryan Kramer has acknowledged the country has a limited capacity to test people, raising concerns that the actual number of cases is higher.

Despite Marape’s assurances that personal protective equipment would be made available to health workers, the Ministry of Health released a situation report on 13 March detailing chronic deficiencies, as well as inadequate training on use of such equipment and infection prevention and control.

Nurses across the country have threatened to strike over the lack of basic medical supplies. In Lae, health workers protested over a lack of preparedness and demanded more information about the virus.

Some doctors told The Guardian that they are forbidden from speaking with the media under PNG’s state of emergency powers. While the emergency powers do not expressly prohibit health workers from speaking publicly, PNG’s police commissioner has warned that anyone spreading “false” or “unsanctioned” information during the Covid-19 state of emergency will be prosecuted.

On 2 April, the PNG parliament voted to extend the 14-day state of emergency for two months.

Under international human rights law, governments should ensure that people have access to information. That means that medical staff should be able to speak up and provide accurate and timely information about the pandemic and how to limit transmission.

The PNG government, with support from donor governments like Australia and New Zealand, should take urgent steps to ensure that information is accessible, that personal protective equipment is provided to health care workers, and that affordable and accessible medical care is available to protect PNG’s poorest and most vulnerable people.

BAKA BINA

PORT MORESBY - I walked in and looked at the corner where I spent last night. The couch cushions were still on the floor where I had left them in the morning. Not tidied up.

The filthy sheet was still stuck in the window pane where I’d tried to shut out the early morning chill.

I read something into that. The message was clear. I was persona non grata in my own home.

I had found refuge there in the night after I stayed under the house all afternoon. I was not going to come into the house after the fiasco with Soluhoto shouting out the dlolly word.

I was not going to chastise her for my own stupidity. 

And I had no rational explanation why some people posted such things on my FB messaging page.

My daughter had pulled from out the blue the words ‘dolly’ and ‘lolly’.  The word the person used in the inbox message was totally different word. 

The FB friend had sent two messages 10 minutes apart like it was a desperate situation.

I don’t know where Soluhoto got the idea to substitute this exact word with lolly or dolly. I did not want to ask her that because it was going on to uncomfortable ground.

I might have to explain why I was allowing my FB friends that talk like that on FB.

And the nude selfie…. It was too much to be thinking around about at this precise moment.

It felt eerie coming into a house where no one was talking to you.  Even the dogs had not wagged their tails.

I dropped my laptop bag and left my shirt with the phone on the bare couch frame and tried to get myself a cup of water from the kitchen tap.

The sospen was not in its usual place on the shelf over the stove. I took a furtive look behind the door but there was nothing resembling a sospen.

I felt a bit elated but it was short lived. There was the sospen on the kitchen table under some aibika and kalapua banana. Was that a cover?

When Ma walked into the kitchen, I was anticipating an all-out sospen war. Her face did not show any emotion.

But the same face was there – the one with the twitch in the corner of the mouth that gave her a supercilious smile.

When she smiled, the smile pulled her face opposite to the twitch and radiated from that side, not that I expected a smile right now.

She was blank and mute. I swallowed the bile at the back of my throat and slowly squeezed past her, making myself as small as possible as not to touch her in that corner of the kitchen.

I must have had my eyes in the back of my head for when her hand moved to the water tap, I lost it. I was shaking, skin grass kirap nogut tru anticipating the sospen missile.

The hairs on the back of my neck quivered for a while.  It was not time yet.

I walked to the toilet to knock out the butterflies in my stomach.

I resolved to talk to her - no, both of them. 

“Soluhoto! Where are you?”

“Da, you don’t need to shout. I’m here right behind you. I want to use the toilet.”

“Okay, when you are done, I want to talk to you.”

“What is it that you want to discuss with her? What fokofi has troubled you this time?”

Oh, the blank mute has a voice now.

Em nau.

That was not a good conversation starter.

They were not questions though they sounded like it. They were statements where she knew she would not get any answers.

I walked out of the house with Ma’s sarcastic air following me to the vegetable garden. I was not going to egg anyone to do battle.

I walked around the aupa plot four times without pulling any pigweed, meditating to my best self, mumbling about nothing.

“Da!”

I edged up to Soluhoto sitting at the edge of the aupa plot and pulled her close.

“Solo! Apo! Yesterday you mentioned dolly or lolly. I looked up the Facebook messages and there is no mention of lolly or dolly in the message so where did that word come from?”

“Da, some person in there was saying that they want to do something that boys at our school are always swearing at us or sometimes these boys get into the girl’s toilet and write graffiti there that mention what the boys say to us.

“The word in the phone is the same.  We – girls, being girls, substitute some of the words and this word, we changed it to lolly.  I did not say dolly.”

I looked at her with tears in my eyes. Gosh, what was the world coming to when children in primary schools are becoming cleverer than they put out to be?

“Da-a, you think that I will call that word for the public to hear?”

“Apo, I think our neighbours did hear that and they could make connections between FB and lolly and especially when a small kid shouts it out or puts it out in an inquisitive way.”

“And Da-a?”

“Yes.”

“There was one ass natingmeri in there also.”

“Apo, say that again.”

“Honest, I saw a picture of one ass nating meri on your mess---!”

I woke up seeing myself amongst the aupa plants with a glorious rainbow arching over me and a soothing waterfall cascading down on me with more than a few stars still going off between the waterfall, the walls beyond the rainbows and the heavens.

I was not sure if it was me just taking off to the nether world as I saw my own world crumbling when my daughter told me she saw a naked woman on my FB page or that the sospen had landed.

I was prostrate on the ground with a burning bump on my balding crown and Soluhoto leaning over me, trying to revive me. Her face was all wet from the water or tears or both.

She however was wearing a smile a mile long and the water from the handheld hose was all over me and my cracked balding head and the cracked and mangled phone beside me.

“Da-ah, I am so sorry. I did not see Ma come up behind us.”

Ooh, pleeaase - cry me a river.

Glossary

aibika - vegetable prevalent in the Pacific
apo - endearing word used by Eastern Highlanders (Alekano, Tokano, Eastern Highlands)
ass nating meri - naked woman (Tok Pisin)
aupa - vegetable common around Port Moresby
Dlolly - combination of words dolly and lolly (for this story)
em nau - there now / that’s it (Tok Pisin)
fokofi - woman with loose morals, including sex workers (slang)
kalapua - round cooking banana common around the Pacific (Kuanua, East New Britain)
persona non grata– unwelcome guest
skin grass kirap nogut tru - hairs on the skin stand erect (Tok Pisin)
Soluhoto - girl’s name (Tokano, Eastern Highlands)
sospen - saucepan, a pot with a handle sticking out the side (Tok Pisin)

PHIL FITZPATRICK

TUMBY BAY - Further to my article the other day about PNG Attitude’s old duffers chewing over world affairs (with apologies to Charles Duffer) it occurred to me that they represent a rare collection of thinkers.

I’ve been casting around for a term that describes them but haven’t come up with anything appropriate so far. PNG Attitudism doesn’t really cut it.

I guess they are progressive-leaning with an odd ginger of conservative input. Important too is that they are a mix of Australians and Papua New Guineans - rare in itself.

There is a strong ex-kiap element along with teachers and other professions, plus a bit of business and media influence.

When you look at some of the articles they write, the quality is impressive. A few of them have even attracted a personal following.

I always look forward to anything the meticulous Chris Overland contributes and also enjoy the acerbic Bernard Corden and, lately, Jim Moore. Paul Oates is always reliable for a level-headed view on most subjects.

From the Papua New Guinean side anything that Francis Nii writes is compulsory reading. So too are articles by Daniel Kumbon. And I look forward to new poems by Michael Dom and many others. And who would want to miss another short story from Baka Bina?

Two things have surprised me over the years. The first is the progressive mindset of the kiap writers. I had formed the view many years ago that most kiaps were of a conservative bent but I’ve since had to reassess that assumption.

The second thing also revolves around conservatism but in relation to the Papua New Guinean writers.

My notion that writers from a country with a strong Christian ethos would be predictable and boring was quickly put to rest. I now know that there is a strong secular streak alive and well up north and that Papua New Guinean Christians are not without wit.

In the absence of Australian media interest in Papua New Guinea those writers, Christian or secular, keep us informed about events we might not otherwise hear about.

And they are not afraid to criticise their government or call out bad behaviour. This is indeed refreshing and knits nicely with equally critical commentary by Australian writers about our government.

In my previous article I noted how, following the Covid-19 crisis, the views expressed on PNG Attitude match views among other people around the globe. This sort of prescience is a feature of PNG Attitude over a range of subjects ranging from Chinese influence through to more mundane issues of governance and accountability.

Another refreshing feature is the equality between the Australian and Papua New Guinean writers (and readers). It is a feature not so often obvious between our two governments.

Even if Australia is seen to have failed occasionally in its colonial role it appears to have succeeded at the personal level.

Could these commonly held views represent something like a PNG Attitude philosophy?

There once was a kiap philosophy. It was never written down in anything like a mission statement but it was always understood.

Perhaps elements of that early philosophy have lingered on and now inform some of the things that are written for PNG Attitude.

I don’t know whether tisas, didimen or mastamaks had similar philosophies but, if they did, maybe they have survived in a similar way.

A philosophy is generally accepted as a set of views and beliefs about life and the universe, which are often held uncritically.

Does that definition fit? There are certainly disagreements among the writers and commentators so I guess there isn’t really anything resembling a philosophy binding them together.

What about a school of thought?

A school of thought is the perspective of a group of people who share common characteristics of opinion or outlook. That sounds better I think.

But then again, why does whatever it is have to have a label? I’ve never liked labels much.

Putting people in boxes or squares is never a good idea and I cannot imagine the writers of PNG Attitude being that confined.

Lots of them think outside the square. In fact, that’s another feature that characterises many of the writers.

Perhaps I’m just trying to be too analytical. I’ll have to watch that, it could spoil the whole experience.

RABAUL HISTORICAL SOCIETY

RABAUL - The 18-year-old Errol Flynn – with an already shady background - arrived in New Guinea in October 1927 to make his fortune on the newly discovered goldfields at Edie Creek.

His later and unexpected career as a celebrated Hollywood film star lay a few years ahead.

From his arrival he tried unsuccessfully to bluff himself into money as a cadet patrol officer, gold prospector, slave recruiter, dynamiter of fish, trapper of birds, manager of coconut and tobacco plantations, air cargo clerk, copra trader, charter boat captain, pearl diver and diamond smuggler.

He was also a prolific writer and contributed regularly to Australian newspapers and magazines with absorbing tales about the untamed jungles of New Guinea.

Flynn soon discovered that the Australian government had a severe shortage of patrol officers and he hoped to bluff his way through in Rabaul. But his colonial career was short-lived when his background was discovered.

He moved restlessly from one job to another, acquiring many different skills but no great competence. Hoping to get rich fast, he lived by his wits and ran up many debts.

In Rabaul, although considered a likeable and capable young man, his reputation for roguery quickly spread and he ceased to be with the Administration.

His best memory of Rabaul was of “a wonderful saloon” where you encountered “everything the world could yield up – miners, recruiters, con men, thieves, beachcombers, prospectors – cubicles both downstairs and upstairs, several phonographs playing, cards.…”

Long after Flynn had departed he was remembered around Rabaul, mostly for the unpaid bills he left behind.

Even after he became famous as a film star, he never paid those bills.

If people wrote asking him to pay, he would send them autographed photographs of himself, saying these were worth much more than what he owed them.

The story is told of the famous occasion when a film of Flynn’s was showing in Rabaul, and at the end of the credits, a dentist to whom Flynn owned a large account jumped up and shouted: “And teeth by Eric Wein.”

Flynn has been called many names: adventurer, thief, lover, liar, murderer and Hollywood legend.

He probably didn’t do much good while he was here in Rabaul, but nevertheless, he placed New Guinea on the world map as a place where a young man could find himself.

Kerewa longhouses,  Goaribari Island,  1923 (Frank Hurley)

CHRIS OVERLAND

ADELAIDE - Daniel Kumbon’s recent article on the work of early missionaries in Papua New Guinea triggered some memories for me, especially in relation to Goaribari Island.

By a strange quirk of fate I met a man who witnessed the events of 8 April 1901 when the Reverends James Chalmers and Oliver Tomkins, together with 12 colleagues, were murdered and then eaten by the people living on Goaribari Island.

Before I describe my meeting with this witness, it is worth looking at the history of what was, during a subsequent Royal Commission, described as “the affray at Goaribari Island”.

In 1901 most of what was then the British Protectorate of Papua was unexplored by Europeans.

There had been significant contact in and around Port Moresby, but the hinterland remained off limits to other than a few intrepid administration officials, mining prospectors and missionaries.

Goaribari Island lies far to the west of Port Moresby, being located in the tidal delta of the Gulf of Papua, roughly midway between the mouths of the Omati and Kikori Rivers. It was and remains only accessible by boat.

Missionaries like Chalmers were determined to bring the word of their God to the Papuan people and were prepared to take serious risks to do so.

Dying in the service of their God, while not necessarily desired, was regarded as a noble act of martyrdom which would bring eternal credit of the martyr’s soul upon arrival in Heaven.

So it was that on 8 April 1901 Chalmers’ party landed at Goaribari Island and were invited to attend a feast in the Men’s House (called a Dubu in Motu).

Unhappily, they turned out to be the main course and were treacherously and cruelly murdered by their hosts. Their skulls were subsequently displayed in the Dubu as trophies of that event.

Word soon filtered back to Port Moresby about the killings. The then Lieutenant Governor of Papua, Sir George Le Hunte, swiftly mounted a retaliatory expedition to punish the islanders.

Le Hunte, together with a large force of police duly descended upon the island one morning and slaughtered every man they saw, killing a total of 24 in all.

They then burned every Dubu on the island, being 10 in number, before departing for Port Moresby.

Such violent retaliation may seem excessive to us these days but was clearly regarded as proportionate at the time. Also, it was plainly consistent with the Papua New Guinea tradition of payback and would have been understood as such by the islanders.

Le Hunte’s actions should have been the end of the matter and, indeed, there it rested for two years when events took another fateful and lethal turn.

In June 1903, the Australian government had taken over control of Papua on behalf of the British government. This had always been the intention from the moment the reluctant British government had annexed Papua, mainly in order to prevent the further expansion of the German Empire into the Pacific.

On 9 June 1903, a 32 year old called Christopher Robinson was appointed as Acting Administrator.

I have been unable to ascertain exactly what Robinson’s qualifications and experience were for this demanding role but colleagues described him as showing little sympathy towards the indigenous population.

A contemporary rather unkindly described him as a “blithering idiot” and his subsequent actions seem to add weight to this description.

Perhaps the kindest way to think about him is that he was inexperienced, lacked good judgement and had been promoted far beyond his level of competence.

In any event, in March 1903 Robinson, in company with Police Commandant W C Bruce and a contingent of Papuan Constabulary, set off for Goaribari Island in the administration steamer called, somewhat paradoxically given what transpired, Merrie England.

The apparent aim was to capture the remaining murderers of Chalmers et al in order to bring them to trial.

At this point, it is worth considering the weapons they took with them on their journey.

Merrie England was 147 feet long and weighed about 170 tons. It could make a steady nine knots under steam power, so was quite fast by the standards of the day.

The vessel mounted a multi-barrel Nordenfelt quick firing gun, which was a precursor to the modern machine gun. Operated efficiently it could fire hundreds of rounds a minute of a heavy calibre (25mm) bullet.

To put such bullets in perspective, the USA’s Army’s most potent modern heavy machine guns fire bullets that are only marginally larger at 30mm diameter.

I think that the word bullet is an inadequate description for ammunition of this size. It is better to think of it as a small artillery shell, with a corresponding capacity to inflict enormous damage upon anything it strikes.

The constabulary were armed with Martini Henry carbines, firing a .577 calibre bullet. These weapons had an effective range of about 370 metres, but were still lethal at up to 1,000 metres. In the hands of a competent rifleman, several aimed shots could be fired in a minute.

The bullet used in these guns was made of lead and weighed around 30 grams. I have fired one of these weapons and, believe me, you would not wish to be hit by one of them at any range, let alone close range.

Their hitting power was sufficient to at least highly discourage if not stop a charging rhinoceros or elephant.

Thus equipped, Robinson and his colleagues duly arrived at Goaribari Island. Initially at least, the islanders greeted them with cautious offers of friendship. No doubt the last visit from Le Hunte remained firmly in their minds.

At first all went well but when the police seized one of the men identified as being a participant in the murder of Chalmers and his colleagues things went horribly wrong very fast.

Several islanders loosed off arrows towards Merrie England and pandemonium ensued. The police opened fire with all guns blazing, shooting indiscriminately into the assembled mass of islanders.

Commandant Bruce strove desperately to restore order as the police and Robinson himself frantically blazed away.

In the space of only a very short time, perhaps no more than 90 seconds, about 260 shots were fired, including many from the heavy calibre Nordenfelt gun.

At least eight islanders were killed outright and an indeterminate number were wounded. Some of the wounded must have subsequently died but Robinson and his men had long since departed so the true extent of the killing remains unknown.

Given the power of the weapons used and the number of shots fired it seems implausible to me that only eight deaths occurred. A wound caused by a Nordenfelt gun could easily remove a limb or blow a large hole in a person’s body. A Martini Henry rifle at close range would inflict very serious damage too.

Despite lacking any verifiable evidence, I think there are reasonable grounds for suspecting that Robinson (and possibly Le Hunte too) understated the casualties they inflicted, partly due to the well documented problem of accurately reporting events after the “fog of war” has descended upon those engaged in combat and partly in an effort to avoid criticism for using excessive force.

In any event, upon returning to Port Moresby, Robinson was confronted by almost unanimous condemnation for his ill conceived and disastrous expedition.

A subsequent Royal Commission was scathing in its assessment of his actions.

Depressed and suffering from malaria, Robinson committed suicide at Samarai (Milne Bay) in June 1904, thus bringing to a close a short and dreadful career as a colonial administrator.

This brings me to my own knowledge of this event which, I have to say, remained very scant until quite recently.

In 1970, I was stationed at Kikori in the Gulf Province, where I heard about these events for the first time. The information conveyed to me was very hazy, providing only the bare bones of the story.

So it was that, armed with incomplete and inaccurate information, I set off on patrol with the objective of visiting the Omati Base Camp, where the administration had established a large resettlement scheme.

The aim of the scheme was to create a haven for small scale agriculture and horticulture in the hilly but fertile country that surrounds the upper reaches of the Omati River.

On the way, I resolved to visit Goaribari Island.

Those who knew the island at that time may recall that the islanders tended to have distinctive facial features, enhanced by equally distinctive tattoos and piercings.

Kerewa man grinding an adze, 1923 (Frank Hurley)

They looked more like the people from further west towards the Bamu River or even Daru in the Western Province. This made them fairly easy to recognise compared to people from, say, the area around Kikori or Baimuru or further east around Kerema.

I mention this only because they were, at that time at least, fairly distinctive in looks and, somehow, this seemed to fit with their reputation for ferocity in pre-colonial times. They also were superb canoe builders and this expertise was much respected by the local people.

Upon arrival at the village, I did the usual kiap inspection of things like gardens and toilets and made inquiries into the general well being of the people. As I recall nothing of great note required attention, so I settled into the “HausKiap” (visitors rest house) and chatted to the locals.

Inevitably, the story of Chalmers arose and one of the villagers mentioned that there was still one man alive who remembered the incident.

This immediately piqued my interest and I asked if I could talk to him. Someone set off towards a nearby house and soon a very elderly man tottered towards me before settling himself comfortably on a log under the shade of the Haus Kiap’s veranda.

He told me that he had been a small boy at the time that Chalmers was killed and so had taken no part in the murders. His role had been restricted to witnessing events from a position of safety and later consuming the leftovers from the subsequent feast.

He complained that, as a small boy, he was not entitled to the prime portions of the feast and was given a foot to gnaw upon. Irritatingly, he said, the foot had first to be removed from a sandshoe.

He also said he remembered that attacks by the white men that followed, although he apparently witnessed this from the safety of the bush, well away from the actual scene of the fighting.

I recall him saying that many were killed, including women and children but, unsurprisingly, he could not say how many.

To this day, I do not know whether or not he was merely pulling my leg about the foot and sandshoe, but I remain quite sure his account of the attacks was accurate.

I suppose I might well have been the last non-indigenous person to hear a firsthand account of the affray at Goaribari Island. The man who spoke to me was very old by the standards of the day, being over 70 years of age.

So that is my tenuous connection with the terrible events of 1901 and 1903 at Goaribari Island. It is a story I have told to my children but no-one else until now, mostly because I felt that there would be no great interest in it.

However, now that Daniel has raised the matter once again I thought that, while my story is historically insignificant, it does show that oral histories of events can reverberate down through the years in unexpected ways.

It is these histories that people like Daniel and Mathias Kin have been recording and they are certainly worth preserving.

My account of these events drew upon several sources, including the work of John Quinn, whose article ‘The Curious Case of Christopher Robinson’, was published by the PNGAA on 21 October 2018. John’s work provided a useful narrative framework for my account of Robinson’s actions and I commend it to readers.

In another example of how small a world it is that we live in, readers should know that John Quinn was my Assistant District Commissioner when, as a novice liklik kiap of no great promise, I arrived upon his doorstep in Kerema in 1969. I remember him as being kind to me and tolerant of my youthful failings. Thank you John.

WARDLEY D I BARRY

keep your heaven
if you will ask for offerings
and won’t buy my scones

keep your jesus
if you will ignore me
and love your own

keep your religion
if it will teach me to
hate on an empty stomach

and if after the mass
you drive home in a Maserati
while i limp to my shack

keep your prayers
keep your spirituality that separates
me from my brother who is gay

keep the songs that lift
you to heaven if your stares
will push my sister away

keep your sermon that scares
me into submission
while you sleep with the deaconess

keep your prophetic gift
it is pushing me back
into the darkness

all i want is humanity
all i want is equality
all i want is a jesus
that says everyone matters

BAKA BINA

PORT MORESBY - Darned if I know how you make humour of a situation after your head is bashed in.

Soluhoto had washed my head and said the wound was minor.

She cut a young banana leave and collected the sap and used this to put a stop to the bleeding.

She mixed the rest of the banana sap with Aloe Vera to make a paste, smearing it over the cut to the head before checking the secondary bump where I had landed on the cement path.

It was superficial but bruised and swollen. Soluhoto liberally applied the rest of the paste to it. More than I thought was necessary but it was the TLC by the acting nurse to her father that mattered and I accepted it gladly.

There was no talk about dlollies or ass nating meri or sospen. There was even no suggestion on how the sospen got there in the first place.

Soluhoto kept close by, she was concerned I might let one of my occasional rages get the better of me and make me run amok.

Agnes or Ma or whatever she called herself now had retreated into the house where there was a lot of to-ing and fro-ing that boomed through the floor.

Sometimes when things went wrong for her she would move to her sister’s place, and it sounded like preparations were underway.

I could see that Soluhoto was going to be the go-in-between, the pacifier, if World War Three broke out.

She was feverish – her hands were shaky and she nervously walked in small circles around the small spot where we were huddled.

I got up gingerly. The stars were still there and were so furious I sat down quickly.

That hit must have been with all the pent up energy kept especially for this occasion.

I had been evasive with the phone since the time I went active on Facebook and had been secretive, at times answering the phone in whispers or a low voice or going out of the house to the trees.

She had always looked up when I started walking away from her to answer the phone, which had never happened before.

I now realised she must have taken offence that I had excluded her, especially when I passworded the phone.

I picked up the mangled phone, removed the SIM and SD cards. There were several old one band phones around the house which I could use temporarily.

I was not going to cut off my contacts. I needed to be in touch. The boss had expressed we be constantly available in these uncertain times.

When she saw I was not going to collapse, Soluhoto raced into the house and brought food but I did not touch it. She then made coffee and stayed with me for a while.

She yawned. It looked like there was a truce in the impending war. I decided to make an attempt to get to the house.

I did a dodgy walk up the stairs but there were no more stars. Soluhoto followed clumsily with my food in her hands and the dogs at her feet, making sure I did not stagger back.

“Give my food to the dogs.” I could barely speak the words.

I looked at my couch bed and moved straight to it and settled into it gingerly.  I must have passed out because I don’t remember anything after that.

When I came through in the wee hours of the morning, I realised Soluhoto had her mattress next to my couch bed and Ma was sleeping on the far side next to her on a mat.

There was a bucket of water nearby and a wet cloth over my head. I was running a slight fever, one ear was tender, my eyes were puffy, the top of my forehead pained and there were ants all over my thinning hair.

“Da-ah, thank goodness you are awake. You were sleep talking for a long time. I heard you from the room and came out. I tried to calm you but couldn’t.  I had to wake mum and both of us attended to you.”

“Who is Dini?  Is she one of your FB friends?”

“No stupid. That is my mother’s name.”

“Well, you were talking to her about some wooden pot.”

“Oh my gosh, the yar motona, her favourite wooden cooking oven. This is serious. I was walking amongst the dead.”

My mother Dini had died whilst I was doing Grade 9, some thirty or so years ago.

“You say I was talking with my mother?”

“Yeah, you two had a very long conversation. You kept calling her Ma Dini and kept asking her about the miso recipe.”

Shucks, the miso recipe was a herbal meal that women prepared for new widows - given to them to eat before one of their fingers was cut off as a sign of mourning for their dead husband.

The meal sort of took away most of the pain. Why the hell would I be asking my dead mother about it?

“How I am thinking and talking ghoulish things in my sleep?

“And why do I have ants all over me?”

Ma looked up to say something. She too must have been up because her eyes were redshot.

“Apo, I was thinking that the sospen might have made a hole in your skull for your brains to have seeped out to make you do the sleep talking,” she said.

“When people die out in the bush, it is the ghitunoso ants that get to them first and they are said to start with the brains first.  They go up through the nose passage to get to the brains.’

I shot up straight.  “What!”

I raced through the dream. Yes all those village persons I had encountered were dead, even my big brother who turned his back on me. Ma Dini had her gossip friends – all dead.

I put my fingers up my nostrils nose and tried fervently to see if I could find any ants. 

There were none but I had a feeling these small ghitunoso ants, and there were plenty, might be in there in amongst the nooks and crevices. There were plenty enough in my hair and around my ears.

I moved my hands over my body making sure no part of me was dead. I’ve been in the presence of a few dead people and know what the dead feel like.  Cold, not freezer cold but cold – chilly.  Well, no part of my body was that cold.

“Solo, get this bandage off and see if any of my brains have spilled out for the ants to cart away.”’

“Da-ah, I am scared.  Ask Ma to do it.”

“What and you want her to kill me again.  I am dead man now and you want her to dead-me-good the second time. 

“You giving her the chance to kill me again.  She’ll probably pull out whatever brains left in there.”

I looked seriously at Soluhoto.

“She will try to kill me and it may be for good this time around.” I forced myself to repeat those words.

“At least I can still talk to you with whatever brain is left. And Ma’s gone somewhere now. Quickly, I can feel the ants getting double loads.”

Soluhoto scrambled all over the head to undo her mangled bandage, never mind that it hurt.

The wound was all muddy black with small ghitu ants busy around the paste and all over my hair.

“Da-ah, the paste is all black.” She prodded and moved hair here and there. I grimaced.

“What does a brain look like?”

“I dunno, they say it is a grey matter. Is there anything that looks grey - something towards whitish?”

“Ah……..No!”

I rubbed my hands up my forehead and looked at them. Black!

“Apae, what else did you put with the banana sap and aloe?”

“Da, you always told us to use honey whenever we were ill. You said it has a soothing effect.”

“You mixed honey in your paste?”

The use of banana sap was Ma’s idea from her mum. It was effective as a clotting agent on a new wound. But the sap oxidises to black and leaves a black sooty trail.

Ooh, pleeaase - the rivers of me fools.

Well, maybe Ma was clever to braindead me, especially when Ma Dini visited.

Glossary

apae– variant of apo used for special people by Eastern Highlanders (Tokano/Alekano and the greater Goroka languages)

apo - a word of endearment used by Eastern Highlanders

ass nating meri - naked woman (Tok Pisin)

Dlolly - A combination of the words dolly and lolly (a neologism for this story)

ghitunoso/ghitu - tiny whitish ants that work around decayed material

miso– traditional concoction that new widows eat before the cutting off of a finger as a sign of mourning for their deceased husband (Eastern Highlands). Miso names two things: the widow’s beads and the plant from whose bark bilum strings and purrpurr [grass skirts] are crafted

Soluhoto - girl’s name (Tokano, Eastern Highlands)

sospen - saucepan, a pot with a handle sticking out the side, domestic fighting weapon (Tok Pisin)

TLC - tender loving care

yar motona– wooden oven, usually a hollowed out tree trunk where stone is heated and put in with food to cook - a miniature mumu

Margaret Melke has been a nurse in East New Britain for more than 40 years

KALOLAINE FAINU
| Guardian Australia | Judith Nielson Institute

KOKOPO - The first that staff at Nonga General Hospital in Papua New Guinea heard that they had been treating someone with coronavirus, was when they saw the country’s prime minister announce it in televised press conference on Monday.

They had been treating the patient, a volunteer health worker at the hospital, for pneumonia.

She originally came into the hospital in late March, but recovered and was discharged, before her symptoms worsened and she was readmitted.

“This person wasn’t put into isolation or even a different ward. She has been walking around freely in the past few days and talking with us, so we are scared. We all left the hospital and are waiting for someone to come and explain what is happening,” said Margaret Melke, a nurse in Rabaul district, where Nonga Hospital is located.

The woman, who is now recovering at her home, is the second confirmed case of Covid-19 in Papua New Guinea. The first was an Australian mining worker, who had flown into the country.

But this time the infected person is a local, who had not recently travelled abroad. The case was detected in a village near Rabaul, a harbourside town on the island of East New Britain.

The prospect of the arrival of coronavirus in a country with just 500 doctors and around 5,000 hospital beds and which struggles to deal with even routine illnesses has terrified the public.

Health workers are asking how the nation’s fractured health system, which routinely leaves clinics without soap or disinfectant and where nurses report using nappies as gauze to mop up blood and rice packets in lieu of gloves, would deal with an outbreak.

The country is already dealing with outbreaks of malaria, dengue fever, drug-resistant tuberculosis and polio.

“When one [Covid-19 case] is confirmed, it is a disaster for us. It is already an outbreak,” said Melke, who has spent more than 40 years working in Papua New Guinea’s beleaguered health system and is the Nursing Union leader for New Guinea Islands.

“We are the frontline, but we do not have safety equipment to protect us, so how can we save others? We put our own families at risk.”

After the case was announced by the prime minister on Monday, staff at Nonga General Hospital walked out of the building, refusing to continue working until they knew more.

Deputy chief physician at Nonga Hospital, Dr Alexander Maha, confirmed there was a walkout of staff, but said things settled quickly and staff were given the option to leave if they did not wish to be part of the frontline team.

He also said it was protocol for the cases to be announced by the prime minister.

Maha says a section of one of the wards has now been cleared and set up as an isolation area for suspected Covid-19 cases.

“A huge part of what we need to do now is to manage the fear”, explains Dr Maha, “so that others who present with Covid-19 symptoms do not go into hiding. We need them to know that if their results are positive, they are in good hands”.

The fear is acute, especially among health workers. Melke says there was a recent suspected case of coronavirus at Nonga Hospital and the patient was transferred multiple times between hospital departments as medical staff fled, too scared to touch the patient.

“Finally, one nurse put her hand up, declaring that she would sacrifice herself for the sake of the patient,” said Melke, who recalls the nurse said: “‘Larim mi suicide tasol, mi lukautim em, mi ken dai’ [Let me suicide, I will look out for them, I can die] and she alone nursed the patient.”

The patient turned out to have pneumonia and was cleared of Covid-19.

If anything, the fears are even more acute in rural health clinics, where the resources for nursing staff are even fewer.

A two-hour drive from Rabaul on a road strewn with potholes and corrugation, is the rural health clinic at Warangoi, where nurses report working to the point of exhaustion in desperately under-resourced conditions.

The emergency kits in the labour consist of two plastic boxes. Nurses from Warangoi clinic say they do not have enough instruments, PPE or sanitisers for their day to day needs.

“We struggle with drug shortages, we have endless problems with our facilities and our wards,” says Rosemary Darius, the head nurse at the clinic.

“We don’t have proper equipment to treat patients with, our bedding is not in good condition, we don’t have proper instruments or disinfectants to sanitise our instruments - if coronavirus comes here, we will be disabled. We have nothing to disinfect with.”

Melke used to work at Warangoi clinic.

“I ran away because of the problems here. Even for a mother [who] comes to deliver, there is no gauze, there is no IV fluid, there is no medicine to control the bleeding. We use their nappies. We tell them to give us five of their nappies so we can use them to soak up the blood.

“I am lucky because my husband works at Nonga Hospital, so I would ask him to smuggle some gauze so when I was on duty I could use it. We tell patients to bring their own laplap so we can soak up the blood.

“Sometimes there’s no gloves, so we put our hands in the plastic bags of rice just to protect ourselves. Even to wash the floor, we don’t have strong detergents, just Omo (laundry powder). There’s often not enough sanitiser for the nurses even to wash their own hands.”

It is not surprising that in light of these conditions, healthcare workers like those at Warangoi are apprehensive at the news of a positive Covid-19 case in their district.

All the nurses the Guardian spoke to said their families have asked them to stop working as they are scared they will bring the virus back to their villages, or that they might even be chased away.

“We are scared because we are the frontliners receiving the patients. PPE is a big need. We don’t have enough resources, and manpower is one of our biggest concerns,” said Anne Tatau, a nurse at Warangoi health clinic.

Staff say they lack information and training to help them manage a potentially catastrophic outbreak.

Nurses told the Guardian that only higher-level administrative staff have received training since the Covid-19 state of emergency was declared and Tatau says frontline staff “rely on social media, news updates and personal research to inform themselves” about the virus.

Maha, the deputy chief physician at Nonga General Hospital, disputes these claims, saying health workers across the region have been given the opportunity to undertake training by an infection control nurse, but that: “No one turns up.”

Health minister Jelta Wong said on Wednesday that swift and aggressive measures had been put in place to stop the spread of infection in East New Britain, his home province, including rapid response teams composed of epidemiologists, doctors, nurses, and infection prevention and control specialists. Contract tracing has begun and the affected woman’s village is under lockdown, with police officers stationed around it.

Although Maha believes he has the right team, and enough PPE and medical supplies to handle an outbreak in East New Britain, he admits that at times the health system does face some challenges.

“We have been improvising for 20 years, but we’ve always managed,” he said.

Sr Dorothy Fabritze MSC with Sr Bernard Overkamp MSC whom she met in PNG

MICHELLE N LYNCH
| The Reading Eagle | Extracts

READING, USA - Bushwhacking her way through the jungles of the South Pacific was just the sort of adventure Sister Dorothy Fabritze, now 72, imagined when, as a young teen, she felt called to join the Missionary Sisters of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus.

The international order, known as MSC, was founded in 1900 to work in the island area of Papua New Guinea.

As a student at St. Michael’s, the girls boarding school run by the sisters in the Hyde Park section of Muhlenberg Township, Fabritze learned the story of the five young Missionary Sisters killed in 1904 in the Baining Mountains of New Britain, the largest island in the Bismarck Archipelago and Papua New Guinea.

But that was long before she entered the convent in 1965, and it did nothing to deter her.

At age 29 in 1977, Fabritze embarked on a mission to Papua, where she shared her faith while doing humanitarian work.

“My first four years, I travelled the jungles of New Britain and canoed around the island,” she said.

As part of her duties, she oversaw 150 small village schools, many little more than thatched-roof huts.

After taking the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience in 1968, Fabritze, who earned a bachelor's degree in elementary education from, at the time, Alvernia College, taught in Catholic schools for several years before accepting the mission to PNG.

For 16 years, she worked with the indigenous people, sleeping on bamboo mats, slogging through seasonal rainstorms and mucking from village to village through the deep mud.

Back in the US in 1993, her creativity, drive and public-speaking skills were tapped for duties as a fundraising and development director.

While she embraced the role, she sought outlets for her true passion as a missionary by serving several weeks at a time on a Native American reservation in New Mexico, among the poor in Appalachia, and later, building houses with Habitat for Humanity in Guatemala.

Sisters never really retire, the remaining sisters of the Villa like to say, and Fabritze is not sure what work lies ahead.

“This is a spiritual journey that I am on,” she said.

The one mark expedition stamp (used not for postage but to raise funds) depicting an airship over an idealised New Guinea

ALAN BROOKE

SIBTON, UK - More than a century ago in the years before World War I, the long-planned Joint German–British airship expedition – the Luftschiff Expedition – was due to conduct the first aerial survey of the mountainous, unexplored interior of New Guinea by airship.

Exploring and mapping the interior of the island by airship would be less costly and arduous than long, dangerous and difficult explorations by foot.

As the strange floating object moved slowly over highland tribes on its 800 km flight north-west from the Gulf of Papua across English and German and into Dutch New Guinea, the news spread rapidly amongst the isolated people.

On the ridges and in the valleys, people who could only guess at its origin, purpose and intentions nervously watched its progress.

As the airship began its descent, thousands of people crouched in awe.

Two special cameras situated 70 meters apart on the airship filmed the historic event.

The expedition commander, Lt Paul Graetz, a German officer who had famously been the first man to drive across Africa in an automobile, stepped on to the fertile soil of the Wahgi Valley, greeting the astonished onlookers in the name of the Kaiser and becoming the first European they had seen.

But, this alternative history never happened.

World War I intervened and the planned 1914 Deutsch-Englische Luftschiff Expedition that would have changed the history of Papua New Guinea was cancelled.

It was not until 20 years later, in the 1930s, that the Australian Leahy brothers, prospecting for gold, finally make first contact with the isolated highland tribes.

Stamps issued to fund and commemorate the airship expedition - not valid for postage but purchased as collectors' items - are extremely rare and the event that almost but never happened is now a forgotten footnote in PNG's aviation history.

Another of history's 'what if' scenarios.

Tapini airstrip, 1972 (Graham Syphers)

GRAHAM KING

YUNGABURRA, ATHERTON TABLELANDS - Just two months after I started work in Papua New Guinea in 1980, the wet season in Central Province stopped abruptly in mid-March and it did not rain again until December.

The rainfall records at Laloki Plant Quarantine and Horticultural Research Station went back to its establishment in 1949. The average rainfall was 1,500mm, which to an Australian is a lot of rain.

But the year before I arrived, 1979, was the driest year on record with only 600mm; and just 900mm was recorded in all of 1980.

So I walked into two years of drought conditions and many of the people of Goilala began to walk to Port Moresby and its town water.

Their graffiti was all over town, most notably ‘GOIPEX 105’, the tag of a notorious raskol gang. Martyn Namorong has written that, at the time, the Goilala were among the most marginalised people in PNG.

With the Independence long weekend coming up in September 1980, I signed up for a walk with the Port Moresby Bushwalking Club from Woitape to Tapini. It would be my first trip into the Goilala.

Early on a cloudless but windy Friday morning, seven of us with packs and gear took off in a Central Air Services Islander from Jacksons to Woitape – ahead of us a four-day walk.

After about 40 minutes the young Australia pilot was circling over Woitape but the airstrip was not visible due to low cloud.

Instead we flew a bit further west and landed at Fane’s steep strip, disembarking outside the mission station where a large group, including the Catholic priest, met the plane.

I took some time to go inside the bush materials church and was stunned by the beauty of the decorations on the walls.

As we were readying to start our walk from Fane rather than Woitape, the pilot received a message that the strip at Woitape was open.

We jumped back into the plane and took off down the steep incline and cruised low over the hills to Woitape. 

With only a few hours of daylight left and an estimated four hour walk to Kosipe we wasted no time and started our trek uphill to Kosipe Mission.  The track had been built as a mule trail and we were to follow it for most of the next four days.

In 1956, Father Alex had been sent by the Catholic Church to establish the mission.  At the time of our visit he was back in France having a hip replacement but the brother in charge allowed us to stay in Fr Alex’s house for the night.

It was built in the style of a chalet. The library had a large collection of Asterix and Tintin books, all in French. At one end was a smokehouse where he could cure meat from his herd of goats, cattle and horses.

Going through a box of old photos recently I came across this one of four children squatting in front of a cross outside the priest’s house. 

Fr Alex being a practical man had used the cross to suspend a pipe carrying water from a spring down to his house.

The Catholic missionaries opened up the Goilala using pack horses and mules and there was an extensive network of trails throughout the region to make travel and supplying the missions easier.

By 1980 some of the bridges on these trails had rotted away and landslides had taken out the graded track.

Rather than following the contours to build a new route the villagers constructed tracks that went straight up the mountains and down the other side - what we termed ‘Goilala Specials’.

Leaving Kosipe we had a long day ahead of us and a high pass to negotiate before arriving in the village where we were to spend the night.

For some reason the haus kiap was not available so we were given a house that had been used by the village pigs.  The entrance was a tiny hole which was not a problem for the small statured villagers but a tight squeeze for us.  I certainly would not fit through today.

Although the villagers had cleaned the house for us, it still smelled of the pigs, which all night long tried to break through the walls. 

Lighting a cooking fire inside filled the space with smoke but we had some butane stoves and cooked our rice and bully beef before falling asleep after the exhausting day’s walk.

Next day we reached another village from where we could look over the valley to Tapini government station.

The house in this village was much more comfortable and, with an early start we began the steep descent to the river below and an even steeper ascent to Tapini, where we slept in a teacher’s house near the bottom of the airstrip.

At the other end of the strip the Tapini Hotel was open and the thought of a cold SP put some energy into my tired legs for a trek to the top of the station and the hotel.  Judging by the hangover I was suffering on the balus next morning plenty of cold ones had been consumed.

The young pilot of the Islander had only been in PNG a short while and this was his first flight to Tapini without a check pilot on board. 

We took off down the hill and soon after takeoff banked to the right and started the climb to get over the range. 

Cloud descended soon after take-off and, after circling for what seemed a long time, the pilot spotted a gap in the clouds and we headed for Woitape to wait for the weather to clear. 

The Owen Stanley Lodge at Woitape was operating and a popular weekend destination for visitors from Moresby.  At 1,500 meters above sea level the climate was cool and ideal for vegetable production.

The aroma of brewing coffee was too compelling and we encouraged the pilot to let us have some breakfast and finish our coffee before heading once again to Jacksons airstrip in Port Moresby.

The droughts of 1979 and 1980 caused severe food shortages in the Goilala.  In 1982 another group walked from Fane to Bakoidu and found that all the villages on the route were abandoned.

A road to Tapini was opened soon after I was last there but has never been regularly maintained.  There is huge potential for food production in those highland valleys of Goilala which are so close to Port Moresby.

In 1980 strawberries were introduced to Woitape with support from a New Zealand Aid project and they flourished but flying them to Moresby was too expensive. Coffee can also be grown but, without reliable road access, the beans just rot on the ground.

It is to be hoped that money can be found to maintain rural roads throughout PNG so people can grow crops and get them to markets and ensure their livelihood.

I have not been back to the Goilala since 1983. The only people left in the villages at that time were the old and very young.

There were six airstrips serving the Goilala back then but the third level airlines flying into these remote areas have largely disappeared and many of the airstrips have closed due to lack of maintenance. 

The expatriate priests have all departed and some missions such as Kamulai have been abandoned following the murder of a priest.

But I’ll never forget that adventure in the drought of 1980.