Travel to and from the village

Whenever I travel to or from the village, I get a ride on a truck or 4WD. Some 4WDs are utes with roll bars and canopies and some have no roll bars or canopies, and I feel less safe in them, but I don’t think the roll bar frames are going to do much to protect me if the car rolls anyway, as we don’t have seatbelts to hold us down! Other 4WDs are fully enclosed and have two sideways bench seats behind the driver. We call them a ’10 seater’. They are the most comfortable ride to the village.

The 4WDs all go quite fast, but we also have some bigger trucks, which are probably safer as they travel more slowly. There is one truck that we especially like travelling on as we trust the driver to be careful. This truck only travels to the Teop area and doesn’t go further south. It has the name ‘Green Fingers’ painted on the front, so that’s what we all refer to it as, or just ‘Green’ for short.

Here are a few photos of Green Fingers.
Front:

The view when sitting on the back of the truck:

We were lucky this day, there wasn’t many people travelling, so you can see quite a lot of empty space. Other times the truck is full and we’re all packed in really tight!

Heading to the village Part 2 – Waiting, waiting, and river crossings

After crossing the passage we arrive at a small town called Kokopau on Bougainville Island, where there are trucks, utes and 4WDs waiting to take people to other parts of Bougainville. We usually get there at about 10-10.30am, find a vehicle that can take us, then we wait for 2-3 hours until they leave.

Depending on the vehicle, it usually takes around 1-3 hours to get to the village on the dirt roads. I can usually expect to arrive in the village at around 3pm.

We had to drive through three rivers on the way, which slows the cars down considerably, and it is quite bumpy!

Watch this video to see how bumpy the crossing is:


While we were there though, the Japanese Government was funding a bridge building project for the river crossings on this road. We saw a lot of progress in their construction while we were there, and after we left, the bridges were completed. I look forward to experiencing the new bridges when we get back and seeing how much it shortens the travel time.

Bridge building in progress.

Heading to the village Part 1 – Buka to Bougainville

When we are heading back out to the village after being in Buka for a while, everyone who is at the Centre gathers together to pray for us as we go. We always do this whenever someone is travelling.

Prayer for us going to the village:

We have a short car trip from the Centre to the boat ramp in Buka town, where there are always many little boats vying for us to choose to travel with them. I never know which one to choose, they’re all much the same to me, so we just pick any one. We load our supplies on, then make the very short trip across the water from Buka Island to Bougainville Island. It only takes 1 minute to cross.

Next blog post will talk about getting the rest of the way to the village.

Catching car to Buka

This may be a thing of the past now, since our village now has its own car, but before then, to get to Buka, we had to wait for other cars travelling past and wave at them to get them to stop and take us.

It was usually quite a problem as by the time many of the cars from further south get to our village, they are already full, and we’d have a long wait, sometime up to two hours to find a car that had space for us.

There’s a bend in the road just before our village, so we only have a short bit of road to see cars coming:

Standing by the road waiting for a car:

Here’s our luggage:

Finally, here we are squeezed into the back of what they call a ’10 seater’. It’s a four wheel drive that has the seats in the back going along the side instead of the usual way.

Port Moresby adventures – Luxury Hotel

We were at the airport very early on a Saturday morning, all checked in, with our boarding passes, and I was having a doze while waiting to board our flight, when suddenly my doze was interrupted with an announcement that our flight to Buka had been cancelled and rescheduled to 4am on Sunday morning. They had already taken our luggage off us and everything, so we were told that we were to go to the arrivals area to pick up our luggage again.

Since we were only in transit in Port Moresby, we didn’t have a place to stay for the night (the previous two nights we knew we had to stay there and had bookings for accommodation), so we went to the Air Niugini customer service desk and spoke to them. They put us up in a hotel for the night, since it was their fault that we had to stay another night in Moresby.

Oh, it was so exciting! We got to stay in a fancy hotel and we were excited by everything, including the free toiletries (shampoo, conditioner, moisturiser and body wash). Air Niugini paid for our lunch and dinner there too. The three of us wanted to be together, rather than in separate rooms and requested that, but since Air Niugini was paying a certain amount for each of us, they added that up and gave us a room that was worth that value, so we got a really nice room. They called it a ‘suite’. It had a widescreen TV and cooking facilities. There was a sliding door that went out to the swimming pool area.

Here is the pool and dining area:

We really enjoyed our two meals there, and I was happy to be able to see the last quarter of a Geelong AFL game after dinner.

We had a HUGE double bed, plus they put in an extra bed too. The double bed was really more like a triple bed, as it fitted 3 pillows along the top. I had never seen a bed that big before. Here’s a picture of it.

This is Mariela and me relaxing on the couch, posing for the photo.

You can see the widescreen TV, lounge, dining table and kitchen in this photo.

This night in the hotel was a huge contrast to what our living situation in the villages over the next two weeks would be!

I have my blog back again!

I have been off travelling again! I returned to Ukarumpa on 26th May after Mum and Dad’s visit, then I left again two weeks later on 10th June to go to Buka (part of the Bougainville region) to help on a survey trip. I scheduled this blog post to go up today before I left Ukarumpa, as my internet access is limited on this trip.

Anyway, I am travelling around the western part of Buka island, and visiting some small islands off Buka to the west. I am with two other single ladies who are permanent members of the survey team (as opposed to me who is just a part of the team for this trip). We are visiting two language groups and asking questions and taking lists of words in order to determine what their translation needs are, and to find out how well people are able to understand neighbouring languages and dialects.

I will be back in Ukarumpa on 2nd July if things go to plan. I will put up some blog posts about this trip then, so keep looking!

Travelling home (post by Bill & Liz)

Our time with Julie in PNG has come to an end. We said goodbye to Julie at The SIL centre and went to Madang airport to wait for our flight to Port Moresby. But PNG hadn’t finished with us yet.

Madang airport terminal building.


Our flight was scheduled to leave at 11.30, but was delayed, delayed and delayed till nearly 17.00, due to aircraft being unserviceable.

Madang airport is not the most comfortable place to wait 7 hours in, no air conditioning, and hard wooden seats. We did get to see Julie’s small plane take off from another part of the airport at 15.30 returning her to Ukarumpa.

Inside Madang airport.


Well we finally got away from Madang just before 17.00, but our onward flight to Cairns left at 17.00 so we were definitely going to miss it. Air Niugini did arrange accommodation for us at Loloata island Resort, which was a 20 minute bus drive, then a 10 minute ferry trip away from Port Moresby.

Loloata Island Resort




The next morning we left Port Moresby on the 09.30 flight to Cairns, but PNG kept calling us back. Half way to Cairns the pilot announced, ‘We have an engine malfunction indicator and are returning to Port Moresby’. After a 3 hour wait in Port Moresby, we were on our way again in the same plane, hopefully fixed.

The troublesome plane.


We made it to Cairns safely and stayed at the Tree Tops Lodge, which is in a lovely location. We went into Cairns and wandered around Cairns city centre and visited the Night Market which is very touristy.

Tree Tops Lodge


Port Moresby was very hot and humid, but Cairns at this time of year was a lovely 30 degrees when we left to return to a very chilly 12 degrees in Melbourne.

Well that’s Bill and Liz’s incredible adventure to visit Julie in PNG over, so I hope that anybody that read this blog enjoyed it.

BYE for now.

Village – Travel between villages (post by Bill & Liz)

We visited several villages in the local area and to reach these villages, we could either use the ‘made’ roads or bush tracks. We preferred the bush tracks because there was more shade.

While walking along a track like this, we encountered a wild pig. The dog that was with us alerted us to the fact that there was something ahead, and Julie’s wasmama knew it was a wild pig. There were other dogs chasing the pig and the pig burst out of the bushes across the track, quickly followed by 3 men with spears. We saw a man throw a spear as the pig disappeared into the jungle again. The pig was hit by the spear, but escaped with the hunters in close pursuit.

Here is another track, which was close to a river.

This is a man made road with 3 ladies walking up it wearing bilums in the traditional manner.

Goroka (post by Bill & Liz)

We had a day trip to Goroka which is about a 2 hour drive from Ukarumpa. The road is sealed and in pretty good condition, except for one or two places where it has subsided and is in need of major repair. There is dramatic scenery along the road which you can see in the following picture.

There are many villages and roadside stalls along the way.

The locals travel by PMVs (Public Motor Vehicles), which sometimes looks a bit scary. Hold on tight!

Goroka has some large supermarkets and second hand stores, along with government buildings. Of course there is the market too, where the white people stand out.

Travel to and from Teop

In order to get to Teop from Buka, first you have to cross the Buka Passage, the water between Buka Island and Bougainville Island. As you can see from the photo, it is a pretty narrow passage, so it is just a couple of minutes on a little motor boat to get there.
 
After that, there is a two hour or longer trip on the back of a truck to get to the Teop area, and there was no shelters over the top on the trucks we travelled on, so we were exposed to the sun the whole time.
 
It's a bumpy two hour trip on dirt roads, sitting on hard wooden planks, squashed between two other people and with cargo at your feet. But it's not too bad and there are some nice mountain views. There were also some river crossings, some had good bridges, while at others, the truck just drove through them (the water wasn't high).
 
In the photos above, you will see me on the truck on the way to Teop, and a photo that I took of how packed in we were on our return trip. I think I counted about 42-44 people on the back of the truck.

Off travelling again

Tomorrow I leave Ukarumpa again and won't be back for 4 months. I am travelling to Goroka by road with a group of SIL people tomorrow to go to the Linguistic Society of PNG conference. There will be various people there presenting information on linguistic research they have done.

On Friday I will fly from Goroka to Rabaul/Kokopo, stay there for 3 nights and then fly to Buka. I will be at Buka for over a month, and I will be visiting a couple of language groups to consider whether I would like to work there, plus I will be managing the kitchen during a two week workshop.

I travel to Melbourne next for a holiday, arriving on 4th September. I am enjoy my birthday there and being able to watch the AFL Grand Final live.

I leave Melbourne on 27th September and I go to Alotau to be a mentor at a translation workshop called VITAL, then I fly back to Ukarumpa on 9th November (I think that's the date).

For the next week or so, I won't have Internet or email access, but when I get settled at Buka I should have it, and I will have mobile phone reception almost everywhere I will be on these travels.

I am going to prepare some blog posts about my Sos Kundi trip this evening if I have time and I can set them up to post automatically every few days while I am not connected, so you can keep checking my blog as per usual. (I am hoping that what I am setting up will work and the posts turn up automatically as scheduled).