The pilot’s safety briefing was interrupted by a loud squeal.
\n“Was that a pig? If it makes a mess you’ll have to clear it up when
\nwe reach Hagen” he said indignantly to the woman with a large bulge under
\nher coat. The pig squealed repeatedly as we took off but was quiet for the rest
\nof the 45 minute flight – another small incident in travel around Papua
\nNew Guinea, the land of the unexpected. The previous flight to Tari had been
\nover 4 hours late: “As the weather was unusually fine, we took the
\nopportunity of using the aircraft to visit poorly-served airstrips before
\nsending it back towards Hagen” the fat controller eventually explained.
\nAt Tari we watched the Spirit Dancers, Huli wigmen dressed up in all their
\nfinery with head-dresses of Birds-of-paradise feathers and cloaks of Cuscus
\nskins, performing their dance to help overcome problems such as serious
\nillness. Higher up, in the moss-covered forest, a King-of-Saxony
\nBird-of-paradise performed a similar dance, bouncing up and down on a thin
\nbranch, swaying his bizarre elongated head feathers and singing just as
\ntunelessly as the Hulis.<\/p>\n
The Central Highlands Highway was now open to regular traffic, thanks to
\nrecent patrolling by police vehicles. It had effectively been closed for years
\nby the presence of “rascals” who stopped and robbed any who dared
\nto use it. Now it was possible to drive from Tari to Hagen in 8 hours instead
\nof at least 20 on the safe route. We took part of this when we travelled from
\nHagen to Lake Kutubu, mainly in the back of a lorry masquerading as a Public
\nMotor Vehicle. The “5 hour” journey took 8 hours and included
\nanother pig on board, very well behaved this time. We climbed up and down
\nmountains, mainly through a semi-cultivated landscape, dotted with patches of
\nforest, before dropping down through hills covered with young forest. My
\nbackside felt thoroughly tenderised after bouncing up and down on the wooden
\nplank cum seat as we hit numerous potholes. We got off at dusk and had to wait
\nfor a boat to take us to Tubo Lodge on an island in the picturesque lake. The
\njovial local headmaster explained the meaning of time: “I know that if
\nyou say you will meet me at 7.00, you will be there at 7.00, not 6.59 or 7.01,
\nbut if a Papuan says 7, he will arrive at 9.”<\/p>\n
We took a birding trip to the mainland with bare-footed Robert as guide. We
\nhad a good time until it started raining in earnest, so we returned to where
\nthe canoe had been left. “The others have taken it to the village, we
\nwill walk there.” “How long will that take?” “It
\ndepends how fast we walk” – we had heard this before. It took an
\nhour, without stopping, as we slithered along the muddy path which looked as
\nthough it had not been used for weeks – a wrong assumption as we met four
\nchildren who were walking to a village some 10 km away where the school was.
\nThey would live there during the week and walk home for the weekend. I was
\nhappy to accept Robert’s helping hand, such as when we crossed streams on
\nslippery rocks, but my companion stubbornly refused all offers. He fell into
\none stream, soaking both feet – no, I didn’t say that. In the
\nvillage, the men played touch-rugby and the children touch-basket ball. The men
\nall lived in a single longhouse, each with their own fire next to their bed,
\nand the women and children in their own family houses.<\/p>\n
After returning to the lodge, we proceeded to the other side of the lake to
\nsee the bleached skulls and bones of the locals’ ancestors, laid out on a
\nledge beside a chalk cliff. Their glory had been to be killed by the Japanese
\nin World War II. Later, we ate delicious small crayfish, speared by boys
\nstanding precariously at the front of a small wooden canoe. One of the local
\nwomen had a fever, probably malaria; we gave her some pills to help – the
\nnearest pharmacy was at least 6 hours away. In the early hours I spent a long
\ntime in the rain trying to see a very rare bird, Wallace’s
\nOwlet-Nightjar, which called only once or twice every 10 or 15 minutes. He won,
\nI had to leave at 05.30, to go home. The first step was to get the guys out of
\nbed to take me by canoe to the other end of the lake, an hour’s journey
\nin the rain. There was no sign of the vehicle to the airport: “The man
\nallotted to arrange this forgot to do it”, said Penny in a matter of fact
\nway. We walked it in 45 minutes, in time for the 30 minute flight to Hagen,
\nfollowed by an hour in a jet to Port Moresby, 6 hours to Singapore and 12 hours
\nto Heathrow, where my bag failed to appear, one hour to St Pancras, 3 hours to
\nSheffield and bus home, only to find there was no-one in and my key was in my
\nbag still in Singapore…<\/p>\n
The pilot’s safety briefing was interrupted by a loud squeal. “Was that a pig? If it makes a mess you’ll have to clear it up when we reach Hagen” he…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","css_class_manager_body_classes":"","css_class_manager_use_in_post_loop":false},"categories":[2,3],"tags":[60],"class_list":["post-1185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archive","category-main-article","tag-november-2003"],"yoast_head":"\n