Last blog probably

If I had any doubt that my happiness lay in development, this stint settled it. This is the world I want to be part of. The demand for my skills is the greatest and the return of investment is the highest.

PNG is an anomaly. The economic indicators are the same as some of the West African countries yet everything is ridiculously expensive. I just don't know enough to explain it though those mining projects might have something to do with the ridiculous real estate prices.

It's easy to forget that there are over 800 different languages spoken in PNG and each of these village lived in isolation and had a unique culture. It also explains why Tok pisin (pidgin) is so ubiquitous.

It really feels like the final frontier at times. And then you see hotel rooms like this one and get very confused.

Looking forward to seeing you all.

Goodbye Goroka

Time is almost up. This morning Eastern Highlands Family Voice (a smaller partner NGO of Save) hosted a special morning tea for me. It was sweet. We sat around a table and they thanked me profusely and wished me luck. I am not sure what I was being thanked for but it was genuine. I bounded down the steps back to work feeling pretty good about myself and smashed the two documents I had to finish.

I'm not sure if I'm ready to come back. I have just started making a difference and it's time to go. I have little choice though.

There are three main categories of people here - missionaries, ship wrecks and NGO workers. The mishos keep to themselves and travel in large 4WD with tinted windows. Ship wrecks came here around or just after independence and never found their way out. They love their drink and are not shy of reminding nationals of their colonial superiority. No, that's a bit rough. Some are nice.

NGO workers have got stories. I had lunch with Anna yesterday and her work in Pakistan had me mesmerised. Sure there are the bad ones but most are passionate about issues and committed to their cause. Like Topa. What a character.

I'm on tomorrow morning's flight to Port Moresby and from there leaving for Aus on Friday.

Ugh... not so loud

I had my 'go pinis' ('pinis' is 'finish' in tok pisin, ya sicko) and birthday party last night and today I'm in all kinds of hurt. Let me bring you up to date on my travels.

Let's work backwards.

Port Moresby was hard work. We woke up at 3:45 AM to catch a flight from Wewak and went straight to work. At about 1PM, the A/C broke down. At about 3PM I started getting really cranky. I had 7 coats of dried sweat on me, a pounding headache and an awful lot of work to finish. I could see cracks forming even in stoic Michael. We pushed through till 6PM and headed back to the hotel. I cancelled my dinner appointment and ordered room service, which predictably took an hour and a half in arriving, and went straight to bed. Worst. Day. Ever.

I didn't get to see much of Wewak, not that there is much to see. The hotel served 'wild kangaroo' and 'crocodile tail' and was the cleanest one I've stayed at in PNG.

Madang was pretty. It has a beautiful coastline that the city council has done a great job of maintaining. Madang has a 'prohibition' on alcohol sales on the weekend (Thursday 4:07PM to Monday 8AM). Really it's just a prohibition on alcohol for the less affluent. The fancy establishment are allowed to sell beer but you pay 3 times the price. People finds ways and means. They actually have their own Al Capone keeping the town well hydrated.

Around PNG in 10 days

I hail from Lae today. If you look on a map, it's a depressingly close to Goroka to warrant two flights and a stop over yet that is what we did. By "we" I mean Michael (the regular IT guy) and I.

We're on a techno-tour of PNG. We'll be stopping in 4 cities, at some for less than a day, analysing the IT infrastructure, implementing some quick wins, preparing a report and jet-setting off to the next.

A name like Lae might mislead you by conjuring images of a idyllic little town flanked by beautiful beaches. Lae-zy. Lae-id back. Nogat! It hot, it's busy and, to be completely honest, kind of a dump. Cars have their windows and windscreens covered with metal grills, which, I can only assume, are to keep projectiles off the glass. Potholes a yard in diameter and probably half in depth welcome you at the outskirts of the city and then again around every corner.

What I did for christmas and NYE break

Adventures galore. Highlights were snorkeling the reefs, camping on Swallow's Rest (an island 20 meters by 5 metres), early morning fishing, 3 day bike ride through heart wrenchingly beautiful New Ireland, swimming in the ocean with 200 odd dolphins, climbing an active volcano, drunken golf.

Details are boring. Instead, let me tell you about a different PNG. Housemate and I agreed that if we had gone home without doing this trip we would have passed quite a different verdict on PNG. The people in the eastern provinces were mentally easy going, physically hard working, extremely hospitable and gregarious. Kids and grown-up alike welcomed us with hi fives. Flower and fruits were handed out as we rode past. The couple of times we stopped at a village for lunch, they cooked for us and gave us fruits and shared their little available drinking water (hadn't rained in a long time and rain water storages were low). Kokopo and Rabaul also function much more efficiently than Goroka. There were wide roads in good conditions, a clean and well organised vegetable market and the people had this precocious sense of cleanliness that had all us Gorokans agog. Just as I was beginning to generalise PNG as a failed state, I am forced to reconsider and have hope that things can be different.

Then again, I might have a different opinion if I lived there.

Xmas parties and another POM trip

I don't like going to POM. It's not a pretty city, it's hot and the security issues make it hard not to feel claustrophobic. I will be there for the next few days to assist with the logistics for their move to a new office. One redeeming feature of travel from Goroka is that you don't have to wait for hours at the airport. You can collect your boarding pass and walk back to work and listen out for the plane landing before packing your bags up and meandering over to the gate.

It's Christmas party season. There has been one pretty much every weekend for the past week weeks. There was one with the AusAid gang a couple of weeks back, one at Seraj and Manuel's place last Saturday and a 'Save The Children' one coming up this weekend. It seems Christmas is an even more obnoxious affair in PNG than in the US. "Less tinsel and more bbqs" attitude to Christmas that Australians foster seems to be missing from the legacy of Australian rule.

Next Monday we all leave for Rabaul for a 3 week beach & volcano holiday.

POM and back

I spent Tuesday to Friday in Moresby. Wednesday was a security briefing in light of the Madang events and I used Thursday arvo and Friday to work from the Moresby SCiPNG office.

Today was a wonderful day. Jason, his folks and I went to a part of Kamaliki village that I had never been to for a swim. There was a patch of sand where the locals setup the volleyball net for us and joined us for a game or two. We swam in the river, had mambu chicken, which one of Jason's friends prepared for us, played volleyball and headed back home. It was one of my favourite experiences in PNG.

In contrast to this, we went to a xmas party at the Pacific. While we scoffed down banana cake and quiches, a litte boy from the settlement climbed the tree on the other side of the fence and looked on with fascination. I soon forgot about him though as the beer took hold.

Quite a night. It seems that somehow I can justify both extremes with no problems at all.