June 8 Monday: In the morning I met John and a few others from Magila, took pictures with some of them, and waited to be picked up. Ecotourism Melanasia director Aaron Hayes, guide Tommy Osi, and a young girl I think named Cheryl, on her first day of work with the company arrived at 8:20. I loaded my bags, dropped off my room key, said goodbye and we headed to the PMV stop. Much like taxis, people prefer to travel on certain PMV's because they know the
drivers reputation, are related, or for various other reasons. The PMV Aaron had planned for us to use, LUCY, was delayed and so they searched for another one they trusted. In the meantime Wally (a second guide for the trip) arrived and introduced himself. I spent some time talking to the new girl. She just graduated college here with a hospitality degree. After about half an hour we had selected a PMV and gotten our belongings loaded. I was ready to get in the back with everyone else, but they wanted me to ride in the cab. Tradeoffs: A padded seat for the 4 plus hour journey with wire screens covering the windows making picture taking a moot point, or a hard wood bench for 4 plus hours, but open sides and rear for better picture opportunities. Too bad I did not really realize this until after getting into the cab as requested. I would have preferred to take more pictures. Tommy rode in the cab with me and pointed out many things as we moved from POM, through Central province, and entered Gulf province. We made a few stops early on for open road side markets, mainly for passengers to pick up last minute items or get some food to eat on the way. Progress was slower than normal because ahead was a PMV carrying the body of a PMV driver killed two weeks earlier in a bad accident. The other drivers had agreed to not pass that particular PMV out of respect. The funeral procession is just the first of many because 23 people had died in a head on collision between two PMVs at about 1 am. Nobody wears seatbelts; there aren't any in the back of a truck anyway, and while most of the road necessitates slow speeds there are sections that they get up to 90 kmph. The other PMV driver had been drunk and this was the result. We passed the accident site and it was only partially cleared; debris everywhere and one crushed PMV still on its side. At one market stop, Tommy got me a sweet bread and I bought some cookies for later. We had a lunch of egg salad sandwiches. Back to the road conditions, they are a mish mash of dirt, gravel, mud bog, eroding pavement, newly striped asphalt, and crushed rock. Earthen speed bumps appear near towns, placed by the citizens to slow the drivers down and possibly to get customers, since markets are usually set up right along side. The drivers seem to have the pot holes, bumps, and other road trivia memorized and do their best to minimize the damage to our behinds. It did make me think of a couple things though: 1) For Josh, this would be heaven, a 4 plus hour Indian Jones ride and 2) for Gabe, I wondered how his reconstructed bionic back would handling this kind of jackhammering. We crossed many rivers, a vast swamp, an immense rubber plantation, and lots of green jungly vegetation. The grasses are routinely over my head. If it were not for the road we are driving on, even a few miles outside Pt Moresby could easily be a hundred or more years back in time. There is a beauty to it. When the funeral procession made a long stop, we left the line and continued to our destination, the Terapo Bridge. This is the way point to get into the Tauri river and also the location of Moveave village, the largest village in the Gulf province. There are around eleven thousand people living in this village next to the river without electricity, water, indoor plumbing, or many of the luxuries we take for granted. We got into a small boat and motored 10 minutes downstream to a point close to my homestay house. We walked to Michael's house and were welcomed warmly. Michael and Tommy gave me a short tour of the town, seeing the town center (where a Catholic church on one end and a United church on the other mark a split in the towns two primary religions. We also saw the cemetery and a memorial marker dedicated to the first missionary in the area, right around 1900. There are only a couple of schools and they only go through sixth grade. After that the students have to go to another smaller town to continue their educations, if they get that chance (for comparison, Majuro had close to 30 schools, all the way through college level for a population of 25,000). Even the public school cost money here, so many kids only attend when their families do not have other things for them to do, like gardening, fishing, etc. Back at my host's house there are 11: Michael, his wife and three boys, a deaf older sister, another sister, her husband and three kids. Tommy, my guide is married to another sister and has a home up the river, which we will see tomorrow. As the guest I had a private room, where we set up a tent on top of the straw mats for the added mosquito protection. I bathed using a bucket of rainwater and a scoop, while the rest washed in the river. I was shown were the family outhouse was located and have to get a key each time to use it. They keep them locked so they last longer. Still the edge of the forest on this side is dotted with little outhouses. After dinner, which the men eat separately from the women and children, we all sat around and talked, but by 9 pm I was feeling sleepy and Tommy said we should get an early start in the morning, so I excused myself and went to bed.

June 9 Tuesday: I got up at 6:30am after fitful sleep. We wanted to be in the river by 8, so I packed up my bags and went downstairs where everyone else was. I took some pictures and was ready for breakfast by the time it was set out at 7:30. It has fried mud fish, baked sago, fish soup, fried sago, fried corn fritter like things, and tea. Immediately, after eating we got loaded back into our boat and set out up river. It was Tommy, Wally, me, and two running the boat. The trip up stream was long, I got more sun than I need, and my butt is sore, but the cooler air on the water was pleasant. We passed many villages, including Apu Apu where we will be staying on the way back. The Tauri is a old serpentine river. On the way I saw cockatoos flying back and forth across the river, several of their variant of eagle (much like a bald eagle's coloration, but with white much further down the chest, and toucans/hornbills always flying in pairs. The toucans/hornbills also seem incapable of flight unless they are honking loudly. Between that and the sound of their wings beating the air you cannot miss them coming. When the boat motor is quiet the jungle is alive with sounds and those of the cassowary and bird of paradise were pointed out to me, so hopefully we will see some of them. As long as the trip was we apparently made good time and after picking up 3 porters just north of Apu Apu, we made straight for Hell's Gate, instead of doing that tomorrow. No one could come up with a reason why it is called Hell's Gate, because the people here call it Two Sisters and have a whole legend that goes along with that name. There is the little sister and the big sister, two immense rocks that largely block the river and have created a set of rapids. They say the two rocks protect the villages downstream by slowing the water down as it comes roaring off the mountains and keep the floods from being much worse. It is possible to portage around the rapids and they do on occasion go quite a bit further up river, but there is almost no need. We climbed around on the rocks, took pictures, and then headed back down to a split in the river, where we go up to our destination for the night: the Pukei mission station. Marcel, gave us a tour of the mission/village. His father helped bring a portable saw mill into the area in the 70's and it was still out in the jungle somewhere being used. Because of the mission presence (Catholic) there is a bit more infrastructure here: they have a newly build school, replacing an old one, a small health clinic with staff housing (unlike the much large Moveave village whose clinic is currently unmanned), a two way radio setup to send messages to Terapo bridge, and a satellite tv set up for the Catholic bishop's use. The school has about 130 students in the six grades they offer. On a sadder note, one of the teachers at this school and her husband were killed in that PMV accident. While dinner is being prepared I get a lesson in the bows and arrows of my host. There are different arrows for hunting wallaby/pig, birds, and fish. In these more remote villages, almost every man is carrying a machete and many of the little boys have a fishing pole, bow and arrow set, or knife of some kind with them at all times. My hosts have a pet cockatoo who does not like being left out of dinner and lets us know. The kids are curious about the camera and as long as I show them the pictures I take of them the are happy. Some other notes I have picked up: a 20kg bag of betel nut can be sold in Mosbi for K200. They generally make a trip with at least 5 bags. So a trip to the city grosses K1000 (about $390), then you have to take out K50 for PMV fare, K40 for canoe fare, food cost while traveling, a place to stay (if you do not have a family member/tribesman living in the city, and most of them do) and you can start buying goods to bring home. It isn't bad money, but it is all hinged on the detrimental addiction of the populous to chewing betel nut. Outlaw that and many of these people would be hamstrung for an income source. Almost everything else they grow is for personal consumption and not in quantities big enough to profitably take to market. The house I stayed in last night for example was entirely paid for by betel nut and the new one they want to build is only waiting on nails purchased with betel nut profits to get started. I am experiencing a familiar internal emotional battle. I understand that the US continues to call itself a Christian nation (which I see as being a more and more dubious title) and as private citizens Americans donate huge amounts of money to all sorts of excellent causes. I certainly do my share of monetary donating. But is it enough? Is it ever? So far on my trip I have encountered untold numbers of people with the vacant faces of the hopeless, those with little or no feeling that they can influence their own destiny or that someone or something out there cares about them at all. They seem to have given up and are merely existing/surviving. I live with a feeling of responsibility to try and better the lives of others because I am in a position to do so. I have a hard time reconciling the life of privilege I have had by chance of birth if I do not look at the needs of others. And yet how do I accomplish/address this felt need? That is my struggle. Simply being here with them sometimes seems to be what they really want. These people on the river lead simple lives. They are not overly complicated, but it is also a lot of work. They work hard and choose to live in these areas (usually after trying to make a go of it in the city and realizing this is better and healthier). They have little say in improving their lives, their government is corrupt in ways that hurts them immediately and often, but they believe God has blessed them and in many ways He has. Knowing that I had enough interest in them to make the journey to where they live has meaning to them and I am included as a family member. To me that is a great honor and it has been hard to not break down and cry on more than one occasion. Seeing elderly people that show up simply because they heard a white man had come (and I get the impression, some of them come quite a distance, not just around the corner), chokes me up. I am just a normal person and the gratefulness and respect they show me is overwhelming. It is strange to think that for some of the smaller children I am the first white person they have ever seen. The last visitors were a British couple in their 70's last year in June. The last American was in January a year ago and he was a 54 year old man who made the guides spend hours driving up and down the river looking for beer and drugs. I'll leave his name out, but they remember it well. Outside of the French Catholic bishop that lives here in Pukei, there simply aren't many strangers in these communities.