| We left LAX the night of Friday July 16th. The first time I met the rest of the group I was traveling and working with was at the airport after they had flown down from Portland or in from Dallas. | |
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The first leg of our trip was from LAX to Brisbane, Australia, and took about 13 hours. After a few hours we flew on to Port Moresby, the capital of Papua New Guinea. In several of the airports we visited (especially LAX and Brisbane) we spent long periods of time waiting in short lines that did not move at all. |
| From Port Moresby we flew on to Madang and then to Wewak, on the north coast of the island (which is the second biggest in the world, behind Greenland – the western half of New Guinea is part of Indonesia and the eastern half, along with assorted smaller islands, forms the country of Papua New Guinea). |
| Click here to see a map of Papua New Guinea. |
| Getting on the plane in Port Moresby, after running from the international terminal to just make the flight. The two teams before us missed connections for various reasons (sometimes by 12 hours) and did not get to the village until days after they were scheduled to. Fortunately, everything worked on time for us. |  |
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Getting off the plane in Wewak. |
| We stayed in Wewak overnight at the SIL guesthouse, where we had a chance to repack and prioritize our luggage to make the limit of 16 kg (about 35 lb) each we were allowed on the next flight, on small airline Airlink. We brought tools, clothes, sheets, and other things to leave behind, along with the plastic foot lockers. Much of our luggage came as cargo two days later. On the way out it was much easier to get under the weight limit. |  |
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From the terminal at Wewak we watched crates of live baby chickens and other cargo being loaded and unloaded from the plane we were about to get on. |
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| We flew on to Tadji, at the town of Aitape, a small airstrip built during the Allied invasion following the Japanese occupation of the island in World War II. The airstrip consists of metal Marston matting with grass growing through, and there are no buildings at the airstrip – the Airlink agent works out of a truck. |  |
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The Airlink pilot was a little puzzled by white people getting off the plane in Aitape; he told us about the wreck of a bomber some indeterminate distance into the bush (we did not go looking for it). |
We were greeted by John Nystrom, who has worked with his family in the Arop village since 1987. We hopped in the back of a truck for the trip into town. There is still wreckage from World War II scattered around PNG, including the B-25 bomber displayed at the high school in Aitape. |
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| After loading boards onto trucks in Aitape so they could be taken to boats, we traveled by boat to the village; the road from Aitape to Arop was damaged by heavy rain, so all the building materials had to be transported by boat to the village of Wauroiyn, the other Arop-speaking village. |  |
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Outside a market in Aitape. Like almost everything in PNG, hiring a boat is not a sure thing without plenty of advanced planning (and maybe not even then). There are times when fuel is simply not available. |
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| We boarded a boat and traveled on the ocean for an hour or so, then went up a river to Wauroiyn. |  |
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Going up the river in the boat was one of the highlights of the trip, with people waving, and new sights around every bend. |
| Several of the many canoes we saw being carved, decorated, and used. |  |
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We hiked an hour and reached the Nystrom’s house and the translation center; a relatively better road is being constructed by the Catholic mission on the path we took. |
| We were warmly greeted along the way. |  |
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At the end, we were welcomed by team #2, who had already been there for a week. |