Survivor

In November I was asked to travel to Lae to work on an office networking solution for the SIL office and guesthouse. The guesthouse helps provide missionaries, their family and friends a place to stay while moving around the country or for a brief, relatively inexpensive vacation for missionaries. Because Lae has the best port in PNG and is the closest city to Ukarumpa, the SIL office also has staff to help get much of our materials (parts, supplies and personal goods) processed, loaded on a truck. and sent over the difficult roads to Ukarumpa.

It was traveling the roads to/from Lae that I remembered best. I rode as a passenger in a minibus driven by others from the SIL center. I’ll just summarize the experience by saying that, as we came within an hour of returning to Ukarumpa, I saw another minibus (which are commonly used as privately owned buses for hire known as PMVs – Private Motor Vehicles) coming down the hill from the other direction. On the front, stenciled in 8” letters was “Survivor”.

On a related thread, Julie and I had been hearing all during our time here how wonderful it would be if we could visit Madang, another large (it’s not) city on the northeast coast, and spend time relaxing and snorkeling. SIL has a guesthouse in Madang as well where we could stay and, with a kitchen, eat in and keep our expenses low.

We finally worked out a plan with friends who also wanted to spend time in Madang, who had access to a SUV and who had a PNG driver’s license. (Julie doesn’t want to drive on the wrong side of the road and I mistakenly left my US driver’s license at home.) We left Ukarumpa early on January 6th and we would be back the afternoon of the 10th. The road heads to Lae for just over an hour and then turns left (north) to head to Madang. We expected the ride to take ~6 hours.

I’d heard that the road over the mountains to Madang were tough. Hah!! Imagine one of those modern 3D computer video games. You’re in command of an older, dusty SUV. The challenge is to drive to the coastline in as short a time as possible (before it gets dark) and simultaneiously cope with:

• figuring out where to turn because there are no road signs
• detours that take you from what appears to be a perfectly good, paved road and onto a rocky dirt road heading off 90 degrees from where you want to head



Probably the result of an earthquake

• finding half the road closed because it has caved in and fallen into the gulley
• dodging pigs, dogs and chickens as they cross the road
• swerving to miss a series of wide, deep pot holes that you don’t see as you drive up to 100 kph (60mph)



This doesn't show how uphill we were going

• stopping because young boys are collecting a “toll” (~50 cents). They are either pretending to repair a bad road (shuffling rocks into ruts) or playing “traffic cop” to let vehicles from one direction and then the other go through a narrow area. They don’t fool anyone but everyone still pays.
• moving toward the center because lots of people are walking on the road (on both sides) and there are no sidewalks, breakdown lanes… in fact, they have to step into tall 6’ grasses to get off the road
• swerving widely because the locals just stepped into the tall grass for the vehicle just ahead of you and then stepped back into the road without looking to see that you were bearing down on them




Anyone coming the other way?


• looking beyond single-lane bridges (all bridges in PNG are) to see if someone is coming from the other direction. Figure out whether you have the right of way and if the other driver is going to give it to you.
• finding vehicles coming toward you on your side because their side of the road is worse than your side




Fording the river


• driving across a shallow river (no bridge)
• dodging large trees that have fallen across the road and only part has been cut away by previous drivers
• hiding your money and disguising your other valuables (like cameras) in the SUV just in case “raskols” stop you to rob you
• climbing hills in 4-wheel drive in first gear over rutty, muddy roads that rattle and shake everyone side to side
• headaches caused when you are suddenly thrown sideways and hit your head on the side of the car

• short sections of paved road that just let you get up to speed (and get your hopes up that then worst is over) when you are dumped back onto another long stretch of rocky, rutty road
• keeping the SUV working because there is no repair station (actually no towns) between departure and arrival points
• staying friends with your passengers after bouncing them around (just kidding, Bruce!)

Wanna play?

I think I’ll see if I can get the stenciled letters for “Survivor” and put them up someplace.

By the way, we had a nice time in Madang.





Overlooking the Madang coastline



Shoreline in Madang