The Highlands Highway

The mountain range that encloses the Simbu valley is relatively young. Therefore, the slopes consist almost entirely of mud and loose gravel. This leads to a lot of mudslides and ground shifts - especially when there is heavy rain. Well, we have had plenty of rain the last couple weeks. At night, it comes down in torrents. As a result, the ground is moving and the loser in all this erosion is the pitiful Highlands Highway - our lone connection to the outside world. The Highway snakes through the valley and is in desperate need of complete reconstruction. There is little depth to the road - a layer of mud, a layer of medium-sized gravel, sand and cement. There are entire stretches where the cement is completely gone.

There is one section that the road is especially bad - adjacent to a village called 'Minima'. It looks like the Germans (why the Germans? Why not?) carpet-bombed the road. Pretty much every other day, a semi truck gets stuck. When this happens, traffic comes to a complete standstill and a social gathering ensues. I think some people like the inconvenience - it gives them a chance to catch up with old friends, buy some buai, etc. When the trucks get loose, the mob goes flying in all directions back to their respective rides. It's a riot.

In PNG, everyone wants a handout. I can talk about this for hours. It's the reason the nation is broke. Anyway, the villagers of Minima expect - nay, demand compensation for all the doings that is happening around their village. Since the road crews have to maneuver their machines into the villagers' property, they demand payment. This usually involves putting up a makeshift roadblock and requiring a toll to pass the small stretch of road. Sometimes, villagers will do something as trivial as fill up a pot hole (poorly, I might add - usually with mud that washes away after one rainfall) and block the road to ask for a toll payment. It's ridiculous and no one does anything about it.

Now, on a major situation like the one at Minima, the police will actually show up to keep the peace. These corrupt bastards lounge around, smoking cigarettes with assault rifles slung lazily over their shoulders. They are basically there in case a riot breaks out and will allow the villagers to go on with their tollbooth. The other day, a truck full of second-hand clothes was stuck at Minima. I was talking with someone who told me that the villagers were hoping that the truck would stay stuck so they could loot the cargo. I had some questions. What about the police? Well, they go home at 5pm. What about the driver? He'll get the hell out there - he's not going to be torn to threads over a pile of used clothes.

There is also a wonderful ritual called 'the car swap'. My friend John was driving his Nissan truck to town the other day when he came upon a particularly severe situation at Minima. A semi was stuck and had blown its engine. Nothing would be moving for some time. He ran into an Australian bloke that was going the other way, stuck on the other side of the messy area. They had a chat and decided to switch vehicles and made loose arrangements to swap back in the next few days.* Apparently this is standard practice. Good times.

*The funny thing about this is that the principal advisor for the Simbu Province, a short, stocky little man that looks a bit like a turtle, was in the same situation. He saw John on the other side of the road and wanted a car swap of his own. John took one look at the advisor's vehicle (a run down heap with the driver's side door attached by bungee cords) and decided it was not a fair trade. When the man discovered that John made another deal, he had an absolute temper tantrum in the middle of the road, screaming at the top of his lungs 'I asked you first! This is not fair!' and on and on, creating quite a little scene during the afternoon road picnic.