Return to Madang

Return to Madang
When I first got to PNG, I thought Madang was a dump. It seemed dirty and confusing and strange. I have undergone a complete paradigm shift. After spending three months in the highlands, I traveled the long road back to Madang for the 2005 VSO Volunteer conference. What I found was a South Pacific paradise. Smiling faces, vivid shades of green, tall palm trees and that big blue sea that stretches out forever. The place is beautiful and I am ashamed that I failed to see it before.



The selections in the super market now seem endless. I was stopped dead in my tracks yesterday when I say a tray of ripe, red tomatoes. I stared at them for 45 seconds. My appreciation for selection and options has skyrocketed. When I get back to the states and visit a Krogers, I may have to be sedated.

The conference came at the perfect time. My school is on break and I am officially at the halfway point of my placement. Almost 40 vols from around PNG gathered at Jais Aben (a lodge right on the beach) for the 4-day meeting. Some of the volunteers come from truly remote areas and make my living situation seem glamorous. One couple, two doctors from England, live deep in the highlands in a place called ‘Jimi Valley’. On top of running a clinic, they embark on ‘patrols’ every other week. They will hike to distant villages and provide medical attention and care. These hikes last most of the day across wild terrain. They will go 2-3 days eating only Cau Cau (like potato) and greens and sleep on the ground. They are the real volunteers.

I feel privileged to be a part of such an impressive group. It felt like a meeting of the United Nations – over 15 countries were represented. England and the Netherlands were represented in force. The range of backgrounds is equally impressive – doctors, teachers, agriculture specialists, physiotherapists, environmentalists, journalists. The wish I could have recorded all the stories I heard. The nights turned into weird dance parties – nobody in this group is shy. I seem reserved in comparison.

An added bonus was the diving. Jais Aben is on a peninsula that juts into the Pacific and is surrounded by small, uninhabited islands. Interspersed between these pieces of land is clear blue water and beautiful corral reef.

PNG claims that this stretch of reef is better than anything the Great Barrier Reef has to offer. I wouldn’t know to compare but the dives I went on were phenomenal. My command of the English language is simply not strong enough to appropriately describe what I saw under the surface. It was another world.

Mourning the Dead
Funerals are a regular occurrence in PNG – the human mortality rate is quite high. A few unique occurrences happen at these ceremonies. The close friends and relatives of the deceased cover their faces and exposed skin with mud the color of burnt orange. This mud is also smeared onto the vehicles involved in the procession convoy. While there are cemeteries, the majority of New Guineans prefer to be buried in their own village. In fact, most people are buried in their front yard.



Lastly, and most jarring, is that the women take part in what is called ‘the wailing’. Basically, the women attending the burial will crowd the grave site and howl at the top of their lungs. The group feeds off each other and the women turn completely hysterical in their cries for their fallen wantok.

A friend of mine was approaching a funeral site with a New Guinea woman – she was completely composed and talking amicably with him the whole way. As soon as she got within 20 yards of the casket, she launched herself into blood curdling yelps that frightened my friend something awful. When they left the village, she was back to herself.

Sunken Ship
I think the promotional plane for the movie ‘Titanic’ must have exploded over PNG and rained down giveaways across the land. Not a day goes by that I do not see someone wearing a ‘Titanic’ t-shirt picturing Leonardo and Kate Winslet holding each other in front of a backdrop of a sinking cruise liner. Not one day.