A bucket list is one of the most inspiring things that one can do for oneself. After university, I made a bucket list of seventy five things to do, one of the things to do on the list was to travel to Marawaka, possibly the most remote places I know in Papua New Guinea and teach maybe for a year or two as most rural places in PNG don't have teachers. Aah! the ideals of youth.
If Papua New Guinea is popularly known as one of the last frontiers of the world, then Marawaka is the last Frontier of the last Frontier, it is as remote as a place as places come.
Marawaka is a region in Eastern Highlands Province which shares border with two other provinces: Gulf and Morobe. The first contact the region had with the outside world was with Mr John Bray, an Australian Kiap, or government administrator in 1968. By then most places in Papua New Guinea had already made contact with the outside world and the colonial administration set an outpost perched on a strip of flat land on base of the rugged Kratke range.
When I first heard this I thought it was incredulous that right about then in 1968, whilst the West was going through significant changes in the counter culture happening through civil rights, music, war and everything else, my grandfather had just met the first white man only forty years before that, mistaking Jim Taylor, the first kiap, Australian colonial as a messenger from their dead ancestors.
My trip to Marawaka happened unexpectedly. One afternoon whilst sitting on the lawn at my house in the village,a stranger stood at the hedge lining the lawn motioning me to go over, calling out ‘Sister, sister’, in my culture its polite and courteous to refer to people you don't know as brother or sister, when you don’t know their name. This is disarming when one is coerced in any awkward situation and indirectly you are banking on their cooperation for something.
I listened as he, James (I later learnt of his name) with a look of desperation, unloaded his burdens of peri urban settlement living, turns out he worked as a security guard on minimum wages of K100 (US$ 25) a fortnight and paid rent of K50 fortnight for a small hut with no toilet. This rented hut was in my village but he could not afford food and so proposed to borrow an amount of K50 from me to buys food supplies as he had young hungry children, and he could slowly repay over time.
Since I was at the time spearheading the women's cooperative in the village, apparently image in the community was of one who helped the needy and that included money as well.
I responded bluntly that I do not give money on credit, but I instinctively realised that they might be hungry so i headed into my house where I brought some food; some rice and tinned tuna to gave to him.
The next afternoon my saviour complex haunted by the thought that people are hungry in a place where I lived in, where food is abundant and it is in my power to remedy this, I went to the garden with Bisuhu,my faithful cousin and harvested some plantains, tapioca, sweet potatoes and greens to give to these people.
Upon visiting their house that afternoon with the food, I was met with beaming faces and firm handshakes they were greatly surprised by this act of kindness and expressed much gratitude, as we placed the food before them.
Turns out my new found friends were from Marawaka,one of the last frontier of Papua New Guinea. This place which we had heard very little about and it was common knowledge that they were considered bush people.
The strangers at my yard were James and his wife, Ursula. They lived with their two kids and five other extended family relatives including Ursulas father. The shack was a two meter by three meter hut. The hut was dark with the only light from the door with a fireplace at the center of the earthen floor , a small table sparsely decorated with tin utensils, a used half of a candle that must have been from previous nights.
For the next couple of days every evening we would all sit around the fireplace in this congested house of smoke and people, drinking sugarless ground coffee as these people started telling me of their land.
They patiently answered my endless questions from the rudimentary like if they had a shop there? Did they still wear traditional costume? how could they afford school? What did they did they grow? Did they have a school there? and what money where they using? to the most difficult like everywhere else, the politics , filling my head with stories of their legends, imagining what thickets of ancient forests looked like and of course what teaching would be like over there.
One evening a week or so later, as I was about to eat, a knock sounded from the door, it was Papa john, Ursula’s father, he brought the news that on the morrow, a twin otter plane was being chartered by a candidate to go to Marawaka, and some of this candidates supporters were travelling back home in time for election, and I would be welcomed to travel with them. Since its chartered all I had to do was be at the airport in the morning and Im as good as on the plane to Marawaka. Sounded easy enough.
That night I could not sleep, I made mental notes of all the things that I could do over there, recollecting all the stories I’ve heard from my new friends.
At the crack of dawn,I was at my parents house, telling them of my about to be great adventure, of course, they were shocked and apprehensive about the prospect lecturing me about how crazy I must be to think I can just travel into nothingness with people I barely knew anything about except through what they told me. I responded that since I had already made the commitment and there was no backing out. They knew I wasn't going to back down, so in their foresight they offered me a 10kg bag of rice and two boxes of food and stuff I might need such as battery, matches and soap etc stuff I clearly didn't plan to take but would end up needing. Initially I refused the boxes saying I would eat whatever the locals ate, of course, I didn’t really understand what I said. To make my parents happy I took the stuff. But I was of the notion that I would live like the people of Marawaka, little did I realise how difficult that would be for me.
At the airport, I called my brother, my best friend basically anyone who would pick up the phone to proclaiming to them the great adventure that lay in front of me.
The excitement subsided when my brother’s tone changed as he bluntly said do you realise that you’re voluntarily stepping back in time, nothing in this world matters over there, I being defensive that’s not true, they have phone coverage.
The weather was glum that day, as I bade farewell to my parents whose look of apprehension became more obvious than ever, afterall I was flying to what my mother said was the end of the world. My father had travelled there in the early 70’s, he was with the Department of Agriculture and said that on a cloudy day it is impassable, yet to me Marawaka, had all the markings of what the last frontier should be like treacherous terrain of ancient forest and mountain passes, remote pygmy people still lost in their ways undisturbed by the outside world.
Nothing was going to stop me, I was going to stay there for weeks on end and experience everything I had heard of what life in the last Frontier was like
I walked out to the tarmac with my new found friends, Papa John, Ursula ,her two kids (James had to stay back for work), I, the tallest in a line of sixteen to be checked in and grinning like an idiot waving to my parents (something I don’t do ), happy that one of the most rare things to do on my bucket list was in the process of being ticked off.
Little did I prepare myself for the world I was going to walk into. Unknowingly this was the beginning of my coffee journey.