Going Bush in PNG

Looking out from the Airport in Port Moresby you will see a series of high mountain ranges. They are called the highlands. Highlanders live a considerably different life style than those in the city. I’m told that these green hills will turn a golden brown during the dry season, which starts in June.


Homes in the bush seemed to be a little larger than the average home in Port Moresby. They’re definitely not as densely packed. The state of completion can only be described as a continuing work in progress.


With a nice wide staircase leading to a large covered porch and cross ventilation in both directions And no homeowners association fees)– what more could you want?


I needed to go out in the bush to visit some remote villages and a school. When leaving Port Moresby we always travelled with at least two autos, and two people in each auto. They typically won’t try to hijack two cars. A lone driver, however, is a nothing more than an open target.


The paths that we followed into the bush may have been rutted intentionally. The ruts force a driver to slow way down, making them an easy target for robbery. (Or kidnapping -- if they are white.)


We never let the other car get more than a couple of feet ahead of us. Our car had me and my driver; the other car had two paid security guards.


When we arrived I was greeted by a herd of kiddies. They all wanted to shake hands or just touch me. (they probably hadn’t seen a pale face very many times).


I was definitely a novelty, until they realized that they could have their picture taken. Then I wasn’t so important anymore. I felt at home with the Texas Lone Star tee shirt.


As I mentioned, I wanted to visit one of the bush schools to see what we could do to help them. Here is one of the classrooms. (The children were out for recess.)


Here is a picture of one of the other classrooms. Notice the desk/bench combination. The bench is about 6” wide; the desk is about 12” wide.


Here we have the teacher behind his desk, looking into the adjacent classroom. The fellow in the red shirt is Desmond Bundu. He was with me.


Some of the class rooms didn’t have furniture. The children had to sit on the dirt. Not even the teacher had a place to sit. Yet they were all happy, no one complained. I asked one girl how old she was. "Thirteen," she replied. "What grade are you in?" "Third grade," was the answer. She was just happy to be able to go to school.


When class was in session, they tried to assign only four children to each desk. Sometimes that wasn’t possible.


This class had many more than the preferred number. I think they told me they had almost 40 students. But they had two grades in the one classroom.


The school was built by local villagers. Naturally, I was interested in the methods of construction and the details of assembly.


The day we visited was a yard clean up day. All of the students were asked to bring a machete to help clean up the school yard. They went out as a group and cut all of the weeds and stickers down. This is how it looked as a finished job. Can you imagine asking all the children to bring a machete to school?


Students and teachers alike were pleased with our visit. They only had two requests – if we were inclined to help them. One was the need for clean water. They had no water at the school. During the long hot days the students got very thirsty. The second request was for materials to build desks for the bare classroom, so the students wouldn’t have to sit on the dirt. I was certain that we could help, but wasn't in a position to promise anything, yet.

As we left they all came out to see us off. It was a sad experience. It was a happy time.

Tropical? Yes. Paradise? Not quite.

My last report was of a short but fruitful trip to the Solomon Islands. My next destination was Papua New Guinea (PNG). Although they are island neighbors, there are few connecting flights between them. Therefore in order my keep my schedule, I had to fly down to Brisbane, Australia and then up to PNG.

My purpose in going to PNG was to meet with several people and visit several locations regarding possible humanitarian aid opportunities. Right from the start, you all should know that there are more opportunities than there are resources – so why the visit? Well, it is just like giving away scholarships – any student will take one, but only a few will actually work for them. It was my intent to determine who would be willing to work for the assistance we are interested in giving.

Our key objectives are to:
• Relieve the suffering of the poor and needy.
• Help them help themselves be more self-reliant.
• Assure sustainability.
• Exemplify the teaching of our Master, Jesus Christ.


Our first stop was to meet with the leaders of a village many miles south of Port Moresby, a place called Gabone. There we meet in the LDS Church building. We had more than 30 men in attendance. We discussed their needs and how we could help them.

The sisters from the Church brought a few light refreshments. They also made lays for each of us.

Following the meeting each person in attendance came up and introduced themselves to me and told me their “story.” And each one had a story to tell. There was a good feeling there. They are limited as to how much they can cultivate in the family gardens, because of how much time it take to cut back the jungle between rain storms. If they had power implements they could plant and thus harvest more. They want to do that.

Like in the Solomon Islands, most of the homes in PNG are built up off the ground. They use whatever materials they can find, trade, borrow, or steal to build their homes.

This small home is built with a sturdy foundation of native logs and a good roof of corrugated steel. Look how neat they keep their yards – out in the bush.

Most of the homes I saw appeared to have been finished as materials became available.

The LDS Chapels stood out everywhere we went as the cleanest and best maintained of all the buildings around.

Even in the bush, the LDS Chapels were clean, well constructed, and well maintained.

For the most part, even the grounds were well planned and cared for. All of the Church facilities were examples of our desire to be the best we can and present to the Lord the best we have.

However, not even the LDS Church facilities were exempt from the ravages of crime and corruption. Every place we went to was fenced, gated, and guarded. Here the LDS Church property has a large gate that remains closed at all times, a tall fence with razor wire along the top and 24-hour security protection.

Burglary and theft were not the only concerns, although they were a constant threat, vandalism and graffiti were present everywhere I looked.

It seemed that there was hardly a single vertical surface anywhere that wasn’t marked up.

High walls and fences seemed to be the only way to survive in this country of lawlessness. Some property owners commissioned their walls to have murals painted on them. The gangs and vandals seemed to respect that and not tag over it – for some reason.

This security wall had a wrought iron fence in front of it which helped to kept it from being tagged. At the top, between the pickets and the steel wall, is rolled razor wire. This was common for all residential properties and many businesses in and around Port Moresby.

The stands in front of the security wall/fence are used to place their garbage in. It keeps it off the ground an away from dogs and rodents.

The one place we didn’t see high walls and razor wired fences was around the community built our over the water in the bay.

This picture and the few that follow are of the local market place. I did venture to go into this one, but most of them were far too dangerous for a pail skinned foreigner.

Most of the markets were crowded with people – vendors, shoppers, robbers, gangsters, etc. – all crowded under a sea of umbrellas.

One could find anything from home sewn dresses, to jewelry, art and crafts, fruits and vegetables, to wrist watched – both new and “slightly used.”

Even small bundles of firewood were sold along the streets. Some of the vendors build fires right in the open market to cook their food – either to eat or to sell.

Not everyone in Port Moresby is living in poverty. This is a picture of the Central Business District. High-rise office buildings, hotels, and apartments are every bit as nice as you would find anywhere else. What is missing is the middle case. They are almost non-existent. We ate a few of our meals at these hotels – YUMI (as they say in pigeon).

Our purpose in going to PNG was to check out several opportunities for humanitarian aid projects. In keeping with that we met with the Minister of Development, Dame Carol Kidu and her right-hand Directors. We had a delightful visit and were able to discuss her priorities – which are the rights and care of the children, the rising generation.

As in the Solomon Islands, I spent considerable amount of time at the main hospital. This is a picture of the ICU/CCU. While they did not have a central monitoring station, it gave the appearance of being well equipped and staffed.

The general wards of the hospital were not quite as well equipped or staffed. Notice the family members sleeping on the floor under the patient beds.

All of the wards we visited had 56 beds; two rows of 14 beds on each side of a long hall. They were being cared for by two nurses, supplemented by family members (who are, incidentally, the primary care givers).

The Accident Emergency Department (A & E) was overflowing with patients and visitors. There were many similarities to the ER at Ben Taub Hospital in Houston – especially when it came to long wait times and over-crowding.

This is their minor surgery room. They didn’t have a surgical table so a local carpenter built this one of wood and plastic laminate. The OR light didn’t function.

This is their cardiac and high-risk observation room. Notice the parents caring for their dehydrated infant on the floor.

We visited with the Hospital CEO, but our observation was that the A&E Director was the only staff member with an active plan for improvement. A graduate of the University of PNG, he was a breath of fresh air.

While the hospital is decades ahead of the Solomon Islands hospital, it still is not what it used to be. The Minister of Health explained to us the most of his physician administrators simply did not know how to manage. They were good clinicians, but not good administrators. That appeared to be the case as we saw it.

That being said I thought there were several areas that could benefit immediately from our humanitarian assistance. These I will take back with my recommendations.

The Solomon Islands - An Almost Forgotten Land

Honiara, Solomon Islands – still referred to as Guadalcanal. Mountainous and beautiful, Guadalcanal was the scene of some of the fiercest fighting between the allied forces and the Japanese during the 2nd World War. Located only 6 degrees south of the equator, it is a hot and humid tropical island that hasn't progressed much during the last 50 or 60 years. What progress we see is in the form of imported equipment and technology (automobiles and cellphones), but by in large the people still live very much as they did when the Japanese first invaded their islands in 1941. They are subsistance farmers and have little, if any, incentives to produce more than they need to just subsist.

Now visitors are welcomed by a more traditional warrior.

The primary purpose of my visit to Honiara was to look at their hospital and medical facilities to assess what humanitarian aid opportunities exist and to find out what their priorities are.

Prior to visiting the hospital, we met with the Minister of Health and some of his subordinates including the Director of Health Awareness.

This picture was taken in one of the intensive care wards. I purposefully avoided photographing patients, but the facility itself tells a lot of the story.

Like some other island nations I’ve visited, laundry is done by hand using rainwater harvested from the metal roofs. Here the washed laundry is hung or set out to dry.

This is a picture of a local family. They are members of the Church. The grey haired man is the father of the other four. The wife/mother of the family died of unknown causes several years ago. Their home is the building in the background.

In addition of improving healthcare, I was interested in opportunities for providing education, training, and equipment to improve local food production. With that in mind we visited at length with the people at the Taiwan Technical Mission. They have developed several large rice production projects on the island.

The rice fields were beautiful with their neat straight rows of green against the wet black soil.

In addition to the production of rice, the Taiwanese are experimenting with papaya, pineapple, guava, corn, leeks, pole beans, pumpkin, sweet potatoes, etc. All of these are produced using native (non-hybrid) seeds so the local farmers can self-produce their own seed crops as well as produce for consumption.

While the Taiwanese have been highly successful in developing viable plants, they have not been very successful in attracting the interest of local farmers.

One of the first things that caught my attention was the general practice of building their homes up off the ground. Someone told me that this was to keep the snakes out, but I since learned that there are very few venomous snakes and that snakes in general are not a nuisance. However, rodents and flooding are a constant threat. In this picture the space below the house is being used to dry the laundry. They also relax under the house since it is open and cool.

I was also intrigued by the raw number of abandoned automobiles I saw scattered everywhere. They were a real eye sore for an otherwise attractive island.

Another purpose for my visit was to evaluate a couple of communities that have expressed a need for clean water. This is one of those communities. We walked along a very rough and rocky path to get here. While the residents took great pride in keeping it clean and well cared for, the raw materials they had to work with were mostly discarded scraps.

We met with the owner of this home. They explained to me that another humanitarian organization had built several rainwater collection stations in the village several years ago. These were placed adjacent to some of the local churches. However, after they joined the LDS Church the other churches prohibited them from accessing the water station. They now have to walk 5 kilometres to a government source each day. They bring water back using a 3 litre container.

The lady on the right is the Branch Relief Society President. The sister in the center is a senior missionary from Melbourne, Australia. She has been teaching these sisters how to garden and raise their own vegetables.

One of the highlights of my short stay in the Solomon Islands was the opportunity to be with the full-time missionaries as they taught this family the gospel of Jesus Christ. They sat on shipping pallets and tarps as they taught them about how God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. And that God has always had prophets on the earth to teach the people. I was able to add my own testimony that we have a living prophet on the earth today. I also bore witness of the truthfulness of the Book or Mormon, and that Jesus is the Savior of all mankind.

This is the home of this wonderful family. Just like the homes Diane and I have been looking at on the internet recently, this one features “an open floor plan.”

It also has a naturally ventilated kitchen. Notice how all of the necessary kitchen implements are within easy reach.


One of my last stops before leaving Honiara was to pay tribute and to mourn the loss of the brave men who fought in the Battle of Guadalcanal more than 65 years ago. The local people have planted a tree next to each head stone.


After I had checked my luggage at the airport, I had to wind my way through customs and the ever-present airport security. This fellow reminded us to stay in line.

I had a wonderful time, and found the people of the Solomon Islands to be clean, friendly and poor. And, unlike these airport guards, they were very inviting.


I can't end this report without paying tribute to the great people who dedicated three days taking me around, introducing me to high ranking officials, explaining local customs and traditions, and most of all translating Pigeon into English, when necessary. The man of the left, President Rimou, is the Branch President for Honiara; he has been in this position for over 7 years -- 3 months after he joined the Church. The other two are Elder and Sister Soisoi, they are full-time missionaries serving from Australia. Originally from Samoa, as volunteers, they are helping the great people of the Solomon Islands learn and grow in the Gospel, by teaching them how to put into practice the teachings of Jesus Christ -- thus reaping the blessings and rewards of living a Christ-centered life.