Melancholy is how I would describe my feeling in Madang these days. Al those white people around me. I’m not used to that anymore. And than the possibility to speak Dutch with some of the other volunteers. Even though I’m living here now and I do feel a resident of PNG, I’m having a holiday as a tourist. And the best thing is that I’m feeling like the time I had in South Africa and the good times I had with friends in Nijmegen. The people who have been there with me know how I’m feeling now. Without a care in the world and everything I do seems to be the thing I want to do at the time. We celebrated Christmas with some friends and during these two days I drank a lot of alcohol. I’m not used to it anymore. In Hagen I never drink alcohol. So when I did in Madang, I felt it the next morning. And I had a case of diarrhoea which was so explosive that I had to take ORS (a mineral and vitamin supplement) to supply my body with the necessary nutrition. Nice to feel this sick of alcohol again. It reminded me that I didn’t have this feeling anymore in Nijmegen. It feels nice to be healthy. Although I wish I would stop smoking. I’ve tried twice now, but I can’t seem to stop the craving. But I will succeed at it one time or another.

I suppose I’m going to annoy you with some other stories now. We went to Karkar island for two days where we climbed up to a volcano. There has never been a more strenuous climb in my entire life. And the macho man I am I couldn’t let the locals beat me on the way up or the way down. It took me 15 minutes to realise I was never going to be able to keep up. Men, women and children alike, they climbed like mountain goats. Kids where hopping there way up. Unbelievable. Luckily I was able to forget my macho behaviour and look at the view…amazing. How a tropical rainforest should be.
Well let’s start from the beginning. Here you can see Karkar from the mainland. This place is called hole in the wall. Because underneath the rocks there is a hole through which you can swim to the see.

The pictures can be dark from time to time, because it’s the rainy season. A lot of clouds take the light away.
So from the mainland we took a fast boat to island. Seen from the boat it looks like this;

It was hard to imagine that I was going to be standing on the top the next day. It looked so incredibly high. The village we stayed at was the village of the wife of the VSO country director. While writing this I remember that I haven’t taken any pictures of the village. I’m getting so used to them now.
We stayed at the house of a council member. Arranging for this stay happens in a very formal way. Everything in PNG society seems to have a formal way in which things should be done. Even when it concerns very small things. You have to approach the right people when you want to have anything done. There is fortunately always a local who will mediate on your behalf. An example came in the morning when some man was very upset about us going up, because his brother had died previously by police fire while trying to rob one of the visitors. Our council member came and resolved it, so we could go up. Nice way to start your climb don’t you think. Another example I’ll mention; in the afternoon we wanted to join a game of soccer. We couldn’t join the game without asking the proper man if we could join the game.

By the way, the night before we taught the locals how to play “toepen”. So if you ever go to this island and ask them to play “toepen” they will now how to play it. A necessary touch of Dutch culture everywhere in world.

So we went up.

The surrounding bush was big, green and lush. When we had a good view around we could see the mountain ahead or the see below.
After a gruelling six hour climb with everybody waiting for us, we came to the top and a flat part of the mountain. Here we had to stay silent for a moment. The locals said this was to satisfy the clouds to stay away so no rain would come. And than after an hour we reached the place. And I tell you it was worth the climb.

It was so great being there. The talking of the people, the view, the sandwiches after this walk, just the complete scenery. One of the locals told us that the mountain was used by the Americans in world war 2 as an observation post. There was a helicopter pad used to supply the troops stationed there. I understand most of tok pisin now, but cultural differences keep arising. As a western educated person I try to structure everything in time. But PNG people say; dispela samting kamap taim bifor. Translated it means; this happened before.
While at the top some kids started to “bilas” themselves. Or dress themselves up with plants around. After a while the grownups joined in. It looked just great.

The way down went much quicker. I walked or rather marched between two women who didn’t take break during the way down. After an hour I got into sort of a trance and I just kept on walking. I lost all concept of time, but afterwards I found out it took me about 3 hours to get back while it took a little more than 5 hours to get up.
I can tell you I had a great night sleep that night, although I expected the worst next morning. I was surprised to notice that even though my legs where extremely wobbly the day before I wasn’t suffering from muscle pains. So we walked to the beach again and went back to the mainland with a boat. Nature treated us on a little cyclone and flying fish on the way back. All in all you could say this trip was a success.

Now new years eve was coming so we couldn’t just sit at home. We went to a very little island above Madang called Kranket island with a couple of other people. First we had a barbeque during which we had to take some pictures of the sun setting. I want to warn you, they are extremely nice. I don’t want people getting jealous.

After the barbeque there was nothing else to do, but to get drunk again and of course take an occasional dip in the water. A very nice thing about this water is that it is fluorescent. So when it’s dark and you trail your hand through the water you see it light up with all sparkles. When your wearing a snorkel and someone swims underneath you can see the outline of their body in the water. That was the fireworks for me this year. Ow no, two ships seemed to shoot probably their only flares into the sky. With three bottles of champagne we started the new year.
For the people who have a thing for maps I’ve added a map of where we’ve been.

And as a closing statement. I found something Tim will enjoy very much. This spider is living underneath my carport in Hagen. It’s bigger than my hand and the security guard says it’s a young one. So keep you up to date. When the security guard says it’s fully grown I’ll take a picture again.