Written by Sjoerd, rudely influenced by Maaike and Femke

The full PNG experience…that’s what we got when we were in the Southern Highlands in a place called Pangia. From beautiful views and joyfull singing kids in the woods to a village court case and a desperate feeling while getting lost in the jungle. We started of in a flea ridden house in a village called Koiya in the Pangia district of the Southern Highlands Province.

My security, Yunego, and his wife and my cleaning lady Monica had invited us to his wife’s village. After a four hour bus trip and a half hour walk we were thirsty and sugarcane was an excellent idea.

Early morning we started our epic walk to Mt Ialibu…or so we thought. We were the first white people to ever set foot in this forest.
The first obstacle was easily taken by Maaike.

It was somewhat harder for Femke, because of her fear of heights.

Yunego (my security) had promised us a kapul (tree kangaroo) for dinner, so he invited two experienced kapul hunters to come with us. The hard work of actually hunting the creatures was however done by four young boys. Alex is climbing this rotten tree trunk looking for the walabi with virtually no foothold.

We took a huge amount of scenery pictures and most of them we left out. This one was included.

Strong Dutch

and PNG alike were dead tired after an eight hour trek to

our self-made hut.

While we were nice and cosy in our sleeping bags together with our house animals called fleas, all the kids and adults slept on the ground without any covers…Respect is in order for those die hard jungle people.
Almost all the trees were covered in moss and this was used to create a vicious jungle monster (Femke and Maaike think I was trying out a toupee).

Another scenic picture of the jungle we were walking through.

I was so tired of the walk that I needed a beauty sleep in our new house. By this time we had decided not to go for the top of Mt Ialibu but instead go down directly because it was too hard to continue (although the young kids seemed to be alright…).

The next morning soot of the oil lamp was used to make me even more a bushman.

Femke on the other hand was made into a fairy. She must have used her magic skills to confuse the guides, as we started to get lost just after we left the hut.

Getting lost had a positive side effect; we discovered this beautiful waterfall.

Sometimes the trees decided to give way to a magnificent view of the country side behind them.

From this point onwards we did not have the energy anymore to take pictures, because the trek got harder and harder. We were still lost and the guides were trying to find the way back to the village. After a gruesome, non-stop walk of about nine hours we came back to the village more dead than alive, just half an hour before darkness set in. Our batteries dangerously low on energy; a nice fresh shower in a cold creek revived us to a point where we thought that we were back in heaven.
If only we had known better…the worst was yet to come.
Like I said before we had two guides when going up. These two men together with Monica were the so called “papa graun”. This means that they have a say in what goes on in their backyard (an extremely big backyard I have to say). Before we went up we had done a round in the village introducing ourselves and shaking hands. This unfortunately did not prevent some men of becoming extremely jealous. Jealously is PNG’s nemesis. People in the highlands can’t get passed the fact that some other people do better than themselves.
Back at the house during dinner we were introduced to an example of this envy. Some of the village men had decided to go to the Ialibu police station to get a warrant for compensation. The guys made a request for money, because we had taken pictures of the bush and we had illegally trespassed on their ground. This paper was handed over to us with loud voices and a lot of cursing on Monica’s side. I understood the discussion and knew what was going on, Maaike and Femke on the other hand were rather intimidated by the loud voices and the threatening of bush knifes (manchetes). I never understood how to intimidate those two; now I know. Note to self; buy a bush knife.
It was understood that we would go to Ialibu police station next morning, thinking it would blow over.
The next morning when we wanted to go to Hagen the villagers had come together outside our door. When stepping outside we were introduced to a village magistrate. He heard the case in a good way I thought, because he listened to everybody involved and had some good input. It became apparent to me that these guys were just out to get a little money, because their demands were illogical and threatening. I had to talk for almost an hour with the entire village in front of me. We don’t have this custom in our society, but in PNG it is very important to make a full account of a story and repeat important issues several times. The fact that I was a volunteer working as a “doctor” in a hospital made the magistrate say that Maaike, Femke and I were let of the hook. After openly giving some money to the guides we went to the road to get a pmv. A police car came instead and took us to Ialibu police station. We gave the constable in charge the warrant and explained to him our point of view. He told us to go back to Mt Hagen, because the men had acted out of jealousy and had no grounds to hold us up.
While waiting for the bus it started to rain, which gave Maaike an opportunity to take some nice shots.

On our way back Femke could take a picture of us sleeping before she passed out herself.

The next morning the arduous task of washing our clothes and sleeping bags started to try and remove all the dirt and fleas. We smell Jongerius-delicious again…