It was a great party. I never new white people could become such good Indian actors.
But let’s start at the beginning, namely the travelling towards Madang. As I told you before, the planes were not flying for reasons nobody knows. So I was planning to take a pmv. The thing I don’t like about pmv’s is that you have to sit in them for such a long time. Luckily Dylan decided to join me, which made the travelling actually very pleasurable. Now the trip was nice when looking back, although typical for PNG something unexpected happened. In the Chimbu province one of its bridges was swept away. It had been raining so much that the construction couldn’t hold the strain and there was now simply a hole in the road.
So this meant we had to walk across and get into another pmv. Or some had other means of getting across. Who said NG did not have systems in place for the disabled?
Now it doesn’t seem a time consuming event; walking across a river a go and sit in another pmv. Unfortunately that is not the way it goes in PNG. A lot of discussion has to go into choosing which pmv is going to be used next. Second was the matter of payment. We had paid the amount for a trip to Madang to the first driver. So he had to find all his passengers in the new busses (we didn’t all go to the same pmv). But somehow he succeeded in finding everybody and we could go.
Until we reached the mountains just before Madang and the driver told us that he did not get enough diesel on the last stop. That meant we had to sleep in the car on the side of the road. Dylan and I pressed the driver and told him that there was enough diesel in the tank to go all the way. So after much debate he gave in and we tried it. And you know what? There was enough diesel in the tank. Finally we arrived in Madang after 1 hours of travel. For comparison, it takes about 9 hours on a good day.
A quick shower and we went to Jais Aben (Petra, we’ve been there with Hu). Jais Aben is a resort with palm trees and sea. A place you don’t mind staying for some days and doing nothing, but reading, swimming, eating and relaxing. The best thing is when you have friends there and you can use their house. We had a good nights rest and the morning looked like this.
After a day of reading, talking to friends and swimming, the night promised to be nice as well. A bollywood party with Indian food. Really nice food and really nice costumes.
And me between two lovely ladies.
And last but least Dylan in a very Indian pose.
On Sunday I decided to go to back with some other volunteers in their car. They were going to Goroka. This suited me fine, seeing as I could meet my new physio colleague in Goroka hospital. Again a Dutch physio. We are simply the best.
Arthur (he was the former physio in Goroka), if you’re reading this, Marcel is going to do a great job. I’m sure of it. And I had a very relaxing time with him. Playing volleyball with some of his new friends and cooking a nice diner of tinned tuna, veggies, rice and coconut cream (standard food of PNG now).