Gulf Province

Every province of PNG is different. I have visited several regions now, but when we arrived in Gulf Province with YWAM, it was different again. Big, fast flowing rivers. So much sago and pandanus along the river banks. Few mountains. 

The highest point around.

Zooming about in zodiacs I was able to see the province from its best angle, the water. In the mornings we would head out to deliver the primary health care team to their village for the day. Mist would often still be on the water, the whole environment softened by its presence. Some days it would be raining on us, making the environment sparkle. Often we would see Hornbills flying about, bats as well.

With all the rain, the river was high and ran fast. This meant few mosquitoes, as all their breeding ponds were being flushed out and little mud, as it was all lost beneath the water. We could step straight from the zodiacs to the river bank, or even on to the steps of houses. Houses on stilts would have water the whole way underneath and a canoe tied to the front step. One village we went in to the creek was deep enough for us to  drive the zodiac right into the middle of town. While offloading people and supplies, we were passed by a man standing in his canoe and using his oar as a pole to navigate the small the creek, so very Venice!

Fast flowing river

Another day we were taking dental patients back to their village when they took us on the short cut. Now, ‘local short cut’ often means ‘I’m off on an adventure and I don’t know when I’ll be home’, but in this case it was actually shorter and far more beautiful. The creek was narrow and wound through a pandanus grove, long leaves touching the water on either side of us. Away from the rush of the big river it was peaceful and beautiful.

When we arrived in Gulf it was raining, and we navigated in by GPS and radar, knowing there were river banks nearby, but not seeing them clearly, knowing there were sand banks nearby and planning not to meet them. Towards the end of our time in the province, the river flow had subsided enough for the sand banks to show themselves. When we anchored at high tide, there was water everywhere. At low tide it was clear how treacherous those rivers are, how narrow and twisted the navigable sections.

Space for one more?

When we left it was sunny as we wove our way downstream. The most direct route was not an option, and so we took the safest one. Satellite images from the internet interfaced with data from the survey-zodiac were our map. Alongside us were riverbanks of sago and pandanus. As we exited the river and headed into the gulf, we still had to be wary of sand banks, for the river continued undersea. If we left the path of the river, we could still run aground, even though well offshore.


PNG: land of the unexpected. Where each province is unique, has its own challenges and its own beauty .

A Village Day

I spent one day in a village while with YWAM; the rest of the time I was busy with ship work. This did not bother me, as I have plenty of other opportunities to be in villages and few to be afloat. While the cook was wanting some land time, I was soaking up my ship time. The one day I did go to a village was a location where we knew English comprehension was low and some Tok Pisin help would go a long way. It was fun to go with the group and see what they actually got up to after we dropped them off each day.

Busy with clinics

Firstly, the primary health care (PHC) team met with the leaders and confirmed where they would be working for the day. They then set up a place to wait, a place to register (blood pressure measured and babies weighed) and areas for the doctors to consult, for the pharmacy-in-a-backpack to be used to fill prescriptions and for the nurse to do wound care and other tasks. We drew a crowd, both of medical issues and as the entertainment of the day. Doctor-patient confidentiality takes on a new meaning when half the village is within earshot! Although we tried to reduce the closest crowd to family only, it was with little success. 

Translating the women's talk

After the bulk of the patients had been seen, we broke into two groups for teaching sessions. The women talked about family planning and problem signs in pregnancy. The men spoke about domestic violence, among other things. Translating the women’s talk into Tok Pisin was a challenge. We didn’t exactly cover terms for pregnancy and family planning at orientation! Still, we got the message across…I hope. In another education session earlier in the day we had spoken about the importance of washing hands to prevent germs causing illness, but I wondered how much we really communicated. Here were the outsiders talking of bugs you cannot see which make you sick. Why is that any more believable than spirits you cannot see being the cause of illness? Both rely on a worldview of managing that which is unseen.

Just as we were packing up to leave the village, we found ourselves with two more patients. A mum had returned to her house to find that her husband had got frustrated with the kids, so beat them with a stick and threw them out of the house. Their house was on stilts, so being thrown out involved falling a long way down. I know domestic violence is a huge problem in PNG. It is talked about in the media here as well as at home, but usually it is not staring me in the face. Usually it does not come in the form of two small boys who are clearly concussed and a mother with tears in her eyes.

We did what we could. We provided pain medication for the boys. We convinced the mum to bring the most injured boy to the hospital for observations overnight and guaranteed to bring them back to the village the next day. We let the other boy stay to ‘sleep it off’, because we had no right to do anything else, as much as it went against the medical conscience of the team. We celebrated the next day when the boy who went to hospital was alright. We prayed that the beatings will not continue and that the children will grow up strong and healthy. 


When I looked into the teary eyes of the mother holding her two small boys, with tears in my own eyes, I think then we truly communicated, without the need for any words in any language.

Zoom!

Recently I was able to join the YWAM medical ship Pacific Link for one of their medical outreaches to Gulf Province. It was good to be back afloat, to spend three weeks immersed in another organisation, to see another region of PNG and to participate in a different sort of work within PNG.

hi ho, hi ho, its off to work we go.

We spent 24(ish) hours crossing from Port Moresby to Gulf Province then spent most of the next two weeks anchored by Kikori hospital. We were well upstream from the Gulf in areas which Admiralty charts mark as uncharted, where the zone of confidence diagrams are lacking confidence. We went upstream with a captain who has been that way before and lots of fancy technology. One of the zodiacs (small boats) could be fitted out with GPS, depth sounder, computer and more to survey as it travelled. Each time before we went to a new place, the zodiac would go ahead of us, creating charts which were then interfaced with the ship’s navigation system. Impressive!

Taking the PHC team out.

While we were at Kikori, the river was in flood. Somewhere upstream it must have been raining heavily, for although it was not particularly dry where we were, the body of water flowing by was tremendous. Many trees and large logs floated by, sometimes forming a dam wall between the anchor chain and the bow, always making driving about in the zodiacs just that little bit more exciting. Only in the last few days did the water level drop enough for the rumoured sand banks to be visible, but even then the outflow defeated the tide every day and we always had our bow pointing upstream.

I joined Pacific Link as second mate, stepping back into what felt like a former life. It took awhile for me to be at ease in the role, but although that side of me was fairly well buried, it was not forgotten. This role meant navigational watches when under way, anchor watches in the river and zooming about in zodiacs delivering the health teams to various villages.

Managing traffic at the sea door

Every morning we would take the ophthalmology team to Kikori Haus Sik (Hospital) to spend their day doing eye surgery. We would also take the primary health care (PHC) team to their village-of-the-day where they would set up for immunisations, consulting and training. We would then return to the ship with dental patients from Kikori and the village where we had left the PHC team. During the day there would be lots of back and forth, ferrying dental patients as well as our own people. There were also some longs runs, when a zodiac would go out for the day to collect, and later to return, an ophthalmology patient from their village to the hospital. These people had been referred for surgery during previous outreaches, but needed assistance to reach the hospital. Each day there was also the visit to tomorrow’s village. We would go and meet the leaders, confirm that it was okay to come with the PHC team and discuss if there was any particular concerns that they hoped we could help with.

Dental patients waiting on the aft deck

In the course of two weeks the three zodiacs travelled approximately 2000km and burnt 12 drums of fuel; a combination of unleaded and zoom (oil-unleaded pre-mix). This was the most the zodiacs had ever done in a single outreach. It was also the worst they had behaved. Something was messing with the engines. The original theory was that it was the wrong oil-fuel mix, but it was probably dirty fuel or water in the fuel. The result was an endless series of sparkplug changes, difficulty getting the boats up on the plane and a lot of uncertainty, but we made it.

Another spark plug change

At the end of each day we would do the final trips, returning the final dental patients and welcoming home the teams who had been on land. Once all were back on board, we would stow, clean and re-fuel the zodiacs for another day of zooming about. Then it would be time to share stories from the day, over dinner or over a cuppa, before curling up in bed to sleep deeply to the sound of water rushing past the hull. My favourite lullaby.



For information on volunteering with YWAM, go to www.ywamships.org.au