Kikori

A foggy sunrise over the river at Kikori

I was in Kikori having a few days break with my friends at the hospital and had gone for a walk to town when suddenly there was action all about. Two drunken men came running down the road towards me and disappeared into the bush. Behind them came a car full of police with guns, chasing down the drunks. I walked the other direction and took the long way home, away from all the action.

In some parts of PNG people have a reputation for being bel hat (short fused). This is not one of those areas, but I’ve spent time in those areas and have learnt to walk away from all public disturbances in case they escalate.

My detour brought me back to the quiet of the hospital about 2 minutes ahead of the police car arriving loudly. I should have known that police chases are likely to end at a hospital! The ones on TV sure look like they will. I had assumed police violence and that a drunk was the patient, but was I wrong. While chasing down the drunks, one of the police had dropped dead. Most likely it was a heart attack.

The helicopter arrives for the Medivac.

My doctor friend and her team spent the next half hour doing their best to revive the policeman, but in the end they pronounced him dead. The wailing coming from the emergency room as people gathered to say farewell was very loud. He was a much respected man.

Meanwhile, a helicopter arrived at the hospital to pick up a patient for a medivac to a bigger hospital. An oil company in the region will use their helicopters to help in this way when needed. The helicopter buzzed overheard, the crowds came out of the wards to watch the action and the people in emergency kept wailing. The patient was carried on a stretcher through the watching crowd to the helicopter that carried her away.

The next day there was a constant stream of people passing the hospital, bush knives in hand. The hospital staff joined the stream, carrying their bush knives also. My inquiries into what was going on revealed that everyone had been called out to cut the airstrip. That explained the incomprehensible shouting I’d heard through the loud hailer all morning. The policeman was from another province and was a respected man, so the whole community was expected to contribute to cutting the airstrip to allow his body to be flown back to his family.

A foggy sunrise over the river at Kikori

Joining the crowd, armed with a camera rather than a bush knife, I chatted with some locals about the state of the airstrip. My pilot friends had told me the strip was closed due to the Marsden matting (metal sheeting) coming up and creating sharp edges that popped plane tyres. My local sources told me that previous plane crashes had occurred because the pilots were idiots who didn’t know how to fly. I think I’ll trust my pilot friends on this one, as they are certainly not idiots. There was a team walking the airstrip with a mallet beating the edges of the matting back into place, so it seemed like the actual cause was being dealt with, even if it was not being believed. The next day a plane successfully landed and took off again, without any flat tyres, to retrieve the body of the policeman and fly it across the country to his family.

So much drama in such a small town!