To the Regions Beyond

When I settled into my new office, I met my new PNG health educator counterpart and the health education consultant whom I would be replacing. Our terms of service would overlap by two weeks. He and his wife had one of the other cottages on the Salvation Army compound making it possible for me to ride to and from the office with him in a small Isuzu jeep, which would become my vehicle after his departure. I was very interested to learn about the projects he had been working on while in the country. He and our counterpart had been working on a village development project for the past two years. When I expressed and interest the three of us, went to visit a project village. After meeting with village elders to identify health problems and village interests, they helped the villagers bring fresh water into the village from a spring on a nearby hill. The running water allowed the village to build a common shower and a large sink with a metal counter in the middle of the village allowing fresh water for drinking, washing clothes, and cooking. The access to running water in the village saved the women and girls from carrying water back and forth from the river below the village. They had also built a latrine and dug a garbage pit to keep the area around the village houses and common areas clean of rubbish that attracted insects and rodents. I asked the village elders what effect all these changes had on their daily lives. They reported that the children enjoyed better health fewer bouts of illnesses from dirty water, food, and fewer sores brought on by dirty clothing and rubbish on the ground. This meant village mothers spent fewer days visiting the health clinic a couple of hours away, giving them more time to work in their gardens increasing their output, and bringing more money to the village from their sell of surplus of vegetables that were sold at the weekly market. I asked them what steps they wanted to take next to continue the improvement. They told me they would like a small tractor so the women could expand the garden. Also, if the tractor had an attachment, the women could dig a deeper garbage pit than the ones they could dig by hand. They wanted a clinic built closer to their village saving time for the women coming and going when someone was sick. It was very interesting for me to hear that the list of improvements resulted in more work for the women. Once again, the prosperity would be built on the backs of females. I soon discovered in observing and listening that, like in many places in the world, the men spent their time identifying problems and discussing serious matters while the women went about taking care of survival skills for the whole society. One day the WHO chief called telling us to leave our offices and go directly to our residences and stay in place until we were notified that it was safe to return. The different tribes in PNG were very superstitious and when a popular politician died of liver cancer in Australia his tribe accused another tribe of putting a curse on him. This resulted in a large anti-government demonstration in downtown Port Moresby. Warriors covered their faces with mud in preparation to face the enemy and prepared to travel over the hill to parliament and wreak havoc on government property. My predecessor and I got into our little jeep and headed over our first hill and down the hill through the major intersection in Boroko. The Salvation Army compound was a quarter of a mile on the other side of the intersection. As we came to the intersection, we could see mobs of men running down the hill, and a sign that they were in fighting mode was the mud on their faces and arms. I suggested to the driver that we should stop the jeep before the intersection until there was a lull in the mobs of people coming, in which case we could drive through the intersection unimpeded. My suggestion was completely ignored, and we proceeded to drive through the mobs that were coming who ran around the front and the back of our jeep as we waded through the masses of men. I think that was one of the most frightening episodes in my entire life because the men running in the street were intent on mayhem. This is one time I felt that our jeep was surrounded by a legion of angels as it passed through the mob. We continued and entered the Salvation Army compound, and I went to my little cottage, and my predecessor went to his cottage, met his wife and we spent the rest of the day behind the locked gate to our compound. The next day it was safe for us to return. In due time my predecessor departed for home, and I had possession of the little Isuzu.