Today Sunday I woke up late, and didn’t come down to fix my
coffee until 7 am. The house was quiet and I read in peace for about an hour
and a half. Then one of the daughters of Tomatha and Andrew came by and asked
if I would care to go with them to church. I jumped at the opportunity, and
found the three daughters all dressed up (18 to 22 years old, I think), as well
as two of the three boys, Dwayne (12 years old) and Wayne (9 years old). We
piled up inside a waiting taxi and went to the Salesian Seminary 2 kilometers
down the road, and just got there on the nick of time as mass was getting
started. Catholic mass, with all the familiar rituals but with actually pretty
good singing of psalms (which in my experience is quite unusual). Catholics and
protestants share the formal religions of PNG, but a lot of people hang on to
animist beliefs and the presence of good and evils spirits. In the highlands,
for example, some tribes favored construction of tree houses, good 10 m up the
trees, to isolate themselves from the spirits that roam the forest floor (and
also because once you pull up the ladder no enemies can reach you). The
practice continues in modern form today, with houses built on stilts even in
places where there is no flood risk. It may also be a way to control pests such
as rodents and snakes.
The plan for today is to go up to the Sogeri Plateau, which
rises to about 1,000 m above POM over a surprisingly short map distance. The
“plateau” is a peneplane that is criss-crossed by shallow stream channels that
can grow to become impressive gorges when they reach the steep mountain front. This
plateau eventually becomes the foothills of the Owen Stanley range, that
extends like a finger from the mainland of New Guinea into the islands of New Britain
and New Ireland; this peninsula has a well-defined north-draining half, and a
south-draining half (toward POM). In one of the first moves of World War II,
the Japanese invaded the north-draining half, with the idea of from there
occupying the full extent of New Guinea. But the Australians foresaw their
move, and with a relatively small force trekked through the jungle along the
grueling Kokoda track, to engage the enemy at Isurava. Bitter fighting ensued,
and from February 1942 to January 1943 the Japanese gained ground little by
little on their way to Port Moresby. But the Australian forces made them pay
for every meter of advance until finally, when Port Moresby was almost lost,
the Japanese command gave the order to “advance to the rear” and the exhausted
Australian and newly arrived American forces harassed them all the way to the
north coast, where a handful of Japanese soldiers entrenched themselves to sell
their lives very dearly. The Kokoda Track has become a pilgrimage to many
Australians, and is PNG’s challenge to the trekkers of the world, with nearly
100 km of steep, slippery slopes. I will have to do 97 km later, but this time
got in 3 km of the track crossing the Varirata National Park.
But to go back to order of my narrative, after coming back
from church we took the obligatory set of pictures with everybody dressed up, I
sat to an excellent breakfast, and shortly thereafter Andrew, Wayne, myself,
and Uncle Bruce got into the car of the latter for our mountain adventure. We
climbed up and up following the Laloki River Gorge until we reached the edge of
the Sogeri Plateau. Wayne, who reminded me a lot of Ronnie, kept us entertained
by describing in exquisite detail the steepness of the walls of the canyon and
how he was afraid that we would fall to our death. Eventually we started
traversing the plateau, where gentle streams provide endless opportunities for
locals to go bathing or for doing the washing of clothes. Our first destination
was the Sirinumu Dam and Reservoir, which provides drinking water and power to
POM. It was built in 1963, under the Australian Protectorate (PNG became
independent in 1975), and is a simple gravity dam with all sorts of small power
plants as the water flows down in penstocks from one to the other. There was a
guy showing off his Jet Ski, and Wayne was suitably impressed.
From there we backed tracked a few kilometers to the
intersection of the Kokoda Trail and the Varirata National Park, where Andrew
and I went for a very nice nature walk along 3 km of the Kokoda Trail. Wayne
had fallen asleep in the moving car, so he got to miss the walk. Poor kid. The
day was beautiful and I could hardly see what was such a big deal with the
Kokoda Trail. That is, until I slipped; man, this thing is like soap and it was
not even raining!
We heard all sorts of birds, and I am sure cassowaries and
wallabies were looking at us from the brush, but I never saw them. We did see
the poor remains of a native tree house, and the mounds of leaves that the wild
turkeys build to keep the eggs that their hens lay down. The hen then takes off
to live a life of dissolution, while the male “hatches” the eggs by making sure
that the temperature in the decaying leaf pile is just right. If it is getting
cold he adds more leaves to the pile; if it is getting too warm he removes some
of the leaves to let the pile breath. The wild turkey of PNG could be next
year’s poster child for Father’s Day. 😊
Mmm . . . PNG pit barbecue of chicken and yams, followed by
a very spicy curry of chicken and noodles for dinner. Yummy! As I sat enjoying
my excellent meal I had an easy conversation with Jennifer, who told me more
about The Swamp (reminds me of the Brazilian Pantanal), where she
lives and teaches. This is the swampy estuary that extends for a good 100 km
between the mountains and the southwest coast of Papua. It is a water world
where everybody moves in canoes, and where there is fish every single day for
dinner. She is going back with 9 other teachers, first 4 hours by sea, and then
8 hours by motor boat up the particular river she lives by. I wish I could go
with them.
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