Trip to CLTC

Well I thought I would take this opportunity to let you all know what travel is like here in PNG, land of the unexpected.

Earlier in the week I received a phone call from Aunty Alison who lives at CLTC (Christian Leaders Training College), around 7 hours drive from Ukarumpa. A van was coming through from Lae on the way back to CLTC on Friday that I could grab a ride on, so it seemed like a perfect opportunity to see where she lives and see a bit more of PNG.

The van was leaving Lae at around 4am and reached Ukarumpa just before 8am, so I had to leave work early. There were 5 of us in the van, myself, Uncle Ross, another kiwi named Laurie, the driver Thomas and a lady who works in the office at CLTC named Nancy. We took off and all was going well. We drove through Kainantu (not far from Ukarumpa) taking the same route I went on last weekend for the bible dedication.

As we approached the crest of a hill all of a sudden 4 men armed with home made rifles and 2 men with bush knives forced us to stop. This was a new experience to me. It would be exceptionally rare to be held up at gunpoint in New Zealand, and in my year in Canada not once did anything like this happen. So I was a little unsure what they may do. I figured they were probably after money, and I was starting to wish that I had stored some of my money in my shoe like Jonathan has been doing in the Philippines. I thought it would probably be too late to try transferring it at that point so I just sat there in the van and waited to see what would happen. One of the men with a bush knife approached the drivers door and hit it with his knife, not particularly hard, but enough to give the impression that he wanted the driver to wind down the window I guess. The driver had some lunch money stored in the ash tray and was pretty quick to hand that over, I think it was 18 kina (around NZ $9) and amazingly after receiving that money the gunmen took off. So we were let off very lightly and continued on our way, all be it a little shaken from our experience. Apparently the driver had been held up before and he and his son were driven to a village where the vehicle was unloaded and they were stripped naked before being allowed to take the van and leave. I didn't hear about that until later, so I didn't realize at the time just how lightly we had been let off.

A few hours later as we were driving along up a steep mountain pass, we came across a group of people looking over the edge of the road, where there was a 300 metre or so drop. Apparently a bus (one of the PMVs that I was intending on returning to Ukarumpa in) had not negotiated the corner successfully and had flown off the edge. Reports from people at the scene were that they had removed 15 bodies so far, and were still trying to cut others out of the wreckage.

Once again we continued on our journey, until we came across two men armed with shovels who were blocking the road. Apparently they had been filling in a few potholes and then demanding money from travellers in return. Not wanting to be harmed with the shovel, I quickly removed a 2 kina note from my shoe and handed it to the driver who passed it out the window. That seemed to satisfy them and we were allowed to continue yet again.

So we continued yet again until we came across a big truck trailer unit that was blocking half the road. A bunch of people were blocking the other half of the road asking for money. These people didn't even have any shovels, so they were a little more negotiable on price. They wanted 5 kina, instead Laurie told them off in the name of Jesus, and they took that as a fair payment and let us pass.

And that was the last stopage on the journey. Last night I heard that there was a possibility of catching a flight from Hagen to Ukarumpa, Hagen is about 1 hour or so from CLTC. So I left bright and early this morning in a van fill of day old chickens. After waiting at the airport for about an hour I finally found out that there were no flights going to Ukarumpa today so I was out of luck. Instead I spent a rather interesting day delivering chickens and driving around Hagen (I wasn't driving, I was just a passenger). I am heading back to Ukarumpa at 4am Wednesday in the CLTC egg delivery truck. Hopefully we will be too early for the rascalls and we will have a less eventful journey this time.

Sorry I didn't have the prescence of mind to grab my camera and take photos of the gunmen, you will just have to take my word for it that they looked pretty mean.