Early flight to Lumi. 9 July

Our flight was meant to leave at 7 am, but has been delayed due to fog in Lumi.   While we are waiting at the tiny MAF terminal in Wewak, we examine the posters on the wall.  MAF stands for "Mission Aviation Fellowship" and is one of a number of small plane airline providers to and from remote places in PNG.  On the Internet, I discover that MAF's mission is:   "Sharing the love of Jesus Christ through aviation and technology so that isolated people may be physically and spiritually transformed."    Rachel and I are both drawn to a poster on the wall, which depicts the two paths one can take in life, and is translated into Pidgin:  "Rot bilong Dai" (the road of Death); or the "Rot Bilong Loip" (the road of Life)    We note the former is filled with cheerful, if rather uninspired people, walking hand and in hand, listening quietly to some boring lectures, and doing not much of anything, except perhaps observing a big conflagration where people are burning up some books.   I must admit that the "Rot bilong Dai" is infinitely more intriguing with lots of cheerful souls boozing it up, going to "Haus Piksa" (movie house), having a gay old time, and going up to have a look at a giant volcano that's on fire.    In the photo below, there is a quote from Matthew in the Bible.   Through an unfortunate twist of linguistics, "the Kingdom of Heaven is near" translates in Pidgin to "Kingdom bilong heven em i kamap klostu pinis."

Poster depicting "Rot bilong Dai" and "Rot bilong Loip"
"Turn from your sins and turn to God, because the Kingdom of
Heaven is near."    Matthew 3:2  

In some of my preparation reading for the trip, I read Papua New Guinea:  Tales from a Wild Island, in which the author, Howard M. Beck, remarks on the great number of Christian-based aviation organizations in PNG.   With one in particular, he notes that the passengers are all requested to join in prayer with the pilot prior to takeoff.   Somehow, I don't find the idea of fervently praying before zooming off down the runway all that appealing.   I am hopeful that we may be spared this ritual.

We notice another sign, which explains some of the rules of the MAF terminal.

It is forbidden:   No can smoke, no can lightem matches, turn off your
mobile phones, radios and pagers.

Although we haven't had to pay any luggage surcharges so far, we get dinged on this flight.  It is determined that we have some excess baggage, and so we have to pay about $68 to get our bags to Lumi.   We figure this is not too bad, and hope this is the only time we'll have to pay extra.

We get airborne around 9:30am or so, sans a take-off prayer, and with great curiousity about where our next adventures will take us, we head to the north and to the west.   Lumi, our destination, is as close as we will get to West Papua, perhaps some 200 km from the border.

When we step out of the plane, an unusual man is there to greet us, nicknamed "Lumi Man." In his wonderful book "Throwim Way Leg" (Tok Pisin for "To Begin a Journey") by Tim Flannery, Dr. Flannery writes,

"It is always slightly unnerving arriving at a new location in Papua New Guinea.   You have no idea what the locals will be like or how you will be received.   Stepping out of the Cessna at Lumi that first time I would have been met by a small, wizened fellow known to one and all as Lumi Man.   Lumi Man looks official.   He wears a clean white shirt and blue shorts.   Sometimes he carries a clipboard and pen.   Lumi Man greets each stranger as they step from their aircraft with a long, detailed harangue.   This harangue can be disconcerting, for Lumi Man delivers it in a language which no-one else can understand.   On subsequent visits to Lumi I have seen Europeans stand puzzled and embarrassed for long minutes as they strain to understand Lumi Man and his function.   Meanwhile, everyone else in Lumi enjoys the joke enormously.   The best response, apparently, is to shake Lumi Man's hand rather formally, an honour which he delightedly returns with a crisp salute."

Jean meets us at the Lumi airstrip, all smiles and good humor.   We all have a good laugh about my idea (many months ago) that "a taxi" might bring us to their home, which is a 1 km walk from the airstrip, down a stone-flecked road, that rises and falls gently along the way to their compound.   Mercifully, she has arranged for some of her neighbors, for a few Kina, to carry our luggage to Jim and Jean's house.

I didn't know Jim or Jean well at all before arranging this trip, and so we arrive with a small sense of trepidation, not knowing precisely if everything will work out as we'd hoped.   Will our Australian hosts like us?   Will we all get along?   Is our presence going to be a burden for them?     Will their Aussie humor jive with our kooky American sensibilities?   Will they force us to eat Vegemite?    I'm sure the concern was almost precisely the same on their end (except for the the Vegemite), as they have no idea about Rachel at all, and they've met me only briefly a few times.   There is maybe one hour at the very beginning of meeting them where we are all quietly sussing out the others.   Jim and Jean remark that they've had a number of friends come and stay with them, but we are their first tourists.   Not meant as a slight, but still, we feel that we are not exactly their friends, although we hope to leave them as friends.

Within a very short time, we are all laughing and trading stories and getting on like old cronies.

Rachel's photo:   Flying into Lumi

Arriving in Lumi -- the whole village has come to watch the plane land
(it brings in supplies for the tiny "store"... these are sold out in a matter of hours.)
Note that Rachel and I were the only passengers on this plane!   I looked in vain for Lumi Man, who
Tim Flannery mentions, but he was not there.

We are intrigued and delighted by their compound.   Jim and Jean were both zookeepers in Melbourne, and when they moved to Lumi they were presented with an assortment of local fauna:   assorted species of tree kangaroos, sugar gliders, a gigantic Victoria Crowned pigeon, bats, even a small crocodile.   Presiding as the king among these beasts is the glorious KENNY, the spotted cuscus.    Rachel and I agree that he steals both of our hearts the second we meet him.   Softest white fur, a prehensile pink tail that grasps our arms with remarkable strength, his dear little five-fingered marsupial "hands", a curious nose, and exceedingly sharp claws (that accidentally nicked the area below Rachel's eye).   Jean tells us that cuscuses can be aggressive and downright mean, but Kenny is a charmer and extremely gentle.   He was apparently a hand-me-down from an English ex-pat woman who lived in Wewak;  the same woman also had a prodigious assortment of human skulls.   When she returned to England she needed to find a home for Kenny since she couldn't take him with her, and Jean and Jim obliged.

Grizzled tree kangaroo at Jim and Jean's compound.

One of the very rare Weimang tree kangaroos,
at Jim and Jean's compound

Jim explains to us that the animals here, especially the tree kangaroos (there are several species here, including the rare and beautiful Weimangs and the grizzled tree kangaroos) are rather delicate.   When Jim and Jean leave PNG to travel to America, Australia and elsewhere, they always leave detailed instructions for their workers on how and when to feed all the animals.   Unfortunately, their instructions, for whatever reasons, aren't always well followed, and inevitably, one or two animals tragically die in their absence. Perhaps the workers are taking the animals' food for themselves, or just don't understand why anyone would care if the creatures thrive or starve.

Jim and Jean live in a sort of "compound":   about 1 1/2 acres of land with various buildings:   a two-storey open air home, offices, teaching center, housing for staff and guests, outbuildings for their small collection of animals and birds, a small enclosure and pond for the crocodile, solar panels and water storage unit.   All of this is surrounded by a tall chain link fence, topped with the customary razor wire.  The gates to the compound are kept locked, and at night the two large and menacing Rottweiler dogs (Kling and Klang) roam the property, as well as posted guards with machetes.

Crowned Victoria Pigeon (these are quite large, about 4 times larger
than a regular pigeon you would see in the US)

Jim recounts to us a rather unpleasant situation he had in around November of 2009, which still haunts him.   As it is quite costly to fly needed goods into Lumi, there is another alternative:   shipping goods from Wewak overland by road for about 8 hours.  Last year, Jim arranged for a large shipment of food and supplies to be transferred from Wewak.  Apparently, the goods were to come to a halfway point on the Wewak-Lumi thoroughfare, and be stored at the house of a PNG landowner, who was to be paid for the storage of the goods until Jim could come and fetch them.  When Jim arrived to retrieve his cargo, he learned that about two-thirds of it had gone missing:   stolen.  Naturally, he only paid for what he actually picked up (less the money for the missing goods)  but the landowner felt he had been cheated out of his storage fee.   When next Jim appeared on this landowner's nearby roadway, the angry landowner lay in wait and attacked Jim and his traveling companions in the jeep with a sharp axe, and bloodshed was narrowly averted.  Everyone in the jeep was terrified and henceforward, Jim and Jean keep a sharp lookout for this maniac, should he come near their property.   I think this incident resulted in the tightening up of fencing and security around the Thomas's property.