These two poems were written and read to us by our fantastic guide on two successive mornings in the Mount Hagen area of PNG. By MW = Michael Moge Agilca Kundumb Keping Wandau (Or Michael of the Moge tribe, Agilca clan, Kundumb sub-clan, Wandau Keping family) Day (1) in Kange Country White clouds of fog […]
Read moreCannibal Sleepover
(Andrew) I was not looking forward to this village stay even though Papua New Guinean people are very friendly. We left our lodge on the Karawari River and boarded a very long motorized dug out canoe. We passed many small villages and I hoped that none were ours because I was looking for the 5-star […]
Read moreWig School Diploma
(Reis) We pulled into a muddy lot in the Middle of Nowhere in the Papua New Guinean Highlands. We climbed out of our private Public Motorized Vehicle (ironic, huh?), and nimbly stepped through the mud to a set of rundown grass/mud/stone stairs. We climbed with great care, not wanting to slip and fall. We entered […]
Read moreLand, Women and Pigs
(Greg) We have been on the road for almost a year, putting ourselves into the middle of some of the wildest, most untouched places on Earth. We are pretty salty veterans, so I thought it unlikely that we would be wide-mouthed and pie-eyed by anyplace or any people again. Then we came to the Sepik […]
Read moreA Father’s Grumblings
My daughters are looking at pictures they just took of young kids in a river village. While laughing proudly at their work, they sing a song they made up about Pho, a Vietnamese noodle soup, sung to the tune of Shoshaloza, a popular South African song. I am writhing on a small bed in that […]
Read moreBirthday Star Galactica
(Andrew) Our flight landed in Singapore airport at 10:00 pm from Jakarta, Indonesia. It left the next day at 11:00 pm to Port Moresby, PNG. A full 24 hours in Singapore! As a compromise for having a longhouse birthday (see Reis’ post), Dad agreed to take us to Universal Studios Singapore, even though it was […]
Read moreMy Inner Hornbill
(Reis) As we boarded the boat in Pangkalan Bun, Borneo, the smell of oil filled the air, and we were off. Along the Aruk River, passing by village upon village and boat upon boat, we raced. We sped by outhouse after outhouse with holes directly into the river. Passing by many logging stations, with gigantic […]
Read moreOrangutan Adventures
(Emma) Out of the 25,000 orangutans in the world 5,000 of them live in Tanjung Puting National Park on the island of Borneo. We were fortunate enough to interact and see many of them. We have 4 days at the park; a really long time for a visitor. So that gave us lots of time! […]
Read moreThe Great Diarist
Like Samuel Pepys, Dana has been a tireless chronicler of this year’s adventures. She is creating a tome that will entertain us for years to come. Some of the most entertaining things she records are lists of all varieties of meaningful and meaningless facts. We have started to show a few in the LISTS tab […]
Read moreHe’d Be Bawling
(Dana) In the 1970s, littering was an epidemic in the US. Discarded food wrappers everywhere. Automobile passangers routinely tossed garbage onto anonymous forests and fields as they zipped past. Those who tossed didn’t see it land, so it didn’t exist anymore. Right? Then came what must have been one of the most influential public service […]
Read more