Kokoda – Mt Hagen with Library Books

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With Evertius (L) and Katia in the path of one of the many streams in our way up to reaching Kagi village...

We are back after more than a month out there in our very first awareness run.

This post serves as a quick update for those of you out there who may be wondering what has come of this exercise.

We left Port Moresby on the 19th of May 2010 in the early hours of the morning at 0300 hrs to find ourselves at Ower’s corner at 5 in the morning. It took us a total of 7 days (6 nights) to get to Kokoda Station in the Oro Province of Papua New Guinea. This part of our expedition was a an eye-opening experience for me and the rest of the trekking party of 8 other youths from NCD.

After 2 days in Popondetta, we boarded the Calvados Queen on the afternoon of  Saturday (29/5/2010)  and found ourselves in Lae the very next morning.

After being out in the bush for a week breathing in the sights and sounds of mother nature’s own quite cool, the drone of engines, the muck, grime, careless litter and the endless craters of potholes combined with the exhaustive humidity and the bums  forever mucking around Eriku for that 5 Toea discount and a quick buck at the expense of some poor old lady or a newcomer in town was just too much for me to stomach.

The School Captain making a point in receiving the books which can be seen in the background.

Finance was another factor and I quickly made the resolve to pull the plug and make an early exit with the boys, minus the books that had been shipped earlier from Port Moresby.  Apparently, my pallet of books had been off-loaded onto another ship.

After dropping off the boys at Kimil in WHP, I returned, making a quick stop for a day at Koningi Primary School to celebrate World Environment Day and continued down to Lae to pick up the books. I then returned to WHP, picked up the boys and headed straight for the foothills of Mt Hagen (the mountain) and handed the books over to the kids of Bukapena Primary School.

We also featured on Eagle FM, making mention of our work and further reaching out to the masses with our awareness messages. Our plan to do a complete cleanup campaign of the city never eventuated due to deaths in the village so we shelved that plan and I instead made a request to students in Bukapena and in Hagen Secondary to spearhead this exercise as their own initiative.

We concluded our trek by heading up straight to the summit of Mt Hagen at 3800m. Most of the boys did not quite make it that far as the cold and the high altitude got the better of them. Me and one other trekker along with 3 boys from the villages made it to the top and got back late in the night the next day.

Its a long way to the TOP if you wanna Rock N Roll... Heading up to the top of Mt Hagen (3800m)

Our return to Lae was as boring as a dénouement could be. The highlight of it all was the night I spent on the streets of Top Town in front of some shop wondering what the hell happened to Taxis. I was even stranded the next morning and had to seek the good nature of the offsider of two buses to make my way to 2 Mile where I picked up my bag and got as fast out of Lae as I could.

This was supposed to be a brief but it seems like a brief but looks nothing like it…
(uh?)

:p

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