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The coffee's good in
Goilala
By BILISO OSAKE
Taking the Gospel to people in remote
parts of PNG is not an easy task.
One must be prepared to trek long distances, deal with harsh
elements of nature and make do with little or no creature
comforts.
Such is the case when I visit remote areas in Goilala district of
Central province for outreach work.
On a recent trip I landed at Fane airstrip in Goilala at 8.00 am
and trekked over the mountains into the Dilava valley with some
boys.
We passed the Fefele creek about 1.00 pm, and arrived at the
Kodige community school an hour and half later.
We rested for ten minutes and resumed walking for another hour
reaching Sogega village at about 4.30 pm.
My reason for trekking there was to open the Christian Revival
Crusade's Sogega local church building.
Before the opening, Pr Steven Avoli, Pr Fana Kaia and I conducted
a week of night crusades and taught from the Bible during the day.
A day after the church opening, I trekked with a couple of boys
over the Illide and Mondo range for Tolokuma mine. We walked
through thick forest on wet and humid soil some areas covered with
thick beds of fallen dried leaves.
The stones in the streams were covered with lush green moss with
icy cold water flowing over them. As we climbed higher towards the
ridge top, all along way, leeches that were on the leaves and
ground and everywhere sucked our blood.
The forest was full of all sorts of wild tropical flowers, and I
saw many mushrooms along the way. The locals told us they were not
good for eating.
We arrived at the Tolokuma mine in the afternoon. I went there
purposely to visit one of our newly established local churches
near the mine site.
We needed to eat so I gave one of the boys a K50 note and
proceeded to give him a list of items to buy. The boy stopped me
from adding to the list after I mentioned ox & palm, a 1kg packet
of rice, and two packets of noodles, 1kg sugar and a packet of
Nescafe coffee.
"Pasta, noken ting bai igat senis ikam bek long dispela fifti kina
bilong yu. Olgeta samting em ten kina tasol. Dispela ino olsem
Mosbi" (Pastor, don't think you'll get any change from this fifty
kina note. This is not Moresby; most of the items you mentioned
cost ten kina each.)
Three days later I trekked with two boys to Mondo to visit another
local church, which was half a days walk away. We passed through
Mondo community school. The classrooms were empty, the school yard
overgrown with grass.
The locals told me the school had not been operating for the last
three years due to non- availability of teachers.
Peter Valava, a former student told me that because of this he
went away three years ago to attend Ononge Community School, which
is nearly two days walk away from Mondo. He was now doing his
grade five there.
We proceeded to Fane airstrip arriving there at two in the
afternoon. It took seven hours (7:00am - 2:00pm) for me to walk
from Mondo to Fane, a local can walk the distance in less than
three hours.
We put our bags in a house belonging to Michael Kulevu, one of the
local chiefs of Fane. The other is chief Henry. Chief Michael has
two wives and eight children.
After dinner, one of chief Michael's brothers treated us to some
home made coffee.
He put some dried coffee beans in a frying pan over the fire for
two minutes.
He took handfuls of the fried coffee beans and rubbed them between
his palms to remove the husks.
When all the husks were removed he put the pan of coffee beans
back on the fire, continually stirring them until the beans turned
chocolate brown.
He poured some of these into an empty tinned fish and crushed them
with an iron rod until they became a fine coffee powder.
He carefully poured the powder into small plastic packets to be
sold at K2.
Some powder he poured into a boiling kettle of water which was
later strained into cups for us to drink.
The taste? It was the best tasting coffee I have ever drunk. Made
in Goilala.
 
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