Deep in isolation there is hope

Weekender

By PISAI GUMAR

DEEP in the highlands of beautiful Madang, and touching the border with Morobe, is a place called Teptep. There is a government station there but not much else in the form of government services.
Villagers in this part of the country live a subsistence life. It takes them three days to walk to Madang or Lae to sell their produce like vegetables and tobacco (brus). It is not a journey for the faint-hearted; the walk is hard and energy-sapping, and when business is done they take the same long walk home again.
Farmers in the areas cultivate 50 varieties of vegetables and fruits that grow abundantly because of the rich soil. It is estimated that they can easily feed the hundreds of employees at Basamuk refinery, Hidden Valley mine and supply hotels, grocery shops and people in Madang and Lae.
But there are serious obstacles and few alternatives: Taking produce by air costs  K5/kg , that is if  the flight is not delayed or cancelled. Third level airline North Coast Aviation (NCA) provides a weekly service while the Goroka-based Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF), a Christian organisation that missionaries and villagers in remote areas, helps with hire services.
Teptep is in the Nayudo council area in the interior of Raicoast. It shares a border with Yus LLG in Kabwum, Morobe.
Sadly, the 15 wards in Nayudo LLG – Gabot-Tamong, Bobongap, Tapen, Boana, Wandabong, Koembung, West Kokop, Bambu, Yawang-Gombo, Meweng, Gubaiyong, Kandawo, Marawan, Miok and Yopbok – are truly isolated without road access.
If you’re not walking, then flying is the only other alternative, and if you want to charter a plane then that will set you back by K12,000  with North Coast Aviation aircraft.
Just a step away on the other side of the Tepteps are the Kabwum people of Yus in Morobe. They too live in the same mountainous region which is mostly accessible only by plane.
To travel to Lae, the airfare on a third level aircraft costs K385 a person, while a person travelling to Madang on the same aircraft from Kabwum pays K410. To travel to Lae by sea, you first pay K50 for a road trip to Wasu then the rest of the way on a K280 dinghy ride by sea.
Without roads, third level aircraft are the quickest and most efficient means to travel and carry cargo, but that is easier said than done because the cost can be beyond the reach of simple villagers living a subsistence existence.
It costs K10,000 to freight 100 fuel drums from Lae to Wasu by ship and K700 to hire a vehicle from Wasu to Kabwum.
Some other areas to which North Coast Aviation and Mission Aviation Fellowship provide much-needed services are Kanabeya and Kaintiba in Gulf, parts of Menyamya, Kabwum, Garaina Tekadu in Morobe and Obura-Wonenara in Goroka.
They don’t get any government tax rebate and when you add to that the cost of fuel and the fact that the airstrips are poorly maintained – if maintained at all – and without basic amenities like passenger terminals, wind socks and cone markers, it’s a rough ride up there.
Better road access can inspire the villagers of Yus and Nayudo to participate fully in their region’s socio-economic activities and perhaps we won’t have coffee cherries and fresh garden produce rotting away in gardens.
Nayudo and Yus not only share geographical features and economic woes but also family and cultural ties.
While the Yus people can catch a PMV down to the coast for a sea journey to Lae, the Nayudo people have to walk for two days to the Saidor coastline for a K150 dinghy trip to Madang.
If they decide to go to Lae, it’s a three-day trek south-west to Keweng-Gorgiok-Kubung then to Bumbum in Wantoat, Morobe, and then catch a PMV ride for K40.
Nayudo council president Baza Yowa said that a fresh food cooperative group was initiated in 2012 to enable local farmers to sell their produce at Teptep station but the cost of airfreight consumed one third of the income, forcing the Madang-based fresh food dealer to bail out.
The LLG does not have a council manager after the previous one left. Only a handful of committed public servants such as teachers, health workers and agricultural staff remain.
Yowa walks to Saidor for a dinghy trip to Madang to attend district development meetings.
Three primary schools in Nayudo LLG, Wandabong, Koembung and Gaptomo, have been registered with Morobe division of education, instead of Madang. The lack of roads and the challenging landscape make it difficult for most people to seek health services at Teptep. Only four health workers serve at the health center there. Most aid posts around Teptep have closed because the staff keep leaving and medicines hard to come by.
The only primary school in Teptep only has grade 3 to grade 8 classes. After that parents have to look for money to send their children to Raicoast High School in Astrolabe Bay LLG .
In 2015, then Kabwum MP and now Governor-General Bob Dadae committed K2 million to building a road from Wantoat to Teptep but the road wasn’t built because the terrain was too difficult  to cut.
Dadae instead invested very heavily in the education of children both in Kabwum and in Teptep.
His hope is that these children, many of whom have also been sent to university overseas, will gain the education and the skills to one day open up this forgotten part of the country and make life easier for those who follow.
Meanwhile, the Yus Tree Kangaroo Conservation Project (TKCP) has been successfully contributing towards encouraging sustainable livelihood programmes in this part of the country. Apart from its conservation aims, TKCP invests in ward development and land use plans, health, education and coffee production. Families in the 13 wards in Yus, two in Nayudo – including Ronzi and Singorokai on the coast at Wasu – are the beneficiaries.
TKCP assists in areas where government is unable to provide for the people.
The councilors are trained to realign ward development plans with district and provincial plans in line with the government’s Vision 2050 in order to be able to attract funding.
Schools in the area are benefitting mostly from a teacher-training scholarship agreement between TKCP, the parents and LLG to train three teachers each year at Balob Teachers College in Lae.
TKCP is also providing teaching and learning materials, especially library books, microscopes for science lessons and desks.
Village birth attendants are also being trained, health facilities improved with the installation of solar lights and freezers for storing immunization vaccines and drugs.
Most drugs come from the United States with the help of TKCP, which also arranges visits by specialist doctors from the US. The land use plans are categorized into conservation, buffer and livelihood areas with 78,000 hectares catering for all species of wildlife and plants monitored by rangers using GPS equipment.
The villagers can access the buffer and livelihood areas for coffee productions, which is the main income source and exported to the US and Australia. The farmers get paid K6 per kg.
The buffer area is also used for other agricultural purposes and the villagers are taught reforestation programmes on savannah and grassland plateaus.
A couple of years back, Dadae revellaed his dream: “One day the light will shed upon the sobbing hearts of people bordering Nayudo and Yus isolated by harsh landscape in the misty mountains of Madang and Morobe and this place will become a little Japan by the power of education.”
This might just come true.