A Managalas experience

THE story begins with my walk with field-based officer Crispine Burawa and a group of men, women and youths from the Afore government station to Tahama village in the Managalas Plateau of the Ijivitari district, Northern, two weeks ago.
I was engaged with Partners with Melanesian, a national environmental NGO and was there for a field activity under its community empowerment and education awareness programme.
The Managalas Plateau, as some people would have known by now, was declared a conservation area last year on Nov 29 which means it is a no-go zone for any large scale development that would destroy the natural environment.
So the walk from Afore station to Tahama village takes about four hours given the pace of the locals. We took the bush track instead of the main road that was once used by trucks and now, only a few four-wheel drives go through from Afore because the sector of the road from Afore all the way to Itokama has deteriorated over the years. Accessibility to basic services like schools and health facilities is a problem both within the plateau and down to the provincial headquarter.
I’m not sure when the last road maintenance was carried out but it seems that has been done over three decades ago or even more.
We took off around 10 am and I was advised not to carry by own bags so a boy and a young woman assisted me. There was a group women, men and youths who came to the station the previous night from Tahama, so they could assist their family members who came from town by PMV. What assistance in particular is something I didn’t really take note of until later on during the walk.
Little did I know of the challenge that lay ahead of me.
I tried to keep up with the pace of the locals in the first 30 minutes. AlI I was looking forward to was getting to Tahama village on time, get the activity done and get back.
There was a downpour soon after we took off, enough to get us wet so we took shelter in a nearby win house and started off again after it stopped.
As we reached a slope going down hill to a creek, I started noticing the amount of load that the young girls and mothers were carrying in their big string bilums and we were about to walk down the wet slippery slope. Some of them were already down at the creek and onto the other side as if they were walking on flat dry land.
For a moment, I stood still trying to work out how I was going to get down there. At that moment, the young mother of one, who was walking right behind me tapped me on my shoulder and told me to be careful where I put my steps and to hold onto nearby bushes for support. I told her to go on ahead and I would follow after, but she said she was told to accompany me and she would have to walk behind me.
So I found my way down anyway and looked up to her and the others, all with big string bilums on their heads. I noticed now that they were carrying store goods that came all the way from Popondetta by PMV up to as far as Afore station and they are now carrying it in bilums and walking to their village which is about four hours walk.
My heart grew stone cold because I feel for them. Most of them are very young, as young as 15 and 16 years of age I could tell. I remembered myself at that age and the kind of environment my late parents brought me up in, it was nothing like that.
We then climbed up the slope, walked for some five minutes and then downhill again, this time we had to cross a river.
When we crossed the river I fell twice because of the slippery stones and when I reached the other side, right before me was the steep climb, wet and a little bit slippery.
A couple of the men, women and young people including my work colleague went on ahead and they called down to me warning me of the heavy rain that was about to fall soon enough. In that instant, I thought to myself, we were doomed to be soaked wet in this heavy rain any minute when I looked up and saw the heavy dark gray clouds.
I was half way through to top when I had to stop because I felt that my chest expanding. I couldn’t breath and I couldn’t see clearly. I felt a little bit dizzy. But my inner voice told me that I need to get to the top so I held onto a shrub, closed my eyes, took a deep breath and kept on climbing up slowly.
When I reached the top, the rain fell so heavily. The others were there all smiling at me with pity in their eyes. I took a breather and we kept on walking in the heavy downpour.
I checked to ensure my phone, camera and belongings were safe in plastic bags from the rain.
We crossed five more creeks, two more rivers after that with the similar wet, slippery, steep uphill climbs and downhill slopes. So we walked in the rain in that hilly terrain for three three hours and when we reached Koruo village the rain had stopped.
My colleague checked his watch and said he was happy because I took their pace and the walk took exactly three hours, the usual time they took for the trek. What he didn’t know was my struggle and pain to keep up with them. But I did not show him that instead I smiled at all of them.
We continued on for another hour and finally arrived at Tahama village. By then I felt my hip, knees and ankle give up on me but with the help of pain killers I was able to get on with the activities the next three days.
The return trip was ok because the weather was fine and we walked at a much slower pace back to Afore station.
It’s about a week now, and looking back to this experience I thought it’s worth sharing. There are some things we take for granted, others are praying for. And there are little things we do that can make a big difference to someone else’s life. Hence, there are social responsibilities that are either being ignored or deferred and that greatly affect people in the communities.
I am telling my story to bring out the daily struggles of local communities in Managalas Plateau when it comes to road accessibility. I had similar experiences when on holidays in my late dad’s home province, Morobe but it is a totally different story when it comes to my late mother’s home province, East New Britain.
I am proud to say that road accessibility to basic services in East New Britain is the best compared to other provinces in PNG.
So those young girls and mothers with the heavy loads of store goods, whom I walked with for four hours have a story to tell. But they don’t need to necessarily tell me, because I experienced their story in those four hours.
Having to catch a brief breather in between the long walk, I learnt from them that they feel obliged to do what they do for their families and they do it without hesitation because if this is life for them, what choice do they have? And even though they say they are used to carrying heavy loads and walking this distance, I think they deserve better than this.
As if this was not enough for me to think about already, I can only imagine the stories of young children walking distances to school, sick people and pregnant mothers walking distances to get to the nearest health facility and whether they receive proper health care or not is another painful story of its own.
It is a sad, sad reality for most or nearly all communities out in the provinces.

• Story and pictures by Lillian Bago, a freelancer currently attached with Partners with Melanesians Inc.