The long road to progress

Weekender

By JIMMY KALEBE

DESPITE the long distance, rugged mountainous terrains and fast flowing rivers, villagers who live along the banks of the Mami and Mangiang Rivers in Umi Atzera local level government in Markham continue to make the two-hour trek to Mutzing and Umi markets to sell their garden produce for cash as well as to meet up with other relatives now living below in the Markham Plains.
Located along the Okuk highway, Umi and Mutzing are main meeting places for people from many parts of Markham and these places where it is easier to catch a PMV to Lae, Madang or the highlands provinces.
Getting to and from these places is fine except that for the people of Dantap, Amari, Tari, Samaran, Nawantamaran and Yampoa, they have to laboriously haul their cargo for two hours back up to the mountains where home is. It’s a long walk if your cargo is iron sheets for a house or heavy pieces of timber.
This is the part of the Umi Atzera LLG which experienced one of the deadliest landslips in the history of the country when 72 people from Mutzing, Marafau and Zumara were buried alive in 1988.
Since the disaster, life for the people has revolved around working in partnerships with other family units and clans to get things done.
Nawantmaran Primary School is the only primary school that serves these villages. Located at Nawantmaran village, some 40kms from Umi, getting school supplies in and out of there needs communal support and effort.
The school currently enrolls students from grades 3 to 8 and it is no easy feat even for small children travelling to and from the school in the harsh environment where there are no proper roads for cars to travel.
Without any road, villagers from Dantap say walking is the only mode of transport for them.
Even the area aid post has closed with health staff complaining that the place is too remote, making moving around difficult.
Last month, Huon Gulf Rotary Club of Lae came to the assistance of Dantap Elementary School located 50kms from Umi.
The elementary school serves school-aged children from Sasau, Wamaramban and Dantap itself, and was established in early 2011.
People of these villages are keen to see their children educated and have walked to the Okuk Highway and back many times, shouldering building materials for both schools as well as classroom supplies.
Roofing iron and cement for the primary school and elementary schools were hauled up to the mountains on shoulders, sometimes through the treacherous and fast flowing of Mangiang and Mami Rivers.
Chairman of Dantap village elementary school Kila Geseng said it has been their way of life for as long as they can remember.
“This is the place we call home and we cannot move anywhere”. Any basic services that we deem of importance to the community, we have to work together to make it happen,” he said.
Like many others around PNG, they too want to open up their villages to the outside world through development.
Teacher in charge of Dantap elementary school Robbie Yawising said education is the priority for his people because it is viewed as a way to produce educated elites who will bring prosperity and development back to their people.
But for now, road access remains a problem for the five isolated villages. On top of that, or due to the access difficulties, government services are not reaching them.
I was there at the donation of 25 desks by Huon Gulf Rotary club. It was definitely was not a journey for the fainthearted.
Starting at the foothills of the Zulurua mountains at around 1:30pm on a Friday afternoon, we trekked for five hours walk through the rain and flooded river banks to get to Dantap. It takes locals only two hours to make this trip.
Dantap is where Umi Atzera LLG borders with Leron Wantoat LLG. After spending a night there and witnessing the handover of the new desks by Huon Gulf Rotary Club to the elementary school the next morning, we took the same route back to Zulurua, where, thankfully, we boarded a vehicle back to Lae.
We should never, for once, think that life in the village is laid back and easy.