A Fun Weekend

After a busy week of just the usual we had a fun weekend. Bill has found a new friend! Sasa and his wife Sara are staff members here at Kabiufa.  Sasa is very musical and loves to play the guitar and write music, so you can just imagine how he and Bill instantly hit it off.  Sabbath we invited the family over and Bill and Sasa spent all afternoon happily strumming away on their guitars while the entire family lustily sang along! Sasa has 6 children ranging in age from around 4 to 18 years old and they sing beautifully together in 4 part harmony. They remind me of the Von Trapp singers in "The Sound of Music".

Sunday Bill took me flying with him. This is a special treat as we wives usually have to sit at home for lack of room in the airplane.  He was moving a new mission secretary, Pastor Robinson, and his family down to the coastal village of Kikori. While I have often had the opportunity to fly in the Highlands this was my first time down to the coast, so I was excited. Here you see the pilot...

...and the copilot!

I will let you guess from the following photo who was actually doing the flying. (-:

I NEVER tire of the beautiful PNG scenery.  The rugged, steep mountains of the Highlands dropping sharply down into deep, narrow gorges with rushing rivers  are in sharp contrast to the flat jungle of the coastal regions, crisscrossed with huge, lazy rivers.

 
This area reminds me so much of Peru, South America were Bill flew as a mission pilot when we first got married. It made me feel a bit homesick. Every where you looked there was another river!

Here you see a little section of hills looking very out of place in an otherwise flat landscape of solid jungle. You can actually see the ocean on the horizon where all these rivers empty out in to. 

Coming in for the landing to the village of Kikori. The airstrip is straight ahead. Can you see it?

For all you World War II buffs, this airstrip is left over from the war when they use to just lay down this metal mesh and presto, you had an instant airstrip! Even after all these years it still works pretty good.

Here is Pastor Bill Robinson with his wife and son.  That little pile of luggage you see in the back ground are their entire worldly possessions. Don't you wish you could move this easily?

See that big smile on my face? You would be smiling too if you could have joined us on this flight. It was great fun.

Fixing Things

We spent this past week fixing things. First we decided our house was in bad need of a face lift. It has probably been 10 years at least since its last paint job. It was definitely time for the alternating purple, pink and yellow doors to go!

Bill is creatively using the double roller method to give our walls that special touch.

Trying to eat lunch in the middle of the mess. While the house is not yet finished, I can assure you that it is looking lovely. (After all, anything is an improvement over pink, purple, & yellow, right?)

Then this Sunday Bill took it upon himself to fix the church piano. (sorry, no photo) He just couldn't take the sad, discordant sounds any more. None of the pedals were working, the keys were sticking and several would not play. It was filthy dirty and badly out of tune. So...he took it all apart, (literally - the action taken out and disassembled, the keys all removed, etc.) cleaned everything, fixed the pedal mechanisms, repaired broken action pieces, sanded all the keys, put it all back together and tuned it! How's that for a days work?

Last month while landing at Kapi Roger "kissed" some tree limbs with the left wing - ouch.

The guys opted to simply get an entire replacement outer wing section and new aileron from the factory in New Zealand instead of spending months attempting a repair job.  The crates finally arrived Tuesday night.

It was better than Christmas!

That is one, big, fat wing section.

Brooks and Bill supervise getting it into the correct position.

Three bolts...and it's on.

It's as simple as that.

See, I don't just take pictures.  I help too. (That's me in the far dark right!)

Back in service again.  A very happy day!

Why Fly?

Come along with me on a typical mornings worth of flying, and perhaps you'll discover why aviation is so vital in this country.

After an hour flight from Goroka we're getting ready to land at Kerema on the Southern coast.

It is truly beautiful as we circle over the bay on approach.  After landing we pick up Pastor Soga and his wife, along with some cargo.  Then we're off again.

Now we head along the coast for 50 minutes to Kikori, where the local mission headquarters is located.  

After dropping the passengers off, it's time to head back up into the central highlands to the town of Karimui where 5 sick people are waiting to be flown out to the hospital.

Karimui is lucky to be in a relatively flat valley which allows room to have a nice long airstrip.  But one must still watch out for the ever present "potholes" and soft spots.

From Karimui it is only a 25 minute flight up the Tua river valley back into Goroka.  

But now you can see why roads are almost impossible to build throughout most of PNG.  How many airstrips can you find in the picture?  (Hint: There are three.)

After passing over the Nomani ridge we come across the Wagi river.

Here, and in the picture below,  you can see that most "villages" are built right on top of the ridge lines. As you can see, it is so narrow that is is only one hut wide!

This gives you a little glimpse of how steep the terrain is.  Often runways are built along the spines of ridges because that is the only place to find a small amount of somewhat "level" ground.  

Now we are within 5 minutes of Goroka, and there are a few dirt roads that venture out and around from there.  Would be a whole lot more enjoyable on a good dirt bike than a car...

We're flying along at almost 8,000 feet, and yet the Elimbari cliffs are higher than we are.

Around the corner from Elimbari is the Kawkaw gap.  This is the last ridge line to cross before we descend into the Goroka valley and "home".

Goroka sits in a large valley at just over 5,000 feet.  That's it up ahead and just left of the nose.  We actually have two parallel paved runways!  And one of the only highways (2 lane road with no shoulders and lots of potholes) in the country that comes up from Lae on the Eastern coast.  It's always good to be back home.