Moving About

On Sunday we took a walk across the hills that overlook our house in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea. The hills aren't all that impressive in themselves but once you reach the top, there are views, quite lovely ones actually. Down to the sea on one side, across the coastal plain to the Owen Stanley Range some kilometres inland, on the other. Quite impressive in its own way. The walk wasn't all that long, just under two hours, and about seven kilometres. It was humid after the night's rain and in parts, slippery underfoot. After months of the dry season the first rains last week had brought forth a flush of green - the hills were changing their coats again, dull brown for green fresh. It was good to be there. The people who live here are not the originals - these days, that's not uncommon. They've come to the city from the bush, from the villages, looking for work, for opportunities, for the chance that independence promised them. To the uninitiated, it looks like most of them haven't found it. These people do it tough, these settlers, squatters many of them, living in crude shelters that are a mix of the traditional and the convenient. Of course everything has to be carried up by someone - by the women mainly, and the kids. The men bring the really heavy stuff. The water comes from the public tap down below, one tap to several hundred people. Here a 20 litre plastic container is a necessity, and a scrubbed out oil drum is a treasure, especially if there is also a sheet of corrugated iron to deflect rain water down and into the drum. And everywhere, you see the stones, piles of them, windrows of rocks, running along the edge of the ridges. Each and every one of them has been picked up and brought to the top of the slope, and deposited there. Clearing the way for the food gardens. Every slope is covered by food gardens, or what used to be food gardens and will one day again be, after a couple of years of spelling. Every spare metre, is under care, although not much can be called spare. That's an expression that indicates a surplus, and there isn't too much of anything surplus here. Except the welcomes, and the friendly faces. Bit incredulous some, seeing obvious strangers among them, but friendly, for all that. It's a really tough life for these people, really hard. Nothing is easy. We walk over the hills and through the settlement and back over the hills again, and we're home. Hot water and a shower to wash off the sweat. Two hours, and two worlds - makes you think. We'll go back of course. It's a great place to walk. And we'll help where we can. That's part of the PNG culture, to share, to give a bit. But of course at the back of your mind is the reality that it'll never be enough, not in your life-time. It's always going to be tough. But I'll bet there'll still be the welcomes though; bet you!