A Day in the Life Shaneel Pathak Oct - Nov 2002

I am more then half way through my contract, and must say the adventure has not stopped.

In October I was accompanying diplomats from the Dutch Embassy in Australia who came to Wewak to inspect the Sepik Community Landcare project. The Dutch government have wholly funded the CLC project.

The preliminary review was only 3 days long. It consisted of a presentation of the whole project in Wewak, then traveling up to Ambunti by land where the Secretariat attended the final day of the Vanilla Farming course; followed by a trip up the Sepik River to Wagu and Yeigie villages to see the implementation of water tanks and irrigation system.

I had planned on traveling up with them as I was to install Network cable between the "Greenhouse" and the "Whitehouse". One houses the Library and community centre while the other is the Office and research station. Prior to installing the email server I wanted all computers to be networked. A public computer was also installed in the Library for the villagers with basic computer training material and email access.

Our trip started on Thursday afternoon, where we packed the Landcruiser with our food supplies and my network cable and tools. Three of us were accompanying Matthew up to Ambunti. Land transport calls for a 4 hour trip over a logging road then 2 hour boat trip up the Sepik. The Sepik river is a major tributary into the rainforest with pockets of villages along the shores.

The weather started to turn bad mid way and the rain made the roads muddy - and a little too slippery for the driver. We were following a slower vehicle when the driver decided to pass, unfortunately he did so around a corner not see the on coming truck. Locking the breaks, we slid right into the on coming vehicle. Luckily we were not traveling fast and no one was hurt. The front corner of the SUV was a bit bent out of shape but was drivable. The van we tried to pass was the Police, so no need to worry, as they saw the whole thing. Add to the accident, our registration was expired which did not give Matthew a good impression.

From here it just got worse. We got through a clearing and as we were driving along Amax, the driver hit a bump, the next thing the hood flew up! Matthew, sitting in the front seat got another scare but we were lucky there were no on coming trucks. We pulled to the side and Max and I tried getting that hood down with no avail. It was kinked pretty badly. I had my Leatherman and Philips screw driver and with them we were able to pry the hood down. And every backpacker should carry duct tape and rope - you never know when you will need it. The hood was tied down pretty good with rope and our headlights, misaligned but secured with tape.

We continued on and grew concerned that our arrival time in Pagwa will be at night fall. From Pagwa we take the motor boat up the river to Ambunti. The Sepik river is hard to navigate because its very has sharp curves and nobody travels at night in fear of hitting the shores.

One hour from Pagwa we were pressing hard through the 30cm of mud, when I noticed some steam coming from under the hood. Not the radiator, I was thinking. Max pulled over and when we lifted the hood you could here the radiator bubbling. We let the car cool, topped it up with water and continued on only to stop every 30min. The radiator was warped jamming the cooling fan. The only way to go was slow.

Arriving at Pagwa at 9pm, 4 hours behind schedule, we all just wanted to get home. We quickly loaded the boat with the supplies and headed upstream. It was a little dodgy because the boat driver was going at his usual speed but we could only see the silhouette of the river banks. Half way through the 2 hour trip, things got worse, it poured like anything. What else can go wrong!

Leo, our manager bowed his head down in embarrassment and didn't say a word to our guest, Cynthia and I were huddled under the tarp. Mean while Matthew was speechless..nobody was talking. Soon after I moved toward Matthew, briefed him on how much longer we had and ensured that there will be some tea and dinner waiting for us.

Soaking wet, we docked at the muddy banks and got the WWF staff to take our gear to the "whitehouse". Paul, the other CUSO volunteer was waiting and had dinner ready.

During the planning stage, we were debating if we should fly up - it only 45 min or take the Landcruiser. The consensus was that we wanted to show Matthew how difficult transportation is in the Sepik and to go by land - we showed him! Matthew was a good sport and was an experienced backpacker before going into the Diplomatic core. The rest of the trip went smoothly. He was impressed with the vanilla training and had a traditional welcoming ceremony at Wago village where he saw first hand the water tanks and irrigation system WWF has sponsored for the village.


Where to next? In November I went to a ChevronTexaco oil mining camp. The camp is in Moro, south west of the island. ChevronTexaco and WWF are in partnership to work with the locals and monitor the environment.