Homeward Bound

Can't wait to see my guys! And my doctor!

Free Association

Australian expats, humidity, sweating, ceiling fans, mosquiito nets, doxycycline, tonic water, nasi goreng, beeping bemos, PMVs, "good morning sir," kopi Bali, Semenyak dinner, Raja Ampat, biodiversity, musical gecko's, roach in my shirt, bottled water, 1,000,000 Rupiah meal, instant friends, partnerships, complex logistics, back pain, hip pain, knee pain, 30 Vicodin in 18 days, batik, Moresby artists row, Ubud, Kimbe Bay, dodging Jemma, meeting at the UN, SP beer, chilled red wine, Singapore Girls, Malaysian desserts, missing Sze-Ling twice, missing the whale shark, missing Bali so much, cremation ceremony, whacky Indonesian TV, painful Singaporean pop bands, Huli Wigmen, 19 hour flights, long waits in stinky lines, Asian toilets, explosions of flowers, rice paddies, betelnut teeth, friendly hand-shakes, scary turbo flights, "Are you the fat man with tatoos?," 12KBS dial-up, volcanos, haunting Balinese music, Mark's humor, Villia's going the distance for me, my boss's email reminders that I'm missed.

Villia Nambawan... Thank You, Tru!

Spent my last day in PNG tooling about Port Moresby with Villa. She managed to snag me easy and painless flight changes back to Singapore. Drinks on me at DEMA, Villia! After limping about the Air Nuigini offices, we stopped by a favorite Chinese restaurant which I'm told also serves a big pot of strong PNG coffee. Twist my arm. The place makes good on the strong coffee promise, but I look around and there are posters of the various fish served on the menu. A good many of them are local reef species and a quick look at the menu confirms that indeed they are local purveyors of the live reef fish food trade. Wrasse cheeks, lips, and assorted body parts from high value target species like Napoleon Wrasse and Bump-Head Parrotfish. Kind of soured the taste of the coffee a bit.

After coffee, I stopped at a local pharmacy to pick what is rumored to be the surest way to knock-out malaria if I get home and a blood test turns up positive or if I find myself with a mystery fever and uncontrollable shakes. It's a mixture of herbs that's supposed to be taken in two stages. Artesunate tablets taken for 5 days, then three Fansidar tablets taken on the third day. Everyone here swears by this remedy, though US Food and Drug doesn't allow it's sale in the states. I'm bringing it just in case the Doxy missed anything.

With miracle drug in hand, back to the PNGDA offices, also known as Villia's home, to meet her parents and make a final call to Singapore Airlines to try to move my flight up from next week. Nothing like navigating a Byzantine electronic answering system on unreliable phone lines. I'd get so close to the final "Press 2 Now," only to be disconnected. After four attempts, I manage to reach a human and make provisional reservations to leave on Friday the 13th. The obvious bad omen notwithstanding, let's keep our fingers crossed that I can get home without a hitch or too big a penalty.

...but the Flesh is Weak

After 15 days, 13 flights, 16 meetings, and way too many pain killers, I've had to make a tough decision to cut my field work short and begin the slow process of heading home. The lower back pain has morphed into some bizarre hip and knee pain that's just unbearable. I think it's muscle and joint pain from all the compensating I've been doing on account of my back. Regardless, making this decision while I can still stand in Kimbe Bay is a lot easier than if I wait to get to Kavieng (which makes the remote bush of Kimbe look like Los Angeles.)

I'm sending Cam on his own to finish the mission, but the added complexity of a an erupting volcano (yes, a volcano,) Mount Tavurvur, on Rabaul may not even allow him to leave Kimbe either. This is wild and wooly country to work in.

Getting out of this country off schedule is no cake walk either. Try making arrangements with no e-mail and terrible yet expensive phone connections. My savior and project partner, Villia Lawrence, brain and go-to person for the PNG Divers Association, has offered to handle my in-country flight logistics from Port Moresby, so all I need to do is handle the Singapore Air leg once i get to Malaysia.

It All Starts With Education

CORAL knows that tourism professionals like dive and snorkel operators can be highly effective agents for conservation, but it has to start with changing attitudes and behaviors. That's where our Field Representative comes in. I'm here to model our Sustainable Marine Recreation workshop so Cam can continue the learning process even after I leave. We have a great turnout for the two-day trainings. About 20 participants both days representing the bulk of dive and boat staff at Walindi Resort, key Mahonia staff, LLG (local-level government) officials, some folks from the terrestrial TNC (The Nature Conservancy, AKA one of the BIg NGOs) project, and the manager of the LMMA (Locally Managed Marine Area), essentially a community-managed MPA.


We had a great mix of people in a really interactive environment both nights. One of the highlights for me was modeling effective pre-dive environmental briefings. Seems like the staff at Walindi were delivering last second, "Oh, and don't touch the coral," briefings which research has shown have about the same effect as saying nothing. After modeling, I asked participants to pair-up and practice with each other. It was fun and one of the most practical tools they can take away and use tomorrow.

I'd call this a good beginning for Kimbe Bay. What's really exciting is looking forward on how we can build and support the LMMA network here, help local communities understand the benefits of marine protected areas and reef management, and perhaps link this educational work with what Mahonia is already doing. And maybe next time I visit, I might even get in the water too.

Walindi Plantations Resort

Thanks to the silver-tongued Cam, we got to move from the spare Mahonia house with all it's local color, to one of the posh waterfront bungalows of the Walindi Plantation Resort. Tucked away behind Mahonia, this is as out in the bush as any resort can get. But it's a paradise.

It's the dream of Max Benjamin, an Ausie agriculturalist turned dive enthusiast. Surrounding Walindi are his acres of oil palm trees which among other uses can provide an alternative to petroleum fuel (though it's still a greenhouse gas contributor and the clear-cutting for oil palm fields can lead to increased soil erosion and reef sedimentation.) But did I mention how nice the bungalow is? No ants on my pillow tonight.

We are training the staff of Walindi this week in sustainable marine recreation and reef ecology. To Max's credit, the majority of his dive staff are local New Guineans and they are excited to be presented with an opportunity to learn. From what I can tell, they can use any information on best environmental practices and proper reef etiquette. The dive shop runs a good business with shore-based diving as well as two big live-aboards.

I've met very few Americans while in PNG. No big surprise there. Combine the distances, exorbitantly expensive airfare, safety issues, Dengue Fever and malaria and you have a tough sell. You can yammer on all you want about highest biodiversity this and amazing culture that, but it's a lot easier and economical to dive Hawaii, Palau, and even Fiji than PNG. None of this hampers the Australian market, however. With Port Moresby only an hour and a half from Cairns, it's a much more attractive proposition for Down Under. Still, the strangle hold of Air Nuigini makes it close to US$1000 for that short jaunt. The PNG government hasn't yet recognized that tourism can be a sustainable revenue stream. Sadly, it's still too busy happily handing over mining, forestry, and offshore drilling rights.

Mahonia Na Dari–Guardian of the Reef

After being met at the airport, we load our gear into a truck and climb into the back of another for an hour ride over disk-compressing unpaved road to reach our destination. Our work here in Kimbe Bay is based at Mahonia Na Dari, the only local PNG-based NGO dedicated to marine conservation and education. They focus on providing environmental education and outreach to local children as well as teacher professional development. It's terrific work and much needed. Mahonia has generously offered the use of their classrooms for CORAL's trainings and they're also allowing Cam and I to stay at one of the visitors houses on their property. It's a small house built from traditional materials just up from the beach. The place has so much local color it's killing me.


After last nights class, I was exhausted from the early wake-up. I switched on the ceiling fan, brushed the ants off my bed and pillow, crawled under the mosquito net, and eventually drifted off to sweaty sleep to the music of assorted squeaking geckos, chirping crickets and burping frogs. I awoke around midnight as the generator kicked off and my ceiling fan spun slowly to a stop. As the heat of the night closed-in, I picked-up on a subtle white noise as background to the burps, chirps and squeaks. It was the sound of the waves breaking over the reef crest just beyond the beach. Local color not withstanding, a great way to drift off to dreams.

This 'Aint Your Aunties Wig

We arrive at Hoskins Airport in Kimbe and are greeted by a group of spectacular Huli Wig Men. They are a highlands tribe and I'm told it is very rare to see them in full dress. They are assembled in two lines facing each other. The Wig Men chant, beating small hand drums while hopping up and down in unison. Just amazing!

Apparently the Wig Men must live in isolation for the time it takes to grow their hair which is then cut and used to make the ceremonial wigs. Some of the wigs are more hat-like, but still absolutely spectacular. I could just imagine the look on the faces of other tribes who tried to mess with the Wig Men. These guys are bad-asses!

White-Knuckles to Kimbe Bay

Woke at 3:30 AM to try once again to fly to Kimbe Bay. Dawn and dusk are the most active feeding times for Anopholes (malaria bearing) mosquitos so the breakfast bell was ringing loudly when we started loading gear into the shuttle. We had our own bags plus several big boxes of educational material to take along. At the airport, we managed to check-in fairly smoothly and didn't even have to bribe the ticket agent again. I'm no longer amazed nor stunned at having to use bribes to get my work done, it's just how things work in many places.

Our plane actually arrived and we were off to Kimbe via a brief stop in Lai, a small town just southeast of Madang. As we descended for Lai, I noticed I couldn't see the ground. Just thick clouds. No worries yet. Then the landing gear goes down. Still no ground. Now I'm worried. While pilots have instruments for navigation, they do not land on them here. They need to visually see the approach and runway. Plus, this is very mountainous terrain and more than a few planes have clipped trees with landing gear or full-on crashed into hills.

We then hear the flaps moving, engines kick-in and feel ourselves climbing steeply again. The captain comes on and says he couldn't see the runway so he plans to circle a bit then try again. So we circle for maybe 10 minutes then begin the decent again. Gear down. Still no ground. I notice a local woman next to me, her palms up, eyes closed and mouth moving in vigorous prayer. I'm not sure to whom she's directing the prayers, but I'm hoping her 110% is making up for the enormous faith-vacuum in my seat.

Once again, the captain bails on the landing and we climb back up. This time no word from the flight deck. We circle for another 5 minutes and the captain announces we will try once again. Again? I mean I admire the effort, but at this point the Port Moresby Holiday Inn is looking good. We descend, gear goes down, but now we can see a patch of ground through the clouds. I guess that's enough to convince the captain there's no mountain ahead of us and we drop from the sky onto the Lai runway to nervous applause.

Cam and I bolt from the plane to calm our nerves in the terminal. Maggi's chicken never looked so good.

A Night in Moresby

Air travel within PNG is an interesting series of acceptances you make between yourself and the sole PNG air carrier, Air Nuigini. They accept your money, and you accept that the tickets and itinerary they issue are somewhat worthless bits of paper. Air Nuigini is everything you might expect from a national airline monopoly. Planes are quite old and in-flight domestic service consists of two cookies and a tin of apple juice. On international legs you may get a hot meal, almost always an unedited violent or explicit Hollywood movie, and four cookies with two tins of apple juice. Flights are regularly late, cancelled, overbooked, never leave the gate, or delayed on the runway with little effort at explanation. All too often, this results in joining a long queue for re-ticketing which begins the entire hopeful process all over again.

So instead of being in beautiful Kimbe Bay, I am enjoying a night in Port Moresby compliments of Air Nuigini. With 2 other flights cancelled ahead of me, all the available rooms at the Airways and Gateway (the decent hotels) are gone. So Holiday Inn it is. CORAL's PNG Field Rep in training, Cam Hollows, is with me and he's just spent 5 months volunteering in rainy Alotau, so Holiday Inn may as well be The Four Seasons. While the rooms reek of smoke, at least I have a cute gecko in the bathroom to eat up all the ants around the sink.

Port Moresby is PNGs capital city and has a pretty bad reputation. While the downtown area is okay during the day, it's not a place you want to stroll about aimlessly. Downtown is considered the center of Moresby and there are settlements and subdivisions named by distance from here, One Mile, Two Mile, Three Mile, and so on. Near the airport is perhaps the most notoriously dangerous settlement of Six Mile. I'm told a sure way to get yourself killed is to venture here. This place is crawling with "raskals," the local pidgin for trouble makers. A lot of the problem is that people live under the crushing weight of poverty and many highlands people coming to Moresby looking for work instead find despair. Alcoholism and high HIV rates are rampant. Factor in tribal and clan tensions between warring highland populations who like to settle disputes with bush knives and machetes and it makes you greatly appreciate your smokey rooms at the Inn.

It's Not The Heat, It's The Humidity... Well, Maybe It's the Heat

Arrived two days ago to clear skies, but ever since the clouds closed-in over Milne Bay in Alotau Province, Papua New Guinea. Torrential bouts of warm rain are making it feel like an enormous communal shvitz. Except the Papua New Guineans don't seem to notice that it's 33 degrees Celsius with 100% humidity. They bundle up with extra layers in the downpour.

Been spending a lot of time in meeting after meeting with various players in our PNG work. The network of MPA's that was slated for completion by one of our partners has been derailed, and I'm trying to pick up the pieces to see how CORAL's work needs to adapt and move forward. Not unexpectedly, there's a lot of resentment and skepticism towards conservation-speak in these parts right now, so it's a lot of delicate footwork. I'm remaining optimistic that marine conservation will still happen in this incredible place, but there is a big knot to untie.

It's too easy to forget about all the people who have dedicated significant portions of their lives to make conservation a reality here. I shared a festive yet bittersweet dinner with several members of the local project team who were recently let go. Mostly Australians, but a few French, Icelandic, and British scientists, anthropologists, volunteers... all smart, dedicated, and passionate conservationists. We kicked-back at one of their apartments to share a dinner of Chicken Tajine prepared by a couple who met here during their work and are now getting married. They leave on Sunday so this is a farewell dinner of sorts. Local PNG eggplants, taro, and assorted local mystery herbs and spices smother big chunks of chicken that probably was running around Alotau just yesterday. All served over peanut couscous.

I was the outsider here, and didn't know anyone longer than a day. But we shared good local beer, great local food, and a common local interest in preserving this amazing PNG marine environment. I'm truly saddened that they won't be able to see their vision realized. I'm hoping CORAL can carry on some of that charge.

Making Conservation Happen

Doxycycline (dox-i-SYE-kleen): Anti-malaria; allows me to dive without threats of blackouts or psychotic episodes as do other malaria treatments; causes high sensitivity to UV exposure

Carisoprodol (kar-eye-soe-PRO-dole): Muscle relaxant used to treat my chronic lower back pain on 19 hour flights; makes me drowsy, particularly when taken with,

Hydrocodone (hye-droe-KO-done): Generic for Vicodin; pain reliever (see above)

Ibuprofen (eye-byu-PRO-fin): Anti-Inflammatory; Helps improve my lower back mobility

Benadryl (BEN-uh-drill): Antihistamine; for the random allergic reactions to new foods

Imodium (i-MOE-dee-yum): Anti-Diarrheal; do I really need to spell this out?

Last Bali Day–Ubud Style

Kidnapped by Helen early morning and whisked off for a day trip up into the hills to visit the town of Ubud. Kilometer after kilometer of stone carving shops lined the narrow road and we had to compete with a million and a half motor scooters for right-of-way. Passed a temple that was decked out for a festival and I stopped in to watch a group of excruciatingly adorable Balinese children practicing traditional dancing.


Ubud is essentially a large paddy field in the center, en-squared by rows of art galleries, shops, spas, hotels, guest houses and restaurants. We passed on the shopping and headed for the Mandala Wisata Wanara Wana–Sacred Monkey Forest Sanctuary. You pay admission then stroll through a dense forest that makes you appreciate what was here before all the shops. As soon as you enter, a troupe of Long-Tailed Macaques come running out of the leaf litter to see if you have a banana (which are "official monkey bananas" that you buy for 1000 rupia at the entrance). I'm not obliged to feed wild animals and I also like all my fingers, thank you. One look at your empty hands and the macaques high-tail, er, long-tail it out of there. Though apparently the baby macaques are happy to feel around in your pockets just in case. Sneaky little primates.


After an amazing lunch of what can only be described as Indonesian tapas, lots of tiny banana-leaf boats filled with amazingly hot but delicious chicken, veggies, smoked duck, and assorted satays, we had to head back to Sanur along roads lined with colorful pengols so I could pack. I will so miss Bali, even my neighborhood pimps. It ends as it started, an amazing overload and I can't wait to return. Next stop, PNG.