Join Indian Samuel Gnanadurai, MAF's Regional Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability & Learning (MEAL) Specialist, on a flight to Sindeni, a first for him landing in a remote village of Papua New Guinea.
“Kaakaruks, Kaakaruks”, yelled the pilot from the flight looking out of his window. He was about to take off. I looked around as the children standing near me started to run behind the cocks standing on the runway. Yes, you read it right, there were cocks running on the runway.
Well, if you have seen the video, you are wondering where is the runway! Well, the green grass is what it is. An airstrip in a remote village called Sindeni, Papua New Guinea (PNG). The pilot had just dropped me off and was about to take off when he saw those cocks.
“Can you see the smoke from afar?”, the pilot asked me. I turned left to look into the mountains. We were flying 10,000 feet above sea level and the earth looked like a green blanket. “Yes, I can see some smoke”, I said. “Yea, there it is, the airstrip, that is where we are landing,” the pilot told me.
Perhaps, he is flying here, because God indeed remembered the place! For, he is an answer to the many thousand lives.
The pilot is on a mission, to reach the unreached. With rice bags and household goods, and with teachers and doctors and health care and education materials for those who are not as privileged. Every other week he flies into this village. Every other day into multiple villages. Difficult terrain, bad climate, rains and hills do not stop him from flying in. On those days when extreme fog indeed stops him, he tries again. The next day and the next. Till he reaches them. The poor and the not-so-privileged.
The village hasn’t seen electricity! Neither have the seven villages surrounding this airstrip. They know no roads either. They can walk through the forest for days to reach the nearest town. Rains do often come here and then walking is difficult as well.
They showed me the school. But for the children playing rugby, I would not have identified the school. For there were a few huts and nothing else. They were the classrooms, apparently. We walked further down and saw a few houses and a store.
“Life hasn’t been kind to them”, is all I could say if I have to explain all that I saw.
The pilot loaded in the few pieces of cargo and a few men got into the flight. It is a small nine-seater aircraft and had a few seats removed to accommodate more cargo as the villagers sell coffee in this part of the world, and the ground coffee powder had to be taken back to the towns to bring in some money.
The kakaruks were cleared, and this time the pilot took off, through the bumpy runway, and into the mighty mountains. I could see him take a steep right turn to avoid the mountains standing right in front of the runway and fly away.
As he left me by, on his way to the next village, I stood there looking at the surrounding, thinking about the pilot. What if he had decided to take life easy, rather than fly into this godforsaken place?
Perhaps, he is flying here, because God indeed remembered the place! For, he is an answer to the many thousand lives.
