In an age when so many of us are accustomed to air travel, it’s easy to ignore the passenger sitting next to you. But flying with MAF to a place called Kaiam, I met a unique man who redefined what ‘isolation’ looks like…
Story by Matt Painter
It’s time to board the MAF flight in Mount Hagen, Papua New Guinea. Sitting down on the small plane, I greet the passenger sitting next to me, a man wearing a heavy red jacket on this fresh highland morning.
Meet Nick Samson. He is returning to his home village of Kaiam, one of the most remote communities that MAF serves.
“I’m not sure of my age,” Nick says in Tok Pisin, responding to my questions. On further probing for even an approximate age, he simply says, “I’m not able to be clear.”
Nick tells me that Kaiam has no school. That is, the entire language group doesn’t have a single school. Therefore, it’s perhaps no surprise that’s he’s not able to articulate his age to me.
“There are no roads that have been cut to reach Kaiam,” Nick says. “We only move around by plane. It’s MAF. Only once or twice we have seen another plane come.
We only move around by plane. It's MAF.
“If MAF did not come, we’d have to walk the bush paths to come up to town.”
I ask how long the journey through the rainforests and over the mountains would take, if he were to walk from Kaiam to Mount Hagen.
“To walk, it would be hard. It’s not a short way – about three months.”
At this point, I’m confused. Is the language and numeracy barrier at play here, or is this truly such an epic undertaking?
To walk it would be hard. It's not a short way - about three months.
A quick look at an old account of government patrol officers ‘back in the day’ shows that a team of fit men might take a month for a similar journey, so the figure is not unreasonable when you consider that Nick’s people have limited nourishment and only a tiny health centre with little to no medicine. In fact, their only access to doctors is through MAF’s aerial health patrols that get there in less than thirty minutes.
“We grow banana, sweet potato, taro, green vegetables,” Nick says of their diet. “Our main food is sago; we eat it every day.”
Nick is married to Ronika, and they have three boys and a girl.
“I went to Mount Hagen to see my daughter, who attends school at Yambaitok.
“A long time ago I sent her with him, and he’s been looking after her. I got on the aeroplane and saw my daughter with her carers in Mount Hagen and now I’m returning home.”
When I ask his daughter’s age, there’s similar confusion. The only clarity comes when he points to a small girl of similar size.
Out of all the young ones in Kaiam, Nick tells me there’s only six who are currently receiving an education. They are spread between places like Yambaitok—which is only slightly less remote, still without a road—and towns with roads like Maprik, Wabag and Kompiam.
“I came to give coins for the school fees to my daughter’s carers,” Nick adds.
To source school fees, he searches for gold in Kaiam. That’s right, gold.
“There’s only a little gold around,” he says, explaining that the biggest piece you’ll find is only half the size of your fingernail. If he finds anything bigger, he assures me he’ll be most happy.
“It will take a long time to search for a piece of gold like that,” he adds. “A month for one gram. It’s a big job, it’s hard work. Us men of work, we find it quickly, those who are lazy don’t usually find it quickly.”
In Australia, it would take only one day’s work at minimum wage to earn the equivalent amount of money that a gram of gold brings in.
But this is not my country, and Nick’s isolation is on a whole new level. Though he effectively pays for his daughter’s schooling with gold, there’s not even a local school to send her to.
“I was happy to see my daughter,” he says. “She is happy to be at school, and I am happy she is in school.”