Last day in Gundai

Friday,  July 18, 2014

 

Morning again.  Our last morning in Gundai. Peter Aikapo stirred up the coals to get the morning meal going.

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We took out the little gifts that we had tucked away in our baggage.  A wooden double ocarina was the perfect present for Ngaomb, the boy who was nicknamed for the local bamboo jaw harp that he so often played.

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An inflatable globe fascinated the school age children.  

 

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This 3-D representation of the world surprised them, especially when Stanley held it in the Western traditional position with the North Pole at the top.  "Why don't all the people in the southern hemisphere just fall off?" they asked.  

 

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How I wished I had brought in more such items that could be used for teaching purposes!

 

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Young women and men appeared with bilas from the forest.

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At first we were puzzled as to how they had painted such delicate decorations on their cheeks. Then they showed us:

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Boys crowded around the men who had the photo albums and extra prints, matching portraits with the colored paintings done by the young men of long ago.

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Other boys set up two reeds in the middle of the field as goal posts for a soccer game.

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They had carved balls out of the pith of tree ferns  -  yimunt'.

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The morning was wearing on and we were expecting the helicopter at any moment. Clouds were gathering and would soon,  and predictably, make landing impossible.  

 

Finally we heard an unmistakable "chop-chop-chop" sound in the distance.  High overhead a tiny shape appeared. 

 

We waved in delight, but instead of landing, the chopper flew off again.  

 

Whatever could have been the trouble?    Alvilda again trekked up the trail to the "reception point" and managed to contact the pilot.  Why had he not landed?   We had been waving! All the people gathered on Gundai field had been waving!!

 

The pilot had indeed seen us, but we were not the only people on cleared spaces scattered along the length of the twisting valley who were looking up eagerly and waving.  Not far to the west the landing strip on Bank Mountain was also full of waving people.  He couldn't figure out where he should have landed! 

 

Someone came up with the idea of building a smudge fire that would clearly identify our location.

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But it was too late. By this time, the clouds were getting ever thicker. The pilot, unfamiliar with this particular mountain valley, had flown off to another appointment.

 

Again Alvilda went to the reception point. She contacted another helicopter company that agreed to schedule a flight for 4 p.m.   

 

To avoid the problem of people waving from various landing strips, we practiced lining up in the form of an "X" so the pilot would easily be able to identify which of the cleared hilltops was Gundai.

 

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Then everyone settled in for the afternoon. The boys continued their soccer game, ever patiently retrieving the balls that kept rolling off down the slope.

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Later the sun came out and women, babies, toddlers and dogs relaxed on the grass.

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The older girls, for their part, filled the time with a lively game of jump rope....

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... while Aikapo's little daughter kept her eye on us, holding a limber stick on which her pet bird perched.

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