MAF

July 10, 2014

It was now Thursday, one day before our scheduled departure for Simbai on the MAF weekly flight. Missionary Air Fellowship is a lifeline for many communities in PNG.  Regular flights serve people on business and family travel, and pilots are always on the ready for rescue flights in case of individual or group health emergencies.

 

All cargo and baggage had to be weighed and signed into the warehouse the day before a flight, since scheduled flights left early in the morning.  The weather at many of the destination airstrips was clear at dawn, but by 10 am it would often cloud over.  Thus everything had to be made ready for early departures.

Not only was the baggage weighed, but each passenger was weighed,  together with their carry-ons containing their overnight necessities, with which they would return the following morning for check-in and take-off.

Our baggage included none of the above items.  The weather report for the next morning was good.  I was looking forward to an easy departure and to landing on the little highland airstrip from which I had taken off last 46 years before.

This time, we would be welcomed neither by the British Anglican missionary nor the Australian Patrol Officer.  Instead, using his two way radio, Bishop Nathan had booked us into the Kalam Guest House. This new guest house was being developed for visitors to the annual Kalam Singsing that was already drawing tourists every September.  We were "off season" so there was plenty of accommodation.

When Bishop Nathan had informed the staff of the aim of our trip, they responded that they would send out news of our immanent arrival "by word of mouth" to the people among whom I had previously worked.  It was a two to three day walk down the Simbai River to their villages.  Although we ourselves would not be able to walk that far and back, during our one week stay,  I hoped that some of the people who might remember me would make their way up the valley so we could see each other again and I could present the photographs.

I was thinking of all this with anticipation as I stood on the scale.  Then, while the rest of our group was  being weighed, I sat down in the waiting room and looked at the materials posted on the walls. 

On a small table by the easy chair there was a Bible and a telephone book.

I was particularly interested in the Tok Pisin Bible. 

Tok Pisin developed slowly in the Territory of New Guinea before World War One when it was a German colony. With vocabulary drawn from a number of languages including German, Malay, English, and based on Melanesian-type grammar, it was a lingua franca between plantation workers and owners and over time it spread widely as a means of communication between people from different areas within the country.

Today there are three official languages in PNG:  English is the language of education and government;  Tok Pisin predominates in daily conversations in the northern areas;  and Hiri-Motu in the southern areas.  Originally,  though more than 800 distinct languages were spoken in the whole country,  many  local languages are now dying out as younger people move for work, marriage and education.

My ruminations on language were interrupted by loud voices from the hangar.  An anomaly had been discovered in our ticketing.  We would probably not be able to fly out the next morning.  Two flights were already fully booked and it would be highly unlikely that a third flight could be sent in before the cloud cover shut down the Simbai airstrip for the day.  The office manager discussed the issue with Shiva who had made the reservations.  A new staff member had indeed made mistakes with our booking for seven.  We were dumbfounded!  Could nothing be done?

A tall white woman strode from the brilliantly lit runway into the hangar where we were disconsolately gathered, hoping against hope for a solution.  Her voice rang calm and clear. Within moments she had grasped the situation:  MAF had indeed made a mistake.  We were in the right.

 However...... the obvious solution of putting us on the first flight was impossible to carry out.  Why?  Because she, as a former member of the Australian Air Force and now director of MAF in Mount Hagen, had only the day before called all the staff and employees together and lectured them on the necessity of breaking a long-standing habit of giving precedence to white-skinned people. She had been noticing this tendency to belittle themselves and felt it was high time to end it.  How could she, then, the very next day, put seven white-skins from overseas onto a plane ahead of local people?

She couldn't.

There had to be another way. 

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