On the American citrus forum shown above, we had the following discussion: - Citrange: Yes, that's another very interesting species that I would love to add to my collection. - Sylvain: I am too very, very interested to have few viable seeds. And after reading the website: http://helenasadventuresintropicalpng.wordpress.com/2013/02/11/was-it-goodenough/ - Citrange said: Anyone feel in need of some adventure? And as a joke, I said: - Sylvain: If someone pays the plane ticket, this summer I go there and send you seeds. This is exactly the situations I love. - Citrange: Really? More malaria? (this is a reference to my search in Africa for the species Citropsis https://www.agrumes-passion.com/viewtopic.php?t=3693) I'd go myself, but I'm not sure they've got enough supplies of soft toilet-paper! So instead, I'll sponsor your trip for €200. Another 9 sponsors should cover your fares. - Sylvain: I swear, this time I'll take my malaria pills.
So it was like this, with a joke, that the project started. We worked on this journey for almost a year. Principally myself and Mike, but with the help of several others. It was quickly realised that Papua New Guinea (PNG) is also the home of C. Wintersii, C. Warburgiana, and the Papuan Citron and, even more fascinating, of Clymenia polyandra which has just rejoined citrus in a new classification.
Mike said: To find C. wakonai will be a real challenge. To find all of them in one trip would be almost impossible. But prove me wrong!!!
And so this joking was transformed into a challenge!
The following months were occupied with preparing equipment, with putting the locations where citrus had been seen on the GPS map (on my Galaxy S2 smartphone), with downloading detailed maps of PNG to the phone, with collecting information on plants and on PNG, and with learning the basics of Tok Pisin, the local pidgin language.
On 4th May 2014 I bought the tickets: Departing Bordeaux 26th August, changing in Paris and Hong Kong and arriving Port Moresby (capital of PNG) 28th August.
I immediately went to buy a flight ticket to Goroka for the 8th September, so leaving a good week free. I hitch-hike to the university where I find a quiet place to settle. I fall asleep and hear strange and repetitive songs close to where I am.
In the middle of the night I am woken by security guards who are the university guards. They explain that it is too dangerous to sleep out here because there are "settlements" (in fact, shanty towns) nearby.They take me to their offices where I can sleep in a large hall, although I prefer to sleep outside because the breeze repels the mosquitoes. The first 3 nights 'encampment':
Saturday, August 30th.
8am, I visit the botanical garden alongside the university. There are no citrus.
Video of cassowary.
Video of tree kangaroo:
At 11am I go out and find a university group preparing for a 'sing-sing':
From Wikipedia: Sing-sing is a gathering of a few tribes or villages in Papua New Guinea. People arrive to show their distinct culture, dance and music. The aim of these gatherings is to peacefully share traditions. Villagers paint and decorate themselves for sing-sings.
Everyone climbs into lorries and leaves for the sing-sing.
Once there, I now understood that the singing I had heard in the night had been a practice. This was the first sing-sing of this group of students representing a new province - the province of Jiwaka.
A panoramic view - click to enlarge photos!
So, that was my first day in Papua New Guinea. A cultural shock!
Backup photos, films and recordings on the hard disk, shower and laundry since I have been wearing the same clothes since Tuesday and my spare clothes are in my bag between Paris and Port Moresby ... I'm going to town to buy a local SIM card with a phone and internet package for my smartphone. I'll finally be able to communicate with the rest of the world and at least say that I arrived. I retrieve my bag at the airport. It has finally arrived in Port Moresby. In the evening, first telephone contact with my family.
Monday, 1st September.
Yesterday I was a teacher on holiday, today I am a retired teacher! I get on well with Eloise Sede who works at the university security company. She has agreed to safeguard my property during my various travels. My smartphone is stolen, together with all the citrus research information I have collected. Depressing moment. The thief was among the university guards. I have decided to go to the Brown River. Everyone tells me not to go, it's too dangerous, especially alone, but duty calls! I have a week to find Citrus wintersii.
I get to Brown River and I am greeted by a lovely family. They receive me like I was part of the family:
The red teeth in the photos are from chewing betel nuts.
Here is my 'house':
The first citrus search - left bank of the Brown River facing north.
A typical local house:
The children who follow us:
We didn't find any citrus, but this was only meant as a trip to see the local environment.
I now do not have GPS but I have studied the subject enough to know the nearest point where C. Wintersii has been seen. It is the purpose of today. I can easily find the place but there is nothing - only a plant that looks like it but smaller and very thin and sparse. Very different from the pictures you see on the internet.
On the way back we find the nest of a rodent. They quickly cut themselves some spears, then set fire to the nest, but nothing comes out.
Later in a clearing we see a kangaroo (actually a wallaby), but the stupid camera focusses on the branches in the foreground!
Everyone rushed in with their improvised spears, but this time it was the kangaroo who won!
Big tour in very dense forest. Four of us set off with umbrellas, machetes and a rifle. Two river crossings. Nothing found.
Back to the village, I find an unknown citrus which was brought to me from the mountain. No fruit, no flower. Articulated and lanceolate leaf with smooth margin. Very short petiole ~2mm. Thorns ~2mm. I give it the nice name of BR1.
The following days are the same, prospecting in the bush but still finding nothing. Meanwhile here is a small panorama of the concession which is my new home.
We took a utility vehicle into the bush. The pretext was the search of wild citrus. In fact it turned out to be more of a "boys day out."
Fishing with nets and beaters.
The catch.
Nest of a megapode, 4 m high and 8 m wide! They rushed to dig in the hope of finding the eggs, but they found nothing.
The picnic, cooked bananas, grilled fish and coconut milk to drink.The rifle wasn't used, so no meat. On the way back, we twice passed kangaroos but the hunter on the pick-up truck was not fast enough.
On our return in the evening, a woman brought branches of citrus. Seeing the fruits, I immediately knew that this was the one I had been searching for!
So, C. wintersii (previously called Microcitrus papuana), the Brown River finger lime, has been found. One out of my challenge to find five species! After one week, I'm on time.
Already one ambiguity is cleared up. The wintersii which is grown in the United States is not true to type. Later I had the opportunity to show local people pictures of the round fruits said to be produced by this species. They say they have never seen round fruits in the region. They also claim to have never seen the fruits turn yellow. So the information on Citrus Pages is wrong. (It'll be easy to correct... After Jorma Koskinen, I am now the editor of that site.)
A small detail that was a little upsetting, is that we immediately realised that it was the plant that we had already seen on Tuesday. Four days ago! But there was no fruit and the plant had seemed so different from the pictures found on the internet ...
I fly to Goroka in the Highlands. I do not have to collect citrus in this region, I'm going to do three days of sightseeing. On Friday 12th, Saturday 13th and Sunday 14th September at the site of the largest sing-sing in PNG, The Goroka Show.
I have two plans: A - a house near the ground where the sing-sing takes place, or B - a remote village in the mountains 20 km from Goroka. Obviously I chose Plan B, as I do not like cities. They are of the Sede family. The village is south of Goroka. Their clan (they do not say tribe) is Musumawe (Moossoomawey) and they live the traditional way.
Tuesday, September 9th.
I go to Goroka to buy tickets for the show. Tour of the craft market. 100 metres of bilum, pronounced 'beeloom', the traditional bag that everyone carries.
Also, a lot of bows, arrows, stone axes, ornaments, feathers, shells, skins and animal teeth, teeth of wild pigs and of dogs ...
I cannot stand it any longer - I go and buy a smartphone in town, a Samsung Galaxy S5. I am taking some risks at the price it costs. I start downloading all my data from the hard disk and the cloud. I get everything but the GPS maps that were only in the Galaxy S2. I can now communicate with the outside world.
And taken that evening some photos of the main hut:
I decide to re-film preparations for the last day of the sing-sing. I tell them that this time I won't ask each time, and they should ignore my presence. The results are a little better.
Notice the nose!
The Papuans laugh very rarely. When they do, you have to take a photo.
During the preparation of this last day of singsing I followed more closely one young man and one young woman. Although living in a small village lost in the mountains of the center of Papua-New Ginea (Highlands), they are young people just like one finds them all over the world.
At first there is this young man, Mohe,
and this young woman, Oru.
At the end we have this Papuan couple.
Let us begin with the young man.
The Restoration before the singsing.
Make-up.
After oiling of the body and the ornamental leaves.
A little visit behind the scenes of the singsing. People who are ready to pay 20 times the normal price have the privilege of being alone with groups in the early morning when the groups enter the field. These are the VIP. Before, it was mainly older men with high quality camera, the kind of adventurer photographers. Now one sees half of women, a lot of young women. The cameras range from the smallest to the most expensive. The situation is somewhat comical and resembles a zoo visit.
Some photos are interesting.
A photo where tourist, local people and dancers are in harmony of colors.
I am no exception. Here amid the dancers in my village.
An interesting photo.
An other one.
Sometimes you get a chance to capture a magical moment. The warrior facing the hunter of pictures.
Meanwhile, those who have paid 5 kinas are waiting behind the wires!
Later, a concert of current music is given on the adjacent ground. Local people are very interested.
A little tour around Goroka. View of the large open space (National Park), opposite the Goroka Main Market.
General view of the Goroka Main Market
A notice between the two sites intrigued me. Especially "Beware of HIV/AIDS during election"!?
After returning to the village, I climbed to the top of the mountain just above the village. The plain is at 1500m altitude and the picture is taken at 2200m.
A little stroll on the mountain ridges
At an altitude of more than two thousand metres there are still citrus and coffee. It seems that here there are many of these citron hybrids with acid flesh and sweet skin.
Back to the village.
In the evening, two old men of the village come to give us a demonstration of playing bamboo flutes:
Today I had to take the road to Madang (pronounced MedEng) except that some guys from the Western Highlands province killed a teacher from the Eastern Highlands. So, the road to the north coast is closed, and will remain closed until Friday. I visit the Museum of Goroka. After two pictures they come to tell me that photography is forbidden. Here is one of the two photos I took - a necklace made of dried fingers...
FINGER NECKLACES: MOMENTOES OF GRIEF Commonly called finger necklaces, but more properly called mourning necklaces, these necklaces were collected in the Simbari linguistic area, Kokenara district, during the late 1960's. Human remains, fingers and small bones were worn by members of the deceased's family and relatives. Their purpose was twofold: to signify a state of mourning and to protect those who wore them from evil spirits and the vagaries of warfare. Fingers were cut off after death and dried over a fire in the deceased's house. When completely dry, they were strung as a necklace for wearing. Human bones were taken from the decayed body and painted with red ochre before being dried in the sun. Once dry they were rubbed with ashes collected from the remains of burnt rats. This symbolised the passing of the stink of decay. These customs have their parallel in the European custom of cutting a lock of hair from the head of a deceased loved-one and wearing it in a locket strung around the neck in the form of a necklace. Just as the wearing of lockets of hair went out of fashion amongst Europeans earlier this century, so did that of wearing mourning necklaces go out of fashion amongst the Anga people during their progress towards modernisation which overtook them during the 1960's.
At the market I find a local jaw harp.
On the net I found this little video that shows how to play it.
There is a rumour that the road to Madang is now open. I take the risk and try it out, it passes... The tribal war is avoided. I spend the night in Madang at the owner of the PMV (Public Motor Vehicle. Means of local transportation, truck or minibus).
The next day I make a small city tour. It's very nice, airy and calm with water everywhere.
I come across the fisherman's market.
The fish are more colourful than at home!...
The bilum bags are used for everything!
I now leave for the Gogol River, looking for Clymenia polyandra. First we have to wait for the PMV to be full.
On the way I start my enquiries and a passenger said that there was no need to go so far up the Gogol River. He knew this plant (Clymenia polyandra) and said they were in his village called Bau. I trust him and I get off the PMV with him. He is a teacher of mechanics in a vocational school. I sit in the village square and after two hours Clymenia polyandra is found! So, that was really fast.
Mundu was the finder.
The only fruit was immature.
Surprisingly the vesicles were round as in C. australasica, "caviar" type.
There were no spines.
Leaves were not articulated.
Now that the whole village understood what I was looking for, they brought me mature fruits.
Notice that someone has brought their grandmother to be in the photo!
The preparation of samples for the photos is always a spectacle worth watching.
The seeds carry the imprint of the vesicles that were touching them.
At night I sleep in the vocational school. It is the holidays and there are only five students in the dormitory. There is enough room. It's Saturday, the post office is closed on Sunday. So I decide to stay in Bau until Monday.
The fruit is sweet. The taste is completely different from all other citrus, but very nice. This species is very interesting.
The rest of the day is spent wandering around the village of Bau.
"Firecracker" hairstyles.
The river Gogol.
Canoe.
This is the bell of the vocational school.
A young Kalao.
They like to catch the Kalao and raise them as pets. I suspect this is to collect feathers for Sing-Sing.
Monday, 22nd September.
I am brought more Clymenia fruits:
Departure for Madang and for Usino. This is on the road to Lae and in my documents it says "citrus at Usino near the river Mia."
I go to Mia River a few kilometers from Usino and sleep among the cocoa trees. A well-deserved rest. It has been a long day travelling Bau-Madang-Usino-Mia River.
When I wake up, I go to wash in the Mia River, do my laundry and have my breakfast. But after two minutes, there are thirty men and boys who stare at me from 5 metres away and harass me with questions ... It's like being in India! I had decided to have a quiet morning - that is ruined. I kindly explained to them that I want to have a peaceful hour, and then I will go to the village (Waput) and answer all their questions. But it was impossible to make them leave. Some pretend to leave, but they hide in the bushes to watch me. I was pretty upset.
The Mia River
Breakfast. Coconut and cocoa pod.
I go to the village and I start to hitchhike to Lae because I did not want to stay there any longer. But I bump into the village chief and some women. He asks me what's going on to make me to want to leave, so I told him the previous events, and I turn to the women and ask "Would you like a troop of men look at you when you go to wash in the river?" There was a unanimous 'NO'. There, I had won. The chief apologizes and explains that they were a bunch of idiots. And invites me to stay. We moved to a hut near the road and I answer all their questions. I explained that I seek a wild citrus (bus muli pronounced boos moolee) but I have no idea what it is or where it is. Half the village was by now all around us and say they have never seen it. Then the chief said that young people do not dare go into the forest and only the old people know about it. He adds "I know the only citrus fruit that exists in our region". I ask him to take me there. It is a nice little walk.
The citrus is just at the foot of the slope.
We reach the place. He shows me a tree and when I look up I know exactly what it is - Citrus macroptera. The leaves cannot be mistaken for anything else. So now it is three citrus found, out of the five being sought!!
The head of the village at the foot of macroptera. I estimate the height of the tree to be 12 meters.
A young man climbs the tree to bring branches and fruits. There are no flowers. The leaves are 7-8 cm wide and 25 cm long.
Here is a branch planted in the ground to take pictures in the sun.
The village chief in the middle of the troup that followed us.
Three beautiful fruits.
Contrary to what is often said, the fruit is very juicy.
The seeds are about 2 cm long and bear the marks of the vesicles.
We move on to the tasting. Everyone wants to try. The zest is not unpleasant. Albedo is tasteless, no trace of bitterness. Everyone finds the pulp good except me. The pulp is very juicy, acid with a lemony taste and a slight unpleasant aftertaste but no bitterness. The descriptions found on the internet are very contradictory, but there I am in front of a citrus fruit that does not really match any of the descriptions !?
The leader assigns me a hut, and I decided to celebrate the citrus find with a beer. You have to go to the next village for that. Everyone tells me I should not go alone because people from the other village are dangerous. I do go alone. Over there everyone is very nice. I find my beer and when I start to wait for a PMV to return to Waput, they tell me they will accompany me because the people of Waput are dangerous! I go back by myself. The scenario is typical of the region. For them, all others are dangerous.
The evening is passed with discussions with the young people of the village. The village teacher is cultivated, open-minded and we can talk about everything.
They bring me an overripe fruit of Clymenia polyandra. Its colour is distinctly orange, skin and pulp. The taste is past its best.
This fruit contained 24 seeds. In five fruits there were 3, 4, 12, 7 and 24 seeds. Average of 10 seeds per fruit.
The way the seeds are attached is very distinctive.
The fruit peeled easily and the segments separated by themselves.
Photo taken with another camera. The colour is closer to the actual colour. You can see the hard drive, the smartphone and USB battery. Note the theme of oilcloth.
I spent the rest of the day visiting the village. The underside of a hut is transformed into a henhouse but the hens are pigeons.
These pigeons are Goura victoria. They are big like hens.
The teacher at home with her family.
The right-hand side of the hut, with her grandparents.
I am waiting for a PMV on the side of the road. I see a line of people - the village chief, the priest and even the teacher who had set a homework to her students to come and say goodbye. Nice!
Good luck, the PMV is a coach!
Here are some photos taken en route to Lae. Note the bandages! I suppose the baby wanted the same as her dad.
We follow a vast plain between two mountain ranges. Industrial plantations are invading all the good land. Palm oil plantation.
Sugar cane plantation.
How to make a basket from a palm leaf.
We arrive at Lae where there is a religious meeting. Papuans are very gullible, so they are overwhelmed by all the missionaries and all the sects of the world. I even saw the Baha'i.
Sometimes there are more epiphytes than the leaves of a tree. This is quite common in equatorial areas.
After arriving in Lae (pronounced 'Lay') I go to the port, but all the dinghies to the surrounding villages have already left. The man in charge of the petrol pump at the Yacht Club invites me to sleep at his place. It is in the largest (infamous) slum (settlement) of Lae. Later on, he returned drunk and snored in the hut. Four-year-old children were watching television until one in the morning. I decided to sleep outside. It is impossible sleep, eaten by mosquitoes with lots of drunk people around who won't stop shouting. It was only later that I understood why they got drunk on a Thursday. The sale and public consumption of alcohol is prohibited on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. So they get drunk some other day! ...
I return to Voco point, from where the dinghies depart. I ask to be taken to a very quiet and secluded village. After a long wait in the drizzle, I find someone to take me. An hour in the pouring rain with no way to protect themselves. Approaching a beach and the driver asks me "Do you want to land here? "Yes," You really want to land here !? "Yes," Are you sure you want to land here? !! "Uh ... Yes. I jump on the beach and the dinghy leaves.
Immediately the whole village rushes to me and they all start to question me like a police interrogation. Why have you come here? What are you looking for? Do you have the authorization? Where do you come from? Which company sent you? Etc. I was too tired to stand it for long - how could I make them understand that I was exhausted by a month of travel and I was looking for a quiet and friendly area to rest a few days? I learned later that they had only seen one white person before, a German, and that was over ten years ago. Fortunately the village head (not friendly) and one of his friends Mathew, friendly, and, as I would find out later, very cultivated, arrived. They extracted me from the crowd and took me a little further away where we sat and talked quietly and calmly. Later the village leader went away and Mathew asked where I wanted to sleep. I point out an empty hut on the edge of the beach. It is quickly agreed and that will be my home for three days.
Here is the hut by the beach.
The front part.
On the roof, my solar panel charging a usb battery.
And my loincloth and mosquito-proof hammock inside.
I spend the next two days sleeping at night, sleeping in the morning and sleeping the afternoon. Between naps, I go to the market, I swim amongst the corals and I take some pictures. In the evenings, Mathew and I change the world!
My food:
A panorama taken from the sea. My hut is the one with the red roof.
I had chosen a camera that can go down to 18m under the sea. Unfortunately this is the only photo I had time to take in two months of travel.
The bilum bags are used for everything.
No road, no trail, no vehicles, no electricity, no telephone and no internet. The canoe is the only means of transport. Travelling along the coast they pass by my house.
I go to the old airport to buy my ticket to Port Moresby and find there a surreal reminder of colonization: Papuans playing the bagpipes to welcome a minister.
I go to visit the botanical garden of Lae. I get acquainted with the curator of the collection and herbarium. Very interesting exchange, we will keep in touch. He asks me to identify a plant. Two months later I find out it was Monanthocitrus (aka Wenzelia) bispinoza.
On the way to the airport I stopped to visit a crocodile farm. Here are some pictures in a breeding pen. A large male.
Nearer.
The guards tell me that when we enter the enclosure there must always be someone with a bamboo pole. I wonder "What happens if the crocodiles charge?" "You must run as fast as possible." "And what do you do with the bamboo?" "Nothing!"
A female.
I sympathize with Eric the head of the crocodile farm. He invites me to spend the night at his home. We spent a few fascinating hours telling us our adventures in Africa and Papua.
Eric gives me a lift to the airport. I fly to Port Moresby. I go to sleep near the university with the Sédé family as usual. Each trip is an opportunity to change clothes, to prepare what I will carry for the next section of the journey, and to spend the evenings in stimulating discussions. In addition, every time I copy all my files on to Murphy's computer. He is one of the boys in the family, and a university student. Should any misfortune happen to my hard drive, I have a backup.
Mike had put me in touch with Nathalie who works for S.I.L. (Originally the 'Summer Institite for Linguistics'). She intends to grow any citrus I find in the SIL gardens in Lae and Goroka. So I decide to go back to the Brown River to find her some seeds of Citrus wintersii.
Thursday, 2nd October.
I'm off to find my Brown River buddies. The atmosphere has changed because the young men of another tribe have been extorting people who use the bridge at night. When night falls everyone is on their guard. This does not prevent me going to get my beer on the other side every night despite the warnings not to go. The store is on the other side ...
Friday, 3rd October.
A boy carrying something to eat from the river.
I go back into the bush to take the GPS readings that I had not been able to do a month earlier because my smartphone had been stolen. The fruits that had been left as tests have not turned yellow. I dig up some young seedlings and dirt because they wanted to grow them in the concession.
The owner of the shop has just cleared some ground for a new garden a few miles away and found two new citrus. One with leaves like Citrus warburgiana but without any thorns.
The other with willow shaped leaves.
If the first one is Citrus warburgiana, it would be the first time it has been found north of Port Moresby, but the lack of spines makes one think it is some other species. While the second one is (for me) a completely new species. This is certainly the most interesting thing so far in this journey. I gave the names BR2 to the one with willow leaves and BR3 to the one wich looks like C. Warburgiana.
I ask where the trees are, and the answer is "Well, we were clearing the ground, so we cut them down, but do not worry, there must be others in the vicinity.". The leaves on the branches brought to us were half dry, so I did not think it useful to take samples. We organize a survey for the next day.
Sunday, 5th October.
We go to the area of the cleared land. We search and search, but it is impossible to find the citrus with leaves like warburgiana. We find a tiny example of the one with willow leaves.
I pick the minimum possible. We wrap the branches in banana leaves and return home where I prepare the samples.
I go to look behind the house for the branches of the warburgiana-leaf citrus I had thrown away yesterday. I put them to rehydrate in water with a few drops of alcohol. The only water available here is the water of the Brown River.
Monday, 6th October.
I prepare the rehydrated samples of the warburgiana-leaf citrus and I leave for Port Moresby. There are neither flowers nor fruits, so no seeds. Local say these citrus grow in the mountains and that the rivers, floods and birds carry the seeds to the plain. The plants grow but end up dying because of the relative dryness and they do not fruit here.
I take this opportunity to switch my smartphone from 3G to 4G . Yes, there is 4G in PNG!
The introduction and sale of betel nuts is forbidden in Port Moresby which results in a lot of smuggling. To fight this, checkpoints are located at the entrances of the city. This is the quantity seized in two weeks on the road Brown River to Port Moresby.
Back to The Brown River. I was told about a place where there were "near-citrus" plants and maybe another variety. So I organized an outing. We had to go to the foot of the mountains. I leave with a son of the family to reach a hamlet near the mountains and the people of the village will take us to the place.
We have to cross the Brown River.
In the distance you can see the mountains where we are going.
We call a ferry.
A child takes us across.
The house and the family of the ferry-boy.
We arrive at the village at the foot of the mountains which are really only hills at this point. The family of the chief.
We wait for the village chief or one of his sons. These are the only people who know where to go. Notice the 'de-lousing' - a constant activity in PNG.
We leave when the son arrives. Very quickly we find the small-leaved near citrus, the one which I already knew about. Young fruit just formed. In the following pictures, my fingers should give a sense of scale.
The leaves are between 1 and 2 cm.
Then close by is the other variety.The leaves are between 4 and 5 cm.
An unopened flower.
Fruit. Note the oil glands which are characteristic of citrus.
Fruit cut open. The structure is that of citrus, but there are no vesicles. Seeds are immersed in a gelatinous liquid as with other near-citrus.
Leaves like holly are a characteristic of this plant.
The resemblance between the two plants gives me an idea, and by searching hard we find there is a mid-sized plant that carries both kinds of leaves, small and large from bottom to top. This is the same plant that makes small leaves up to one meter in height and large leaves thereafter. In contrast, the fruit is always the same size.
We start on the way home and find the village chief in the hamlet.
He has his grand-daughter between his legs, a branch of the plant in one hand and a local tobacco cigarette rolled in plain paper in the other. Note the red marks from betel juice on the cigarette and on his lips.
A house on the way home. There is a hammock which is rare in PNG, and a very rustic "ladder".
We return by another track in order to see some new places. It has been a long, eventful day!
I have enough seeds of C. wintersii. I want to take them to the university but before that I have a meal.
Kangaroos can't win every time. This one has lost.
Another thing I want to do before leaving is to visit the dormitory of the "flying foxes", the giant fruit-eating bats. Every night they made a great hullabaloo in the tree under which I slept. I want revenge!! They roost in two large trees on the other side of the river. The conditions for photography are the worst you'll ever meet. The trees are very tall so I have to use the zoom. It has branches in the foreground that upset the focus, and the contrast between the sky and the bat is such that I have to overexpose the pictures to be able to make out the bats. In addition, I must not make any noise or sudden movements. So be lenient ...
I didn't reduce too much the size of this picture so you can see the head of the bats.
Now I go to Port Moresby to drop the seeds in the botany lab of the University. They will grow plants for Nathalie & SIL and I will go to the Sede family. Tomorrow I fly to Alotau.
A night at the university and then I leave to take the plane to Alotau. Here's some decoration hanging on the rear-view mirror of a PMV.
My intention had been to seek C. warburgiana around the Alotau Bay and in the mountains, and take the opportunity to do some underwater photography because Milne Bay is world famous for its coral reefs. Then finally to go to Goodenough Island in search of Citrus wakonai just before leaving. On the advice of Seb (a friend back in France), I decided to reverse the order and go as soon as possible to Goodenough. This choice may have been a good idea, as the following will show.
Having arrived in Alotau, I hitched a ride from the airport to the city. I immediately met two very nice Chinese who owned a department store in the city. They introduced me to their neighbour, a cargo-transit agent who dealt with movements in the port. He told me that one could wait ten days without a boat to Goodenough, but that a departure is scheduled this weekend. He shows me a place to sleep, the Transit Hotel. I am reluctant because usually I do not pay to sleep, but I'll see.
The Transit Hotel.
This is a building divided into 16 parts corresponding to 16 LLGs (Local Level Government). Each corresponds to one or more dependent islands of Alotau. This is not really a hotel but a local transit station between the islands and Alotau for goods and people. This is a very good idea. This type of project and organization is unfortunately often lacking in PNG.
This is the part of the building allocated to Goodenough Island.
It's a very nice and convenient way to get aquainted with the people of Goodenough. I installed myself there, and come back there every time I am in Alotau. The building consists of a screened porch where most people sleep; a room on the ground floor consisting of a dormitory, two showers and toilets; and upstairs a large dormitory and four single bedrooms. Except in the bedrooms, everyone sleeps on the floor. I sleep in the dormitory upstairs.
Saturday, 11th October.
I have found a boat to Goodenough which leaves this afternoon. Arrives tomorrow morning at dawn.
I take the opportunity to visit Alotau. Here everything is different from the rest of PNG. People are smiling and friendly. Violence seems absent. For example, people walk the streets late into the night, which is unimaginable in Port Moresby and in other major cities. It's like summer in the south of France or Spain. Everyone is laughing, flirting, joking. I've never seen anything similar except at the university. The city is very clean and on a human scale. And best of all, there are no mosquitoes. There are three covered markets. This one is right next to the transit hotel, and this is where I eat.
From the quays I took some photos into the harbour water.
Megapodes eggs are very expensive, 5 kina, equivalent to € 1.50. In PNG, everything is very expensive.
Megapodes eggs are very similar to duck eggs, considerably larger than hens eggs and with a stronger taste.
Here's our boat. This is the MV Goodenough II.
Just next door is the MV Goodenough I. The same boat Helena travelled on when she came here:
Loading the boat.
7pm and still not departed. Now they talk about 8pm or 9pm. We'll see ...
At 9:36pm we leave for Goodenough Island. A 12-hour journey.
As the sun rises we are following the coast of Fergusson Island.
And when we pass the southwestern tip of Fergusson, Goodenough Island appears with its permanent crown of clouds.
We continue to sail along the coast of Fergusson. At 8.28 am we stop to deposit goods in a village.
From there the whole of Goodenough is visible.
Throughout the trip the sailors trail a fishing line. Our first catch. The sailors cook the fish with rice and share it with all the passengers.
10.27am. Another stop. It's now more than 12 hours since we left Alotau, so we should have arrived!!
12.25pm. Another stop going up the north coast of Fergusson.
1.20pm. Another stop, then due west towards Goodenough.
3.37pm. Stop at Wagifa, a small island near Goodenough.
4.05pm. First stop on Goodenough. I manage to send an e-mail by picking up the aerial of Fergusson. This will be the last time for the coming week.
The captain says that due to an error in the cargo loading order we will make deliveries to the south & west coasts of Goodenough before going to the east coast.
We pass the only outrigger sailing canoe that I have seen.
Then we arrive at the village where the captain was born.
The captain suggests the passengers should disembark. They will be looked after by his family and he shall pick them up the next day. I chose to stay on the boat. The crew went ashore and returned half drunk. At nightfall (6.30pm) we leave for the west. The sea becomes rough. A short circuit in the electrical cabinet destroys the boats lighting.Some men at the bow monitor the distance to the coast and the depth of the bottom with a flashlight - a special, extremely powerful torch that lights up a square. I'm with the captain in the wheelhouse. At one point he turned off his GPS. I ask him why and he says it could happen we find ourselves without GPS and without light and so you have to practice. He made the rest of the route without GPS. As I was recording the trace on my smartphone I could compare his night route with his day one. His night journey always kept an extra margin of safety. Very good. At 8.20pm we make a stop in Kiliak, then two others around 10pm. Finally, we anchor in a cove at 11pm and go to sleep.
My feet on the soil of Goodenough. One small step for a man...
At 7.30 am we weighed anchor.
Dolphins playing at the bow of the boat.
See short video here.
The passengers go back on board and the journey continues. We navigate and trade along the entire coast to the east. Eight stopovers between midday and 6pm!
Two more fish were caught.
When we pass the strait between Fergusson and Goodenough, the east coast of the island is revealed.
At 6.30pm, the anchor is dropped at Bolubolu. I do a quick tour of the village but couldn't find a beer . We have them in the hold and only unload tomorrow. I do not feel like walking from Bolubolu to Wakonai, so I go back to sleep on the boat. Tomorrow it goes to Vivigani and the path to Wakonai will be shorter.
At 11.13am we unload a complete house in the form of planks.
I get off the boat here. The track for Vivigani is some kilometers further on, but the dinghy which unloads the house will put me down there. I say farewell to the Goodenough II.
Unloading on the beach with Fergusson island as background.
And we leave again for a few more kilometers. View of the mountains.
We see a dugong. No time to get out the camera. As big as a cow, reddish brown with a dolphin-like tail. Since leaving Alotau I have seen several flights of flying fish, dolphins and now a dugong!
They put me down at the start of the track to Vivigani airfield.
It is 1pm. Three days and three nights on the boat for a trip that was supposed to last 12 hours !!!
I'm finally on this island that has to be the highlight of the trip.
In fact, the forest only lasts for 150 metres. Then I cross a wide plain of grassy savanna.
And arrive at mixed forest and savanna.
I pass the first-aid post and reach Vivigani airfield.
At the end of the runway is a little wood of mango trees where they hold the weekly market.
Further on, after the fork to Bolbolu, there is a horseshoe-shaped mound that must date from WWII. The 360 panorama is taken from this mound.
I arrive at the first house of Wakonai. I ask a woman for some water, then I go to get washed by the river. There, I meet a man and some children whom I chat to. He invites me to come to his house. It is the house where I had stopped before. and his wife that I had asked for water.
It is the house I'm going to live in during my stay in Wakonai.
The family of my hosts, Chris and Mispa, who are standing in the background. Lovely people.
I am finally in Wakonai! First surprise, the village is not flat. This is in fact the start of the mountains. The home of Chris and Mispa is exactly on the border between the totally flat grass savanna (with kangaroos) and the beginning of the mountains. Second surprise, the village extends over a kilometer. That was not visible on the satellite maps. Tomorrow, a meeting with the village chief.
At 7.20 am I go to meet the chief in the village. My host in front of the beautiful mountains, for once clear of cloud.
The meeting with the village chief turns out to be a village council. The village chief is in the yellow T-shirt and red cap. The man in yellow and blue is in charge of the census register. You can also see my chair and my bilum. Photo taken looking north.
That's him on the right of this picture taken by Malcolm Smith in his expedition to Wakonai in 2000.
He is a farmer in a village in the mountains. I made an appointment for the next day to take his picture in front of a citrus wakonai but he returned to his village and I did not see him again.
The meeting lasted an hour and a half and was mainly questioning my motivation for coming here, and haggling over a money-making racket. No one can come to this village without giving their precise reasons. As usual I told the truth, it might have been a mistake. Having said that I was looking for the wild citrus that Australians collected in 2000, a young man (who is now 14 years older) gets up and comes back 30 seconds later with a branch and an immature fruit. This is my first contact with C. wakonai.
After deliberation they announced that I can study the plant and have as many seeds I want for 300 kina. No luck I have only 200 kina. ( £50. €66, US$77) Re-deliberation, and they accept 200 Kinas. Later, I learned how it works: When someone arrives in this village they are not allowed to do anything without paying. To walk in the forest 500 K. Take a picture of plants 300 K. Taking pictures of animals 400 K. Climb up the mountain is 1000 K. And so on ...
Evidently for 200K I will not be allowed to go in the forest or in the mountains. I will have to work on the two plants found in the village.
They send two young people in the mountains to bring fruits. During this meeting, I hurt my foot on one of these steel half cylinders dating from the war.
On the way back we go to see a C. wakonai near the school.
Approximately 5 metres tall.
Back at home, I take pictures of the fruit and branch.
I will keep the fruit as long as possible to give the seeds a chance to mature. But when I opened the fruit there were only two small seeds and they have not germinated.
Having no more money to pay for the return journey, we decided to go to Vivigani village to meet the owner of a dinghy which is soon going to Alotau. I ask if he can take me and get paid in Alotau after I have been to the bank. He accepts. Departure is scheduled for Friday 17 at dawn.
On the way I try to send an email because I was told that sometimes you can receive from an aerial that is located on a hill in the north of the island but it works only occasionally. Actually, the e-mail was sent on the 19th when near Fergusson.
On the way there is a house with one of the few traditional local ladders. All the others are made of metal sheets abandoned after the war.
We miscalculated and found ourselves returning to Vivigani without a lamp, on a night without a moon. A struggle!
Before leaving to study the C. wakonai I take some pictures at home.
The pig in his favorite spot.
A little girl of the household...
and with her mother.
My work-bench.
The Citrus wakonai in the centre of the village.
The same with another camera. The white balance is better.
Height approximately 3 m.
Flower just before opening.
Open flower.
Petals removed. The 20 stamens are unjoined. The filaments are cylindrical. The upper parts of the stamens are bent to form a Z-shape.
The pollen on sticky lines clearly shows the pentameric structure of stigma.
Leaves.
Trunk.
Together with Dominic, Chris's younger brother, we go to the school to meet the teacher. He is next to the palm.
We walk downhill to the east to reach the second C. wakonai in the village.
Kenegabu Artson is now a teacher at the Galuwata Elementary School in Wakonai.
Kenegabu was the second guide who helped Malcolm Smith and Lionel Smith to find C. wakonai in September 2000.
He is the one on the left in this original photo.
He now has a ten-year-old son, and as I had this photo on my smartphone, he was very proud to show him what he looked like fourteen years earlier when he had a beard!
The stamens become white at the end of flowering.
A well-formed pistil. Note the bumpy surface of the ovary and the near absence of any style.
The length of the style is one of main causes of infertility. It is possible that the very short style creates an ability to hybridise easily.
Dominic holding a branch of Citrus wakonai.
While returning to the house I take some pictures in the village.
In the morning, we learned that the young people who went to look for fruits on the mountain have not found any.The plants were all in bloom. Kenegabu explains that they cannot have gone to the right place in half a day, as it takes a whole day to get there. They went to a nearby hill that has some plants but not in the original habitat of wet rainforest. He would have offered to go to the mountains himself to look for fruits but, being a teacher, he is only free on weekends. Dominic proposes to go tomorrow. For a good quarter of an hour, Kenegabu explains to Dominic how to find the place where C. wakonai is located.
I'm going back to the village to haggle over the contract because there aren't any seeds. The village chief is absent, so I discuss it with the head of the census. 200K was for seeds and the study of the plant. I say that, as I have no seeds, I want to pay only 100K. He kindly accepts and takes the 100K. My calculation is simple: I still have 100K; it costs 80K to go to East Cape and 7K for the PMV to get to Alotau. This leaves me 13 K, approximately 4 €uro. So I decided to go shopping for my hosts. The only shop in the area is located near the Vivigani-Bolubolu track. I cannot buy much but the trader I got on with on the boat gave me some discounts ... A small bottle of oil, rice and some other trifles. The gesture is only symbolic. Everywhere else I've been, I've bought some useful things for my hosts - it is the first time I cannot do so. I returned after dark, but this time I have not forgotten my headlamp.
Dominic leaves for the mountain. The Citrus wakonai are mainly in the red circle in the next picture. He will send on the fruits either to Bolubolu or to Alotau.
The two mountains are 2500m and 2300m high.
I set off at dawn to Vivigani to take the dinghy to leave.
The dinghy and its pilot are waiting for me on the beach but no-one else is there. The other passengers didn't turn up. Trip cancelled. I go back to Wakonai to wait for Dominic.
As I sat on the platform with a mango in one hand and my knife in the other, I plant the knife in my right calf. It's time to leave this place!
In the evening, the village headman arrives and begins yelling at me. He wants his 200 kinas and says that the man in charge of the census did not have the right to accept the new arrangement. He threatens to take me to the police commisioner in Bolubolu. I try to explain to him that I had no longer had 200k. He gets even more angry and accuses my host of charging me for the accommodation and keeping the money for himself. This begins to annoy me. I explain that because of him I was only able to spend 13K for my hosts and that you can't call that much of a profit! He calls me a liar. My host says that it is the truth. The villagers, who begin to gather around us, start to take my side against the chief. They say that Chris does not lie because he is a good Christian (every morning and evening I heard him say his prayers). Feeling the atmosphere changing, the leader leaves, saying that tomorrow morning he will come to apologize. Why tomorrow? I do not understand.
In the night Dominic returned from the mountain. He did not find any fruits. The trees were all in flower.
Saturday, 18th October.
In the morning I hurt my left foot on a piece of coconut that was lying in the grass. It is a curse! The village headman arrives with the census book manager. The headman doesn't apologise at all, and the census manager - this is a young man who until now was friendly - starts calling me all the names under the sun, but finally finishes by saying they accept the deal! His statements sounded false, as if he was playing a game. I think he did it so as not to lose face with the village chief. Anyway, one thing I know is that I must leave this place as soon as possible. This afternoon a 4x4 should come from Bolubolu to re-supply food for a training course for new primary school teachers in the region. I'm going to wait and try to leave with them. In Bolu Bolu, on the way to Wakonai I got on with and ate together with the Inspector General in charge of the course. We spent an hour talking about teaching and education.
For this trip, I had brought stocks of ballpoint pens, razors and analgesics - that's what is in high demand in Africa. Here, I found that there is very little demand for painkillers because of the good provision of primary medicine. So, given the reception in the village, I had decided that I wouldn't give anything. But later I thought that children were not responsible for the stupidity of their parents and so I gave pens for the school and razors to those who had been friendly. I realized that my anti-mosquito hammock had disappeared yesterday. It really is time to go.
Today is market day. It distracted me a little. It takes place under the mango grove at the end of the Vivigani runway.
I take pictures of the family and the house, and I wait for the pickup. When it comes, it is full, but I beg them to take me. I ride between the bunches of bananas and other passengers. A few words of farewell to my host family and I (finally) leave. A last look at the mountains.
And so to Bolubolu.
I spend the rest of the day in the rain waiting for an opportunity to get transport to Alotau. At night I walk away from the people and houses and I settle for the night under a tree in the tall grass behind the sports field.
While I am folding up the tarpaulin, a young man invites me to have breakfast with him and he points out the blue house 100 metres away. I agree to join him, and he leaves. When I get to the blue house I am greeted by a very polite and friendly man. A beautiful lunch is ready. He invites me to sit down and he says: "To be honest, I have to introduce myself, I am Bolubolu police commissioner" and he shows me his identity card. I had camped just 100m from his house. He then asked me how it had been in Wakonai. I told him the story. He is devastated and told me not to use this to judge Papua. "These people are idiots who see a white person once every ten years." Then we talk about other things. Speaking of C. wakonai he says that if it is over there, it must also be close to Bolubolu. He asks to see photos and descriptions. He says he will do some research and plant it in Bolubolu, so if someone else comes looking they won't have to go to Wakonai.
Well, the police commissioner was the big threat of the Chief of Wakonai village, he turns out to be the most friendly person I met on the island.
I return to wait at the "port". At three o'clock I found a dinghy leaving for Alotau. The trip should take three hours. A last look at the mountains.
The 'port' of Bolubolu.
The boat goes along the coast of the island of Fergusson and arrives at the cape that opens onto the sea that one must cross to go to the mainland. We see huge waves on the horizon. We decided to sleep in the mission just before the cape. Very friendly welcome.
There's just one week before my departure from PNG and I'm on the island of Fergusson. I still have to find one citrus fruit, C. Warburgiana.
In the morning we wait a bit for the wind to drop, and then depart. We stop a few hundred metres from the shore - I don't know why. When they restart the engine, the starter rope breaks. Since the engine was running, there was a discussion whether to attempt the crossing or to return to the mission for repairs. We chose to return.
The (first) departure. The weather is not great ...
Going back to the mission.
In the neighboring village there is a mechanic. We contact him by phone, because the phone works on Fergusson. The repair takes place.
I take advantage of the wait to take this photo of a small observer.
We leave for the crossing that should last 2 hours. As soon as we pass the cape it starts to rain. Visibility gets worse very quickly. The wind rises and the waves grow larger. Two women, one with a baby, and an old man try to take shelter under a tarpaulin. Others get the spray in the face. I'm on the bench, in the middle of two other people. I have nothing to hang on to besides the bench itself. I keep my bilum between my legs. Soon everything is soaked with seawater. Both my cameras and my smartphones are waterproof. I chose them for that reason, sacrificing image quality for security. Just as well I did, because everything would have failed. The hard drive is also in a waterproof container. After 3 hours of storm they started repeating "you should be able to see land" and "we should already have arrived". After 4 hours the mechanic says we are going to run out of fuel. They asked to see the GPS on my smartphone. As the touch screen was full of salt water, it didn't work very well but just enough. We had time to see that we had covered two-thirds of the distance and we were going in the right direction - and then it stopped working. The mechanic collected all the remnants from the bottom of the fuel cans in order to continue a little. From there we were able to get a phone signal. We called for help, saying we were lost, without petrol but we did not know our position. Others telephoned their families ... The woman with the baby cried constantly, saying we were going to die, and then she started to say her prayers. I was a little rude, but I told her to shut up! As there was a phone signal we knew we were within 40 km of the coast. We waited to see whether the remaining fuel would get us to the coast. After an interminable time we discerned a black mass. It was the mountains along the coast. The rain stopped when we got nearer and the outline of the mountains became visible. A passenger recognized the shape of the mountains and told us where we were. He guided us to a place where there were a few houses and a tiny shop. We landed like zombies, shivering with cold, onto a black sand beach. The pilot said he had always been confident, and sure that we would get there. So I reminded him that I had heard him say that we were lost and we did not have enough fuel ... He admitted that before seeing the GPS he thought we had passed East Cape and were lost somewhere in the Coral see between Papua and Australia. We found 20 litres of petrol to buy and we set off again down the coast to the southeast. On the way, we got caught in the worst rain of the voyage. Finally we arrived in a village, Awayama which is the start of a track to Alotau through the mountain. The crossing had lasted nearly five hours, not the two hours expected. We found a PMV and set off for Alotau. I went to the bank, and back to the Transit Hotel. I put all my devices under running water to remove the salt water. People are a little surprised to see me washing cameras and a smartphone. Extremely happy to be on dry land and still alive.
At sunrise I go to to hunt for Citrus warburgiana. I decide to go to the agricultural station at Bubuleta. The track is good and the PMVs go there. It seems that the plant is close to the track which avoids a trudge through the forest or in the mountains. The problem is that my information dates back to 1976. In 38 years anything could happen, such as the death of the plant ... The site is halfway between Alotau and the East Cape. The PMV drops me well before the GPS location that I have on my smartphone. This is a construction site. I inquire, and a young man who works at the station explains that the old agricultural station was abandoned long ago and they are building a new one. He showed me around. A small goat breeding centre and some fish ponds - not very grand. As he does not know where the old station was, we ask some old people in a group of houses where the employees live. They know roughly where it was but now it's in the forest. We go in that direction, but finding a plant in the forest is difficult. We are starting to get discouraged when Mathew (this is the name of the young man helping me) asks me why aren't we going to the exact GPS co-ordinates? I explain that 40 years ago GPS did not exist and that the coordinates were very approximate. But as this is our only chance we follow the GPS exactly in the forest. At the place indicated there is nothing. Two women arrive and when we explained what we were looking for, they say they know this plant. It was just 15 meters away!
Tree 12 metres tall. The part on the photo is about 8 metres but it is very unbalanced and continues on the right.
Trunk diameter is 25 cms.
My companions at the discovery: Mathiew, Eddy, Yuna et Lino.
I make a work-table with a banana leaf placed on the ground.
A fruit.
The pulp is green but the women tell me that the fruit is yellow when ripe. The peel is sweet and the pulp acid even when mature. All fruits are parasitized by a black wasp. There are no seeds. We didn't find any flowers either.
Leaves.
Under the tree there are many seedlings. The leaves are incredibly different from those of the adult plant. This leaf dimorphism is common for citrus in this region, PNG and Australia.
We go back to the track and while waiting for a PMV I take some pictures. A small island near the coast.
A beach of black sand.
I return to Alotau just in time to get my plane ticket for Port Moresby. The departure is for tomorrow noon. I abandon the idea of spending a few days holiday. Too bad for the coral dives and walks in the forest and the mountains.
As I had neither drunk nor eaten anything during the day, and as I wanted to celebrate the 100% success of my mission, I had a big meal with two beers and a cigarette (I do not smoke). I returned to sleep in the Transit Hotel. It felt like the end, which made me a touch sad with a heavy heart!
The manager of the Goodenough section of the Transit Hotel, gave me one of the empty bedrooms to sleep in at the price of the dormitory. A present for my last night, and the only night in a bed during two months of travelling. I say goodbye to all those Goodenough people whom I had met, and I take the PMV to the airport. There I remember that I had planned to go to city hall to ask the origin of the name 'Orangerie Bay', a bay on the south coast, but I completely forgot.
New Guinea is spelled 'Niugini' in Tok Pisin.
I go back to the Sede family, to re-make the world in one evening.
Thursday, 23rd October.
I spend a day at the Brown River to say my goodbyes to the family, friends and neighbours.
Again, the 'bilum' bag is used for everything.
With flash you can see the baby's eyes are looking at the world outside.
Friday, 24th October.
Back to Port Moresby. In Port Moresby there is a tiny craft market. I spend the day there. Tourist souvenirs are very hard to find, since there are virtually no tourists ...
The market traders tell me that tomorrow there will be nobody here because they will all be at a craft market organized by a school at Ela Beach.
I arrive at Ela Beach and I realize that I had been here before, on 29th August. That was a Friday and this is what it looked like then:
Today is Saturday and this is how it now looks:
Lots of people, lots of food vendors and drinks on the sly.
Beach games, canooing and basketball competitions.
There was a nice atmosphere.
I particularly liked the look of the public toilets!
I finally find the craft market. It is in the grounds of a school, it must take the place of the school fete. There are many vendors, many more than in the craft market that is held every day in the city. There are a lot of white people too. This is the hotel district, with embassies and large companies. I guess it must be the school attended by the children of whites. Surprisingly, the market is led by a group of musicians, singers and dancers from the island of Bougainville. The style is more Polynesian than Papuan. A good way of recycling the soles of flip flops.
Here you have a video of the orchestra.
And here a video of the dancers.
Some light-heartedness in an otherwise rather austere country. This is the only time I saw the elegant hand movements that African women have naturally.
I spend the day at the craft market chatting with the merchants. In the evening, with the youngest daughter of the Sede family and a neighbour, we decided to have an adventure! We climbed the hill just behind the house!
In the foreground are the residences of university employees, with the university itself in the background.
Just behind the university, they are building the athletes' housing for the 2015 Pacific Games.
Another day at the craft market. I ended up buying a Kundu, a local drum made from lizard skins. On the left, in the yellow shirt, is the drum-maker, a pastor, and on the right, the seller holding my Kundu.
It is said that New Guinea is the 'Land of the Unexpected'. For me it was like that from the first to the last day! Going back to the university, this is what I see at the PMV stop:
It is a 'common spotted cuscus' (Spilocuscus maculatus). The skin is one of the main ornaments in traditional costumes.
In fact, the girl got into my PMV which gave me time to take lots of photos.
In the evening we decided to take some souvenir photos. Here is the whole Sede family.
The only occassion when I have the time to use my tripod. Everything else was too fast...
This photo looks ordinary, like all the people shots taken during the trip. In fact it is the result of hard work, because PNG people naturally have quite a stern face, and it's difficult to make them smile.
Scene of ordinary life. I show how my smartphone can trigger my camera.
The Sede family gave me (amongst other things) a ceremonial bilum bag decorated with cassowary feathers.
Now the cassowary is a protected species. So I was not sure how to go through customs. The craft market vendors had told me that if the feathers are part of useful items they will pass through customs without any problems. To be on the safe side, Murphy, one of the sons in the house, accompanied me to customs to recover the bilum if it was refused. I stand with my bilum over my shoulder and ask if I can go through customs with it. The customs officer tells me that they are very proud that foreign people are interested in their culture and they can take home the souvenirs they want. I thought this was a very classy answer! I turn back to Murphy and signaled him that it's OK, and then I'm off to boarding.
Last photo of Papua taken from the aeroplane, a bit distorted by the engines jet exhaust. You can clearly see the "centre" of Port Moresby with Ela Beach in the foreground.
14h 30 Depart Port Moresby for Hong Kong. 21h Depart Hong Kong for Paris.
Wednesday, October 29.
06h 00 Arrive Paris. 10h 30 Arrive Bordeaux. I collect my luggage. The Kundu drum arrived in good condition. 12h 00 Arrive Bergerac.
One year later I've still not completely come back to France. PNG still occupies a large part of my brain.
The thief was among the university guards. 
It really is time to go.
