24th November
PJ
I met Chakumai via an introduction by a mutual friend back in 2020. The friend had noticed Chakumai and I had a shared interest in canoe carving. I don’t know how to carve a canoe and was wanting to learn, while Chakumai comes from a long line of canoe builders and is an expert. Our friendship grew as we maintained our communication online. He taught me about canoe building and at the same time shared parts of his life. I also shared my life and we planned to meet in person when I came to Manus. A few trips had been planned previously but we had to cancel for various reasons. Hence why when this trip finally happened, I got really excited to visit him, learn from him and experience life in his small island home.
He knew that we were unfamiliar with how to arrange things in Lorengau such as transport, markets etc. He was in the village but arranged for his daughter Kiteni, to come and assist us. Kiteni lives in Lorengau while she studies welding at vocational training. She told us that she is the only girl in a class of 18. This amazing young woman graduates next week.
She came to the lodge where we were staying and she helped us catch the PMV to town. I was quite familiar with PMVs in PNG but it was a bit of a shock to Jacinta especially the state of the bus structure, seats, and questionable road worthiness. But we got to where we needed to get to for one kina.
First thing we needed to get was cash. We went to the only ATM in town, at the only bank in town, with our only bank card to take out some cash. Unfortunately, there were some technical difficulties with the PIN number so the ATM ended up chewing up the bank card. We worked it out later that this technical difficulty was I had punch in the wrong PIN number which triggered the anti fraud/theft protocol. Fortunately we were able to retrieve the card and we were able to set a new PIN online and were back in business.
Next thing was the food from the market including, cooking bananas, kaukaus, tapiocs and sago and some nuts and fruits.
Jacinta has introduced me several times in Townsville to some fruits and veggies I’d never had before so it has been good to return the favour here in Manus.
After the food shopping we managed to catch up with Kevin who drove us back to our lodge to drop them off then to the main fuel depot to fill up our fuel containers.
We would still need to get a bit more fuel tomorrow when Chakumai arrives from M’buke but for today the main things we needed to do was done. We headed back to the lodge for an afternoon rest before heading to Kevin’s for dinner later in the evening.
