Day 8 - Hike to Gwirot

I cried today. More than once. And not because of the excitement of being the first European ever to reach the Daga highlands. But let's come back to it later...

As promised, the hike was shorter - just below 20 km. We started the day at 450m elevation and ended up at 1450m. Given that we had to cross several steep river valleys, the total climbing meters were around 1300 meters. Maybe nothing for a serious hiker, but challenging for me. In some ways it was actually easier than the first day, as I prepared more properly this time, but it still took all my mental and physical strength to get over the finish line. We even managed to arrive before it got dark, but to be honest, there were a couple of moments where I thought for the first time that maybe I have taken a bigger bite than I can chew.

This path, I don't really know how to describe it. I am not sure that even pictures or videos can give you the true picture. For the most part, it is an extremely narrow track, running on the mountainside, crossed by fallen trees and small streams, sometimes you are literally climbing the wall, using both your legs and hands. Several times I fell and had to grab some bushes not to fall off this path, with 20 meters of almost vertical mountain below. And this is the only access to the world for thousands of people. Everything they want to take to the market, they have to carry on this path and everything they buy, they have to carry here too. Starting from batteries, salt and cooking oil and finishing with the construction materials. In the highlands, all the buildings are made from some local logs, bamboo and grass mat, because they cannot bring anything from outside. Some houses have a few metal sheets on the roof that they have carried.

Every time I start to think about the challenges the people are facing here, emotions just overrun me. I was complaining when the elevator was not working in Georgia, and I had to carry groceries to the 5th floor. Here they have to walk 50km and climb steep hills. Women carrying bags, whereas I cannot manage just my own weight.

They are just on their own. No state, no government, no aid organizations, nothing. They wanted to educate the children, so the only way was for the community to build the schools. Some years later, the government recognized them as educational institutions and now at least pays the salaries for teachers. There is not a single medical office in the whole highlands region. The only one, a very basic nursing point down in Sirisiri, which is 4 days of walking from further away villages.

And what strikes me the most, is that they are not some native tribes for anthropologist to study, living in their own time and place. They are people like all of us. Children go to school and listen to modern music, when they are able to charge the batteries of their phones or loudspeakers. Friends gather in the evening to chat and play guitar. They think and discuss problems in Papua New Guinea and in the World.

And they are cut off, on their own. No safety net, no outside help. When your child gets sick, you just hope for the best. And in some ways, no chance that things get a lot better. With the terrain they have here and given the overall situation in PNG, I don't see any roads appearing in the coming decades. They cannot grow anything for sales, because it is impossible to take it to the market. I thought that even buying their coffee feels like torturing them, because they have to carry those thousands of kilos on this crazy path. I was thinking several times, of how they are not just giving up.

Yet they stay and try to improve their communities somehow. Building something, trying to find teachers or medical nurses who would be willing to come and live in those isolated conditions. Whenever I start to think about it, tears just start to come. Even now writing this, because I feel hopeless, it feels so crazy. Luckily they are not hopeless. For them it has been the reality that they have gotten used to. And with the only option to migrate out to bigger cities, which have unemployment and law and order issues, they stay. And they do not give up hope that some day things are better - maybe a new teacher comes, maybe even a doctor...

Hannes