A remarkably fertile land, rich with flora and drenched in suffocating heat and Highland chill, Papua New Guinea is a land of pearl-shelled villagers and prosaic hill people.

Organizations such as Rotary are helping this country improve its Health and Educational needs. It is with this in mind that CAFE (a program I started with the help of a grant from Rotary International) and its partners in PNG would assist in this endeavor as well. Distributing computers to help facilitate the informational needs that health care facilities need to adequately care for peoples – especially in the very remote and less accessible areas. To include computer technology to the classrooms at schools throughout the regions served.

In early September of 2008 a CAFÉ team including myself, an employee of Global Health Ministries in Minnesota, and a member of King’s Daughters Hospital in Indiana, ventured to PNG to assess needs and to assist at facilities that were soon to get the 100 PC’s that had been shipped there earlier that year.

We, as members of the CAFÉ team, traveled to this remote and lush country to help distribute and install these units in hospitals and schools.

We left August 30th and returned September 18th. First landing in the capital city of Port Moresby, we flew to Madang the next morning where we could visit a nursing school, a high school some clinics and hospitals where the CAFÉ PC’s would be used to learn or keep critical information.

After a few days in Madang we traveled to the Highlands; to Enga and Mt. Hagen. In Enga we visited and stayed with the medical surgeon – Dr Steve Lutz – who took over the missionary work that former Fairmont Rotarian and Fairmont Clinic founder Neil Nickerson had served.

Finally we traveled to Lae to evaluate facilities where CAFE PC’s were to soon be installed.

During our journey we had the opportunity to travel by banana boat to a remote village where the natives had never seen an American. We slept in a hut built on stilts with a thatched roof and bamboo floor with only a cloth for a bed.

The shower was a hose whose source was from a mountain stream. The hose hung over a wood tripod. Our host arranged to have a wall of large leaves surround the unit as they were told that we were perhaps more modest than the natives. The surround was too small to undress in and the cloth doorway kept falling down so the effort was for naught. Toilets were wherever you found a spot in the jungle.

After evaluating the needs at many facilities throughout PNG, we could see that many more PC’s would be needed in the future.

All was not work. A ceremony known as a Singsing was attended in Garoka. These events are presided over by tribal elders, and are distinguished by their high head-dress displaying the brilliant colors of plumes from the bird of paradise. Proud warriors painted in bright ochre dance to the beat of the Kundu drums.

Cafe team members

Scott - Doug - Connie