Goroka

Hi friends,

As I conclude my 3rd month in Port Moresby here in Papua New Guinea, it still brings a smile to my face to see green mountains outside my team room window every day! Quite a contrast to Singapore, Bombay or Ann Arbor. This month's featured visit was travel to Goroka, part of the Eastern Highlands Province and home to PNG's 2nd highest peak, Mount Michael (~3,750m above sea level)

In addition to catching a great mountain view at sunrise, we also managed to visit several local villages, observe their cooking the 'mumu' (traditional heating of food using hot stones) way, and share in eating a meal with them at the chief's hut. Also they were kind enough to have a subsection of the village perform a 'sing-sing', traditional song and dance which was quite interesting...as you can guess from the picture.

Through the visit, we got to see how people live out in a rural environment, including housing: 'Traditional housing is built in a circular or rectangular shape and the walls weaved from pit pit canes or bamboo. It is built low to keep the interior warm from the cold climate and the high thatched roof, keeps the smoke away from the inhabitants. Cooking and sleeping is done in this communal, open-spaced living arrangement.' - Wikipedia

Actually this visit was quite profound - coming from living in super developed environments, it was a little surprising to see virtually everyone we met (in the communities) perfectly happy with living a slow life without access to electricity, or privacy (somehow to me these 2 were the first things I thought of that I would have difficulty living without), not to mention water and sanitation issues. People were extremely friendly and welcoming, taking us on little walking tours around their humble abodes, and seemed an extremely well-knit larger group, a community of ~60-70 ppl basically functioning as one big family. Makes me take a step back and rethink whether operating at a rapidly increasing rate is really the way forward, or if I need to reexamine any of my assumptions on the pursuit of happyness.

I can expound on more philosophy in person or via detailed individual emails, but that's enough of a flavor of what I've been up to for now, since I have to get back to work :(