A journey to Port Moresby

By storyboard guest writer, Smith Irogi.

Months of strenuous fund raising in our humble surrounds of Bogaboga, Milne Bay Province, saw our group of 19 Christian adventurers ready at last to travel to Port Moresby. It was 5 am, Friday, 24^th June.

The sea was calm and the wind still.

There were heard footsteps hurrying about as we loaded our gear onto two community dinghies that we’d hired and which were moored along the white sandy beach of our beautiful village. Then the 19 of us, 10 men and 9 women, boarded the dinghies and slipped into the open sea, shattering the silence of the morning with 40hp engines.

The journey across Goodenough Bay to Awaiama was long and tedious as the sea was exceptionally calm and of deepest blue. A few of us dozed off. Some 4 hours later we landed at Awaiama, a greyish and lonesome looking stretch of coastline compared to Bogaboga.

Half an hour later we boarded a PMV and travelled another 4 hours or so along a dirt road of pebbles and stones toward Alotau, arriving there at 1.00 pm.

Saturday next day, 25^th June, saw our group unable to meet the cost of travel to Port Moresby on a Starship. By 3.00 pm, however, our leader secured a PMV which took us on some more dirt road but closer to the famous Magi Highway.

Landscape on this part of our journey began taking different forms, hour by hour. New places came into view, strange landmarks seen and familiar historical spots recalled and seen in actuality. Once, we were told we were at Nube only to learn we were at a place called Borai. The next day, Sunday 26^th, we reached Nube itself.

By Monday, 27^th June, we are scrambling for dinghies to take us to Kapari. Due to rough weather we use up 8 hours to travel from Nube to Kapari. And in that process my phone slips into the ocean, else I’d provide you some digital photos of some of the beautiful places we have seen.

Nonetheless it is 7.30 am, Tuesday 28^th, and we are leaving Kapari for Port Moresby, stopping briefly at Kwikila around noon for some biscuits and lolly water from a trade store, then onwards to the city; for some of us, a sight indeed from Erima, 5Mile, Boroko and Tokarara to behold for the first time. A few of the women huddle up closer to us men because of the strangeness of the city.

We are here the 19 of us to sing songs of praise and worship. A few parishes of our own (Anglican) along with other Church denominations have invited us to sing and worship with them. Wherever we go and sing our hosts feel the power of God’s love with us.

We sing mostly in Are, our mother tongue. It is the first language in Papua New Guinea that the entire Bible was translated into in 1904.       

Oro dancers joining in with the Bogaboga fellowship group at St Paul's 9-Mile church festivities.

The St Paul's parish at 9-Mile became the first host of this Bogaboga fellowship group, when opening its Brian Bell funded new church building on July 3rd. The Right Reverend Peter Ramsden, Bishop of the Port Moresby diocese opened and blessed the new church building.