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As you fly north out of the Highland mountains, which form a spine down the middle of PNG, and enter the Sepik valley, you eventually notice the scenery change from broccoli-covered mountains and deep valleys, to wide expanses of dense forest, punctuated by rivers and swamps. As the scenery starts to change, nestled in the foothills of the Highlands, is Munduku, quietly sat on the banks of a tributary of the Warakori river.

This was the first time visiting this remote and isolated community for both of us. It’s a little off Ryan’s usual route between the two MAF main bases of Telefomin and Wewak. As Ryan has never landed there before, he had to get permission for a “self-check”, meaning that he did not need a training pilot to check him in before he could land there on his own. As it’s not a difficult airstrip (Class B, 720m long, 1.4% slope), permission was quickly given. When a pilot does a self-check, the rules say they need to do a low-level fly-past first, to check the airstrip conditions, before doing a circuit and then landing. This all went easily according to plan and we found ourselves in this tiny community in the East Sepik Province of PNG.

As Ryan turned off the engine, the first thing I noticed was the heat, then came the calm…

After 6 weeks of almost 24/7 construction in Telefomin, we decided we needed to get out, if only to get a good night’s sleep. MAF management was very supportive. So on our way to Wewak, a major town on the north coast, which Ryan flies to most weeks, we stopped to pick up 6 passengers from Munduku, a 30 min flight from the coast. The river is their major source of transportation, so with no roads, they have no vehicles and probably few, if any generators. This meant there was no drone of engines, piercing car horns or sounds of gravel being dumped out of trucks, as is almost constant in Telefomin at the moment. The peace and quiet was tangible and washed over me in a very unexpected way. Even the wide, rushing river was almost silent.

I soaked in the stillness as I walked along the river bank, then spoke to some of the Munduku residents. I was told that they were in the middle of building a new double classroom for their primary school. The first classroom with an iron roof. This will mean that the students will be able to study through the wet season and the parents won’t need to replace the grass, which is their main roofing material, on top of the classrooms! It’s great to see a remote, isolated community making education a priority. They don’t have the roofing iron yet, but it’s likely that MAF will bring it from either Hagen or Wewak once they’re ready to put the roof on their new classrooms.

Roofing iron is a double blessing as it will enable the school to easily collect clean rainwater for the students and teachers to drink, improving their community’s health as well.

Our stop in Munduku was brief, only about half an hour, as Ryan prepared his passengers and the manifest, but that was long enough for me to chat with a few people and even be given the gift of a sun hat made from reeds. Freeman, a young man who had come to see the plane land along with most of the community, approached me as I came to look at the new Primary School. He placed his hat on my head, we took a picture with some of his friends and I offered it back, but he said it was a gift and that he had made it himself out of “grass from a lake”. I was touched, and wore it with pride as the plane took off.

I am often humbled with the generosity of people in remote and isolated communities. They have so little, by our western standards, yet they are abundantly generous. Ryan regularly receives gifts of fruit and veg, which we share with the Base Staff. We’ve received string bags (Bilums), wool & flower necklaces, traditional weapons, stuffed birds of paradise, but this is the first reed hat! :-D