Robert@PNG

Saturday, 25th of November

Continued on from “Wagang Village : Series 2 (Part5)”

Of to the hospital in Port Moresby…

Got out of bed at 6am, packed, showered, drank lots of coffee and smoked about a dozen ciggies. The bus was booked for 9:30am, so there was plenty of time for me to “focus” on my sore leg. I had been pumping pain killers into me since the previous afternoon so was therefore pretty groggy. But no pain, the nod never far away. Pretty numb all over really. Nice.

After picking up some cash at the ANZ bank, I was dopped off at the Lae International hotel and had enough time for another coffee before being transfered by another bus to Nadzab (Lae international airport). And yes you guessed right, the plain was delayed by about one hour, very common around these parts for any form of transport.

Met a couple of my colleagues at the airport. They were on there way to their respective xmas holiday destinations, we spoke about Unitech, about my sore leg and a few other topics of little interest. Quality small talk nevertheless.

I eventually arrived at the Pacific International Hospital at around 4:00pm. I walked into the reception area of the hopsital expecting a welcoming committee, a Robert Schilt welcoming committee! No such luck. In fact, they were not expecting me at all. At first I complained and then I moved on to the ranting and raving stage. To be honest I was pretty pissed off. A phone call to the insurance company in Melbourne soon sorted things out. After a few apologies I was then whisked off to the emergency room and tended to like a true VIP. A VIP deserves the best room in the house and as soon as the wound had been cleaned and my body pumped full of medicines I was shown to the VIP Room - Room #1. An unbelievably high standard for a hospital room, geez…  a high standard for any type of room. I have been in a few hospitals in my time but VIP Room #1 has to take 1st prize. Private bathroom, seperate lounge, comfortable sofa, two flat screen TV's and of course aircon. And yes. the seperate lounge room had a state of the art electric massage chair.

Once I settled down and learnt how to work the remote control for one of the TV's, I realised how hungry I was as I had not had anything to eat all day. I buzzed one of the nurses and asked about dinner. She told me that orders for dinner had already been placed and I was therefore too late. Another opportunity to be assertive I thought!  Some strong words and a little “influencing with integrity” and dinner was on it's way. It turns out that the hopsital does not cater for it's own meals and a couple of the local restaurants serve as “kitchens” for the patients. I was shown two menu's : one from an indian and another from a chinese restaurant. One of those things peculiar to PNG I guess.

After dinner, watched some TVand started to listed to the noise of a typical sound in Moresby - the sound of a mob now and then and of course the mandatory noise of gunshot fire. The odd gunshot could be heard from my hospital room throughout the night. Later on, probably close to midnight, I started to hear wailing. I peered through my window and could see a middle age PNG woman sitting on the ground crying her eyes out. This went on for at least two hours. One of the nurses on her night rounds explained that this womens daughter had just died. The 17 year old had apparently overdosed on malaria tablets and had died just arriving at emergency.

A very sad thing for any mother to lose a child. Unfortunately, as old traditions are replaced with our western values we will certainly start to see an increase in suicide amongst young PNG men an women. Welcome to the “Nupela pasin”!!

Did I end up getting any sleep at all?  Of course!  After haggling a couple of sleeping pills out of the nurse - I slept like a log!