Robert@PNG

This past weekend I was lucky enough to visit the Eastern Highlands town of Goroka for the 4th time. Lucky enough because my visit coincided with the 6th annual Goroka Coffee Festival. A festival of any description in PNG is always a special occasion and this weekend was certainly no exception.

I am going to share my experiences from the weekend with you in a slightly differently way than I have previously. This time I plan on posting 4 photos every day and each photo will have a caption describing the photo itself. As they say a picture is the equivalent of a thousand words. So each day you will see 4 new photos displayed at the top section of the blog and these will be added to the Goroka Trip (4/5/06) photo album.

Highlights of the weekend are as follows:

1) When we arrived in “Massey” we walked into a funeral service. The 1st lot of photos that you will see are from this event. I believe that I captured most of the essence through the photos I took but there is one item that was left out… just after we walked over to the funeral service I noticed a group of yound kids following this women - the women seemed groggy and confused. I asked Ellyson what was going on… he told me that part of the tradition in Goroka is that when someone dies as a result of foul play - on the actual day of the burial a friend or relative will become possessed with the spirit of the deceased person. The possessed person then wanders around the village relating the actual cause of death. I was to find out later that night that one of the locals had done the bolt earlier that morning - not wanting to be accused of killing the dead relative. One of the interesting things about this Goroka tradition is that most of the people present at the funeral service are religious. This seems to be typical all over PNG : on the one hand people hold true to the teachings of Christ and on the other hand they still hold very true to their old spiritual traditions.

2) The 2nd highlight of the weekend in Goroka was Coffee Festival itself - specifically the singsing groups. I managed to captue some great shots and these will eventually be displayed at the top section of the blog before ending up in the Goroka Trip (4/5/06) photo album.

3) The 3rd highlight of this trip was the opportunity to visit the Aiyura Valley just outside of Kainantu (down the mountain a bit from Goroka). The reason for this short diversion was to visit volunteer mate Kevin whom works at the local Fish Farm at Aiyura. Apart from enjoying spending some time with another volunteer it was also great to get to see the Aiyura Valley itself - a beautiful spot indeed.

4) Perhaps the best highlight of the weekend was coming back to Lae ! I describe the experience of coming back to my “home” town in a Ranting I posted the day I got back : Rantings : “A new home” (check it out if you haven’t already).