By Charles Bennett

The preparations for our departure to Bougainville are now in full swing. This week we travelled on the Highlands Highway over the mountains of central Papua New Guinea to Lae on the east coast, to purchase materials for the project to be shipped to Bougainville.

View from Kassam Pass, Highlands Highway

As the Water and Sanitation Project in Bougainville has funding from the European Union Rural Water Supply and Sanitation Programme (EU RWSSP), we have to follow strict criteria for the procurement of all the materials we need. Much like a task on The Apprentice, we split into two teams, with each team visiting a number of suppliers to obtain quotations. This made it possible for us to get to all the suppliers we needed to visit in the two days we had available.

The most eventful part of the trip was the drive back to Goroka. A small earthquake near to Lae (5.4 on the Richter Scale), combined with heavy rainfall, meant there were a number of mudslides and slips blocking the highway back to Goroka. Next to the road a deep brown river roared along, thick with sediment from the hillsides, sweeping whole trees with it.

View of the river in flood

At several points, people from local villages had worked to clear the mud, rocks and trees from the road allowing cars to pass through. In return, the villages then blocked the road and demanded payment of between 5 and 50 kina (around $25) from each vehicle. It was made very clear that if you decided not to pay you would not be allowed to pass. After some heated discussions between our driver and the villages we made the payments and carried on back to Goroka.

A path cleared through flood swept debris allowing cars to pass