On The Way To Hauna Village-A Traveler’s Tale
The flight from Brisbane to Wewak, Papua New Guinea was uneventful, as it should be, the clear blue sky was one with the ocean. Gazing out the window with anticipation, I could not tell where one ended and the other began.
There were 26 of us kids, all aged 14–17, in summer 1984, clad in work boots (the only shoes we were allowed to bring) and our Teen Missions t-shirts of varying colors, quickly gathering our belongings. We each clutched our filled-out customs cards, had them in hand, and were ready to give them to the agents as we entered the small airport from the tarmac. There was quiet mumbling, as none of us had any idea what to expect once we got off the plane.
Coming off the plane, a stifling heat gripped me.
The jungle, however, was enchanting. Its lush air was like walking into a wet blanket. The greenery, wafts of onion smell, flowers, and the scent of rain, took my breath away.
I descended the stairs to the tarmac, instantly sweating, my carry-on slung over my shoulder, clutching my custom card, so I didn’t lose it. My teammates and I were in awe at the atmosphere. The airport staff, their skin as dark as night, running around in airport uniforms, a few armed soldiers around the entrance to the customs area, and a lush, green unknown just beyond.
We arrived in this foreign land where we didn’t speak the language, didn’t know the people, and were unfamiliar with everything in every way. Yet, this was only our first stop on a journey that would change me and my teammates forever. Still, we had a long way to go to get to our destination in the deep, treacherous jungles of Papua New Guinea.
Our journey’s end, and beginning I suppose, was the small village of Hauna. Four hours by truck and 20 hours by boat, up the mighty Sepik River. A long, meandering, brown, crocodile-infested river, to the village where we would be staying for the next two and a half months. We had packed in all our gear. Tents, food, our personal effects, including clothing and sleeping bags, and any other paraphernalia needed to get through our time there.
Oh, wait…I’m sorry, maybe you didn’t hear me…I said TENTS…with no electricity…and no running water. TENTS! For two and a half months we were to live and work out of a shared tent with one other teammate, and MANY insects, both flying and crawly ones. The likes of which, I had never seen before. The upside? We could stand up in the tent. The downside, we spent a good 20 minutes each night before bed, crushing and swatting any insect that dared breach our zippered door and think that it was going to eat us alive. No bug spray folks, no “dry feel” Neutrogena insect repellent…just good old-fashioned mosquito spray…from 1984.
The greasy, smelly kind. That was fun to slather on our dirty skin before we crawled into our sleeping bags. It was like a layer of dirt and stink that lasted all summer.
At this point, you may have some questions…Where did you all shower? You may ask…Our bathtub? The RIVER. The silt-filled, croc-infested river…in our bathing suits. Oh, but wait, there was a makeshift “shower” (and I use that noun very loosely) for which we had to lug three-gallon buckets of water up from the river (which was about 50 yards away, all uphill and hopefully another teammate needed one too so you didn’t have to lug alone). Then you hoped that you had enough to last while you QUICKLY washed, again, in your bathing suit.
I am HORRIFIED to think of that now and how disgusting we all were for two months! But I digress…
The place in which we would reside for the foreseeable future would be Hauna Village. A desolate outpost deep in the jungle, inhabited by cannibals (before our arrival, of course) and a lone missionary. Our “mission” so to speak, was that we were to build an airstrip for the village and the resident missionary, Marilyn Lazlo. As it turns out, a 20-hour boat ride is impractical if you are injured and bleeding out or have been bitten by a Death Adder (a very real snake that we engaged with daily) and would die within minutes.
My team consisted of, a rag-tag group of 26 teenagers, from all over the U.S., and 5, slightly older, leaders. One was a married couple who were the “main” leaders and 3, for lack of a better word, were “helper” leaders. The helper leaders were in their early 20s, had been on previous Teen Missions teams, and now had more power and could boss us around as newbies.
We piled into a couple of big, rumbling trucks and stopped in at another mission spot where they fed us and we were able to clean some of the travel off, only to get more travel on us as we still had many, many more hours to go to get to where we were going. My memory of this gets a little fuzzy at this point. I THINK we may have stayed at a local church that night. I remember being cold and not being able to sleep in this strange place, where there was no blanket. It seems like a dream now, but I’m pretty sure that’s how it went.
The next day we got up and waited around for 3 big trucks that we would be riding in the back of for four hundred and seventy-four miles. Great. The road we were to travel on was paved in some places, dirt in others, and sand in others. There would be no “washing off the travel” today. This trip, by the drivers’ estimation, could take anywhere from 4 to 6 or 7 or 8 hours depending on the weather, the road, and if the truck was going to break down or not. Cool.
When you’re 14, your perception of the world is one of wide-eyed enthusiasm and drinking in all the world has to offer. (Well, I was, my current 14-year-old just watches people play video games on YouTube…but I digress). I could barely hold my excitement. I completely embraced everything that was happening with no qualms or reservations about the situation. I find it quite astonishing now that I think about it.
While the official language of the country is English, they also speak Tok Pidgin, or Pidgin as we referred to it. This is the language the missionary, who was hosting us, was translating the Bible, from English to for the villagers. It was to be taught in the school that she ran in the village. She is quite famous, actually, in missionary circles.
There was a movie made about her and Hauna Village where she lived and worked, called “Come by Here”. She has also written a few books and had speaking engagements all over the U.S. talking about her life in the Sepik Iwam village of Hauna. She spent 25 years there. Sadly, she died in 2021, on my birthday, in fact.
Anyway, the drivers were speaking in Pidgin, but they also could speak some English. They loaded us in groups, into the beds of these three trucks, shouted, “Here we go!!” fired up the engines and we were off.
Now, when I think of riding in horse-drawn carriages, (I always think of carriages, never wagons as I would have fancied myself a “Lady” of the time), with their wooden wheels that felt every bump and pothole the road had to offer, then I think of this truck ride.
Sure, they had some sort of suspension, I mean…at least I think they did. And if they did, I sure wouldn’t have been able to notice it. It was the bumpiest, most jolting ride I have ever encountered! All of us kids in the back of these trucks bumping and thumping along, hanging on for dear life, singing our hearts out as if it was the best day of our lives. Little did we know what was in store.
Thankfully, the trucks didn’t break down and we made it to our next destination. Six hours later, we came upon the banks of the mighty Sepik River. Now, this is a BIG river. It’s not like the Rogue River, in Oregon, where I grew up, where the cold, crystal waters run over rocks, and you could walk to the other side in places. NO. This river was HUGE. At least 3–5 miles across, wider in some places. It was a muddy brown color because of all the silt flowing in the water. It was also not super cold. We disembarked the trucks and got all our gear. Once that was done, we loaded ourselves down with bags and went to the bank of the river where the boat stood.
Now, let me explain what this boat looked like. It was a large metal structure, with a small wheelhouse and a roof that covered the entire bottom floor, like a houseboat. There were stairs that led up to the roof and you could sit up there as well. There was quite a bit of space on the main part of the boat. THERE WERE NO BATHROOMS ON THIS BOAT.
I looked at my friend, “Are we riding 20 hours on that thing???” I said, with a slight lump of dread in my throat.
“I guess so.” She looked as worried as I did, but we were 14 years old…I mean, how bad could it be?
Turns out, not great.
We loaded the gear and all our team onto the boat. We had to figure out what we were going to do for a “toilet” because, obviously, we were not going to hang our butts over the side and go. We were, after all, a “Christian” organization, and a certain amount of decorum and modesty was expected.
We DID, however, have a 5-gallon bucket and a tarp. The brilliant, slightly older leaders devised a plan where if we had to go number one, (number one ONLY, there was no plan for number two) they, (the appropriate gender of the…uh…’ goer’) would hold up the tarp around the person and they could go in the bucket. Then it could be dumped over the side. Gross.
Anyhow, this was all well and fine until you actually had to do it. I have a pee fright. I think most people know what that is…you can’t pee when people are around. No matter how bad you have to go. Well, I had to go. I literally held it for as long as I could before I thought my eyes were going to turn yellow. So, everyone was shooed off the roof of the boat and a couple of my teammates were holding the tarp. Of course, I couldn’t go…even though I had to go so badly 5 minutes ago, I was now in full pee fright and was unable to procure any urine whatsoever.
There I sat for almost 10 minutes, and if you’ve ever sat on a 5-gallon bucket they aren’t exactly comfy, until finally, I was able to eke out (no pun intended) a small enough amount that it at least relieved the pressure on my bladder. Ugh, what an ordeal.
We ended up stopping for lunch at this little village, (and not cute “stopping for lunch”, it was very utilitarian and had no menu) where they were expecting us. I don’t remember much about that part except they only had one bathroom (with a REAL, actual flushing toilet), and being I still had to go, the walk to that bathroom in the lady’s house was a precarious one. Finally, though, relief.
We got back on the boat and continued on our way. The sun began to go down, so we all were going to just sleep under the stars and enjoy this ride. We had tarps and jackets for blankets. Awesome.
I remember getting woken up in the wee hours of the morning.
“Hey, get up! The boat is stuck, and we have to continue the last part of the trip in these canoes that the villagers are meeting us with.” One of the leaders whispered.
Man, I must have been one easygoing kid. If ANYTHING like this had happened to me now, I would have FREAKED OUT!!! But anyway, I digress.
We waited for what seemed like forever for the “canoes” to come pick us up. Mind you, this was in the MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT, in COMPLETE DARKNESS, IN CROC-INFESTED WATERS. I later learned that some of the villagers had LOST THEIR CHILDREN TO THE CROCS (the animal…not the shoes) because they could get to them in these hand-dug-out canoes that we were about to board. I am glad my mother knew nothing of this at the time.
It’s pitch dark and all we can hear is the water around us, and the boat captain and a couple of his crew talking in the darkness. None of us knew what they were saying, but from what the leaders gleaned, our boat was too heavy, the river too shallow and we had to lighten the load if we wanted to get all our gear to the village. It was about 2 more hours away.
We heard some shouting and the villagers had come up with their large dug-out canoes. I believe some of the kids were staying back on the boat because there was room in each canoe for only 4 or 5 people, sitting in a row. I think there were 4 or 6 canoes and they had outboard motors on them. When we sat down on the bottom of the canoe, the sides came up to our faces so we could peer out from the side but couldn’t look down into the water. So, they were pretty deep in the center and then got shallower on the ends. They were, maybe, 2 feet wide.
I don’t really remember being scared or worried in any way when all this went down. I just remember thinking, I hope I make it home to tell people about this because I barely believe this myself! I was more tired than anything but excited.
We hunkered down on each other’s backs, like dominos, and with the drone of the outboard motor, in the dark, tried to sleep. It was pitch dark. I don’t know how those guys driving the boats could see. The river was narrower in this part and seemed a lot more shallow. It didn’t take us long to get to the village once they picked us up. By that time the sun had started to rise, and we could see where we were going.
My heart quickened as we started to see huts on the banks of the river, high up on stilts. Probably a good 20 feet off the ground. The river and the huts were all brown and blended into the muddy landscape of the riverbanks.
As we came to the end of our harrowing journey, I was relieved to see the missionary, Marilyn Lazlo, standing on the bank where we landed the canoes, waving to us and welcoming us to her home. Up the hill was “The Big House”, as we came to know it, where she lived and worked. It was a huge building that was mostly open air, with screening all around the big wrap-around porch and several rooms inside.
This is where she did her translating and conducted a school for the children of the village. Along with Marilyn were a plethora of village kids. Barefoot, black as night, with their American clothing hanging off their shoulders, and cut-off pants haphazardly made into shorts, staring with wonder at all these white kids coming to Hauna Village’s shore on the banks of the mighty Sepik River.
To be continued…
