Travelling in to Hauna on a Canoe

When I landed at Hauna Airstrip, Sampson, the Hauna MAF Agent, met me with some others, he sorted the pilot's paperwork, kindly took my bags and the Eski full of vegetables, and loaded me into the canoe.  Once the MAF plane took off, leaving me behind, we headed upstream to the village.  We sailed through wide expanses of water, reed-beds more than 2.5 metres high, past posts holding fishing nets and past the top branches of trees as it was the end of the rainy season.

The journey only took about 15 minutes and brought us through half of Hauna Village, ending at the Mission House where I stayed.  This video is a short glimpse of that journey, but what a way to see a village for the first time, from the Sepik River which they depend on for their very lives.

My week of Bush Orientation - Hauna, East Sepik, Papua New Guinea

During the 1st week of April, these lovely women, Marilyn, Shirley & Cristina, looked after me whilst I experienced the real PNG with the people of Hauna, a remote village, 80 minutes flight time from the nearest MAF base, in the hot & swampy lowlands. 

The "Bossmeris" who run the Mission and the Elementary School

Hauna is located on a tributary of the Sepik river, where the people learn to row a canoe on the crocodile & piranha infested waters when they are only 5 years old; where Maleria is rife and floods constantly threaten families' crops.

I spent a week talking to the people (in both English & Tok Pisin) learning about how they live off both the river and the land.  Life in the remote villages of PNG is very hard, I never fully appreciated the many blessings and conveniences of my modern, western world.

To find out more about the work of Kids Alive International and Sepik Christian Ministries who work in Hauna and hosted me, please check out their websites.  They are currently looking for someone to take over running the Elementary School from Shirley who is approaching retirement at the young age of 79!  Shirley is from Indiana in the USA and has been working in Hauna for over 35 years!!!

1 - Hauna Airstrip       2 - Arriving in Style, on a dug-out, out-board canoe        3 - The Mission House that I stayed in