THIS FROM: Michael Wolfe

The quality of the friendships that I enjoy decade after decade in Madang is a primary reason I call Madang home. Michael will soon be leaving us. The section below is an email he sent to me. I think it deserves to be quoted as is. Mike has been a good friend and I am going to miss him.

That moment when the last rays sink below the horizon and the world is timeless as you gaze at the sky flaming red and orange while pondering the day gone by. Or that moment when the gentle first rays break over the horizon casting off the night with fresh light of hope and promise for the day to come.

Looking back with gratefulness, looking forward with hopefulness. Even before I lived in the Pacific, I loved sunsets and sunrises. As I write this, a Pacific sunset is rapidly approaching. And so is a Pacific sunrise.

In a few days I leave Papua New Guinea. Once again I’m leaving a land where I’ve poured myself into the lives of the people. And once again, my heart is a cauldron of nostalgic emotions, positive and negative. Only this time the cauldron is bigger. This time it’s not just leaving PNG and moving on to another country. This time it’s leaving the field and returning “home”.

I’m standing on a ledge of pumice a few meters above the ocean. The waves are frothing onto the rocks. The sun is sinking behind the mountains, the sky ablaze. I’m reflecting back on my time in the Pacific, and on my time in the field.

I feel grateful. So many life enriching experiences during the last 5 years living in Tajikistan, Uganda, Sri Lanka, and PNG. So many great people: villagers who daily carried the burdens thrust upon them by wars/disasters/injustices, national staff who worked very hard under difficult conditions, friends and colleagues who shared laughter, pain, and many, many beers.

I feel tired. Right now it feels like the passion and energy and patience I once had for this work have faded long before this sunset.

But I also feel hopeful. Tomorrow will bring another sunrise.

Thanks to the last year and a half in the Pacific, I know that unspoiled natural beauty is vast stretches of verdant green mountains crashing onto white sand beaches with turquoise waters stretching into deep blue. Leaving the world above behind and diving down into the realm of the reef: tropical fish of dazzling combinations of colours and sizes swimming about corals of magnificent shapes and textures. Floating weightlessly into surround sound of colour.

I know that awe is riding on the boat out to the dive site as the sun is sinking behind the mountains, casting brilliant arcs of reds and pinks onto the layers of clouds that float above the mountains. The last reds fading into purple behind the mountains as I jump off the boat and descend into the black abyss of ocean. Ascending at the end of the dive a few meters from the surface I discover that all my air bubbles become transformed into bioluminescent sparks. Vigorously waving my hands and feet back and forth, sending off green bubbles racing up to the surface. Swimming in a bubble bath of bioluminescence. Coming to the surface and gazing up at the canopy of stars overhead, with the Southern Cross low in the horizon. Scooping a handful of water and marvelling as the green sparks fall from my hands.

I know the adventure of climbing active volcanoes, seeing the smoke, smelling the lava, watching fiery chunks churn into the air. The novelty of hiking through the thick jungle with barefoot machete-wielding villagers. Wading across streams and rivers, ascending steep mountain creek beds to find a suitable source for the water system. The satisfaction of sinking my feet into the soft black sand in the community meeting hall listening to the women clad in multicoloured mission dresses talk about sanitation improvements they plan to make in their village.

I know that loathing is getting robbed three times in the same month that I throw a party at my house where two people get robbed and one gets knifed. Attrition is the constant battle to get anything done, the continual fight against apathy.

Sunset on the Pacific. And sunset on my time in the field.

Thanks to the last five years in the field I know that cobalt blue is the ocean off the coast of Bougainville. I know that orange is the African tulip tree lining the streets in Lira. I know that white is the sweet fragrance of frangipani permeating a muggy Bangkok alley. I know the smell of poverty in Asia and how it differs from the smell of poverty in Africa. I know the grandeur of the infinitely cascading snow capped rocky peaks in Central Asia. I know the tumult of rafting white-water rapids followed by the tranquillity of floating down the Nile. I know the satisfaction is hearing the women ululate and cheer as the first water is pumped from the well. I know that the fingerprint of God appears in an abundance of manifestations.

I know that overwhelmed is trying to contain a cholera epidemic in a war zone and complex is working to rebuild everything destroyed by the tsunami in an area devastated by 20 years of civil war. I know that multiple hospitalizations result in multiple scars.

I’ve gazed in the face of awful suffering and destruction. I’ve battled hopelessness from the comfortable distance afforded to a bearer of a blue passport. I’ve seen hopelessness in people who don’t have blue passports or return tickets.

Joyful moments, painful moments, frustrating moments, overwhelming moments, even a National Geographic moment. Many moments where a mixture of strong emotions raged an unrelenting inner battle.

Sunset.

Returning home to a country where I’ve not lived for over 7 years, back when September 11th was nothing more than the day after September 10th. Moving to L.A. – new place, new friends, new experiences, new adventures. California.

Returning to a fiancée. Having a life partner. Marriage. Sharing the laughter and tears with someone who’s committed to walking with me during the ups and downs that life will throw our way. Intimacy.

Excitement, happiness, hopefulness. On the other side of the Pacific.

Sunrise.

Thank God for sunrise.

Love from Papua New Guinea,
Mike

Here is a magnificent Madang sunset photo that Mike sent to me: 

And here is a shot of Mike in the cockpit of the B-25 bomber at Wongat Island: 

We are going to miss you, Mike

In some ways, I am a very patient man.

“Hurry up, I need it now!” strategies have little chance of success in places such as PNG where you are up against the triple curses of turtle-paced introduction of world-wide available technology, anticompetitive pressures of vested interests, and a pervasive cultural attitude that the situation is hopeless and we may as well ‘do what we can’ and not complain.

When I become impatient to the point of pushiness is when my co-workers and (yikes!) my bosses begin to wonder if I know anything about what I am doing. (I sometimes wonder myself.)

The most irritating and common complaint that I have directed toward me is that people simply cannot do their work without a reliable internet connection, which they don’t have. How can I respond to this? “Sorry” just doesn’t do it anymore.

In today’s world, this is a complaint that cannot be dismissed by saying, “I’m doing the best that I can.” You simply must find a better way.

At my office, the combination of Telikom’s ever decaying capability to provide reliable service and our ISP’s apparent inability to do anything to improve the situation has led me to this: 

That’s right. I can get more done at my house with a ten year old dialup modem on my very messy desk (maxing out at 28.8KBS) than I can at my office on a leased line costing thousands of Kina a month.

For the icing on the cake – I have to get my emailing done before 8:00 AM or forget it.

To me, this seems shameful. The funny bit (in the tragic sense) is that nobody seems to be ashamed of it.

Teiikom certainly shows no indications of apology or even acknowledgement of care of duty. Like PNG Power, the attitude, over time, has decayed to the point that the model is no longer continuous, reliable service. The model now is “count yourself lucky when we give it to you and don’t complain when we don’t.”

As an example (we’ll give Telikom a rest for a moment), when we first came to Madang, power outages were rare occurrences. We might experience a brief outage a couple of times a month on the average. Now we are experiencing many blackouts a day!

Getting back to Telikom, there is always a perfectly perplexing excuse why the throughput is so glacial. It is a new excuse every day. It seems that Telikom’s slogan is truer than we might desire. “Telikom – Always There” sounds catchy and hip. But, where we need it is here, not there!

The ISPs blame it all, of course, on Telikom. While this may be true in some respects, the ISPs seem happy to accept payments that are shameful by world standards for service that is ridiculous by the same standards while offering no alternative solutions themselves.

Telikom offers a VSAT (that’s a satellite dish that communicates directly with a geosynchronous satellite) that will give the customer broadband service. However the price is absurd – wait, absurd is not strong enough. When asked if they will offer anything for actual businesses that have a responsibility to act in a fiscally responsible manner (meaning not pounding money down a rat hole) the answer seems to be, “Maybe – someday.”

Our ISP (which out of kindness I will not name) offers no alternative VSAT solution.

But that is not the end of the story.

Telikom is actively suppressing new technology such as VSAT. Please don’t take my word for it. Try to get one from someone else. The song and dance routine will put you in stitches first. This will be followed shortly by a crying jag.

And there is more! Our ISP issues veiled threats that our purchase of a VSAT from a (non Telikom) PNG supplier is illegal and we will have multiple unspecified but supposedly scary problems if we purchase one.

The vendor of said VSAT equipment says that they have the legal situation in hand and there is no problem. They are happy to take our money with a smile and a promise that we will not have our equipment unceremoniously ripped out by enraged Telikom technicians. This promise is not offered in writing, mind you.

Smiles, handshakes, veiled threats, vague promises of the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow? Who can you believe?

I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but these kinds of shenanigans will raise suspicions in any reasonable person’s mind.

What is going on here?

My only option is to join the revolution.

Do you need a speedy, reliable internet connection to operate? Do you want to help man the barricades?

Call me, I’ll tell you how!

(DISCLAIMER: I freely admit that I am not aware of many details of what is going on concerning this situation. If I am incorrect or misinformed or even (horrors) disrespectful in any manner in this post, please, oh please, by all that’s good and fine and true, email to me a rebuttal and I promise that I will post it here. That would be more honourable that just bad-mouthing me.)

Yes, I am stuck for a story, so I am heading for my garden.

Fortunately, I love taking photos nearly as much as I love to write. Finding the time to write something worth reading is my biggest problem. I have deadlines to meet for two magazine articles in ten days and I have not written a single word yet. My editor is patient, but I don’t like to take advantage of that. I’d rather save up that patience until I really need it.

Fortunately again, the low angle of the rising sun was performing fanatical tricks with the flowers this morning.

This daisy was painfully pink in the warm morning sun. What caught my eye were the shadows of the yellow flowers on the pink whatchamacallits.

Maybe I should explain. A daisy is a kind of composite flower. The actual flowers are the little yellow bits in the centre. The outside petal-like thingies, which we normally think of as the flower petals are actually not part of the reproductive apparatus, but purely decorative. If you want to know more about composite flowers look here. At any rate, they are still very pretty: 

This is a variety of hibiscus that I think we call the Chinese Hibiscus. It always droops like this:

I’ve featured the beautiful orange lilies before. This morning the sun was striking this bloom from the side. The orange tone of the morning sun intensified the natural colour of the blossom: 

Once in a great while, serendipity intervenes in the photographic process. In other words, sometimes we get lucky.

Click this yellow flower photo and you will see something interesting: 

It was certainly not my intention to invade the privacy of this happy couple. Insects have the right to privacy as much as anybody does, I guess. Nevertheless, I’m going to take the risk of (a) being sued by them for invasion of privacy OR (b) being accused of posting pornographic images on my weblog.

They certainly chose a beautiful setting for their tryst. But, at 6:30 in the morning? They must be young.

Getting a Wednesday afternoon off is a genuine treat. Friends visiting Madang made a good excuse this week.

We did a dive in Kranket Island lagoon.

Here is a rather ancient looking pufferfish. He looks about as wrinkled as I do:

This little fellow is a juvenile spotted cardinalfish. He is only about two centimetres long. This was a very lucky shot. These little jewels dart around in this tangled up coral, seldom holding still for more than a second. I just happened to snap at the right moment. I took about thirty shots trying to capture one:

I’m slowly building up my ‘patterns of the sea’ collection. Click this one to see the intricate design enlarged. The overall feel of the thing is wavy – like the ocean itself. It is the inside surface of a cone-shaped coral:

Here is another pattern. This one is the centre section of a solitary coral: 

Here was the true gem of the day. This is Opal. I took this shot just as I was coming up. Later in the evening, we had a long conversation about the difference between banana leaves and palm leaves – complete with demonstrations. She is so bright and pleasant that it’s easy to forget that you are conversing with a child.

Cute as can be:

Now I am recharged and ready to face Thursday – the last day before Friday, which comes just before Saturday!

Horay!

This will be of little interest to folk here in Madang. I am posting this mostly for people who are or have been associated with PBT, the outfit that we work for.

We are adding a big chunk of office space to the utility building on the back lot of our office. Since many people have put plenty of effort (and money) into this project, my blog seems a convenient way to show our progress.

So skip this one if yet another new building in Madang holds little interest for you.

Lae Builders sent in a big Cat to move the container we were using for storage, break up a big slab of concrete and remove the stump of the giant Mango tree that was given the chop: 

Here, the operator just dropped a big slab of concrete. You can see the dust rising. What you cannot sense is how powerfully the ground shook when it fell. I felt as if I were standing on a very large bowl of jelly. The water table is only one metre deep here:

While all that is going on, some guys are digging (and some not) the footing trench. We had seven guys and two shovels so as not to tax anybody unduly:

Here is a panorama of the action. The Cat has just removed the stump of the Mango tree:

Here is the stump. We took bets on whether the Cat could actually pick it up: 

I’ll try to post something every week or so for those who want to keep track of the progress of this project.

Some dives are more successful than others for the hunter.

Back in my gun-nut days, I used to shoot just about anything that moved. I drew the line at humans and barnyard animals.

Actually, not much has changed except I traded my Marlin Micro-Groove .22 Magnum rifle with the 9x scope for a camera. It’s much easier on the wildlife and quieter too.

I’ve been trying to shoot this critter for several years. Not the fish – the little parasite on its head:

The fish is an Epaulette Soldierfish (Myripristis kuntee). He (it’s a male) would be about the size of your hand. What is interesting about him is the isopod parasite attached to its head.

I’m sorry that I can’t provide the reference (mind rot), but I distinctly remember reading an article in Scientific American, or New Scientist or some other rag that revealed an amazing fact.

Female soldierfish show a much higher selection preference for males that are carrying the isopod parasite on their heads. My sketchy observations lead me to think that about one in ten males in this area are ‘carrying’.

This leads to the sad conclusion that there are a lot of lonely-guy soldierfish out there.

If that didn’t amuse you, maybe this will:

 

I call it the Giant Poisonous Gumdrop Nudibranch. That’s just a pet name. I can’t find my nudibranch book, so I can’t give you Latin today.

If you went into a fancy candy shop in Vienna and saw this on the shelf as “Vanilla Liquorice Paradise” you would probably try one. It does look delicious. I have not sampled.

The next photo is of my favourite fish. Not this individual fish. I mean the Silver Sweetlips in general. Anything named sweetlips can’t be all bad.

The silver sweetlips will let you swim right up and flash your camera right into his eye – without a flinch!

This one has a little cleanerfish doing its business. A few seconds before I took this shot the cleanerfish was in the mouth of the sweetlips. That’s me. Always a little off time:

I’m working on a collection of photos called “Nature’s Fabric Designs” (really). I’m fascinated by the repetitive but not quite perfect patterns that I see around me.

This is a section of coral about the size of your big toenail. (Don’t ask.) You’ll need to click on it to enlarge to be able to see the intricate detail: 

Someday I will sell my collection of nature’s patterns to a famous fabric design company and I will become fabulously rich.

I’ll throw a big party.

You are invited.

Some of us trudge with grim determination through the week so that we can (eventually) arrive at Saturday.

If you’ve been reading, you know that our little gang of water babies goes out on Faded Glory every Saturday for diving and relaxing in the sun.

My camera goes with me always. Underneath or above the water, there is beauty to be seen and captured on silicon.

Over the months I’ve shown you the beauty of our spectacular local scenery on terra firma, the sea, and under the sea.

However, it is not all sky, trees, birds, flowers and fish.

We were relaxing on the boat after a dive when somebody yelled, “Grab your camera!”

Our lovely Jenn was enjoying a float in the crystal waters near Pig Island.

Here is one of the shots that I snapped:

It is certainly a nice snapshot, but I am never satisfied. With a few elementary Photoshop tricks we can turn a pretty snapshot into something entirely different.

Have a look at this:

If you’re interested in how it was done, here’s a short description.

First, the colour of the waster was very green because Jenn was floating above a sandy patch. I tried making it blue, but it lacked punch. I created a selection containing only the water and converted it from colour to black and white.

The object that Jenn was grasping was distracting, so I used the cloning tool to pick up bits of the water image and superimpose it over the object.

Then I found that the recent sun on Jenn’s face made it look too pink. I selected shades elsewhere on her to make the skin tones look more even. I also increased the intensity of the colour of her lips. (you can click the image to see a larger version)

Getting rid of the confusing ripples below her chin was a tricky bit. Again, careful use of the cloning tool removed the distracting water ripples.

Finally, I increased the contrast of the water and darkened it around the edges to highlight the subject.

What was only a snapshot (albeit a nice one) could now be a fashion plate for the company that made her swimsuit.

Beauty is beauty – wherever you find it.