A remarkably fertile land, rich with flora and drenched in suffocating heat and Highland chill, Papua New Guinea is a land of pearl-shelled villagers and prosaic hill people.
Organizations such as Rotary are helping this country improve its Health and Educational needs. It is with this in mind that Rotary CAFE and its partners in PNG would assist in this endeavor as well. Distributing computers to help facilitate the informational needs that health care facilities need to adequately care for peoples – especially in the very remote and less accessible areas. To include computer technology to the classrooms at schools throughout the regions served.
In early September of 2008 a CAFÉ team of three ventured to PNG to assess needs and to assist at facilities that were soon to get the 100 PC’s that had been shipped there earlier that year.
The CAFÉ team of Scott Lein of Global Health Ministries in Minnesota, Connie Milner of King’s Daughters Hospital in Indiana, and Doug Hall, Rotarian in Fairmont Minnesota, traveled to this remote and lush country to help distribute and install these units in hospitals and schools.
They left August 30th and returned September 18th. First landing in the capital city of Port Moresby, they flew to Madang the next morning where they could visit a nursing school, high school some clinics and hospitals where the CAFÉ PC’s would be used to learn or keep critical information.
After a few days in Madang they traveled to the Highlands; to Enga and Mt. Hagen. In Enga the team visited and stayed with the medical surgeon – Dr Steve Lutz – who took over the missionary work that former Fairmont Rotarian and Fairmont Clinic founder Neil Nickerson had served.
Finally they traveled to Lae to evaluate facilities where CAFE PC’s were to soon be installed.
During their journey Connie and Doug had the opportunity to travel by banana boat to a remote village where the natives had never seen an American. They slept in a hut built on stilts with a thatched roof and bamboo floor with only a cloth for a bed.
The shower was a hose whose source was from a mountain stream. The hose hung over a wood tripod. Their host arranged to have a wall of large leaves surround the unit as the team was perhaps more modest than the natives. The surround was to small to undress in and the cloth doorway kept falling down so the effort was for naught. Toilets were wherever you found a spot in the jungle.
After evaluating the needs at many facilities throughout PNG, the team could see that many more PC’s would be needed in the future.
All was not work. A ceremony known as a Singsing was attended in Garoka. These events are presided over by tribal elders, and are distinguished by their high head-dress displaying the brilliant colors of plumes from the bird of paradise. Proud warriors painted in bright ochre dance to the beat of the Kundu drums.
  
Cafe team members
Doug, Scott & Connie
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