Delivering Education Resources for Hela Schools
Journal Entry: Lae, Morobe Province – 7–13 November 2025
Where the Earth Breathes in Color, and a Single Open Door Becomes a Horizon
Farewell, Kumul Kantri, You Have Marked My Marrow
7 November – The Door That Finally Swung Wide The plane’s wheels kissed Nadzab, and the Huon Gulf exhaled a warm, salty hello. I stepped out expecting a city. I found a heartbeat. Pre-arranged bus, engine humming like a patient wantok. Twelve days of room, meals, laughter; gifted by a family friend whose generosity felt like a soft blanket after Port Moresby’s slammed doors. The hotel room was stiff, lonely, a box of silence. I wasted no time. He arrived at dusk: the young man with a degree in social work and political science, now steering trucks for a multi-million-kina empire. We met in the hotel kitchen, fluorescent light buzzing like a trapped insect. His voice steady, articulate, laced with the cadence of someone who understood both boardrooms and broken footpaths.
8 November – The Crash Morning PMV into town. Some family I hadn’t seen in years. Their welcome: a cracked cup, cold, desperate, leaking. Eyes counting my wallet before my face. Hired a taxi to escape the chill. Reversed too fast. Metal screamed. Back window exploded into glassy tears. PGK 2,000+ vanished like smoke. The day collapsed: severe loss, depression, panic, fear, hopelessness. I sat on the curb, head in hands, while Lae’s heartbeat thumped on, unbothered, alive.
9 November – Rocks, Sea, and a Street Seller’s Odyssey Paperwork labyrinth. Back and forth, stamps like slow torture. Escaped on PMV to town. Found him under a breadfruit tree: street seller, 60s, skin like weathered teak. He and three friends walked Lae to Moresby during COVID, three months, blistered feet, hunger, hope.
Sapphire water to infinity,
sky a bowl of molten gold.
Lungs filled with salt and storm. Here, amid smashed windows and slammed doors, life was simple, dramatic, poetic.
Sea whispered: You are small. You are enough.
I loved it all, sting of spray, cry of gulls, beauty refusing to break beneath my small tragedies.
9–13 November – Gardener, Hairdresser, Security Guard- Two Men Who Lit the Fire My gardener friend: hands in soil, planting tomorrow in cracked earth.
My hairdresser friend: scissors dancing, cutting despair with each snip.
My security friend: torchlight eyes guarding dreams in the dark. Two men, two generations, one fire. The elder, sixty winters carved into his smile, spoke of barefoot miles and a single tin of bully beef split between eight mouths, how hunger taught him to laugh louder than thunder. The younger, twenty-two, eyes still wet with city neon, told of a father lost to the mines, a mother weaving bilums by kerosene light, and how he learned to code on a cracked phone because dreams don’t wait for electricity. Their stories braided into mine, same cracked earth, same stubborn seed. We traded numbers like sacred relics, promised oceans would not erase the ink. Their resilience was ours: shared suffering, a communal pot of kai; fight for hope, barefoot and unashamed. We laughed over wasa (K1 bread) and my mangled Tok Pisin. We cried without tears. We refused to be statistics.
Lae: Where the Earth Breathes in Color The Huon Gulf wakes in liquid sapphire, blushes coral at dawn’s whisper. Rainforest greens drip like wet paint, emerald, jade, lime, moss, a thousand shades shouting We are alive! Markets explode: turquoise bilums, crimson betel smiles, golden pineapples stacked like suns, ochre kaukau roasted over open coals. Air is symphony: smoky sago, salty sea, frangipani sweetness, sharp tang of “we will make it” sweat. Food is love made surplus, fish grilled in bamboo, kulau cracked with machete’s grin, taro leaves swimming in coconut cream. Hunger is a stranger here, not from wealth, but because sharing is currency. Poverty? Cracked concrete, single lightbulb swinging in trade-store, barefoot kids kicking plastic-bottle goals. But watch: they laugh like thunder, hug like family, dance like tomorrow is already won. Simple loves: mother braiding daughter’s hair under mango tree, boys racing canoes at sunset, old men arguing politics with toothless smiles. They embrace each other’s strength, no shame in need, only pride in the fight. They know how to do life. I and the outside have much to learn from this display of strength, resilience, simplicity, and a fighting, hoping spirit. Tripping over my Tok Pisin, wasa is K1. But oh, I love everything. The way rain drums on tin roofs like a welcome song.
The way strangers become wantoks in a single smile.
The way Lae refuses to be broken, it blooms.
13 November – Farewell, but Never Goodbye Sun dips low over the Huon Gulf, bleeding gold across the water. Candle trees rise like silent sentinels along the coast. I walk beneath their cathedral of leaves, boots sinking into warm volcanic sand, air shimmering. Each tree a living chandelier, slender trunks pale as moonlit bone, branches heavy with waxy crimson buds. At dusk they split open in slow motion, petals unfurling like silk scarves in wind. One by one, flowers ignite: not flame, but glow stolen from a star’s heart. Fireflies drift through branches, mistaking blossoms for kin. Scent thick, jasmine laced with salt, sweetness clinging to the throat. A reef heron calls, low and mournful, threading perfumed dark. A single petal loosens, spirals down, lands warm on my palm, almost feverish. I close my fist and feel the tree’s pulse, sap rising, life insisting. Around me, candle trees burn without consuming, a thousand quiet lanterns guiding night toward morning. Lae sleeps beyond palms, but here time loosens its grip. I am small beneath this living constellation, and that smallness feels like grace. Tide sighs against shore, flowers keep opening, world, raw, salt-stung, impossibly alive, holds its breath in crimson light. I leave with an ache tasting of betel and frangipani, a quiet drum beneath the ribs. A Morobe bilum, wool dyed river-clay-after-rain, heavy with a thousand market mornings.
Two candle trees, small enough to cradle, buds plotting gold against my foreign sky.
A palm, defiant in its pot, whispering of your equatorial spine when I plant it on my block, a green vow that distance is only geography. To the people of Lae; your survival is not a footnote; it is the whole damn book. You rise before roosters, mend nets with teeth if needles fail, turn floodwater into gardens, turn grief into songs that outlast the radio. Your energy is mined from the same volcanic heart that once pushed islands from the sea. I bow to that force; unbroken, unbowed, unstoppable. Every time the candle trees bloom, I will smell your harbour at low tide.
Every sway of the palm will replay the elder’s gravel laugh, the young man’s quick hope. Forever friends, forever echoes. Tenkyu tru.
Asa Sumba!
Thank you, Kumul Kantri. The door is open.
The children are waiting.
And Lae, wild, warm, unbreakable, has taught me how to bloom.
My Journal in Pictures
Where the Earth Breathes in Color, and a Single Open Door Becomes a Horizon
Farewell, Kumul Kantri, You Have Marked My Marrow
7 November – The Door That Finally Swung Wide The plane’s wheels kissed Nadzab, and the Huon Gulf exhaled a warm, salty hello. I stepped out expecting a city. I found a heartbeat. Pre-arranged bus, engine humming like a patient wantok. Twelve days of room, meals, laughter; gifted by a family friend whose generosity felt like a soft blanket after Port Moresby’s slammed doors. The hotel room was stiff, lonely, a box of silence. I wasted no time. He arrived at dusk: the young man with a degree in social work and political science, now steering trucks for a multi-million-kina empire. We met in the hotel kitchen, fluorescent light buzzing like a trapped insect. His voice steady, articulate, laced with the cadence of someone who understood both boardrooms and broken footpaths.
“Containers don’t move on hope,” he said, stirring instant coffee, “but they move on relationships.”
We spoke of Hela’s schools, of children waiting for books, of development as verb, not noun. He listened like a man who had carried dreams across potholed roads. By the time the cup was empty, he was texting his MD. Hours blurred: rattling bus to his office, then Eriku to 3mile for the diplomatic dance with brokers, velvet-gloved but firm, signatures, stamps, handshakes heavy with a province’s weight. When trucking was secured, relief flooded me like monsoon on tin. Port Moresby had bolted every door with bureaucracy’s cold iron. Here, one swung open on hinges of human trust. I stood on the curb, sea breeze tugging my blouse, knot in my chest loosening. Purpose has a postcode, I thought. Today, it’s Lae. First time in this city, I walked its veins, sea breeze stroking my face, warmth seeping into bones. I searched myself beneath frangipani shadows, looked ahead to Hela’s classrooms, felt mission breathe. 8 November – The Crash Morning PMV into town. Some family I hadn’t seen in years. Their welcome: a cracked cup, cold, desperate, leaking. Eyes counting my wallet before my face. Hired a taxi to escape the chill. Reversed too fast. Metal screamed. Back window exploded into glassy tears. PGK 2,000+ vanished like smoke. The day collapsed: severe loss, depression, panic, fear, hopelessness. I sat on the curb, head in hands, while Lae’s heartbeat thumped on, unbothered, alive.
9 November – Rocks, Sea, and a Street Seller’s Odyssey Paperwork labyrinth. Back and forth, stamps like slow torture. Escaped on PMV to town. Found him under a breadfruit tree: street seller, 60s, skin like weathered teak. He and three friends walked Lae to Moresby during COVID, three months, blistered feet, hunger, hope.
“We carried dreams in plastic bags,” he grinned, betel-stained.
He took my photo against the sea, ships like iron giants behind. I climbed the mighty rocks, sat where ocean met sky. Vastness swallowed me.Sapphire water to infinity,
sky a bowl of molten gold.
Lungs filled with salt and storm. Here, amid smashed windows and slammed doors, life was simple, dramatic, poetic.
Sea whispered: You are small. You are enough.
I loved it all, sting of spray, cry of gulls, beauty refusing to break beneath my small tragedies.
9–13 November – Gardener, Hairdresser, Security Guard- Two Men Who Lit the Fire My gardener friend: hands in soil, planting tomorrow in cracked earth.
My hairdresser friend: scissors dancing, cutting despair with each snip.
My security friend: torchlight eyes guarding dreams in the dark. Two men, two generations, one fire. The elder, sixty winters carved into his smile, spoke of barefoot miles and a single tin of bully beef split between eight mouths, how hunger taught him to laugh louder than thunder. The younger, twenty-two, eyes still wet with city neon, told of a father lost to the mines, a mother weaving bilums by kerosene light, and how he learned to code on a cracked phone because dreams don’t wait for electricity. Their stories braided into mine, same cracked earth, same stubborn seed. We traded numbers like sacred relics, promised oceans would not erase the ink. Their resilience was ours: shared suffering, a communal pot of kai; fight for hope, barefoot and unashamed. We laughed over wasa (K1 bread) and my mangled Tok Pisin. We cried without tears. We refused to be statistics.
Lae: Where the Earth Breathes in Color The Huon Gulf wakes in liquid sapphire, blushes coral at dawn’s whisper. Rainforest greens drip like wet paint, emerald, jade, lime, moss, a thousand shades shouting We are alive! Markets explode: turquoise bilums, crimson betel smiles, golden pineapples stacked like suns, ochre kaukau roasted over open coals. Air is symphony: smoky sago, salty sea, frangipani sweetness, sharp tang of “we will make it” sweat. Food is love made surplus, fish grilled in bamboo, kulau cracked with machete’s grin, taro leaves swimming in coconut cream. Hunger is a stranger here, not from wealth, but because sharing is currency. Poverty? Cracked concrete, single lightbulb swinging in trade-store, barefoot kids kicking plastic-bottle goals. But watch: they laugh like thunder, hug like family, dance like tomorrow is already won. Simple loves: mother braiding daughter’s hair under mango tree, boys racing canoes at sunset, old men arguing politics with toothless smiles. They embrace each other’s strength, no shame in need, only pride in the fight. They know how to do life. I and the outside have much to learn from this display of strength, resilience, simplicity, and a fighting, hoping spirit. Tripping over my Tok Pisin, wasa is K1. But oh, I love everything. The way rain drums on tin roofs like a welcome song.
The way strangers become wantoks in a single smile.
The way Lae refuses to be broken, it blooms.
13 November – Farewell, but Never Goodbye Sun dips low over the Huon Gulf, bleeding gold across the water. Candle trees rise like silent sentinels along the coast. I walk beneath their cathedral of leaves, boots sinking into warm volcanic sand, air shimmering. Each tree a living chandelier, slender trunks pale as moonlit bone, branches heavy with waxy crimson buds. At dusk they split open in slow motion, petals unfurling like silk scarves in wind. One by one, flowers ignite: not flame, but glow stolen from a star’s heart. Fireflies drift through branches, mistaking blossoms for kin. Scent thick, jasmine laced with salt, sweetness clinging to the throat. A reef heron calls, low and mournful, threading perfumed dark. A single petal loosens, spirals down, lands warm on my palm, almost feverish. I close my fist and feel the tree’s pulse, sap rising, life insisting. Around me, candle trees burn without consuming, a thousand quiet lanterns guiding night toward morning. Lae sleeps beyond palms, but here time loosens its grip. I am small beneath this living constellation, and that smallness feels like grace. Tide sighs against shore, flowers keep opening, world, raw, salt-stung, impossibly alive, holds its breath in crimson light. I leave with an ache tasting of betel and frangipani, a quiet drum beneath the ribs. A Morobe bilum, wool dyed river-clay-after-rain, heavy with a thousand market mornings.
Two candle trees, small enough to cradle, buds plotting gold against my foreign sky.
A palm, defiant in its pot, whispering of your equatorial spine when I plant it on my block, a green vow that distance is only geography. To the people of Lae; your survival is not a footnote; it is the whole damn book. You rise before roosters, mend nets with teeth if needles fail, turn floodwater into gardens, turn grief into songs that outlast the radio. Your energy is mined from the same volcanic heart that once pushed islands from the sea. I bow to that force; unbroken, unbowed, unstoppable. Every time the candle trees bloom, I will smell your harbour at low tide.
Every sway of the palm will replay the elder’s gravel laugh, the young man’s quick hope. Forever friends, forever echoes. Tenkyu tru.
Asa Sumba!
Thank you, Kumul Kantri. The door is open.
The children are waiting.
And Lae, wild, warm, unbreakable, has taught me how to bloom.
My Journal in Pictures
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