Burns Peak pikininis

This is one of the photographs that inspired me to do my Year 2 366 Project Retrospective Edition.

Burn's Peak is a small hill that divides Port Moresby from its beautiful harbour and the rest that is Moresby. When I first got to Papua New Guinea I kept dreaming of one day climbing that peak and getting a few snapshots of the view. But at this point in time, it still remained elusive.

A friend of mine came over in his Ute and he said "Surely there is a road up there, there are telcom towers and stuff, surely maintenance guys need to get up there!"

He was right, there was a road, and it went through the notorious "Rifle Range Settlement". It was Saturday afternoon, we had some beers, we thought what could go wrong?

Well to start with, once you enter the Settlement (which I had not been in a settlement up until this point of time) there are no road signs telling you "Burns Peak this way", so we drove slowly on some shitty roads looking lost and hopeless and well, looking like targets.

Ooops.

I said to my friend "when in doubt, kids will save us" so we stopped the car and I asked the young girl (in the back of the shot) "how do we drive up Burns Peak?" and she replied that we were on the wrong road and that she would show us the way. I said "Is that your mum?" pointing to a lady over yonder and she said "yup"

So I spoke to mum and said that her daughter was going to show us the way to Burns Peak and that we really wanted to go up there for some work and stuff on the Towers. Mum said it was ok as long as the other kids climbed into the tray of the Ute and came along. It would seem that none of the kids had been up there either, and we had a Ute! Beats walking any day.

So around 30 kids piled in. In the cabin, at least 8 joined us and easily 22 jumped into the tray. Off we went, all the kids really excited and laughing and screaming and punching each other and just going off their tits!

We slowly motored up and got to the top. All the kids jumped up and ran around and laughed and screamed and punched each other. We chatted to the Security Guards up the top and they were the fathers of some of the kids. They said it was a great idea bringing the children up here because they had never been there before and this was a new experience for them.

Well every kid wanted his or her photo taken on top of the hill.

The beers I drank before we left home gave me a warm fuzzy feeling... seeing the pure joy on these kids made me feel quite drunk indeed. Their laughter and joy was infectious, and as the sun slowly sank, we said we had to go back before it was dark, and we all drove back down the hill. When we got back to "Rifle Range Settlement" we were met by each and every mother of the children. They could see the joy in the faces of the kids and the mothers shook our hands and said thank you. We even scored a bilum from one of the ladies as a gift.

And I always wondered why we were told not to enter the settlements???

Photo taken with the little old point and shoot back on 12 August 2006.

22nd August 2012 22nd Aug 12

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Camera X450,D535Z,C370Z
Taken 12th August 2006 4:55pm
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Tags kids, png, papua new guinea, port moresby, ncd, nations capital district, burns peak

judith deacon ace

What a lovely story and what a great bunch of kids. Whilst "listening to the locals" is a good maxim if you are new in a place, fear of places like the settlements is often caused by "stories" rather than reality. I can see you were glad you went!

August 22nd, 2012