Brad's PNG Blog

Yemli Trek

April 19, 2016

For 18 years, John and Amy Lindstrom and their family spent much of their time living in the remote village of Yemli in the Morobe province of Papua New Guinea. In 2010, the Malei language New Testament was dedicated. Thanks to the training the people of Yemli received as they helped work on the New Testament, they are now working on the Old Testament with John taking on a consulting role.

Recently, the Lindstroms invited the general population of Ukarumpa to join them on a good-bye trip to Yemli along with their son Samuel, who is about to graduate from high school and may not ever return to the village where he grew up. Since my software development work all happens in Ukarumpa, I eagerly accepted the opportunity to see another part of the country. There were 20 of us altogether. To get to Yemli from Ukarumpa, first you take

A 5-hour bus ride to the coastal city of Lae...

Bathroom break

Then an hour boat ride south along the coast...

To the village of Buakap, where the hike begins. (There's no road!) The hike itself is about 13 miles though beautiful jungle/mountain country. While the mountains are very pretty to look at, they also make the hiking much slower and more difficult, especially while carrying all your clothes and sleeping bag and mosquito net. On the way to Yemli, we climbed over a mile up (6400 feet) and over half a mile down (3200 feet). We spent about 10-12 hours walking spread over two days to get there, sleeping at a school in the village of Hote overnight.

The trail took us up mountains...

Through jungles...

Across bridges...

And through rivers.

We spent two nights in Yemli itself. They honored our visit, and Samuel's departure, by giving us a traditional welcome (with singing and dancing), and killing and cooking a pig for us (which is a big deal in PNG culture).

Welcome (with not-so-traditional instruments)

Sorry, Wilbur

Pork, rice, cooking bananas, tea

On Easter Sunday morning, we attended the Yemli church service, then began the long walk back to the coast.

Here's some stats of the hike gathered and summarized by Chad Michael: