Let the marathon begin. I hope everyone has the prayer
points and praying daily for MAF.
Our family had the opportunity to head out into the
mountains surrounding Kompiam over the last weekend and visit two of the
hospitals remote health Centers. This proved in many ways to be an incredible
experience, but again highlighted to us the valuable work that MAF do and their
impact on people’s lives here in PNG and around the world (read on).
We headed off on Thursday the 30th of October for
a 7 hour walk up to the top of a mountain and back down to the other side to
the Marambe Health Center. We spent 2 nights here and then headed off on
Saturday the 1st of November for another 6 hour walk to our Lapalama
Health Center. Before we headed off Saturday morning the girls took the
opportunity to kickoff their marathon and run the airstrip at Marambe (made a
good warm up for the walk ahead).
We got to Lapalama on Saturday afternoon, but decided not to
run the airstrip that day as it is on a 13% grade straight up the side of the
mountain. That afternoon we took a tour of the Health Center and found a young
girl named Nomi alone with her mother in the ward. Our health worker had walked
out to Kompiam the day before as she had some training to do, and so there were
no medical staff at the center. Nomi had an large inflammation on her leg, hadn’t eaten for a few days, was in a lot of pain and couldn’t walk.
We got on the phone to one of the doctors in Kompiam and described her
condition. He prescribed a course of medicine and was pretty sure she needed to
get to the hospital in Kompiam as soon as possible. After several more phone
calls we found out that there would not be any MAF planes available for various
reasons for at least a week. After much discussion through an interpreter we
finally managed to figure out a plan which should get her to the hospital this
coming Wednesday. Basically she will have to find someone to carry her up a
mountain behind Lapalama and then we will send the ambulance for a 2 hour drive
on Wednesday morning to try and pick her up. A lot can go wrong in this
process, but we are praying and hoping that it will all work out. Again though,
this just highlighted for us the critical nature of the work that MAF do that
is so often the difference between life and death for so many.
Our weekend ended safely back in Kompiam on Sunday afternoon
after another exhausting 7 hour walk through some pretty incredible (and steep)
scenery. And yes, the girls got their second marathon run in down and up the
Lapalama airstrip on the Sunday morning before we left.
Keep praying for MAF and for young Nomi.
Blessings
The Conwell Family
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| Looking down on the Marambe airstrip |
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| Kids on the Marambe airstrip |
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Let the marathon begin – heading down the Marambe airstrip
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A river crossing on the walk to Lapalama
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Walking up the Lapalama airstrip (13% up)
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Nomi and her mother
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The MAF “lounge” at the top of the Lapalama airstrip
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Early morning run down Lapalama airstrip (hard part is
coming back up). Kompiam is up through the valley in the middle.
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Walking home with Lapalama airstrip on the opposite mountain
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