Trip to Rabaul and Kokopo

In October 2008, Raul Schneider (Country Director ADRA PNG), Darin Roberts (ADRA Aust Program Manager) and I travelled to East New Britain for a Monitoring and Evaluation trip... with a little tourist activities thrown in.
Here is a sample of the 'Tourist Activities' ...

Flying out from POM to Kokopo and watching a great sunrise over the Owen Stanley Ranges was amazing.

Kokopo main beach and wharf with Mt Tavurvur in the background.

One of my 'dream jobs' would be a vulcanologist and a visit to the RVO (Rabaul Volcanic Observatory) has ticked off a place to visit.

A sample of what Rabaul now looks like after years of ash fall.

Darin and I visited the Submarine Base. The Japanese dug thousands of tunnels into the soft rock and you can understand why the Allies never attacked Rabaul as it was nearly impossible to attack without massive loss of life. Check out the view below from one of the 'windows' in the rock. The subs just came up against the reef close to the coast where the water is said to be 180m deep (about 10 m from the shore)... imagine the fishing here!The next day Raul arrived and as it was my birthday I wanted to take a trip out to the volcano and jump off the Beehive rocks in the middle of Simpson Harbour.

View from the beach at Rapopo Plantation Resort

View from the beach at Kokopo Village Resort

Here is a brief clip showing the eruptions that occur at 5-10 minute intervals, taken from a boat 100m from the shore, under the ash cloud... what a birthday present!

These are one of the Beehive Rocks. About 10m high jump from the left hand side of the rock shown above with rocks jutting 2m out... made it a little bit exciting!



At the end of a memorable day we had a swim at Rapopo Plantation Resort; Raul didn't see Darin taking photos but I did not want to come out until the camera was put away...

Kambubu Teachers In-Service

After flying from Buka to Kokopo airport, we hired a car and travelled 3 hours down to Kambubu High School. It is situated close to Rugen Harbour and has a boarding school, large coconut/cocoa plantation and school farm.

View from the Administration steps, looking east.

We completed the same type of training as we did in Bougainville but there was another focus for teachers at Kambubu and that was dealing with the senior students issues.

This time we had a manikin

Marilyn says that she was explaining 'internal anatomy'...

When it comes to the HIV crisis here, I not only was able to give them education on HIV (and scare them with statistics), but also gave them strategies to address sexual issues in their senior schools. Gender inequality is probably a lot of the cause, but especially in the boarding schools, the kids are practicing risky behavior and unfortunately in this country they have not got that freedom because a lot of youth are infected with the virus. Country-wide, I believe it is growing by 60% each year.

I also had the opportunity to have time with the boarding students, it was valuable time spent and they were learning and absorbing everything. I give about 2 hours of awareness and education and it is always followed by 2-4 hours of questions and this is the most rewarding. You just couldn't believe what those kids are going through

Kitchen of the Boarding School, which produced amazing food for us