In September, I went back to Kokopo for two weeks to spend some time with my family. September 16th was Papua New Guinea's 34th Independence Anniversary, so the country was already in a festive mood by the time I arrived. The colors of the PNG flag; red, black and yellow were everywhere; in shops, on PMV buses, even people wore clothes which had either a PNG flag print, or the colors red, black and yellow.
Since the 1994 eruptions of Mt Tavurvur and Mt Vulcan in Rabaul, Papua New Guinea, the first thing that crossed my mind was that the future was going to be harder for everyone in Rabaul. Kokopo Town became the next big, central area for development and business. People naturally just got on with their lives. That’s not to say life became easier.Everyday has its own challenges and the biggest challenge of them all, I would personally say; was staying together as a family. But I'll talk about that in detail some other time.
What's it usually like everyday?
Waking up to dust covered houses and dust covered roads and water tanks for more than a decade as left Rabaul and Kokopo residents no choice but to adapt to their new environment. Some days the Mt Tovurvur volcano would lie still. No rumbling would be heard coming from its mouth until suddenly, a few days later it wakes up the entire townships of Rabaul and Kokopo and even beyond to villages up in the mountains, with its noisy and tantrum-like ruckus. Word going around the province is that there’s a big hole under the volcano from all that dust throwing, and Rabaul Town might just sink one day. How true this statement is, is far from my knowledge—we’ll just have to wait and see, and in the meantime, start looking out for places to resettle on higher ground.
We spent New Year's day 2009 at the Takubar Beach, Kokopo for a tiny barbecue. The weather was great and luckily the wind was blowing the dust in the opposite direction, so it was a pleasant day overall. In this video are Dad, Mum, DJ, Julie, Melita, Ashanti, Auntie Elma and I.
