Preparing for Departure

Our pre-departure training colleagues holding flags of the assignment countries.

"Not doing this again" I said after the last time.  But here we are, a few weeks away from a year in Papua New Guinea.  Jenny and I both have Australian Volunteers positions with the National Agriculture Research Institute (NARI).  I will be helping the scientists with their research programs - experimental design, data management/analysis and publication.  Jenny will be helping the extension team get the research messages out to the farming community.  Our home will be in the city of Lae where NARI has its headquarters.  There are smaller research facilities in Port Moresby, in the Highlands and on the coast of New Britain.  We will probably get to visit these.

Living in Lae will be interesting for two main reasons - the climate and the level of security we will experience.  Lae is about 6 degrees south of the equator and has hot, steamy days throughout the year.  There doesn't appear to be a distinct wet season as it rains nearly every day and has a total annual rainfall of about 4,500 mm/year (compared to Hamilton with about 680 mm/year).  We've lived in tropical climes before but Arusha (Tanzania) and Buloba (Uganda) had distinct wet and dry seasons and were at high altitude so were never hot or humid.

Lae is a small city of 100-200,000 people (depending on where you draw the boundaries).  It is the main sea-port for the nation and has the only sealed highway up to the Highlands where most Papuans live.

Lae from the ocean with Mount Lunaman in the foreground 

and the mountains of the Huon Peninsula in the background 

(Photo 6 April 2011, by Геннадий Сущенко on Google Earth).

AVI volunteers in Papua New Guinea are required to adhere to a higher level of security than is the case in Tanzania so we will be a bit more restricted in our activities.  This is an unknown but we have been chatting to a current volunteer in Lae who assures us it is not too onerous and that she is having a great time in Lae.  We are resourceful so I'm sure we'll be fine.

I've naturally been researching the opportunities for birding in the Lae area.  I went on a birding trip to PNG in 2014 but didn't visit the Lae vicinity so there are lots of new birds waiting for me in the forests.  Sadly I've not found any resident birders there and it is not often visited by international birders.  The upside is that I should be able to add significantly to the knowledge of bird life in the area.  Hopefully our house will have some bird-attracting vegetation.

We have done all our pre-departure tasks and have our visas so now we are thinking about what to take (rain gauge?) and waiting for our tickets to arrive and counting down the days to August 3rd.  Jenny is blogging as well - https://clarksinlae.blogspot.com/