Fly Me to The Neck

I just came back from some places around the Bird’s Head of Papua doing some auditing works for the clinics owned by the Diocese. Over the past 2 months I’ve gone to Manokwari, Fakfak, Bintuni and Kaimana. That’s why I’ve been offline for quite sometime.

Sure you have no idea where exactly these places are. I just realized that most Indonesian who live in Java or Sumatra have very poor knowledge about Papua. It’s almost like a foreign country to them ;-). Okay, let me give you some description. Imagine the head of a bird. Sorong is the eyes of the bird and Manokwari is at the backside of its head. If Bintuni is in the chin, Fakfak and Kaimana are both in the neck.

To go to those places, except to Manokwari, one has to take small aircrafts, around 16 people on board. But these are bigger planes compared to the one we took to Suswa last Christmas. Often the flight is delayed or canceled because of the bad weather. The runway in Fakfak is so short and small that in a cloudy day the pilot has to do some maneuvers in order to find it. It took us 1.5 hours, normally takes about 45 minutes from Sorong, to land at the Fakfak’s airport. It was quite an experience to be in a Twin Otter that flew below the cloud, went up the cloud and went down again, made several u turn, flew up and down again for 45 minutes before it finally landed. Phew!

Is it cheap to fly in Papua? Heck No! You pay Rp 1.3 million to go to Kaimana (1.5hours with Twin Otter and 1hour with a bigger air craft, I forgot the type). It costs around 1 million to go to Manokwari (30 minutes with Boeing 737-200). And what really bothers me is the fact that in some places (except Sorong and Manokwari) it is not so easy to get the ticket. You can only get the ticket one day before the day you fly. There is no certainty whatsoever. In Fakfak, having booked the ticket for 1 week, I’ve got told just one day before the day I was supposed to fly that there was no flight to Sorong tomorrow. Great! The plane was rented by members of parliament. Sometimes it is rented by the local government. “Important” people, huh?? I think the reason why they cannot confirm the ticket until last minute is to make the ticket available for these self-important people.

But it teaches me to be more patient. I learn to put up with uncertainty. Here in Papua, you should be ready to stay longer than you plan. And stay calm when it happens ;-). I went berserk when I first experienced this.

Alternatively, you could go by ship. Most places are not yet accessible by cars. Ship takes longer but the schedule is much more reliable. Apparently, ship is quite a popular means of transportation here in East Indonesia. The big ships called Kapal Putih go to most big towns. I once took the ship to go from Fakfak to Sorong. It’s actually quite convenient if you are not in a rush. To most people here, Sorong-Fakfak, 12 hours by ship, is considered close. “It’s only 12 hours”, say them. It takes 3 days to go to Timika (from Sorong) or to Jayapura. Yeah, but a 12-hours-flight could take you from Jakarta to Capetown.