Ilya Gridneff
In March this year, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd visited a small village in the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea where he was mobbed, showered with gifts and treated like a rock star. That was strange enough but when I heard that to prove the extent of their devotion, the very next baby to be born into the village was named Kevin Rudd in his honour, I knew I had to go there to seek out this child. Here’s an excerpt from the diary I kept of my time there….
I am in Goroka, deep in the mountains of Papua New Guinea’s Eastern Highlands. I’m here to find a small baby named after the new Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd. The village I need to visit has no electricity or running water and is accessible only with a 4WD, but is supposed to be only two hours drive away. I’m in the car with Zachery, a local journalist who is fixing things for me (at the same rate that he’s screwing them up) and two cops called Miskem and Big Simbu, who’ve been brought along as protection.
The unsealed roads, the mud, the ascents, the descents, the river crossings and a stolen bridge, force many delays, but they’re not the only problems. Zachery tells me he wants to take me on a detour to get a better story, which I learn — whilst turning into a livestock farm — is a hermaphrodite goat they lovingly call ‘50-50’.
You can read the full fascinating article by Ilya Gridneff, an AAP correspondent in PNG, here.
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