Road to Papua New Guinea
Three weeks aboard a ship sailing tropical waters sounds like a great getaway, but it's hard to relax and unwind when you're responsible for navigating or assisting the medical personnel it's carrying or feeding its crew.
That was the experience of Mary Jo Mustello Losch of Butler and her two daughters, Anchor Losch, 15, and Belle Losch, 13.
Between Sept. 8 and Oct. 8, the three worked aboard a medical missionary ship, which traveled from Port Moresby in Papua New Guinea to the country's Daru Island, where the doctors, dentists and optometrists on board provided medical care to the inhabitants.
“Daru was the previous capital of the western province of the country,” said Mustello Losch. “It's 60 miles north of the Torres Straits of Australia.”
“It was not as hot as you would think. We were on the water and had a nice sea breeze,” she added.
After a 16-hour flight from Los Angeles to Australia, the three then had to travel north to Papua New Guinea.
“We flew to Port Moresby and caught a missionary medical ship, the Pacific Link. There were 10 different countries represented on the ship,” said Mustello Losch. Crewmen and volunteers came from the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Papua New Guinea, Britain, Malaysia, Russia, Singapore and Fiji.
Mustello Losch, who has a Merchant Marine captain's license and had sailed between Japan and Indonesia, served as the first mate.
“A friend of mine from college was the regular captain on her (the Pacific Link) for nine years. This opportunity just came up,” she said.
The ship is a converted Japanese fishing vessel.
“My duties were to ensure the safety of the ship and crew, run the drills just like you would on a cruise ship, navigate the ship from Papua New Guinea to Daru Island and drive the Zodiacs (inflatable boats) filled with medical supplies and medical personnel from the ship to the dock on Daru,” she said.
“I brought my two daughters with me on this trip because it was a chance for them not only to serve others, not only to see a most remote part of the world, but to experience shipboard life,” she said. “When I worked on American flag vessels, children were not allowed to accompany their parents. This was one chance for my kids to actually see what their mother does 'at work.'”
Noting that Anchor is in the ninth grade at Butler Intermediate High and Belle is in eighth grade at Butler Junior High, Mustello Losch said, “I really wanted them to see that there was a world out there. I wanted them to see how big the world is before they start their high school years. I definitely wanted them to know the world is not all about high school.”
There were 50 people, crew and staff, aboard.
The Pacific Link travels along the Papua New Guinea coast for six months of the year before returning to its home port of Townsville, Australia, for restocking supplies, fundraising, repairs and waiting out the rainy season.
The doctors went ashore, while dental patients were ferried to the ship on the two Zodiacs.
“Anchor wants to be a doctor,” said her mother. “and she worked with the optometrists and dentists.”
“It was really fun. We did vision acuity and vision exams,” said Anchor. “My mom gave this one lady glasses. She was running a private orphange, so on top of that we helped a big orphange.”
Belle worked as the cook's assistant.
In addition to three meals a day, Belle said, the galley was also responsible for morning tea at 10 a.m. and afternoon tea at 3 p.m.Because of the two daily teas, Belle said, “We made a lot of cookies. We made chicken pot pies. Hot dogs, there were different ways to fix them up separately.”Belle said the Papua New Guineans on the ship tended to make sandwiches with four pieces of bread in sort of a double stack.Papua New Guinea, said Mustello Losch, was one of “the most unique, fascinating and multilayered countries I have worked in.”She said 800 of the world's 5,000 languages are spoken in Papua New Guinea.“People try to translate the Bible in all these languages,” she said.“There are all these missionaries there to translate the Bible into these languages,” she said. “I think it's in the Old Testament that the end of the world will not occur until the Bible is written out in all the languages of the world.”“It's taken 20 years to translate the Bible into some of these languages, and there are arguments over whether something is a language or just a dialect of another one,” Mustello Losch said.All the linguistic and theological arguments arise in a country where in some areas the inhabitants are no more than two generations removed from cannibalism, she said.“They say Port Moresby is the most dangerous city in the world with its gangs and tribes,” said Mustello Losch. “There is a lot of wife abuse, but that seems to be changing. We were in the market one day and this woman was getting harassed by her husband and she started screaming at him and the people started cheering.”Daru Island itself didn't give the family much to cheer about.It was very dirty, said Mustello Losch. “The entire beach was garbage,” she said.Anchor said, “The beach was just filled with plastics.”Mustello Losch said people there chew betel nut and spit the red-colored juice everywhere.“Belle thought there had been a murder,” said Mustello Losch.Belle said, “It was a different way of living. We're used to being clean. We're white and they're black skinned. Ten or 12 kids formed a ring around me and were staring. And when I smiled at them, they didn't smile back.”“You couldn't even buy ethnic food. In other places, at least, there's ethnic food to buy. There was none of that,” said Mustello Losch. “There was an open market that had bananas, coconuts and legs of deer, and suicide rope which is this vine that they use to fish. They throw it in the water and it paralyzes the gills of the fish.”The food is very bland, all three agreed.“They take a palm tree and cut it in half,” said Belle. “They take the inside and scrape it out.”Anchor said, “It looks like cornstarch, wet cornstarch. It's called sago. It's gelatinous, cornstrachy and white. They squeeze it out. It sits in a pan. Then they pour off the water, put it in banana leaves, roast it and sell it.”On the other hand, said Mustello Losch, the people were very friendly.
On a trip to the mainland, she said, “We did go up the Oreomu River. We took the Zodiacs. That's how they ferried the doctors and patients. We took a two-and-a-half hour trip up the river.”Mustello Losch said 99 percent of the people live off the land in Abam, the village they visited.“The nurses immunized the kids. We brought them glasses and toothbrushes and toothpaste,” said Mustello Losch.But even Papua New Guinea is entering the digital age, said Mustello Losch. There were cell phone towers on Daru Island because an Australian telecommunications company, Digicell, had handed out cell phones to the New Guineans and was making its money by selling them cards for the cell minutes.“Everybody has a cell phone,” she said. “A lot of the calls are lost.”While they were there, Papua New Guinea celebrated its independence day, Sept. 16, marking 37 years since it gained its independence from Australia.Mustello Losch said the day was marked with speeches, traditional dancing, military displays, songs and flag raisings.Mustello Losch said after their three-week stint on the Pacific Link, she, Belle and Anchor spent two days on the resort island of Loloata where they snorkeled, hiked and relaxed.Mustello Losch said she was thinking about going to Fiji next or sailing on the African Mercy, which travels on medical missions along the west coast of Africa.She has two more children, daughter Caravel Losch, 12 and son Diesel Losch, 9When asked if she would take the two youngest on a similar trip, Mustello Losch said, “I would like to, but they have to learn to swim better. They have to be a little bit older.”
✓ The eastern half of the island of New Guinea — second largest in the world — was divided between Germany (north) and the United Kingdom (south) in 1885. The latter area was transferred to Australia in 1902, which occupied the northern portion during World War I and continued to administer the combined areas until independence in 1975. A nine-year secessionist revolt on the island of Bougainville ended in 1997 after claiming some 20,000 lives.✓ Slightly larger than California, Papua New Guinea is located in Oceania, a group of islands between the Coral Sea and the South Pacific Ocean, east of Indonesia. Its climate is tropical with the northwest monsoon season running from December to March and the southeast monsoon season running May to October. Its terrain is mostly mountains with coastal lowlands and rolling foothills. Situated along the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” the country is subject to frequent earthquakes, mud slides and tsunamis. Its natural resources include gold, copper, silver, natural gas, timber, oil and fisheries.✓ The indigenous population of Papua New Guinea is one of the most heterogeneous in the world; the country has several thousand separate communities, most with only a few hundred people. Divided by language, customs, and tradition, some communities have engaged in low-scale tribal conflict with their neighbors for millennia. The advent of modern weapons and modern migrants into urban areas has greatly magnified the impact of this lawlessness.✓ The 6,310,129 inhabitants are divided among Melanesian, Papuan, Negrito, Micronesian and Polynesian ethnic groups. The official language, Tok Pisin, is a creole language widely used and understood. English is spoken by 2 percent of the population. In addition, there are some 860 indigenous languages, more than one-tenth of the world’s total.✓ Twenty seven percent of the country is Roman Catholic and 69.4 percent is Protestant. The rest of the population is Baha’i or follows indigenous beliefs.✓ Papua New Guinea’s government is a constitutional parliamentary democracy, and it is a Commonwealth realm. Queen Elizabeth II is the chief of state, represented by Governor Michael Ogio. The head of government is Prime Minister Peter Paire O’Neill. The governor general is nominated by Parliament and appointed by Queen Elizabeth. Following legislative elections, the leader of the majority party or coalition is usually appointed prime minister by the governor general.✓ Papua New Guinea is richly endowed with natural resources, but exploitation has been hampered by rugged terrain, land tenure issues and the high cost of developing infrastructure. The economy has a small formal sector, focused mainly on the export of those natural resources, and an informal sector, employing the majority of the population. ✓ Agriculture provides a subsistence livelihood for 85 percent of the people.✓ The country relies on assistance from Australia to keep out illegal cross-border activities from primarily Indonesia, including goods smuggling, illegal narcotics trafficking and squatters and secessionists. Papua New Guinea is a source, destination, and transit country for men, women, and children subjected to sex trafficking and forced labor.SOURCE: CIA World Fact Book
Sharing her snapshots is Mary Jo Mustello Losch of Butler, who traveled to Papua New Guinea in September with two of her daughters. The family spent three weeks aboard a volunteer hospital ship.After their stint aboard ship was over, the three spent two days on the resort island of Loloata before boarding a 16-hour flight back to the United States.Mostello Losch graduated in 1988 from the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy in Kings Point, N.Y., and holds a captain’s license for deep sea vessels. A Naval reservist, she sailed ships between Japan and Indonesia for seven years then captained casino boats on rivers in Illinois and Missouri before moving in Butler. She is married to Ralph Losch, a naval architect, who works for General Electric in Fox Chapel.
