Mount Ialibu

Dr Pagel liked his general practice in Melbourne well enough. That was what he had always wanted. He imagined his patients talking about him warmly, saying, ‘Yes, Brian is our doctor,’ to their friends. Yet he did not quite believe it. He imagined himself saying, ‘These are my patients,’ with the same warmth, but it was lukewarm. Sometimes he could see instead, in his mind’s eye, his first schoolyard on the other side of the country, with the big pine tree standing near the gate and the children sitting among the roots and pine needles, himself among them. He thought of the bright little boy he had once been and felt sorry.

He considered going back West for a holiday and took down his battered suitcases. He changed his mind. Then he saw a television documentary one evening, about another doctor in a famine-besieged city in a poor country far away. He sat and thought, withdrawn into himself.

You’re thinking about New Guinea again,’ his wife said kindly.

How did she know that? He felt alarmed that she should know him better than he did. But it was true. ‘Yes, I am,’ broke from him like a confession.

Long ago in New Guinea he had felt bright, and that is the important thing. Brighter even than he had been as a boy, in fact. He had seen the jungle clad mountains like a great green brain, firing his imagination. How could he deny that? Should he see New Guinea again? New Guinea post independence, fraught with social problems?

That was the journey he made. On his own. The airfares were more expensive than he expected, and travel arrangements difficult. He also found far fewer white people there, of course, than in colonial times. When he arrived in Hagen, in the West Highlands, there were none with whom he made contact. Only the small, dark highlanders from the wild mountains and the plains of kunai grass were as he remembered. But not exactly as he remembered. The locals had changed too. They wore cheap, store-bought clothes and lounged on street corners like unemployed people anywhere.

He lost his nerve for a time Maybe he had only liked the expatriate Australians there in the past, on an adventure, and not the place itself. He had certainly liked the effect being there had on them all, encouraging their generosity and open-mindedness. Maybe he had liked the native New Guineans only for the exoticism of their former Stone Age lifestyle. That had certainly fascinated him. Such thoughts depressed him, but also offended his sense of fairness. There must have been more to it than that. Alone he walked in the overgrown botanical gardens with increasing alarm. During the first night he woke to a drunken argument in loud voices outside his hotel door.

His mood brightened next morning. He found the communal bathroom sinks full of tiny, curly, black hairs from highlanders’ beards, and that tickled him. He ate bacon and eggs for breakfast, and sat on the hotel back steps afterwards, watching barefoot laundrymen hang out the linen on a row of rotary clothes lines. Behind them rose the ancient landscape of soft blues and pale greens. New Guinean guests had washed their clothes too, in the communal laundry, and were also hanging them on the lines. One man pegged out many children’s shorts and shirts.

Later in the day he befriended a couple of squeaky-voiced local boys on the lookout for something to do. He hoped to use them partly as guides and interpreters, but also for company. They called him ‘Mister Brian’. He was not sure how old they were. Perhaps mid teens. They were excited at having their own white man to tote about and persuaded him to rent a utility truck for transport. One, Abel, began formulating more elaborate plans as well, for Brian to provide the capital in a business they would start, perhaps even in Port Moresby. The other one, Simon, was convinced they would always be friends, at least. Brian liked him for that, and accepted their speculations as part of the amusement he provided.

They journeyed constantly over the ensuing week, to waterfalls and caves, to a bird sanctuary and to dozens of roadside markets, giving lifts to selected villagers vetted by the two boys. The back of the ute was always full of people singing and shouting to their friends. Their vehicle leapt over great pot holes in the road. They got bogged in mud, and freed. They repaired countless flat tyres, the result of worn gravel roads weathered by topical rains.

Eventually Brian told Abel and Simon that he had once worked in Ialibu, at the base of the mountain with the same name, and that he wanted to go there. They were surprised. Was he a doctor? He had not told them that. They were also reluctant to go so far. But it was Brian’s last day and his last chance, and he insisted.

He had been still a student, in fact, when he had traveled to Ialibu on his first visit to New Guinea so many years ago. There had been other students too, from other parts of Australia, all based in Mount Hagen and Mendi. Brian had been especially selected to go to Ialibu.

‘All right,’ said Abel and Simon. ‘Somewhere new for us.’

He appreciated their courage, knowing they would be afraid of devils in distant places. He supposed they trusted him to protect them, though he was worried himself, to be so blatantly revisiting his youth. He remembered the excitement shared with the other students, and the medical officer in Mendi who had taken such a paternal interest in them all. The boys’ company would protect him, he hoped, from the dangers of such nostalgia.

Doubt returned as soon as they set off.  It seemed a bleak prospect, after all, to be going there now without compatriots. He had been left in charge of the little hospital back then, despite his lack of qualifications, and the others had sent him messages addressed playfully to ‘The Chief Medical Officer, Ialibu.’  Long ago. To make matters worse, Abel and Simon started the journey in high spirit only to run out of steam as the landscape changed. Lush vegetation gave way to stony country with more open streams, and smoke rising from bare ridges high above them. For long stretches no-one had anything to say. They were forced to halt eventually where a culvert had collapsed and the road had become temporarily impassable.

Men had come down from a village on the nearby mountainside and made repairs with large stones. They were particularly dark skinned and had stripped to stand chest deep in the fast flowing water. Their bodies glistened black as the rocks, and their faces were grim with concentrated effort. Time passed slowly. Then the job was done, and they beamed with pride, motioning to Brian that it was safe to continue.

Further on, another village clustered closer to the road. Abel and Simon had mentioned that people in these parts built their grass houses differently from the ones near Hagen, so Brian stopped the vehicle again to take a look. The boys got out uncertainly. A line of old ladies in crumpled cotton smocks sat holding piglets which they rubbed and stroked as they chatted. They cried out with pleasure on seeing Brian and wanted to touch his skin. He smiled helplessly and their hands felt greasy, but he remembered something from before. He remembered their alien goodwill. An old man appeared with a kundu drum to show them. He did a solitary singsing with it, in his baggy pants and t-shirt, smiling broadly, recalling the old days too. He would once have been dressed in bark and leaves, not cloth, Brian remembered, and his mouth would not have been stained red with betel nut as it was now. His wrist strap would not have been adorned with plastic beads.

A smartly dressed local policeman emerged from one of the houses and greeted Brian in English. That was new too. It seemed to reassure the two boys, however, who livened immediately and responded to the man’s invitation to come into the village proper.  Brian found himself being shared, as if hospitality towards him established a group enterprise in which Abel and Simon could now participate.

‘Come and see inside the house,’ they said, leading him into the dark that smelled of smoke and dry earth. It took a while for his eyes to adjust.

‘This is my mum and dad’s house,’ the policeman told him.

The old man had joined them, continuing to smile.

‘See where the people sleeps,’ the policeman went on. ‘That’s my dad’s sleeping place there, and that is where he keeps his private things. See how the roof is made in two levels. See the fireplace – how the people does it in these parts.’

The old man nodded happily. Abel and Simon grunted, looking to see Brian’s reaction to what he was being shown.

The villages are just not as colourful as they used to be, Brian thought, regretting his reaction. He had been looking at empty tuna cans on the floor and an old truck tyre supporting part of the wall. He forced a smile, knowing their pleasure in talking to him was a fragile and precious thing. But when he was young he would probably not even have noticed the tuna cans, he admitted to himself, and smiled at his reluctance to be pleased now.

‘No young people in the villages,’ the policeman said, looking Brian in the eyes as if he knew what he was thinking. ‘But we love to come back to visit. I come to visit my old folk. Of course, I must.’

‘Of course he must,’ Abel and Simon repeated.

Outside, the policeman put his hand on Brian’s shoulder and pointed with the other one along the road. He was much taller than his old relatives. ‘You are going to Ialibu,’ he said. ‘Soon you will see the Ialibu mountain as you go.’

As he and the boys continued on their way, one mountain did begin to stand out taller than the rest, against a patchy sky. The boys pointed it out, as if Brian might not notice. Its top was blurred by cloud, and Brian was not sure he really recognised it from before.

He could not recognise the hospital either, when they got to the township and stopped again, except that the faded notice board beside the road looked familiar. ‘Ialibu D.H.’ And three steps on a curve.

Abel and Simon fell quiet again, allowing Brian to lead the way up a rocky slope. They reached a group of long, low buildings at the top, connected by a covered walkway. Perhaps he did remember that. Men and women of all ages sat about out of doors, some with bandages or plaster casts, others apparently the relatives of the sick. Naked children wrestled on the sparse lawn. Some people nodded and made sounds of greeting, relieved from the boredom of waiting to get better. Brian clasped the extended hands, but the two boys hung back.

Eventually they came upon a nurse, but she too looked alarmed when she saw Brian. He asked if the doctor was about, but she could not speak. Simon and Abel tried too, in their own language, to no avail.

She braced herself at last and said, ‘No doctor,’ in English, then changed her mind and said she would get him. She smiled shyly.

Dr Johns arrived and introduced himself with much enthusiasm. He was young and had the creamy complexion and straight hair of a Polynesian islander, looking just as out of place here as Brian might have done. Yet the hospital was clearly his domain, and his manner bestowed an unexpected dignity on the occasion. He shook hands with the two boys too, careful to include them in his greeting. He was from the Cook Islands, he told them, and his youthful face took on a wistful expression as he mentioned his home. He looked tired then, Brian noticed, but moved on quickly. He had studied medicine in Port Moresby, he said, and was now committed to working in the New Guinea health service. This was his first long posting away from the capital.

‘Come and see my work,’ he said, with obvious pleasure. ‘I came here before as a student,’ he said, leading the way into the wards, ‘and then I chose this place to return after qualification.’

Brian wondered whether to mention that he had also been here as a student, so much longer ago, but Simon said it for him. ‘Mr Brian was here too.’

Dr Johns seemed not to notice. ‘This man with a knife wound to his wrist is interesting,’ he said. ‘You see? All the tendons were cut. I’ve had a tricky morning stitching those and I’ve made him this support of fencing wire.’

‘They fight him? With bush knife?’ asked Abel.

‘Quick tempered people,’ the doctor said good humouredly and laughed at the boy’s reminder. ‘And this next man was badly burned by his cooking fire at one time. Now he has skin contractures restricting his arm movements. See?’

So he showed them his patients, describing his efforts proudly, acknowledging their remarks.

Brian noticed with amusement the reactions of the two boys, but this did not distract him from his own perplexing response. He felt an intense interest in Dr John’s work just because this was Ialibu. He had been a callow youth, thinking of this as an adventure to share with other students, but must also have taken it very seriously. It had stayed in his mind like a long ago love affair.

Dr Johns told them about his success in reducing infant deaths from enteritis, and his theory that an increase in iron deficiency anaemias had resulted from the people changing to using aluminium cooking pots. He discussed obstetric problems, nutrition, smoking and T.B.

Brian was appropriately impressed by the man’s absorption in his work, but there was something else he wanted from him, and was not sure what.

‘Do you have much contact with other doctors?’ he asked.

‘Very little.’ Dr Johns laughed again, but less certainly. ‘I have to make my own running most of the time.’

‘Not easy,’ said Brian. ‘Lonely sometimes, I suppose.’

The boys looked worried at this turn in the conversation. No-one likes to think of loneliness.

In the X-ray department Dr Johns pointed out two gleaming new machines, a gift to the hospital from Japan. ‘And this is my dear friend Peter Robin,’ he said in the hospital laboratory, pushing towards them the old technician, reluctant to be introduced. Everywhere they went Dr Johns greeted people, asking after their comfort. Everywhere people responded lovingly.

‘I’m afraid of loneliness,’ Brian said, as if this was something with which Dr Johns could help him.

Dr Johns paused for a moment, then continued talking about other things.

‘The political situation in this country,’ Brian said later, ‘must be all important.’

‘Oh, we are far from politics here …’

‘But …’ Brian said, then checked himself from saying more. Dr Johns was hardly more than a boy, he realised with a shock.

They smiled at each other.

‘I’ve been here before,’ he said.

‘I know,’ said Dr Johns.

‘I told him,’ said Simon.

‘And would I want to come somewhere like this again?’ This was the question he had come to ask.

‘That’s something for you to decide,’ said Dr Johns.