Ukarumpa

A morning view from our balcony across to the surrounding hills.

It sounds like something from Charlie & the Chocolate Factory, looks like something from The Land that Time Forgot and feels like something from Little House on the Prairie. Ukarumpa, home to the largest community of linguists on earth.

We spent 2 1/2 weeks there with the aim of finding out whether this base at 5000 feet in the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea could viably be a home for us for two years or so from August 2010. It seems so.

The base was created in the 1950s from disputed land. Tribes had fought over the valley land for generations and when the Summer Institute of Linguistics requested land from the then Australian PNG government to set up a base here, they didn’t hesistate to hand it over.

Security is still something of an issue with the Highlands having a reputation, as I’ve said before, as being a little like the Wild West of yore. As a result, a fence was constructed in the ’90s to improve the situation here. It’s not foolproof but it’s a deterrent. On the whole though, life here is very peaceful. People were really friendly to us and it was good to see a mixture of ex-pats and nationals working on the base.

A view of the fence snaking away to the valley and the surrounding fields.

It’s a very large base. There must be several hundred people there and, despite our best efforts, we failed to make it all the way around the perimeter. We did walk many of the unpaved roads, up hills and round corners exploring as much as we could. The settings for many of the houses are idyllic and those who have bought their own places here have often gone to great lengths to make them cosy homes.

We started off in the guesthouse but then had the opportunity to rent a place and self-cater which gave us a much better impression of what it would be like to live here.

We lived in the right hand half of this house.

Feeding ourselves meant that we got a lot of experience of using the great store here which stocks a surprising array of products. You can get a lot of tinned goods and frozen stuff there with most of it coming from Australia and the US.

We also had to head to the market which is three times a week from 6-8 in the morning. It must be the quietest market in the world. Unlike many countries we’ve been to where hassling customers to buy and bargaining loudly are mandatory, in PNG, prices are fixed and the only noise is subdued conversation to pass the time of day before a purchase is made. It’s kind of eerie and will take us a bit of getting used to but it adds to the peaceful early morning atmosphere.

What £5 will buy you at the market.

Everything happens early here. People start school and work way before 9 often and finish around 4. This is because, once the sun sets around 6:30 there’s not a lot to do. People who invited us over to eat usually asked us to come at 5:30 or 6. Meals were finished fast and we often found ourselves back home around 9pm staring at each other and wondering what to do with ourselves for the evening when we thought we’d be out. It’s a good place to read and watch DVDs!

We saw a tremendous variety of people here of all sorts of backgrounds, nationalities and jobs. It was good to see such a range as it adds both to variety and the chance that there’ll be someone somewhere who can relate to how you feel about being there. Everyone’s welcoming though and quite tolerant of cultural and theological differences.

What there is to do is entirely self-made. If you want to do something, you just go out and do it. There’s a pony club, archery, a motorcross track, quilting, crossstitch, cafes in people’s homes, day trips out shopping and more sport than you could possibly manage each week. I played tennis, indoor hockey, football and ultimate frisbee as well as went for a hike up a local hill to get a view back down the valley.

With a teacher from the high school and a local guy to guide us up a nearby hill. No prizes for guessing what that plant is in the foreground!

Getting off the base isn’t too easy if you’re a single woman. But if you can get a group together or, better still know a national who can go with you, there’s plenty of walking to be done and a whole world of villages to explore. To do so safely is simply a matter of building the right relationships. This takes time but is a great investment for all those who’ve done so who we spoke to.

Being in such an isolated location can give people a bit of cabin fever but, as we heard many say, life there is really what you make of it. We had two weeks and we made the most of that. I’m sure that if we had two years, we’d not do too badly at all.

For more photos than you know what to do with, check out our Smugmug Ukarumpa gallery.