In 2016, I was on a yacht in the Bahamas.

Every morning I woke surrounded by postcard-perfect azure water — so crystal clear you could count the sharks sweeping the seafloor.

From my porthole in the laundry, my 1x2m kingdom, I would watch the rain clouds gather in the afternoon and a breeze toss the palm trees 30 metres from anchor.

It was below-deck before the reality TV series existed — Downton Abbey for the 21st century.

I flew home in March, surprising my family with an early return. It turned out being the help on a luxury yacht was not for me.

When I arrived in Aotearoa New Zealand, however, the surprise was mine. There was no room at the inn.

My family had taken in two West Papuan boys who were enrolled at the local high school.

They were part of a group of students at the start of a six-year scholarship programme funded by the Indonesian government.

I bunked in with my brother, sharing a room for the first time since I was 10 years old.

My new Papuan ‘brothers’
The Papuan boys, my new brothers, had shivered through the Wellington summer. Their English was improving daily, but conversation was still a struggle.

Every day they woke and sprinted to catch the school bus. There they spent the whole day surrounded by fast-talking, monotone English voices. At the end of it, they were exhausted but still chipped in at the dinner table, cracking jokes and bravely consuming the foreign cuisine before them.

Our family grew from six to eight.

My youngest brother relished no longer being the baby and took our exchange students under his wing.

After enormous peer pressure, the boys taught us some choice Indonesian swear words, but our ability in their language didn’t progress much beyond that.

They graduated high school, turned 18, went out clubbing, played for the local football team. They embraced New Zealand life and all our family’s quirks.

After four years, they moved from Wellington and enrolled in tertiary education.

This Christmas, they schooled us all in volleyball.

Embassy letter brings bad news
At about the same time, the Indonesian government sent a letter to the embassy in New Zealand.

In it was a list of Papuan students who had “fallen behind” in their studies. These students, they said, would need to be sent home immediately.

One of our Papuan brothers is on this list, a young man almost at the end of his study.

He has an apprenticeship with a local builder lined up, by all accounts, is excelling in his field, as are the other 38 students listed.

The list of names is the fallout of law changes in Jakarta in 2021 that reallocated money away from the Papuan provincial government to the districts. The scholarship fund for the students has dried up.

These victims of politics, however, have taken a stand.

Despite no longer receiving the money to pay their rent and food, they have told the authorities that they will not return and have demanded dialogue with the Indonesian President, Joko “Jokowi” Widodo.

The Asia Pacific Report has investigated the human rights issue, but aside from one or two other outlets, by and large, the New Zealand media have ignored it.

Times-Age will be joining the debate.

Mary Argue is a Wairarapa Times-Age journalist where this commentary was first published. It is republished with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Air travellers were left stranded and fuming country-wide as airlines Air Niugini and PNG Air hit a rough patch in operations due to wet weather and a large number of their key staff falling sick and unable to be at work.

Flight cancellations were the order of the day yesterday at many airports with passenger backlogs and frustrations growing.

Air Niugini, especially, has had flight cancellations since last November.

The airline has issued an apology saying wet weather conditions and staff absenteeism had caused the situation.

In a media release, both airlines apologised for a number of flights in recent days which have been disrupted due to a much higher number of crew than usual falling sick, as well as the current bad weather conditions across the country impacting on the airlines’ operations.

Both airlines say they are doing everything they can to manage the situation, but will not compromise safety operations.

Stranded passengers had to rebook flights and spend extra money for accommodation and transport.

Backlog mostly tertiary students
Most on the backlog of passengers are tertiary students and parents who have been asked to rebook flights for four to five days as of last Wednesday.

While the airlines have not publicly stated if staff were infected with covid-19, reliable sources from within companies have informed the Post-Courier that a majority of those sick and absent from work were infected with the virus.

They included aircraft engineers, high-end ground staff, pilots, cabin crews and protocol staff.

One of the stranded passengers from Lae, former EMTV senior journalist Scott Waide took to social media to comment on the crisis, which attracted a lot of responses and complaints from passengers who were in a similar situation.

They describing the customer service by the airlines as poor.

Waide was asked to rebook his flight more than once and finally made it into Port Moresby late yesterday evening.

An unfortunate incident happened at Nadzab Airport in Lae yesterday when an airline staff member allegedly insulted a female passenger.

Staff member ‘tears up’ boarding passes
Josephine Kawage claimed the staff member tore up her and her child’s boarding passes.

Kawage said in a video recording that they had been stranded for four days and were finally put on the flight yesterday. However, the check-in officer was only able to produce two boarding passes for Kawage and her son.

She said that she was humiliated when she asked for the boarding passes for her other family members.

A disappointed husband, Captain Henry Nilkare from the North Coast Aviation, condemned the alleged actions of the airline staff member when he spoke to Post-Courier last night.

He said he would take the matter up with Air Niugini to have the officer penalised.

“I do work in the airline industry and understand the nature of his job at situations like this, but his actions were uncalled for and no passenger, or any woman with an infant, should be treated as such in front of many people,” he said.

“That is a bad image for Air Niugini and I do not wish to see this happen to any other passengers.

“If he can do this to my wife and child, who knows how many people he may have treated badly.”

Captain Nilkare said he would be flying to Lae himself to pick up his family today.

Melisha Yafoi is a PNG Post-Courier reporter. Republished with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz