Photos from Papua New Guinea, 2009
part 2

PNG in a nutshell, in billboards:
chicken-flavored hardtack, AIDS, corruption, and Jesus.
And a PMV. Taken in downtown Goroka.

reef from the air

where roads exist, they're sometimes more rut than road

Typical village homes in the Sepik

Chewbacca's house

more of the incredible variety of life

Everything has something else growing on it, too.

some of the life is underwater
(but sadly I didn't get good pictures of it.)

some raise pigs, some raise crocodiles

Pidgin, the lingua franca, is pretty easy to learn

Many local languages have never been written.
This book invented a lexicography for an Iatmul-family language.
Only 50 copies were made; possibly a lot by local standards.

canoeing the sea off Madang

Cheerful orange vendor in the Goroka market

An exceptionally good meal by Sepik tourist standards:
wild boar, 2-minute noodles with bits of canned beef,
and sak-sak (fried sago palm tree pith)

adult-height window and kid-height window

white herons were all over the Sepik river

a decade-old solar panel still gives a family more power than they need

inside the Kaningaraga haus tambaran

orchid farm in Port Moresby's botanical gardens

hibiscus is everywhere in PNG