People rejoiced at the opening of the new airstrip at Pyrulama, Papua New Guinea.
Yet it was also a somewhat bittersweet event. It had taken years to create the airstrip, with many dying before it was ready.
‘Before the airstrip,’ recalls a community leader, ‘We’d spend four days carrying men across the mountains to the hospital. But women facing difficult childbirths never made it.’
How many women and children died is anyone’s guess. As is the number of people who perished due to snakebite, accident or malaria. And this is just one remote community out of hundreds.
So desperate were Pyrulama’s people to get MAF to land in their village that they spent 21 years digging an airstrip out of the forest using machetes and sticks. Just any old strip of ground wouldn’t do. It had to meet our stringent, yet essential, safety requirements.
So although it was time to celebrate, it was also a time to remember the lives that could’ve been saved if we’d been able to land sooner. In fact, the time couldn’t have come soon enough. Days before the celebration, pilot Nick Swalm flew to Pyrulama for four medical emergencies.
Thanks to the airstrip, all four women were able to reach the hospital and have recovered fully. ‘Two months ago,’ said the villagers, ‘they would have died like all the others’.
Now, because of MAF and the new airstrip, life-saving help is only a radio call away.