The Gumi

Busu River, PNG

Papua New Guinea is not a place that springs to mind as the ideal tourist destination. Reports of social unrest, theft, violence and general instability put people off. It is a shame. I lived there for over ten years in the 1970s and loved it. Would I go back?

I would like to see it again, but... ‘Like every place you have never been!’ Quite a motto! Places I visited all those years ago: walking the Kokoda Trail, Mendi, Tari and Hagen in the Highlands, Wewak and the Sepik, my favorite coastal town Madang, what’s left of Rabaul, Tari and so on—all are fascinating indeed.

Mind you, the place nearly killed me! When I transferred to Lae in 1972, friends at the then technical college asked me if I would join them in white water rafting. They told me that the nearby Busu River was one of the ten fastest flowing rivers in the world and was quite safe. I forgot to ask how they defined quite.

Rafting day dawned and we hopped into some four-wheel drive vehicles and trundled up the rough road along the Busu till it petered out about ten kilometers from Lae. Our rafting equipment? Inflated inner tubes, called gumis. We tied the tubes together to create what seemed a fairly stable raft. I was sure they would not flip over. Nonetheless, we added extra ropes round our tubes to hang on to. Did we have buoyancy jackets? Next question?

We foolishly (bravely?) pushed the gumi raft into the river and clambered on. The current snatched us and we whizzed off shouting and laughing. We floated, rushed, bumped and splashed our way through the ravines and over the rapids till the river broadened to a majestic calmness a few kilometers downstream on the outskirts of Lae. We cheered, totally elated. It had been fantastic. Wonderful.

‘Let’s try it again!’ someone suggested.

 A couple of our friends who were less adventurous (should that read smarter?) had driven the cars back down river to meet us, so we dismantled the raft, piled everything on and clambered back up to our launching spot.

‘Let’s all go solo?’ someone said.

I was a little dubious but decided that as we had no trouble before, it would be fine.

‘Sure! Let’s do it’.

 At first it was lovely. I lay back relaxing as I floated gently along a calm passage of the river towards where the cliffs narrowed and we could hear a roaring sound. How come I had not noticed that before? We entered the ravine and my heart missed a beat. The rapids thrashed us round like fruit in a blender. Without ten others round me to hold my hand, I held on to my gumi so tightly that I was worried the tubes might snap.

I was in the middle of the group. We bumped into each other. A couple of my fellow gumi groupies were thrown out. I started to worry. I could hardly swim. Now I began to regret ever resigning from my position as a Sunday-school teacher.

We made it through the first rapids. I recalled that there were bumpier bits ahead and looked longingly at the bank.

If I were to angle my way across and claim that I had stubbed my toe, maybe I could escape the horrors that awaited us? I could not. With only my hands, I was no match for the immense power of the river.

We negotiated two more rapids safely. By this stage I was the second last in the group. Another set of rapids faced us. We could hear the roar and it sounded far worse than the first series of rapids. I was not the only one showing some apprehension.

‘Let’s try and group together,’ someone shouted above the immense roar.

We failed and the river grabbed us and gulped us into the maelstrom. I hung on for grim death. There was no way out. The river tossed us like tooth picks down the rapids.

I lost my gumi. The water grabbed me. It smashed my body against the cliffs. I felt an excruciating pain in my thigh. I screamed. No one could hear me. I clung to the slippery rocks. 

Once the initial terror had subsided, I realised that, as luck would have it, I was in a small whirlpool of relatively quiet water in a scalloped alcove. I was also in immense pain.

I considered letting go and trying to float down the river but I knew I would have no chance against the torrent’s force.

Some say that your grip is tightest when your life is at stake. That was certainly true then. I managed to grab a ledge and tried to haul myself out of the water. I could not.

I wedged my arms between two protruding rocks and clung to it for life. My good leg rested on a small ledge below the water. My other leg was useless. Terrified, I could only hope that I was safely wedged out of the river’s claws.

My injured leg hit the bank as a particularly violent eddy threatened to drag me away. I gave in to the pain and passed out.

I have no idea how long I was there. I regained consciousness as I felt someone slapping my head and chest. I heard voices calling me above the roaring of the river. Two villagers had clambered down and grabbed me. I screamed from the pain in my leg as they tried to lift me. They called for help. Other villagers climbed down. They grabbed anything they could: my arms, my clothes and even my hair. They heaved and dragged and scraped. My leg flapped against the cliffs. I passed out again.

Some time later I woke up.

‘Where am I?’

Two friends from the gumi group were there when I came round.

‘You are in the hospital,’ they said.

 I checked. My left leg was in plaster.

‘You have broken your femur,’ said one.

I nodded. I felt terrible.

‘We have terrible news’.

I looked at them.

‘I know! I have a broken leg!’

They looked at me. This was not about me.

‘Peter drowned’.

I closed my eyes, not from the pain of my own pathetic injury but from the dreadful news.

‘How?’

‘His gumi got dragged down under water between two rocks. There was no way he could fight his way back out against that current’.

I did not need to ask how or why. I knew something of the horror he must have faced and the hopelessness he must have felt as he drowned. But did I fully understand? I was lucky. I was alive.