As I stood on my front porch looking over the ocean, no internet, no power and a tropical storm rolling in off the ocean. I thought to myself “Paradise.”
And I meant it.
A few weeks ago I was given the opportunity to return to Bougainville, the place Caitlin and I will soon call home.
Our office in Buka had very little to no internet. Essentially no communications. For a team trying to start up operations in one of the most remote corners of the world, that’s not just an inconvenience, it’s a mission stopper. Under my current role it is my responsibility to ensure adequate systems for our staff, so I packed my bags, all sorts of equipment to try and solve the problem, put a plan in place to fix it and jumped on a plane.
The plan was simple enough. Ship an unused satellite dish from our Goroka office in mainland PNG a week before I land. Ample time, you’d think. Express shipping, domestic route, one week head start.
I should know by now that PNG is the land of the unexpected. Very rarely does anything go to plan, flight delays, bad weather, forgotten manifests, no power, someone not getting paid, so many things you don’t think of can go wrong.
Two weeks away from home, away from Caitlin, is about my limit. After that, homesickness kicks in hard and I miss her dearly. But the chance to put my skills to real use, in a place I love, doing work that has direct impact on people’s quality of life? I locked in four weeks without hesitation. Surely that would be enough time.
The dish didn’t arrive in four days as promised. Or that week. Or the week after.
For a while I sat with that frustration. I had come to fix something and I couldn’t. Thankfully we found a few limited workarounds, bringing in multiple 4G signals to try and make use of the rare moments they were available. But still, hours, days at a time there would be no usable connection. Maybe you could get emails in one moment, maybe a video call, but for weeks I could hardly even call back home to talk to Caitlin. All of that builds up into frustration and a longing for home. There was literally nothing we could do with local internet options. Until the satellite dish arrived, I had to just slow down. Not able to keep up with an overflowing inbox or missed meetings, I was feeling very stressed, at least at the start.
And honestly? It was exactly what I needed. Other than not being able to talk to Caitlin.
That forced stillness became one of the most valuable things about the trip. With no connectivity pulling at me I had to stop, look around, and actually feel what it’s like to operate in this environment every single day. Our staff here, and in all of our remote programmes, aren’t dealing with slow internet. They’re dealing with nothing at times. The feeling of isolation when this happens is real, not because you can’t watch YouTube or browse Facebook. How often do you pick up the phone to message your partner, mum or friend? Little conversations, or the times you really need to talk, all of a sudden are no longer possible.
I also had time to really dig into the technical side of high latency and packet loss connections, getting the most out of what little connectivity exists in places like this. But that’s not something you want to read about here. Trust me.
When the dish finally arrived we got to work. The team came together and mounted it three stories up on the roof of our main building. All installed within a day. Problem solved, connection restored, mission back on track.
Nope.
Days of alignment attempts followed. Early mornings and late nights, the only times it was cool enough to be on that roof, and still no signal. Then a local installer reached out and came over with a big smile, laughing: “Yeah, Buka is the hardest place to get a connection, so many people give up.” Feeling a little validated after all my failed attempts. He got to work and said it would be done by end of day. I’ll spare you the rest of the details but it took an additional three weeks before we had a connection. By then I’d already had to leave Bougainville, feeling utterly defeated. I had come with a purpose, to connect this team, to help them, and I hadn’t been able to finish the job. I’m so grateful for Joel who stuck at it for weeks after I left to get it across the line.
But all was not lost.
The fact that I was there when I was put me in Buka at exactly the right moment. The MAF Technologies team, Nasson, Noah and the crew, were preparing for one of their solar and HF radio installation trips. A full install at one of the most remote health clinics in all of Bougainville. I had hoped that during my time here I might get to tag along for a day, just to get a feel for what the work involves. This was more than that. This was the real thing.
I didn’t think twice.
But that story, 112 kilometres of open ocean, a maternity ward without power, and a community that hadn’t been forgotten after all, that deserves its own post.
Next up: Han Island.