The hospital services the 6,000 or more people who live around Lake Murray. It was paid for with the compensation money from the Ok Tedi gold mine – a company that is doing a good job in polluting the water around here. Unfortunately, they only received enough money to fund the walls and the roof ...

Today, John is the only health worker on duty. There are 6 in total. No doctors. There is also no electricity, since the village generator went on strike weeks (or months?) ago. Just as there is no food for the patients, no mattresses, no free transport to a bigger hospital for emergencies – not even a microscope to screen blood for malaria. Anti-malaria pills are simply distributed at random to whoever looks symptomatic.

They do have a freezer that runs on solar cells, to store vaccines at the right temperature. A really nice piece of equipment. “This one was donated by the Japanese some 4 years ago, and it still works,” John says. (I didn't find out who “the Japanese” were). The freezer is in one of the wards. On the floor, three sick people lie on the ground on their own palm leaf mats, under a mosquito net.

“The plane is coming!” I run outside to say my last goodbyes to Diki, Yolanda, Krikior, Sam and Bart. “See you again when the coconuts fall, guys!” I'll miss them.