On Saturday the five travelers clambered back into the Cessna as they headed farther around the coast of West Africa and on to the Gulf of Guinea. That night they landed in Lagos, Nigeria. The next day they flew across the delta of the Niger River and down the coasts of Cameroon and French Equatorial Africa (now Gabon). Here Betty left the coast and headed eastward to Leopoldville (now called Kinshasa), the Congo (now Zaire). From there they flew north over the Congo to Juba, in southern Sudan. And from there they made the final leg of the trip back to Malakal.
On Thursday, March 14, 1957, two weeks after leaving London and eight thousand miles later, Betty touched the silver Cessna 180 down on the runway at its new home base, Malakal, the Sudan. Soon she was back flying her regular rounds, serving the missionaries on the ground.
Chapter 15
New Guinea
Betty sat in the MAF office in Fullerton, California, studying the map of New Guinea laid out on the desk in front of her. After Greenland, New Guinea was the world’s second largest island. The shape of the island on the map resembled a great dinosaur perched above the northernmost tip of Australia. The dinosaur’s head rested on the equator, and its tail descended all the way into the Coral Sea. Two lines divided the island into three parts. The first line ran north and south through the center. The territory it created to the west was called Dutch New Guinea (now Irian Jaya), which had been administered by the Dutch since 1828. A second line running east and west through the eastern portion of the island divided it into the Territory of New Guinea in the north and Papua in the south. Before World War I, the Territory of New Guinea had belonged to Germany, but now Australia administered both of these eastern sectors.
In the northeastern corner of Dutch New Guinea lay the town of Sentani, which was going to be the base for Betty’s next flying assignment with MAF. Leaving the Sudan in October 1958 after two and a half years of flying there, Betty spent the next eighteen months working at MAF’s headquarters in Fullerton, California. But in June 1960, she was scheduled to replace pilot Paul Pontier, who had been serving in Sentani and was returning home on furlough.
The work of MAF had been growing rapidly in New Guinea, partly as a result of the increased public awareness stirred up by Marj Saint, who had undertaken a speaking tour of Australia and New Zealand. Marj talked about her husband Nate’s death at the hands of the Auca Indians in Ecuador and went on to tell of the many opportunities for missionary service that existed and that needed to be taken up by Christians.
Many people responded to Marj Saint’s appeal, and both workers and donations poured into MAF. As a result, four MAF pilots and planes were now flying in New Guinea. Originally the work there had been started by the Australian branch of MAF. In 1951, however, MAF-Australia’s most experienced pilot, Harry Hartwig, had crashed his single-engine Auster airplane, killing himself and destroying the aircraft. Following this tragic accident, MAF-Australia had invited MAF-US to join it in serving the missionaries scattered throughout the country.
Betty was excited about her new assignment; it reminded her of when she was in Peru. Indeed there were many parallels between the two areas. The Amazon jungle and the highlands of New Guinea were two of the most unexplored places on Earth. Many areas of New Guinea were unmapped, and no one knew for sure all that lay inland. It had been only eight years since Grady Parrott had been granted permission by the government of Dutch New Guinea to be the first pilot to fly over some of the eastern inland areas. What Grady saw there stunned everyone. In an area that most geographers assumed to be unpopulated, Grady spotted the Dani people, all 150,000 of them! The people were living in stone age fashion in small village groupings. Even now, eight years later, there was still much to learn about New Guinea and its inhabitants.
When Betty arrived, she found New Guinea to be all she had expected, and more. The contrast between areas was breathtaking. Towering high mountains were wrapped in endless veils of clouds, huge rivers gushed through rocky canyons and dense tropical forests, and ubiquitous coconut palms fringed golden beaches.
MAF’s three other pilots, George Boggs, David Steiger, and Bob Johanson, welcomed Betty to New Guinea. Soon after her arrival, Betty was given a Cessna 180 to fly and put to work. Just as in the Sudan and Peru, there were food and supplies to ferry into mission stations, sick missionaries and locals to fly out, and a host of other routine duties.
In November, five months after arriving in New Guinea, Betty heard about a new airstrip that was soon to be opened. A pioneering missionary couple, Bill and Grace Cutts, were working among the Moni people in the remote village of Hitadipa. Betty had met the Cuttses when they were stationed at Homejo, another Moni village, and liked them very much. But now new missionaries had been trained to carry on the work there, and the Cuttses had moved farther inland to open up new areas of Moni territory to the gospel message.
It was in Hitadipa that the new airstrip had been constructed, and this airstrip would provide Bill and Grace Cutts a more convenient way in and out of the area. Otherwise it required a three-day trek over steep terrain just to get to the village. However, MAF had a strict policy that one of its pilots must inspect any new airstrip before an MAF plane could land there. The fact that this new airstrip at Hitadipa needed to be inspected gave Betty an idea: Perhaps she should be the pilot to do it.
One day soon afterward she found Dave Steiger alone at Sentani and asked him, “I was wondering if you would consider letting me be the pilot who inspects the new airstrip at Hitadipa.”
David Steiger looked at Betty, his eyes grave. “It’s a thirty-five-mile trek there,” he said. “And it’s over rugged terrain. It will take whoever goes to inspect the airstrip at least three days to get there.” He paused for a long moment, his eyes scanning Betty. “Are you sure that’s what you want to do?”
Betty nodded deliberately. “I’ve talked to Leona St. John, who’s stationed at Homejo, and she says she’ll go with me.”
“It sounds to me as though you’ve thought this all out. I guess if that’s what you want to do, I can arrange it for you.”
“Thank you,” Betty replied.
“It’s quite a task you’ve set for yourself. I hope you’re still thanking me when you get to Hitadipa,” David Steiger added.
“I hope so, too,” smiled Betty.
True to his word, David Steiger arranged everything, and in early December, Betty found herself on the way to Homejo. The airstrip there was perched on a rocky ledge halfway up the side of a mountain and was angled uphill. This meant that the Cessna would stop in a very short distance, which was a good thing, since there was a sheer drop into a canyon at the end of the runway. As George Boggs, who was flying Betty in, circled the Cessna around the airstrip, Leona St. John and a fellow missionary came running out onto the runway with an old white sheet. They held two corners each and allowed the sheet to billow in the wind, making a primitive windsock. Once George had established the direction and approximate speed of the wind from the windsock, he brought the Cessna in for a perfect landing.
As soon as the plane’s engine had stopped, Leona opened the cockpit door for Betty. “Hello. How was the flight?” she asked.
“Wonderful,” Betty replied. “How about things here? Is everything going on schedule?”
Leona grinned. “Ahead, actually,” she said. “Our eight guides have gone on ahead. They left at daybreak, and we’re hoping they’ll be waiting for us at Pogapa.”
Betty climbed out of the cockpit to allow Leona to get herself and her backpack into the rear seat of the airplane.
Soon they were back in the air, headed to Pogapa airstrip located ten minutes flying time farther up the valley. As they approached the airstrip, Betty could understand why it had the reputation of being the most difficult airstrip in the country. It sat sixty-one hundred feet up on a mountain plateau, with steep slopes leading to deep ravines on three sides. The strip itself at nine hundred feet in length was barely adequate, making any landing or takeoff a heart-stopping event. George Boggs eased the Cessna over the landing strip as all three of them searched the ground for any logs or rocks that might flip the plane over if it hit them. Satisfied there were none, George lined the plane up for a landing. This time there were no missionaries holding up a makeshift windsock for him to gauge wind speed and direction. Instead he studied the way the trees around the landing strip were swaying, which gave him some idea of wind direction.
Again George made a perfect landing. After he had touched down, he taxied the Cessna over to an unoccupied mission house. Betty could see the eight guides beside the old house waving at them.
“Dugulugu and his men made it in good time!” Leona St. John exclaimed. “It’s good to have such reliable guides with us.”
As soon as the Cessna’s engine had stopped, Betty, Leona, and George climbed out of the plane. Leona talked to the men in the Moni language for a minute or two and then reached into the back of the plane and retrieved her backpack.
“Everything is fine,” she told Betty. “They’re eager to get going.”
Meanwhile, George Boggs unloaded Betty’s backpack before walking around the Cessna to check that everything was fine for the return flight. “Well, ladies, I guess you’re on your own,” he finally said.
After saying a short prayer for the group, George climbed back into the cockpit of the Cessna. He glanced at the oil pressure and gas gauges as the plane’s engine burst into life. The two women and the group of native men watched as the plane bounced along the rough airstrip and then climbed into the air. When the plane had disappeared from view over a mountain ridge, Betty and Leona helped each other hoist their backpacks onto their backs.
“Okay, let’s get going,” Leona said.
Betty went last as they set off up the trail. She studied her traveling companions as they walked past her. They were typical New Guinea highland men, dressed only with a string around their waist. They all had the same thick, dark, almost woolly hair, and each man was only about five feet tall. Three of the men carried the equipment to start out with. The others would take over the load farther along the trail. The first man carried the food box, which rested on his back and was held in place by a strap from his forehead. Betty marveled at the strength the man must have in his neck and upper back to carry the box. The second man carried the tent, and the third had sleeping bags and camping supplies suspended on his back. Betty and Leona carried their own personal items and a change of clothes in their backpacks.
As the last reverberations of the Cessna’s engine faded, a sense of isolation washed over Betty as she stood on the side of a mountain in hostile territory in the highlands of New Guinea. Anything could happen in the next three days. There was the possibility of physical injury. If any member of the team broke a leg or suffered some other serious injury, it would take days to get help. And then there was the threat of being ambushed. Betty had been told that the tribes in the highlands were in a state of constant war with each other. The tribes believed that no one died by accident, so if someone did die, it was because some enemy had put a curse on the person. Thus, when a death in a village occurred, warriors were sent out to make someone “pay” for it. This kept the highlands in a state of upheaval, and it was the main reason Bill and Grace Cutts had moved to Hitadipa. The couple wanted to show the Moni people that there was a better way to live.
Dugulugu, the lead native guide, pointed downward and said some words in the Moni language. Leona St. John nodded and turned to Betty. “He says the first thing we need to do is go down to the bottom of the hill and cross the river. There’s a vine bridge there.”
