Selamat Datang di Sentani (Welcome to Sentani)

Sentani met my expectations of the Papuan third world.  Warm, moist, green.  Getting off the airplane, Doug from MAF met me at the bottom of the stairs from the jet.    Luggage was picked up in a clean but open covered area very typical of the third world.  MAF's hangar is literally next to the terminal, and the MAF compound is behind the hangar.  A missionary pilots dream!  Wake up, walk out of the house and the airplane is just a few steps away.  I checked into the MAF guest house for some much needed sleep and a shower.  My view out the window is of the JAARS hangar area, with tails of the JAARS PC6 porters lined up, waiting for work on Monday. Lunch was at a local restaurant, tasty and Asian.  You can drink the water and take ice in many of the dining establishments here.  There is only one main road in Papua, it goes from Sentani to Jayapura, 20 miles or so away.   If you want to get anywhere else on this vast island, plan on walking or flying.  Flying is the preferred method for those with all but the most modest of financial means.

 For dinner, I was picked up by Jonathan, an MAF pilot that grew up here as well.  He gave me a tour of the local area, filling me in on the history of General Douglas MacArthur’s nearby headquarters and taless of WWII wreckage he played on as a child.

 Part of Operation Reckless, MacArthur’s forces invaded Sentani, then known then as Hollandia, on April 22^nd 1944 to block and isolate the Japanese 18^th Army’s advance toward Australia.
There is a large monument here to MacArthur at his former headquarters and I am hoping to visit it this weekend.  After WWII, the Dutch regained control of this area.  As missionaries began to arrive, the Dutch decided to put all the missionaries in one location, known then as Outpost 7.  Jonathan drove me by some of the original MAF houses

one made from an old military quonset hut.  In typical missionary fashion, it is still in use today as a MAF home, although highly modified.   

Dinner was pizza at Pizza Ron's, a new restaurant located in a nearby shopping mall.  Yes, read that as shopping mall, with A/C, escalators and all the stores to boot.   Money is coming to this remote island, and with it, western style commerce.  Sunday was church, with missionary “bingo” being the after church activity.  For those of you unfamiliar with the term, “missionary bingo” is two missionary’s talking until a mutual aquaintance or previous meeting is connected.  After church, its was lunch and shopping with a stop a Dunkin Dounuts, just to say I had been there.


Jeff