Janice got a root canal done in Port Moresby, the capital of Papua New Guinea, and the amazing thing is that the root canal was the least painful part of the trip.

Two weeks ago Janice suddenly had a cavity erupt through her molar wall. The pain wasn’t too bad, but she’s had enough experience with tooth infections to know she was soon going to have one. Wewak isn’t a great place to find dentists. I’m sure I could find someone with a pair of pliers who could pull a tooth for only a few Kina but Janice’s teeth have had more investment sunk into them than our IRA so I wanted to save the tooth if we could.

Now there’s a dentist in Port Moresby who comes highly recommended from other missionaries. So a ticket was purchased. If you think root canals are too expensive, just imagine having to buy plane tickets every time you go get one. I stayed home with the kids, which sounds noble, but really I’m just cheap.

When you’re a missionary, you can’t really spend money on things like gambling without having people, especially your financial supporters, start hedging their bets and so I’m a little hesitant to admit I bought plane tickets with AirNiugini, PNG’s national airline. That’s because it’s basically like dumping your money into a slot machine and hoping a boarding pass will come out.

Now I’ve been told by a wise former missionary that I shouldn’t insult my host country, at least not in public, so I’ll try not to use phrases like dumpster fire, nuclear melt down, painful incompetence, or any such phrases like that. Shucks, I don’t even know why I’m implying that I’d be tempted to use such words. Ha! Silly me.

Anyway, the most expensive part of flying out of our “quaint” little town of Wewak is flying out of Wewak. The cost of the ticket from Wewak to Port Moresby, the capital, is the same as flying from Port Moresby to Australia or to Malaysia or even to Fiji, if I wanted to buy overpriced bottled water.

The Wewak flight is also the most unreliable. Of course, I want to be careful not to imply that being unreliable is a bad thing. I’m just saying that, factually speaking, it does, on more occasions than not, get canceled. 

AirNiugini has many fine qualities as an airline but the thing it does best is lower your expectations. That’s why we were absolutely delighted when Janice’s flight out of Wewak occurred twenty minutes late. Hurray! She managed to leave the airport on the same day as her flight was scheduled.

She got to Port Moresby Thursday evening, checked into her hotel, and got her tooth fixed the next day. She called me Friday evening to see when she should be at the airport for her flight on Saturday morning.

“My flight is at 10am. I should get there at maybe 8, right? It’s a domestic flight.”

“Umm… you should probably be there at 5.”

“5? Do you really think I need to go that early?”

“Remember the lines we were stuck in last time? Oops. I probably shouldn’t have used the word ‘stuck’ because that gives it a negative connotation. Silly me, I’m so needlessly pessimistic.” Janice murmured in complete agreement, so I continued. “Just remember, long lines aren’t a bad thing. Why wouldn’t you enjoy socializing with people you don’t know in a hot, sweaty terminal? I’m just saying, since there’s so many people to socialize with, you might want to get there early.”

“Ah, you’re right. I forgot how much time we had spent socializing in front of the ticket counter last time. I’ll go earlier.”

Saturday

Janice went in and socialized with other passengers for a good few hours. They socialized so much that the line only moved a couple of feet. This was partly because the ticket agent had also socialized too much the night before and was late to open the counter. They’re a social bunch, this AirNiugini. Then they heard the announcement: The flight was full! No more passengers allowed on this flight! There were still people from previously canceled flights clogging up the airport so they were trying to clear them out first. You think somebody could’ve communicated that earlier in the day, before Janice stood in line for hours, but apparently not. A grumbling crowd rushed to the customer service desk to see if they were lucky enough to get on the next flight.

Now, PNG does’t really follow the custom of lining up in a single file. After all, this forces everyone in line to interact with the agent behind the counter one-at-a-time. Instead the custom here is pile yourselves into a huddled mass in front of the only desk with an agent behind it. The desk typically has a malfunctioning computer and, at times, a malfunctioning agent. Because everyone is close to the desk, everyone in the huddle can whisper passive-aggressively to the agent all at once.

“Pssst. Hey boss.” Janice reached her arm out into the mass of people as far as she could and waved her boarding pass and important documents, which should never leave her hands, at the agent. The documents immediately left her hands and were passed up to the counter. The agent stacked up everyone’s documents and began the impossible task of trying to make everyone happy. It’s impossible because everyone was already all so happy, of course, since flying with AirNiugini is a delightful experience.

“No worries,” the ticket agent said, “You’ll get on the afternoon flight.”

Except the afternoon flight was canceled. That was the last flight out for the day so Janice and a murmuring crowd oozed back to the same customer service desk.

After the same song and dance, Janice managed to get accommodations that night, paid for by the generous folks at AirNiugini.

Sunday

The next day, Sunday, she found herself standing in line at the airport at 5:30am so she could get on her 10am flight. Janice soon found herself joining the huddle in front of the ticketing agent. Apparently this flight was full too, but sometimes, at the very last minute, someone who could count would check to see if all the seats were full and if they weren’t, they would issue a last minute boarding pass to whoever was causing the ticketing agent the most grief.

Here in PNG, the best solution to getting anything done is to know people in high places. Need to register your car? Not happening this week, unless you know the administrator, of course. Then it happens that day. The next best thing is to have a crying baby. People here hate crying babies and try to move you along as quickly as possible. If you don’t know people and there are no babies available, then you have to complain, often and without mercy. This is hard when you were taught to not complain and be a submissive housewife. Submissive housewives always find themselves at the back of the line.

Despite all that, a few minutes before departure time, the agent hurriedly called to Janice and told her that, despite AirNiugini’s best efforts, the plane was actually going to leave the airport and they could fit her on it if she so desired. He began scribbling out a boarding pass with a pen.

“Delightful,” Janice said, “here are my bags.”

“No bags!” The agent immediately rescinded his generous offer, “I don’t have time to check bags!” Who does? Janice should’ve known not to be so unreasonable as to bring bags when traveling. I’ll have to remind her next time she flies somewhere.

So Janice was forgotten, with her bags, at the side of the ticket counter.

What else was there to do except wait for the afternoon flight?

After waiting in the hot airport all day, the rusty loudspeakers crackled to life. “Wesh tush inforsh yush yibber yabber dingleberries.”

“What did that say?” Janice asked someone.

“The Wewak flight has been canceled.”

The ticketing agent told her to come back for the Monday morning flight.

Janice went back to the hotel, which AirNiugini paid for again, thankfully. At this point they spent nearly as much on hotels as we spent on a plane ticket, which I’d like to point out highlights AirNiugini’s timeless philosophy of putting people over profits.

Monday

Brimming with stupid optimism (optimism always gets you into trouble), Janice was in line at the airport by 2:15am.

After working her way through the line, she handed the agent her documents. The agent punched some keys and grimaced. “Ohhh, I can’t let you on this flight.”

The submissive housewife began becoming less submissive. “What!? Why not!?”

“The computer system says you were a no-show on yesterday’s morning flight.”

Janice’s blood vessels began popping. “A no-show!? I was here the whole time. I was at the counter and they said he couldn’t put me on because I had bags!”

The agent shook his head, “Yea, we held the plane for you yesterday. We were calling your name on the loudspeaker. You just didn’t show up. We can’t give you space on the next flight if you didn’t show up for the last one.”

As Janice shook the agent by his shoulders, pieces of the story came out – along with some loose change and pocket lint.

First of all, no one can understand anything that comes from the loudspeakers. Apparently the previous agent had entered Janice into the computer system before he began handwriting her boarding pass. Once he saw her bags, he told her to get lost but never removed Janice from the computer system, leaving an empty seat on the plane and causing her to show up as a “no-show” in the system. The plane flew away with Janice’s seat empty. The very idea of a plane leaving the airport with an empty seat, set aside just for her, while she argued with a customer service rep for the second day in a row was overwhelming.

If you don’t have a crying baby, you can always start crying yourself. It seemed to work.

“This flight is full,” the ticketing agent said, “but we can get you on this afternoon’s flight.”

Janice had been calling me with regular updates, crying and blubbering with all the passion of a kidnapped child held for ransom, which wreaked havoc with my emotional well-being. Since there are no roads connecting the towns, I began researching how much it would cost to buy a boat and skipper it around the island myself. Can I charter a helicopter? Are there any other options?

Ah, it turns out there was.

There’s another, smaller airline that flies to Wewak but they only have one flight a week. And when I booked tickets, I didn’t consider them because they flew back several days after Janice wanted to come home. But now, since Janice stood in the airport for three days, the flight was a viable option.

“Buy tickets with that other airline,” I said, “There’s no way AirNiugini won’t cancel that afternoon flight and you’ll be stuck there for another day.” I was running out of food in the refrigerator and I wasn’t sure how to make more. Not to mention if Janice spent one more day in the airport, I was afraid she would suffer permanent, life altering, physiological trauma. My blood pressure would probably kill me. So the kids would be left with one parent that was emotionally damaged. That just wouldn’t do. Janice needed to come home.

So she bought a ticket with the other airline and Janice was home half a day later.

As it turned out, AirNiugini didn’t cancel the afternoon flight that day and it arrived on schedule.

Oh well, that’s gambling. Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose.