I’ve now got a mere three days to wait before I set off on a series of flights that leave the UK on Monday at 10pm and arrive in Madang on Wednesday at 4pm… theoretically. Maybe things have changed since last time but I don’t ever recollect an internal flight in Papua New Guinea leaving anywhere near the scheduled departure time. Either way I think I may be a little tired when I arrive.

Once in Madang I’ll need to find myself some accommodation and a mobile phone SIM and then I’ll be set to get in touch with Sophie, the existing doctor at Eichel Hospital, to work out my next move. I think it will involve buying a lot of food to take to the island.

But, to précis the start of Basil the Great Mouse Detective (I am the only one who thinks that it’s an under-rated part of the Disney canon, by the way?), I’m getting ahead of myself. Maybe I should start by telling you where I’m going.

Papua New Guinea (PNG) is the eastern half of a big fat island which sits above Australia. Here is a map. I’ll be working at Eichel Hospital, a hospital run by Lutheran missionaries, on Silsil island. Google shows it up as a featureless blob but in reality there are a few settlements on the coast and a great big volcano in the middle. Kath and my parents will no doubt be delighted to know that Silsil Island is part of a chain of volcanic islands known as the Ring of Fire. Thankfully the volcano on Silsil hasn’t erupted recently and hopefully someone will tell us if it’s about to.

So now you know about as much as I do.

Oh, one thing I should say just before I go: each post is categorised so you can filter out the aimless witterings that don’t interest you. All vaguely relevant posts to this trip will be in the Papua New Guinea category and if you look to the right you’ll see a Papua New Guinea link under the categories heading. Just click on that to restrict posts to those about PNG. I’ll try to match the standard of what I hold to be pretty much the acme of medi-travel-blogs, namely Anu’s journal about his time in the Central African Republic with Medecins Sans Frontiers. Even if you don’t know Anu I highly recommend it, purely as a great piece of writing.