Bin mountain from Warakamb. Beyond that is Kandep station.
Roads
The Warakamb Valley, being so remote is poorly accessible by road. The main road is the Mendi Kandep Highway, but is hardly reliable. Lot of people still have to struggle. With a properly sealed road, Mendi could be half an hours drive and Wabag could be 2 hrs drive, and Mt. Hagen could be 3 hours drive. But it takes days.
Health Services.
The main health issues are:
1. HIV AIDs
2. Prevetable disaeses like pneumonia, diarhoeal diseases
3. Malaria
4. Chronic Lung Disaeses
5. Maternal and child health issues
HIV AIDs is on the rise.
Since the first case of AIDS was diagnosed in PNG in 1987, their has been an exponential increase in PNG. Unfortunately, Warakamb, although remote has seen a fair number of cases. Up to 10 people have died and many more are living with the disease. many have caught the disease elsewhere and spread it out in the valley. HIV/AIDs is one of the major topics disccussed during our seminars and awareness periods.
Preventable diseases
Preventable diseases like Pneumonia and malaria are endemeic in our community. Most of it is due to hygiene and poor living conditions. Our aim is to have more awareness campaigns and teach the people on proper hygiene. Already, many people are starting to change their ways.
Malaria.
Warakamb has been a victim of climate change. Malaria has been on the rise in the valley. Due to global warming, the mosquito parasite has been able to thrive better in the highlands of PNG, thus spreading the disease. many visctims have been the lederly. When combined with typhoid, it has been deadly.
Chronic lung disaeses
mainly due to the type of accommodation. Houses are built low on the groundand people make fire for warnth. thus the smoke stays indoors. this is like active smoking. many elderly die of chronic lung disaeses. Our aim is to change the type of accommodation and people can cook in open air and then live in houses without smoke.
Child and Maternal Health.
Our women and girls rehearsh a march
Many young children also die early soon after birth due to various conditions.
Education
Warakamb Childrne still need proper schools
The future of our valley is for our children
Promote Sports and Healthy Lifestyle
Promoting unity and healthy lifestyles through sports
Warakamb was known for law and order problems. With more awareness campaigns, that is slowly starting to decrease. More village chiefs have changed their ways and have gotten baptized. It is great to see such man turn away from their old ways.
Chiefs who have given up their old ways
Environment and Climate Change
Global warming is certainly having its effect on the environment in the Warakamb Valley. During the El nino effect of the late 1990s, lot of our tropical rain forest were burnt down. There are still vast areas of bare stone. Lot of big strong tropical rain wood are starting to die off. Our three tropical mountain ranges
Despite that, we still have vast areas of tropical rain forests. However, due to the increasing population, trees are beeing cut down at a very fast rate. Because we are concerned, we (WAECA) would like to change that.
Planting trees
We have started planting gum and pine trees at a very small scale. They have done well. Our plan or proposal now is to plant more tree on a large scale. the locals are good at planting trees. All they need is seedlings.
Gum tree grow well in Warakamb
Self Reliance Projects
Because of the remoteness of the area, government services are almost non existent. In addition to preaching the Christian gospel, we have encouraged people to be self reliant. We have built church buildings mostly with our own hand and funds.We organize sports and create sporting fileds with our hands. Nobody gets paid.
We provide our own security during conventions. Lot of people in the valley now look after goats. We would like to organize laymen to each small church and partner each to an elite to meet their physical needs. (In plan). We would also like to encourage less cutting down of trees and plant more to conserve our environment.
Goat farming is taking off in the valley
