BOB CLELAND
THE lift door opened and I baulked. Just for a moment I considered the stairs.
But it would be a long climb.
I had to trust that my explanation of a lift had been understood. With my heart in my mouth I ushered in the others, stepped in, pushed button 26, and hoped everyone would stay calm.
This was the first time these men had ridden in a lift. In Tok Pisin I’d explained lifts to the group very carefully before we left for this meeting on the 26th floor.
Two doors open. We walk into a small room. There are no windows. The doors close by themselves. The small room is called a lift.
It’s at the bottom of a long, high tube. There are very strong ropes, like the wire ropes on the Yaviufa bridge. They are fixed to the lift.
I will press a button of where we want to go. Strong machinery high above pulls the ropes. The lift rises up the tube. We are in the lift, so we rise up too. It is smooth and quiet. It feels like we are not moving.
The machinery knows what floor we want to go to. It stops there. The doors open. We walk out of the lift onto the floor we want to go to. We are now very high up inside the building.
They all chattered to each other about the marvels of this great city. The lift started with a jerk. There was instant silence except for two Malaysian passengers who continued their discussion. That’s good I thought. They look so normal and casual and my people will see that.
The lift slowed to a smooth stop and some of my people gasped. Was it fear showing? The others were silent and expressionless. The doors opened and the two Malaysians got out. The doors closed and with another unsettling jerk we ascended further.
We got to floor 26 and I said, ‘Em tasol. Mipela go aut nau.’ We got out and all eight of them went directly to the huge picture windows of the lift lobby, ooh-ing and aah-ing as they went.
The ones in front looked down and recoiled dizzily, clutching their bellies. I let them discover all this for themselves, which they did mostly with remarkable equanimity. We’d been travelling for four days and they were quickly coming to terms with the new sights and experiences we were having.
It was 1974 and I was escorting eight Papua New Guinean Eastern Highlanders on a tour of Malaysia.
They were all members of the Area Authority, an elected body which was the precursor to today’s Provincial Government. The Authority members had decided to allocate funds for this educational tour. As executive officer of the Authority, I was to facilitate and escort the group.
It was the first time in pre-independent PNG that such a trip had been proposed. The PNG government approved it as did the Australian government, whose contribution was to approve a diplomatic passport for me.
We flew from Port Moresby to Singapore, then took the train to Kuala Lumpur (commonly referred to as ‘KL’) I was amazed how much the diplomatic passport eased our travel. Even so, I still had to fill out nine embarking/disembarking passenger cards, nine customs declarations, nine hotel registrations, nine …..
I proposed the itinerary and the Australian Embassy organised the trip: transport, accommodation, local experts, every aspect arranged in fine detail.
We visited a variety of small urban businesses in and around KL, enjoyed a restful two days in the Cameron Highlands, so similar to the homes of these PNG highlanders, travelled to the east coast to look at oil palm and other rural industries, then back to KL to catch the flight home to PNG.
But first we had to get down from our 26th floor which my companions reacted to calmly,. Just like in an aeroplane, was the reaction.
“Okay, we’ll go down in the lift now.” One of them strolled casually to the lift door and pressed the down button. I was astonished by the quick uptake of these new experiences.
There were several stops on the way down to load or unload passengers. All my team were fascinated by the floor indicator counting back as we descended. At about floor 2, someone said, “Klostu nau”.
The indicator flicked to ‘G’ and the lift stopped with a severe jolt, made some small up and down jerks and settled to silence. The doors didn’t open. Two Malaysian girls made whimpering noises. Others made panicky comments in Malaysian. My group – and I too – felt the contagion of incipient panic.
I had to stay cool. I’d been stuck in lifts before, but never in a foreign country. Not knowing the language invoked an ugly feeling of helplessness. I took a deep breath and I tried to keep the group calm in Tok Pisin.
There was relief when a Malaysian man used the emergency phone then spoke to me in English.
“This elevator often does this. Don’t worry, they will get us out soon.” I immediately translated these reassuring words.
There were voices outside and fingers poked through a two-inch gap prised between the doors. Then followed a crowbar - creak, creak, snap. Four feet of freedom was exposed.
The lift had stopped three feet short of the ground floor. One by one we were helped out. We chattered excitedly with the release of pent-up tension. My remarkable co-travellers thought it one of the best experiences of the trip. We left the building laughing with delight.