Central Michigan Life

Issue date: 3/12/08 Section: News

Media Credit: Alexander Stawinski Hamilton senior Hannah Assink delivered eyeglasses and clothes to members of the Kaul and Loko tribes of Papua New Guinea's island of New Britain with her father last summer. Assink is the recipient of the Volunteers are Central honors for January 2008. "It was amazing experience. I spent a lot of time talking to people and being as different as we are we learned a lot from talking to one another," Assink said. [Click to enlarge]

When Hannah Assink took a trip to a remote island last summer, she wasn't looking for a vacation.

The Hamilton senior, along with her father Mel Assink, traveled to West New Britain, a province of Papua New Guinea.

During their trip in July and August, the Assinks took many goods, including large bags of clothes and 140 pairs of eyeglasses from the Saugatuck-Douglas Lions Club, and donated the items to the native people of the Loko and Kaul tribes.

"It was the experience of a lifetime," Hannah said.

Hannah said the journey was arduous and included stops in Sydney, Australia, and Port Moresby, the capital of Papua New Guinea.

Port Moresby has been named the most dangerous city in the world four times, she said, and has a high rate of robbery, sexual assault and disease in the country.

"Malaria is very prominent," she said. "We had to sleep in mosquito nets."

Mel Assink said he and his daughter took several precautions to prepare tor being in a country covered primarily with tropical rainforest and wetlands.

The pair got malaria medication and evacuation insurance, said Mel, who said he took a similar expedition to West New Britain before.

Hannah also began learning "Pidgin English," a trade language consisting of about 1,000 words that is meant to help unify the people of New Guinea who have 700 to 800 separate languages.

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