Jerry wanted to help, but his other hiking partner had come down with malaria and couldn’t go. In his
place, Walt was asked to participate and he quickly agreed to do so. He put his own work on hold to
help these two young new Bible translators get started.
The trip involved a one-day drive from the Ukarumpa center plus a two and one-half day hike. No
expatriates had yet been into the language area except Australian Patrol Officers, but after being
assured that the local people were friendly, Jerry, Walt and the two women set off.
The first day they hiked through several villages in the wide and relatively flat Markham Valley. The next
day and a half was tough climbing before they arrived at the first Waffa village, called Kusing. Mary had
no problem climbing the mountain, but had difficulty descending it. Joyce had the opposite problem.
She had difficulty getting up the mountain, but not coming back down. Walt and Jerry did fine.
The local people were fascinated with the two white “meris”, as women are called in Tok Pisin. They had
only seen white Australian men. After giving assurances to the SIL New Guinea Director by short wave
radio that everything was fine, the group continued to hike to the three main villages of the Waffa
language group. They estimated the total number of Waffa speakers to be about 700, a small group. But,
as Jerry Allen described things, “Didn’t the Waffa people have the right to have God’s Word in their own
language as we do in English? Why should they have to learn of God’s grace through a language that is
foreign to them?”
After leaving the two women and the radio in Kusing, where the women decided to locate, Jerry and
Walt went on a three-day “extension trip” for the purpose of walking through several Waffa villages and
hamlets, eliciting word lists to try and identify any dialect changes. They took with them a few national
ca