We burst into laughter and shook hands over and over again. We must have created a scene on the street but I did not care. Here was somebody who had been to my country.

The young man was Steven Sula, the younger of two sons born to immigrant parents from Eastern Europe. He took me to his house where his mother cooked us a delicious meal.

Even at age 24, Sula had explored many parts of PNG and other parts of the world. Whilst in PNG, he had taken part in a Mekeo singsing, chewed betel nut, danced to string band music, eaten local food, chopped firewood in the village and paddled canoes.

“You can never say you’ve been to another country unless you’ve mixed with the people,” he assured me.

I agreed with him. While I was in the UK, I did exactly that. I tasted the local food, sipped the local brews, visited famous places and talked with as many people as I could.

Sula had easily spotted me not just by my bilum but because of my highlands cap and long beard. On a visit to Caerphilly Castle, two young men said they wanted to buy their own caps.

“Excuse me sir, that’s a nice cap you’ve got. Where do you get one? We want to buy our own,” one said.

“I don’t think you can buy them anywhere near here,” I replied. “I brought it from my own country, Papua New Guinea, an island state in the Pacific.”

I said to them that, if they went to PNG, they would find many more caps like the one I was wearing.

In London I caught up with Dr Barry Richardson. In 1985 he was my lecturer in psychology for a semester at UPNG. I met him at Baker Street underground tube station.

Dr Richardson had spotted my distinctive highlands cap bobbing along among the hundreds of people who flowed seemingly endlessly in and out of the station.

As I waited for my train, I noticed a man with wavy grey hair staring at me from three meters away. I stared back and he surprised me with a smile. Then I recognised him.

“Dr Barry?”

“Yes! What are you doing here? And what is your name again?” he asked politely.

He said, he missed PNG very much and hoped to return one day. He bade farewell with the request I pass his greetings to an Enga colleague and boarded a train which took off into a dark hole.

There he had been standing right next to me and now he was gone. I could not say to him, “Wait a moment, let’s talk some more, I am kind of homesick.” London moves very fast indeed.

Even though Dr Richardson invited me to visit, I did not have the time. I too was caught up in the fast life. I could not afford to waste precious time like some of us do in PNG.

Before returning home, to show my appreciation I gave Highlands caps to Val Williams of The Thomson Foundation and Patsy Robertson of the Commonwealth Media Development Fund which had made possible my study trip to the UK.

Before producing the caps I said, “I want to give a small present to each of you – something which I am sure will make you remember me” - and pointed to my own cap. Everybody at Cardiff Castle, where we had the farewell function, laughed and applauded.

I can now picture the cap I gave Val Williams hanging among the PNG carvings in the living room of his home in Cardiff, bearing testimony to PNG’s rich and varied cultures.