Paul's PNG Collection

Papua New Guinea 2008-10

Chapter 4              Cultures

The Shit King's Domain

Papua New Guinea has long been a gold mine for anthropologists longing to be close to the beginning of human time. Even in the 1980s there were complaints about the number of westerners coming to the country to live in villages. Why is there no study by the Melanesian owners. 

Shortly after my arrival I came across two German anthropologists who were trying to redress the balance in a number of ways. Firstly, they were teaching anthropology in Divine Word University – a first in PNG. Secondly they had made their studies, not in the ever-popular Sepik or highland areas, but in the largely neglected Ramu River. In case you wonder why does one river area rather than another matter it is important to know that PNG is a land of more than 800 languages. That represents more than 800 cultures, that may share some similarities but also have unique features. This patchwork of tongues and beliefs is fast changing now that the modern world has lured people from their roots and it is likely that many of the languages will disappear in the coming decades of National identify forming, through globalised educational and cultural invasion. 

The descriptions of the ‘simple' or ‘primitive' peoples that fill many books leave me with a sense of fascination at the levels of sophistication and complexity of peoples living within a limited area and with largely only internal knowledge and experience to draw upon. When highland clans did battle, as they did continuously, they created a system to limit the level of destruction through ritualised combat and ended the hostility by a negotiated peace and shared feasting. This without any police force, formal government, religious control or regal intervention. In similar ways the of stories life in two villages on the Ramu River, one coastal the other inland, describe complex and rich cultures that found ways to keep life in balance in a small world and intense existence with survival at its heart.

Inevitably, my understanding of their world is very shallow and incomplete, but the little I know you may find interesting to think about. Even for Anita and Alexis, who spent a year in the villages the information is very fragile. They depended upon a few people who knew the meanings of actions, ideas and beliefs. Much of the story was told by the action of living rather than through direct enquiry. Women would casually mention that a certain tree had significance as they passed it rather than bringing it up when asked about themes of western interest. Like good journalists they tried to find more than one source to test their understanding and like all of life they ended knowing one thing for certain - that their understanding was not certain.

The two villages were the inland settlement of Bosmun and the coastal village of Kaiam . The names described the languages used in the village not the people or the place. It was only when the Australians imposed a village structure that people began to live in organised settlements. In tok pisin ( pidgeon ) relatives and people from your area are described as Wantoks – literally ‘one language '. Although, the two villages were distinct please forgive my descriptions which to some extent merged together in my memory. It seemed that any migration into the area came from the east because a strange horse shoe shaped equatorial current made canoeing difficult from West Papua. People were head hunters in the past. In many belief systems the idea of removing or eating body parts is linked to magic. It usually involves the idea that you can either destroy the power of the enemy or by eating the appropriate part absorb the qualities or strength of the deceased. For this reason the jaw bone of a dead person is seen as particularly powerful body part. 

Body fluids are just as important. They are ways that people can get control of your spirit and your energy. Because of that there is no such thing as a toilet. People take care to hide their faeces and they are used to divine the cause of death. When buai is chewed it is spat out in fine spray to avoid the chance that someone may collect some for evil purposes. For the same reason a spittoon is provided in the Manhaus (the mens' meeting house) so that no individual fluid is obtainable. When females menstruate they are seen as poisonous and use a separate hut. So important were bodily fluids that there was a shit chief who had ritual functions. He was always followed by a person carrying a crock of shit. 

The balance in communal and inter-village life was maintained by a complex set of taboos and practices. Birth control is good example of this. Unusually, male initiation lasted many years it was 27 – 30 years before a male was ready for marriage. This started when boys of 12 years were sent to bush camp to learn hunting skills, flute playing, and manly skills. At this time they were given bark belts for protection and scarification took place. Girls, on the hand stay in seclusion until they marry in their late teens or early twenties. As if the males weren't controlled enough they were expected to cleanse bad omens/spirits by blood letting . This they did by cutting their penis. When added together these rituals provided the means to keep the population small and prevented over-populating of the area. When the system failed through food shortage, infant mortality, or too many mouths to feed, it was not unusual for one clan to sell children to another. It was not unusual for children to be killed in village ritual.

In the family and community there were just as many regulating actions taking place. A child was allocated a ritual friend who was surrounded by duties. For example the child was not allowed to laugh in front of the ritual friend, could not walk across their land etc. In the village each family was allocated a role. So each family would be known for their role. One family might be known as the thieves – a role that was to reallocate material and food supplies. Another was the murderers – important in a head hunting society, but difficult if you visited the family without knowing their job was to kill you. Another family would be peacemakers etc. There was also a great emphasis on empathy and sharing of experience. Thus if you broke a tool your wantoks may also break a tool, if you got wet they must get wet. Within this structure women had great power. 

Sorcery was, of course, integral to the whole belief system. Families have spells for everything. Most sorcerers pass their skills from father to son. Sorcerery was seen as the way to attack or defend yourself against the magic of others, so it was important to keep the sorcerer strong. However, women had their own place in the magic system. In the case of fighting only they had the power to give food to the enemy and thus save them. This may be important when a woman is married into another family and has the power to save a wantok .

In another very remote community anthropologists had discovered an illness in people similar to ‘mad cow disease '. They found that when a man died the women had to eat his brain to retain his wisdom. Work was undertaken to persuade them to change the practise.

Cultural Shows

In this modern age many of us have forgotten, or never knew, how we got to this place other than through a dry statement of dates and events. As children are with their parents, we are often critical of past experiences, values, the things that seemed important in worlds long since passed. So it is with the old administrators of the colonial worlds, who we judge so harshly now, apparently for good reason. A welcome gift from Chinks, an old copy of the 1960 Reith Lectures by an English Professor, opened a window. She was witnessing her life's work and relationships in close proximity to the Empire Civil Service challenged by the emergence of African nationalism and its wholesale rejection of the colonial world and its trappings. Although, as you might expect, her arguments were carefully referenced in impeccable academic reasoning I was left with a strong feeling for the people behind the government and maintenance of the Empire. In the midst of an acceptance of the moral right to self-determination was an appeal not to forget that some things of value took place. There was a long list of people who lived in intolerable conditions, often dying in strange ways and, at best, dedicating a life of service and parental love to people from an alien and suffering world. In many ways this old colonial relationship fashioned by the British as indirect rule had clearer relationships than our aid-driven pretensions of equality and respect. There was a clear trade-off. Colonialists marked out their interests and left tribal matters to traditional leaders. Trading then went on between the two sides based upon their unequal interests. Even if the vision was flawed many seemed to have personal integrity and a desire to do the right thing. I get the same feeling for the old Australian Kiaps in the remote areas of Papua New Guinea. Tough men with what now appear to be racist attitudes, a superior adult-child relationship with the natives but, somehow a living part of a difficult but negotiated movement from a long unchanging past to a fast-changing present. These men could not have survived purely by force, for this was a world well understood by the clans of the highlands and of no fear to them. They lived in remote areas with few resources and huge areas in which to administer law and what we now think of as development. These men must have developed an affinity and affection for the wild people they co-existed with and probably understood their worlds in more ways than any modernist could hope to emulate. 

Part of the legacy of this long period of Kiap administration was the Cultural Show. My first thought was that this colourful traditional activity was a centuries old show of tribal dance and music. In fact it was an invention of the Kiaps, a thoughtful counter to the clan violence and isolation that surrounded their efforts to move things forward. This was their way of trying to get the clans to meet together in a competitive, but co-operative environment. More than fifty years on the events belong to the people and are now part of their tradition – a guardian of a past ravaged by the present that paradoxically itself became part of the change in culture.

Cultural shows take place each year in all parts of PNG, island, coastal and highland. Now they have become more commercial in the larger centres, a cross between Devon county show and WOMAD. The difference is that the contestants are covered by grass and even more so by paint. It is more important to cover your face than your body. There is also usually a space for bands to play, mostly modern electrical music.

My first introduction to this art form was in 1999 when I visited the highlands. I stayed at an Austrian volunteer centre several times and became friendly with an Engan woman and her two children. Alex, the twelve-year-old , wanted to go to the Engan Cultural Show, while Mum worked. He and I were to travel by PMV and stay with her family in the village some four or five kilometres outside of Wabag the small administrative town in one of the more remote and feared provinces. It turned out to be the best of the Cultural Shows I have visited.

We were met from the PMV by a gang of uncles. Most were short, stocky men with broad strong chests and muscular arms. At the edge of the group, but dominating all the same, was a tall burly man with a highlander's thick black beard and full-grown hair. He was a big man with a big voice and personality to match. We exchanged greetings and they talked about the show. Last year's winners came from a remote village but would not win this year. The road had been blockaded, and they had been turned back.

Alex and I agreed to meet them at the end of the day and paid to enter a Devon- sized flat field surrounded on three sides by views of steep, green mountains. Unlike the coast the weather was cool and drizzly. There was a scaffolding tower on which there was mounted a primitive but effective P.A. A large banner announced the Enga Cultural Show, sponsored by traditionalists, Coca Cola. People were standing around.

Soon the groups began to arrive. The Tari Wigmen from the Southern highlands all red and yellow paint, bird of paradise plumes and flat extended wigs made from their own hair, drifted in one and two at a time. Locals arrived gradually along with a few white people who looked like missionaries – no paint, only white translucent skin. A truck arrived with willowy women in grass skirts from the coast and thin men in laplaps (sarongs). Stocky, young, bare-breasted Engan women started to rehearse their dance. The field began to fill up. The P.A. was tested.

Then, with practiced authority the Mount Hagen Dancers marched in martial order, men at the front women at the rear. They stamped as they marched and sang and shouted. An older man brandished a spear, other had axes. Men's faces were painted white and red with a red hussar -style hat on top. A broad bark belt and long woven loin cloths completed the uniform. They stomped three times round the field, depositing the women to dance in a circle with faces, fully covered in red and white painted designs, long plumed headdresses and long cloth loin cloths. Men had wooden scrolls and women had large kina shells around their necks.

The snake people came, like representatives of a New Games movement they consisted about thirty young men, bodies and faces covered in black and white paint and joined into a twisting snake dance by holding each other around the waist.

Thus, the day proceeded with each group in its own space around the field spending 15-20 minutes doing their dance and then resting before dancing the same dance again. Hagens stamped; Taris jumped in slow heavy rhythmic jumps to the thump of the kundu drum; coastals danced their willowy group dances in coupled teams, some seated cross-legged in circles, and the snakes snaked around the field. It was a photographer's dream. 

At Hagen and Port Moresby the dancing contained much the same cultural groups, with the welcome addition of the Asaro Mud men. These strange Eastern Highlanders many years ago decided to scare people by baking pale grey mud masks, covering the their bodies with mud, extending the fingers with sharp bamboo. They move slowly and creepily around the field scaring children and women and me.

At Hagen the bands drew big crowds. Dancing started in front of the stage by young men to a chorus of wild and raucus shouting. Alex asked if we could dance. For the first time I found myself saying no. This did not feel like the place to stand up as the only white man to dance in front of a large, excited and unpredictable crowd. Two girls walked arm in arm across the front of the seated crowd to be followed by a sound version of the Mexican wave. It seemed that no boy in the audience could resist the opportunity to shout inanities at them. The group of young male dancers at the front also drew raucous shouts of derision or approval as they displayed their moves.

I left that show feeling that I had somehow been part of the last chapter of a wild west fast endangered by the encroaching railroad. But the Indians were really part of Buffalo Bill Cody's Travelling Show. They were already on the reservation. This idea of the Kiaps had itself impacted upon the remote dancers and their traditions. Money prizes induced fierce competition. Costumes that had a tribal and spiritual context were exaggerated and enhanced to win money that had previously existed only in the form of kina shells and pigs. Dances that were primal, spiritual and locally focussed community activities were transformed into spectator sport and caged in arenas. The missionaries played their part too.

A film about the change in local culture exemplified the process of change. In the remote and swampy Western Province the Gogodala people had developed a rich artistic and spiritual tradition. By the early 1970s an anthropologist was reporting that the culture had become stagnant and decayed. Missionaries brought the word of God and the promise of Jesus – or at least their version of it. Carvings were the work of the devil, decorations had evil eyes within them. Primitive values must be cast aside and all must commit themselves to the superior magic of the white man's adopted and adapted middle eastern vision. The local Ida dance scandalised them even more. It involved men dancing in a circle enticing naked women into the circle to engage in sex, presumably linked to fertility. No – that must go too. I guess that a local would now have to search the net or visit a sleazy Hamburg Nightclub to find similar dancing.

But before I blame the missionaries alone let's not forget who really had an impact. It was not so much the missionaries themselves, but the people they trained to become pastors; the people plucked from the villages and given new status by the white man. Like all converts they were much more zealous than their masters. They were the NCOs, the men who kept the troops in order for the officers. More modern missionaries were reasonable people. They shrug their shoulders and point out that all cultures must decide whether they wish to follow Jesus when they meet him through them. This means choosing between God's Word that precludes some old practices or staying the same. In fact this is taught as a choice between the grace of God or a trip to hell fuelled by your cultural instincts.

The other big influence is the imposition of Government. The administrators are in no doubt that some old practices are bad. Development is linked to westernisation. One highlander recently referred to school as ‘the white man's room' – the place where you learn to be like a white man. For him the real cultural learning was with the elders in the Man Haus, where cultural values and living were taught to the young in ever-decreasing numbers.

Now it is all too late. The cork is long out of the bottle, the railroad has arrived. Of course no culture is unchanging. People have always colonised, exploited, ravaged their neighbours and imposed their beliefs. But there is still something inside me that rails against change that comes so fast and from such an alien environment. What hope for diversity? 

A young Hagen man pointed to the singing stomping group at the Port Moresby show.

“He is singing songs in the local language. Most of those others in the group can't even understand what he is singing about. I can't and I am a Hagen man. In twenty years this will all be gone.”

Destructive Squabbling Angels

Papua New Guinea ain't Africa, but there is plenty that an African would recognise. Brown skinned peoples living in villages, low on material comfort, high on family contacts and responsibilities. The village is also the heart of a person's life and death. And then there is always witchcraft.

In Rempi , where I stayed for two nights I found an immediate challenge to my assumptions about the need for development. The village was by the sea. Everything felt very relaxed. When I went to the sea a man was throwing a simple line into the sea and had already caught an octopus and another small fish whilst boys played in a big tree overhanging the sea and occasionally jumped, laughing, into the water. When I went to the gardens all kinds of fruit and vegetables were growing and there was enough land to allow some to be left fallow. O.K. the women worked much harder than the men, but even they had time to sit and chat. At first sight there seemed little missing from their life except for medical support. It was even said that young men who left the village often returned when they had tried town life.

It was just two weeks later that Vanessa was missing from work for a week. A garbled message told us that her husband's cousin had been killed in a road accident in a village close to Rempi .

When she came back to work I offered my sympathies. We talked and a story emerged that both shattered my cosy view of the coastal village life and showed how much the traditional world still influenced modern life.

The 21 year old man was found lying dead on the road with bad head injuries. A vehicle had been seen passing and the Police were informed.

When the Police interviewed the driver he agreed that he had passed by but had seen the body of the young man on the road. He drove on fearing blame if he stopped. He had passed another man from the village nearby and told the Police who he was. 

The man was interrogated by the police – this usually means being beaten – but he denied all knowledge. Following a second interrogation he admitted that he had murdered the young man and further admitted to three other murders. The boys murder was particularly gruesome. He had been struck on the head with an axe and the contents of his skull removed and left on the road.

There was much anger in the village and several houses of the murderers relatives were burnt down. Then the full story emerged . The dead young man had reported being worried after an incident earlier in the day. He had gone to the garden to check on some crops. While he was there he was put to sleep by a sangaya (wizard). When he awoke he found that his bush knife and other belongings had been scattered in the bush. Because he was able to remember what had happened he told people that he was alright . It was believed that when a sangaya put you to sleep he stole your spirit and you would die soon. You remember nothing about the incident. The young man died later that day at the hands of the wizard.

Two other young men in the village were questioned about their behaviour. They had been acting strangely and were suspected of being implicated in the sorcery. They reacted aggressively and threatened to clear the village. Later that day they left to live in town.

Vanessa is now worried because the young men in the village including her graduate husband are planning to use the funeral as an excuse to do more burning of houses. She is concerned for the safety of her children in town now the two young apprentice ‘sorcerers' are close by.

During the week reports of other incidents appeared in the newspaper . In the Eastern Highlands a man had died. Two female relatives were blamed. They were tortured with red hot wires and eventually burnt to death in their houses. This was one of four recent cases.

Police made an appeal for people to use the courts to deal with sorcery rather than take the law into their own hands.

Violence is the sub-text to life here even without sorcery being involved. There has not been sufficient time for either social or legal institutions to evolve that can offer acceptable alternatives to the violent solution of disputes. Since the beginning, the clan is the only insurance against death by starvation or the violence of your neighbours. In practice this meant continual war against your neighbours for land and clan reaction against transgressors.

 In the Highlands this Darwinian struggle for existence led not to competitive chaos but to a highly sophisticated system of governance by warfare. Tribal fighting developed into a mannered and regulated sport with strict rules of engagement. The men of the tribes would agree a fighting field and line up to face each other. One side would advance up the field whilst the opponents fired arrows and launched spears and then the roles would be reversed. If someone was killed or injured they were hauled from the field. Few were killed and men proudly bore the scars of their valour. It was not unusual for fighting to stop for lunch and at dusk the combatants would agree to call it a day and start again in the morning. When one side decided it did not wish to continue an armistice would be called and mediators called to agree on reparation. This system is still called compensation, traditionally paid in pigs and kina shells for injury or death. The clans would meet to exchange gifts and feast to mark the end of the dispute. No further action was required .

There is still clan fighting in the Highlands, but the stakes are higher now and the rules no longer provide the balance of old. Instead of spears there are now AK47s traded for cannabis with shadowy figures in boats moored on remote parts of the coastline. Deaths are on a larger scale; compensation can reach high sums of pigs and money for a clan and pay back – reprisal killings- are common. Women, who were once kept out of tribal fighting along with their children may now be raped as part of the payback. Controlled aggression has been brutalised by the intrusion of the modern world with its weapons and drugs. People do end up in prison for violent crime but it is still the norm in more remote areas for the traditional compensation and payback systems to deal with death and injury. Even when you do go to prison your chances of escaping are high when your wantoks (clan members) are the police and are happy to receive some of the proceeds of your crime.

These values underpin life, even in the city. Just recently a girl of 12 years was driven away in the back of a car, stolen by rascol s who had forced her mother out of the car. She died tragically when she leapt from the car in fear as it sped along the Port Moresby roads. Her highland clan came together, sought out the identity of the rascol s and burnt houses and raped women. Although city life provides a more unpredictable and chaotic structure for existence the clan remains the main insurance for more isolated members. This is particularly true in towns and cities, where I have been amazed to find not one policeman on the streets. They can occasionally be seen never more than two metres from a Police Vehicle but do not patrol anywhere. The only time I saw policemen was on my way into a local market where they were bundling two men into a van after beating them first. This increases the fear of residents, especially women, who have a very realistic chance of suffering from street theft, usually without violence. 

In a small city desperate young men can get to any area without much problem. The real wonder is that there is not more criminality on the streets. It speaks well of the basic warmth and welcome of Papua New Guineans.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JI4uirwxx1Y      This is a link to an extraordinary 12 minute film of a traditional tribe fight in West Papua (1964). It will bring to life the abstract idea of the tribe fight in PNG culture.

Kompian modern tribal fighting 2019, a short video contrasting modern tribal warfare with old -  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xywK_sBm948

A World of Corruption

The latest Transparency International table came out today and I was surprised to hear that PNG was 151 on a list of 180 countries. My surprise was that it had managed to be so far up the list. If there are two things that everyone talks about in every gathering it is crime and corruption.

People sometimes wonder what is it about corruption that really stops things happening. After all, an Australian chancer was telling me that he has dealt with PNG Ministers for twenty years and says that although deals with companies happen all of the time much of the money goes back to the informal economy through payments to wantoks , landowner payments and local spending. My rascol chum, David, even describes how the large sums of money stolen is spread around and spent quickly on binge consumption.

Last Friday we had a day of concentrated visitations that focused the wide beam of corruption into a laser clear pinpoint. 

Our sister organisation in the disability field had been in disarray all week. As with all ‘organisations' (if ever there was an oxymoron) there is an executive group set up to monitor and direct their one paid member of staff and VSO volunteer. The paid staff had followed instructions to set up a monitoring visit to the Highlands. Even better the Government Dept. was so pleased with our planning workshop with the organisation that they decided to fund the monitoring and combine it with their own officer visits. The Executive had been informed along the way. All that was needed was to inform the Executive that they would be absent for a week. They met two days before the monitoring trip.

Brown is a Highlander with a degree in music, who lost the use of his legs some six years ago through a blood clot that damaged his spinal cord. He is an aggressive, ambitious and greedy man. He is also the Vice Chair of the Executive. Since he grabbed control of a Rehabilitation Centre he autocratically sacked the manager and has systematically run down the workshop to the point that no services are available to disabled people. Instead the money from grants has funded the upgrading of his house on the site. Now he needed to pay some bills and start work on the next house, which was to be rented out to bring in income; some say to Brown himself.

At the meeting Brown wanted a sizable advance on his next grant. The Executive said no. Brown was a man denied. His response was to block the monitoring visit. ‘If I can't have toys neither shall they.'

“But Brown the air tickets have been purchased and the hotels have been paid for. There is no cost to the organisation and the Board told them go.”

The two staff stayed in Port Moresby whilst the spare tickets were used to get other officials in the Dept. a treat in the Highlands with their wantoks and extra allowances. They used the money to get drunk and the report has never been written.

In the midst of anger and frustration in the Department more details emerged . One of the senior managers on suspension had been meeting secretly with the Executive. She happens to be the wife of the Governor of Port Moresby, the most powerful politician in the city. Are you still with me? Just like West Wing eh?

So the Rehabilitation Centre, an NGO, is promised a new fence by the Governor, plans are made to sell off much of the Government land on which the Rehabilitation Centre sits to a Chinese developer, who can put 200 houses up and everyone becomes much richer, except the disabled people who are supposed to get services. 

It also emerges that the suspended Government officer, the wife of the Governor, who met with the Executive, has persuaded them that the Department Secretary is also stealing disability funds. The Indian Treasurer, who is a Health service employee is persuaded to challenge the Secretary to produce accounts, an action that opens him to the threat of the revoking of his work permit.

After long animated discussions in the office, David, our disabled rascol arrives and talks for two hours about his career as a criminal. What emerges is a clear picture of significant numbers of policemen - who's only demarcation from the rascol s is the cloak of a uniform- rape, beat, steal and kill at will. Even the accountant in the highly profitable business with a well-paid and secure job will set up the stealing of his organisations payroll. Just recently two Ministers, and two top police chiefs were arrested in connection with a series of bank robberies. 

As we hyperventilated from the overload of scurrilous allegations two taxi drivers, arrived in the office. Our wheelchair-using Chairperson, with a twenty year history of stealing disability funds from every organisation that has existed had been calling taxis with a promise that the organisation would pay. As he ran out of credit with one he called another leaving me wondering what to do about four taxi drivers shouting at me and threatening to take away our single computer. Meanwhile, we discovered that the reason he had been running around all week was to solicit money from soft targets for his aid-sponsored trip to Australia for yet another fancy conference that will never be known about by anyone except those attending.

This was enough for one day, I was ready to go home.

“Goodnight Lily, see you Monday.”

“ Paul , we have got our phone at last.”

“ That's great Lily. How did that happen after three months of waiting?”

“I gave a man a K60 bribe who is a wantok of the driver for the Women's Council. The problem is that there is no signal. Another Department does that.”

Two weeks later the phone is not switched on and the suspicion is that more people are waiting for inducements.

This is the background for development work in Papua New Guinea. You have a Government that is frequently exposed in the press for high corruption but blocks enquiries, and ignores criticism. Freedom of the press exists and there is no overt oppression. However, talk to long-standing activists and they describe how in the past they were beaten or bought off with lucrative jobs or political sinecures. As with all democracies, it works fine as long as the existing order is not threatened.

The police are neither trusted nor trustworthy, although somehow people do get arrested and some complaints get dealt with. They will deal with a level of day to day complaint but are often the perpetrators of injustice and violence themselves. Even if you get as far as court you may still fail to receive satisfaction. A blind man told me his tale recently. Eight years ago he was walking home on his Island when the police, who were chasing a suspect, came across him. They accused him of being the suspect and they beat him gouging his eyes with a stick and making him blind. He finally won an award against the state in 2006. His file was given to a state solicitor, who promptly left on study leave. His file sits on her abandoned desk – he has never been paid and his children now no longer go to school, because he cannot afford the fees.

In my world of disability advocacy I feel as though I am dealing with an HIV virus. The disabled people, who have mostly been around since money started to be available, are like the virus. They clone themselves into advocates for disability and look exactly like disability advocates, but they attack the resource system, killing their host and then move on to the next one. Since they started their National organisation six years ago it is difficult to find any example of a disabled person outside of this avaricious group benefiting in any way from the time, funds and meetings of these people.

The real problem is that no-one seems to care. There is such a pervasive culture of dishonesty that, like an Orwellian state, you do not know if the person you are dealing with is honest – the odds are against it.

In this situation I am left with the option of shrugging my shoulders and saying,

“ Well it's their country, let them do as they please, I can only offer to help.” 

Or I behave in a more traditional colonial manner and try to boss them around and set traps for poachers. My approach is pragmatic. If you cannot achieve anything for ordinary people through the usual development process then start by bossing people around and hope that you can begin to set some standards that will become the norm – a high risk strategy. More McCain than Obama; or perhaps I am becoming the Sarah Palin of the PNG disability establishment. 

Meanwhile, the huge wealth that is being generated by off-shore Canadian drilling, the on-shore gas capping, the uncontrolled tree decimation, and the gold and copper mining is not yet benefiting the ordinary people and will run out within thirty years they say. Disabled people beg on the streets, while their advocates are riding past them in taxis. People are assaulted and fearful, while their police sit in offices or cars.

The roots of what we call dishonesty are deep and have been the norm for millennia. Read any account from the sixteenth century onwards and you will find descriptions of tribal people organised in clans in a constant state of war. One historical book proposes that the coming of missionaries and administrators telling people not to fight removed significant social structures that provided norms and status, leaving people disorientated. This was a world in which life was a matter of clan survival. You must protect your own, but anything you could grab from others was fair game. To impose our western property-owning ethics onto this world is difficult. I often feel that this nation of a thousand tribal cultures has had neither the time nor the reason to move away from this way of seeing the world. Even western-educated people basically understand and condone its perpetuation. Today the Government cancelled the visit of its top Ministers to Enga in the Highlands. It tries to hold meetings in each province to give the people an opportunity for direct contact with its Government . However, ‘certain sections of the community' demanded so much money for the Ministers to come to the province, based on clan rights, that it was cancelled.

In this environment it is difficult to make significant progress . And yet there are still wonderful things happening. Women organise groups for child care , Catholic nuns and priests give their lives to providing services. One engaging old Irish priest goes into settlements to talk with sex workers and form groups for street kids. Electricity runs most of the time, water is clean and rarely fails, some of the rubbish is collected. I have to remind myself that development is a long-term process and I am not the solution. The ocean is made of many drops of rain.

Postscript: This was obviously written at a low point – a time of siege. The challenges were real, but we did eventually create a space for progress with our disability organisation which continues to this day. This did involve a mixture of colonial interference and more ethical respectful support.

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