Paul's PNG Collection

Papua New Guinea 2008-2010

Domestic Violence

There are many advantages being a man in Papua New Guinea. You do not have to do the cooking, look after the children, cook the food, fetch the firewood, work in the garden or bear children in life-threatening conditions. In addition, you are allowed to use your culturally nurtured fighting skills to beat your wife to a pulp. The last time I was in PNG I saw a woman knocked unconscious as my bus passed the scene.

There is a token attempt to address this war on women through the law but given that the police are likely to view domestic violence as normal and may also be wontoks (same clan) the chances of mediation, justice or protection are slim.

We were sitting on the veranda of the Country Women's Association Guest House in the late afternoon. We were talking about the high cost of living and inevitably about the intrusion of corruption and theft into every corner and crevice of PNG life. Someone was making an impassioned point when I became aware of a security guard moving quickly past us on the other side of the hedge. 

Playground mentality stirred and we rushed to the fence, where we were in time to see a drunk man in cap, tee-shirt, shorts, and work boots circled by agitated wantoks already throwing haymakers at a security guard, who quickly realised that his 20p per hour pay was not enough to be worth receiving a shiner. 

The drunk turned his attention back to a large, strongly built young woman who he was dragging by the arm towards the top of the road. As she resisted, he swung random punches towards her head. The wantoks were still swarming around the couple dodging the occasional missile aimed in their general direction whilst gradually increasing the sound towards a level they hoped would make further fighting unbearable. In fact, weariness appeared to dull his ardour for the fight and the young woman went back with her entourage back down the road. Men talked urgently at the drunk.

We were beginning to lose interest when out of the corner of my eye I saw the burley young woman storm back into the ring with a large rock in each hand. The startled drunk quickly recovered his appetite for the fight and having backed across the road began bouncing on the balls of his feet like the boxer at the beginning of ‘Raging Bull ', taunting the woman to come at him. She hesitated and then advanced into a slow-motion grapple with the drunk, the rocks clenched but unused. 

The finale produced an unexpected result. The woman was again dragged to the top of the road but discovered that she was the fresher of the combatants. The man was dragged down onto the road and punched by the young woman until, vanquished he ran off along the Tarauma Road and we returned to our analysis of the ills of PNG.

Our small cameo reminded us that women are not always passive victims of domestic violence. Our mixed sex PNG companions made light of the incident.

“You see, tomorrow they will be together like nothing happened.”

But for all of the Highland women who are tough battlers in the uneven wars of the sexes the reality is that large numbers of women are battered into wheelchairs and even to death. Many more live in states of fear and trauma. Women are at risk in all areas of PNG society.

The Old and The New

My last trip to Enga was supposed to take me to every District, but talking to a local policeman in Kompiam (bush station) he said 

“You won't be able to get to Laigam or Pogera , they are fighting and Pogera has been declared a tribe fighting area”

In fact, it would have been relatively safe to travel on the main road, but it was too late to get things organised. They have put the army in to help the police to calm things down. It is possible to make PNG sound like the scariest place on earth, and all of the stories are true, but it is a big country and mostly, it is not happening close to you.

That reminds me of another story told to me by my Catholic friends. I was standing waiting for a PMV into Hagen from Walum Junction, where I stayed for the night. A tonka car stopped and inside were Brother Ray (my hair stylist) and Brother James. On the way I asked them what the drive was like in the 1970s, when they had come. 

“The road was not tarred in those days and people did not live by the road, like they do these days.”

There was little transport, and people did not need to travel so much. When the road was made it made more sense to live close by to sell at local markets and travel to town to buy and sell.

They went on to tell me the story of a Catholic priest who had driven back from Hagen with a pickup full of supplies. As he came round a bend there were trees across the road – a roadblock. He stopped and wound down the window to show the men that he was a priest. They were not impressed. He was told to follow them to a village in the bush. When they arrived, he was taken to a house, and he watched in dismay as all of his supplies were taken off the back of the pick-up. He was even more dismayed when the vehicle was driven away full of men. 

Some hours later the vehicle arrived back. The men got down from the back of the pick-up and started to put the supplies back onto the vehicle. They came to get the priest, took him back to the road and apologized for keeping him. He saw that they had put fuel into the tank. The vehicle had been needed to take them to fight in another tribe's village. Borrowing is not the same as theft.

We volunteers like to think that we are living on the edge, braving the dangers of a wild land. But things are changing and have changed very quickly in short time .

Chris Sworn had kindly given me a supply of books he bought when he thought he might be volunteering in PNG. One was a book written by a Caribbean Brit in 1982. It is a well-written account of his VSO placement in Wabag , Enga. His name was Markham, and he was a black poet and writer, who came to a heavily colonial atmosphere in which ex-pats were numerous and stayed together in enclaves in the midst of hostile natives. It provides an interesting perspective on volunteering life today. 

He describes a world in which ex-pats and high officials gather together for safety, theft is endemic (he estimates 20 personal thefts in two years ) and people are largely uncontrolled . Today I would walk around Wabag or any other Engan town without any fear and people will proudly tell you that no-one will rob you or hurt you. They also always add, ‘We only like to fight our own people.”

The following excerpt will give you a flavour:

The volunteer had set up cultural evenings consisting of a talk followed by a projected film ( a forerunner of Ian and Tony's Lectures). He had complaints that the noise and smell of the many children who turned up was spoiling people's enjoyment, so he had an early showing for them. On this occasion the projector had failed and after the talk they explained that that they could not show the film. There was no empathy on the part of the audience who were asked to vacate the hall.

‘The video failed and the good people of Wabag were not amused. Soon word got around that there wasn't going to be a film that evening and the people inside made their displeasure felt; outside, on the high banks, the rascols surrounded the buildings and rained stones down on it. We were barricaded inside for about twenty minutes before the police arrived and started beating and maiming…… …..

There was a moment in that wooden building when we had finally managed to lock the main door and as the stones kept clattering down on the roof and sides, I wondered if we had finally run out of luck. The stones weren't just pebbles. There were lots of people locked inside and that was a security of sorts. When the lull came and everyone said we should make a run for it I had my doubts; but maybe it was better to be decisive. The door was open now and people, crouching, hurried out. 

As I came out of the door and started creeping along the side I got hit on the ankle, a sharp pain, but no more. I braced my whole body for the rocks, and the woman in front of me went down to that stomach- churning thud of stone hitting face. We could see that she needed to be taken to the hospital. Eventually, we got there, and they gave her an injection and cleaned her up, applying little bits of plaster which seemed inadequate.'

Next day he talked to his acquaintance the Enga police chief.

‘Once , when my house had been burgled, Simon offered me a gun to protect myself. I asked for time to think about it. Eventually, I called on him at the station, declined the gun and took an axe instead. Simon indicated that this was the choice he had expected me to make. The axe, like most police weapons on offer had been confiscated in a tribal fight …..

Living up to my image, I urged restraint… Would Simon's policy of showing strength really prevent a repeat of this.

“It saved your life my friend.”

Apparently, what the police had done was to creep up behind the stone-throwing crowd and then to proceed to throw some of them down the steep bank till a few of them ended up in a stream full of rocks, in the line of fire of stones thrown by their friends.

“It saved your life.” ‘

Markham thought that they would have to abandon the evenings.

‘“People have short memories, my friend. Next time make sure your video works, they would love it.'

Going back even further to 1895, Chris had also given me two volumes of the unpromisingly titled ‘Some experiences of a New Guinea Resident Magistrate.' By Capt. C.A.W. Monkton. He prefaces his book with ‘It appears to be the custom, for writers of books of this description, to begin with apologies as to their style, or excuses for their production. I pretend no style; but have written at the request of my wife,' It did not seem like a page turner. How wrong I was. It is a ‘ripping yarns' encyclopaedia of danger and adventure.

New Guinea at the turn of the century was a place full of cannibals, sorcerers, adventuring traders, wild gold prospectors and colonial administrators who behaved like the warring tribes, but with better ‘fire spears ', a Bible, and a sense of superior morality. The book is peopled with administrators who die of malaria, black water fever or murder at the hands of natives. Gold miners who sometimes murder natives or each other and end up fighting drunk and in the Kalabus . There are traders who are constantly trying to outwit the authorities who chase them around by ship. Some of them were eaten. There were also Missionaries in extraordinary places with their own small empires. Natives were used as ‘boys' to carry supplies into the bush, do manual work, crew ships and to provide the disciplined police force and village constabulary. Once a tribe had been ‘tamed' by a show of superior force the enemy chief or his son was often given a position of village constable, and a uniform, becoming the guardian of law and order. Of course, all of the action took place around the coast and on the islands, the highlands being, as yet undiscovered by Europeans.

Here are a few highlights:

‘ A wild riot at Billy the Cook's pub attracted our attention, and running there we found O'Regan the Rager being thrown down the steps. O'Regan was fighting drunk and making the night hideous with yells and blasphemy. 

“Go home and go to bed O'Regan” said Moreton.

He would not and Moreton grabbed him; he promptly hit Moreton in the ribs, and just as promptly I hit O'Regan under the ear and also seized him; but O'Regan wanted blood and gore, whereupon Moreton blew his whistle and a dozen police collared him and took him to gaol.

We had hardly reached the house before the warder rushed up exclaiming,

‘That lunatic, the police have run in is killing the Wee-wees (Detained French escapees from New Caledonia serious criminals' prison).

I bolted down to the to the gaol and found that all of the cells were full of natives except the one containing the Frenchmen; O'Regan had immediately proceeded to dance with his heavy mining boots on their recumbent forms, and to challenge them to a fight. 

The Frenchmen all clamoured to be taken away from him.

“ I'm plain drunk and disorderly, I am, “said O'Regan, “and I'm not going to be shut up with a ***** lot of ***** foreign criminals.”

“Gaoler, bring the irons and we will make a ‘spread eagle' of this man on the floor.”

Here the Frenchmen chipped in, saying they didn't want to remain in the cell with him, even when ironed, and begged to be put in the cells with the natives, to which I accordingly agreed.

Throughout the two volumes he is constantly dispatched to catch murderers, sort out sorcerers or tame warring natives. This is one adventure.

‘From the Barigi River, I went to investigate claims made by a tribe named Notu , situated at the Oro Bay on the north-east coast, of attacks made upon them by an inland tribe named Dobudura , The Notu , who were a set of murdering blackguard themselves and a curse to the coast, told me that they had hitherto been on the most friendly terms with the Dobudura , but that lately the latter tribe had been raiding them, and killing by torture any people they captured.

“We don't mind fighting,” said he Notu , “and don't mind being killed and eaten, for that is the lot of men, but we do object to having our arms ripped up and being tied to trees or posts by our own sinews , and having meat chopped off us until we die.!”

“I will deal with the Dobudura ,” I told them “but afterwards I am going to make you sit up and squeal; for, to my certain knowledge , you have recently killed and eaten two Mambare carriers; also I have heard of quite a number of mysterious disappearances of people in the vicinity of your villages.”

“Crocodiles” said the Notu “They are bad here.” 

“Yes,” I said “two -legged crocodiles ”.

He goes on to describe a cat and mouse pursuit of the Dobudura , whose plumed heads could be seen bobbing up and down in the tall grass and their war cries going on incessantly. But they avoided contact, trying to buy time for others to join them in a place of their choosing.

‘Platforms of skulls were at each end of the village; hundreds of skulls; and there was one heap of about thirty fresh ones, the adhering flesh had hardly had time to go bad. I nearly lost Private Oia here: he had leant against a tree and was squatting on the ground, when a Dobudura crept up and rushed him with a club; Oia sprang towards the enemy, just as the club swung down for his head. And succeeded in catching the blow from the wooden handle of the club on his shoulder, instead of the cutting-stone disc on his head. Oia then tore the club from the man's grasp and dashed out his brains with it.'

They had several skirmishes, but never a direct battle. Later they found out why:

‘ They had decided to draw us as far as possible into the district; then to throw every possible every available fighting man onto our camp just before dawn. They knew that a large portion of my force was comprised of Notu , whom they despised and expected would bolt at the first attack. Their chief, who devised the scheme, had wished to visit the camp himself to see how my force was disposed; finding he could not do this, he had sent men who had crept unperceived past the sentries. Some of the men had had already returned to him with news, and he was waiting for the others, when bang went the village constable's rifle and he fell dead, shot through the heart.'

This and heavy rain demoralised the Dobudura , and they had been brought to heal. Later, there was an interesting postscript to the story, as colonial rule of law was brought to the Dobudura .

‘The wife of the old chief of the Dobudura , whom I later made village constable, was one of the finest charactered women I have ever known, either white or brown. I remember once, camping in the village, warn, tired and with a hungry lot of carriers. She received us and explained that her husband was away, so she was making all of the arrangements for a supply of food for us. In thanking her and talking to her before I left, I asked,

“Have you no children?”

“I had two sons, ” she replied, “but they are dead.”

“How did they die? ' I asked.

“You killed them,” she said

“Good gracious!” I answered in surprise “how do you make that out?”

“One was killed in the night, when about to attack your camp; the other speared one of your people and was killed in your camp.”

“I am very sorry,” I said, “I wish I had your sons marching there,” pointing to the constabulary, “for they are very brave men.”

“I don't blame you,” said the old dame; “We were a foolish people; but my husband and myself wish we had our two sons again.”

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