Paul's PNG CollectionPapua New Guinea 2015 |
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SECTION 3 Mendi - 2015Chapter 1 Highland Beginnings - July 2015
Dear All, On my first morning on the streets of Mendi a man came walking towards me. On his face was the darkest scowl, in his eyes a cold fierceness. As he came close I tentatively said “ Mornin '. His face broke into the broadest grin. Welcome back to PNG. It has been over two months now and the Highlands is my home. I have left behind the clinging, steamy coastal heat of Madang with its coral and coconut trees and swopped it for the rather English feel of drizzly mountain mornings. We are in a fairly narrow valley, which tends to heat up in the morning leading to sudden torrential downpours in the afternoon as heavy, black clouds roll down the valley. The slopes are ridged with military creased edges rolling down in pale green velvet pleats and folds to the valley bottom. Everything is green with a few scars of bare rock here and there on the limestone cliffs. I live at one end of the town close to the airport runway, which looks frighteningly short as you come into land. The engine is at full power to brake before the end. We ended up driving to Mendi from Madang over two days. I had far too much stuff to catch the plane what with boxes of food (they had warned me that there were very few shops in Mendi), boxes of work stuff and ridiculous amounts of things I might need if I stayed for 10 years, but do not need for less than a year (I never learn). Luckily a young Ugandan man and an American woman from Ireland also needed a lift to the Highlands, so a vehicle was dispatched. The road from the coast through the Highlands is called the Highlands Highway. If that sounds like a six-lane autobahn then think again. The road from Madang to the edge of the Highlands is a slalom-drive through craters of rain- leached potholes and stretches of once tarred roads. Many bridges in the Ramu valley had suffered in floods with the remains of twisted superstructure left in the river. Often, fords had to be used, and diggers were working to restore order. Ramu is a big sugar producing area and the oil palm is rapidly gaining ground as in many coastal areas. At the end of the valley dairy cattle have become established. When you climb to the Highlands you soon find stunning views of steep dramatic valleys leading to the Daulo pass at 2450 meters. All is verdant green forest and colourful plants and grasses. In May and early June, the grass looks like soft heather. Evidence of past landslips abound, sometimes causing serious collapses of the road at river bends. The locals love it because it is a way to make money from vehicles needing to cross their land. We stopped in Simbu en route for a night in the main town of Kundiawa . Another young Ugandan volunteer had two of his friends in for an evening of EMTV, which is a diet of cartoons, PNG news, and Australian rugby and news shows. It turned out that Bonny was a kick-boxing champion, with a training hall in town. He was a gentle and charming companion and cheerfully showed us videos of the past master, The Head-hunter , spin-kicking various Australians senseless. He started a theme that was to follow us through the Highlands. “ People are very friendly in Simbu, but the Western Highlanders and Southern Highlanders are very dangerous people.” Every Highlander will tell you the same story of how people in their province are friendly, but everywhere else is wild. The fact of the matter is that even in Mount Hagen, where things happen, people are keen to welcome strangers and make you feel safe (not always the case for other highlanders). They will often not let you walk alone, at least for the first day or so, when they get tired of hospitality. My large flat is the upper floor of a two-story house. The house is old, but comfortable with a small platform outside of the front door. Although it gets chilly there is never any need to close the glass shuttered windows. It feels like an autumn evening chill in England. Days are usually summer-hot once the sun has climbed over the mountains. At first, I shared with a sizable rat, but it was him or me. Now I just have the cockroaches as house guests. No snakes yet. Below are an ever-changing group of women with small snotty pikaninies , who cry much of the time. Fathers come and go, joining the throng in the centre of town, where men and women with nothing to do spend much of the day sitting on the low walls, jawing and chewing buai ( bettle nut), occasionally pausing to eject the blood red sputum onto the road or your shoes if you are not quick enough. Entertainment is provided by the odd women who get into a loud public squabble or mangis (youth) who get drunk or high on local dope and scrap. This is accompanied by a rush of people whooping and laughing. Their other distraction is picking your pockets and then later offering to sell you back the stolen cell phone. Otherwise, all feels calm. Everywhere I go I am talked of as ‘White Man '. People call you white man to your face and talk about you as the white man quite casually as though you are not there. Most of the time I am a curio, a circus seal expected to perform tricks. The children are persuaded to behave by mothers for fear of upsetting the white man. It is a mixture of strong residual colonial respect and alien curiosity. In town, I am the only white man around, although there are plenty of Catholic priests, brothers and sisters at the diocese fifteen minutes down the road, they are rarely seen in town. It wasn't long before I found the very large Catholic diocese. The Catholics are always impressive in developing countries. They have a large campus with a clinic, top quality training of community health workers and a range of services including passage to heaven. I met an elderly Swiss sister, who told me that she came to Mendi in 1972. “ We were the first in the country to react to HIV,” she told me without a hint of hubris. The epidemic is small here compared to Africa, but highest in the Highland Provinces and main cities of Lae and Port Moresby. The real danger is that the big donors have convinced themselves that the problem is under control. All they need to do is concentrate on sex workers and men who have sex with men. Local services tell you that all of the new infections come from the general population and statistics are very unreliable. Sister Gaudaitia turned out to be a real character. She has fluent Tok Pissin and it is not unusual for her to find herself in the middle of testing situations in remote villages, usually involving abused women. She told one story of having to negotiate a village meeting in which a husband accused his wife of being HIV positive. She had not disclosed her status to him, and all sorts of reprisals were threatened. It has been known for people to be buried alive. Bride price complicates matters because the clan have paid for the bride. Now people are more aware of the nature of HIV, but rumours persist of bad practices in the remote bush. She negotiated a peaceful end with the husband and the clan. She then told me of intervening in a case where women had had to lock themselves in a house because of threats of extreme violence linked to allegations of witchcraft by the women. “ We went there and a head- man shouted outside to be let in. I went out to him, and he said that he would come and burn my house down if I did not let him have the women. I said to him, I have a box of matches, and I will burn your whole village down. You have to speak to them in the same way they speak.” She chuckled at the thought. “ What happened?” “ Oh, he went away, and we took the women back with us.” It turned out that the Diocese was also the place to get a haircut. A young Latvian volunteer who had preceded me let his hair and beard grow for a year. I am not ready for the Highland look, but getting a haircut was out of the question in Mendi, until I discovered Brother Ray who came at the same time as Sister Gaudaitia and has a license to cut hair from his native USA. I was introduced to him by Bill the finance manager, another older Aussie man with tales of being chased by an irate man with a bush knife. “ They come here expecting you to give them money. The last man was a soft priest who gave into them. I won't .” I left them trying to convince a man that he couldn't have books unless he paid for them. The conversation had been going on for half an hour when I left and showed no signs of concluding. I am now finding plenty to do. I have visited groups of people living with HIV in five provinces including the Port City of Lae. Charlie from Totnes, who worked at Dartington alongside Andy Christian, was here for two years before me and did some excellent work with them. So, I have already travelled the Highlands and on down to the coast on PMVs (mini busses), but that is for the future. For those of you who suffered my tedious ramblings last time I was here, I am afraid that much will sound rather familiar , but I am sure things will happen during my stay here. When space age aspirations meet with stone-age mentality something is always round the corner. Right now, we have the Pacific Games (Pacific Olympics) in Moresby and the Nation is gripped. There were weeks of uncertainty about whether facilities would be finished, but Prince Andrew arrived to open the games, and the new multi-million-kina flyover is open for traffic jams. One thing that has changed is the increase in traffic in Moresby. I hope you are all enjoying the heat wave. Think of us near the Equator huddled up in warm woolies . I am off tomorrow for my first stay in one of the villages. Pop in if you are passing, Love and Best Wishes, Paul
Mid WaySeptember/October 2015 Hello, Well, the drought is officially over. For over two months now the dry season has bled us dry in the Highlands. To add insult to injury cold nights have been accompanied by frost, which has ruined hectares of crops. Here in the tropics, unlike Europe and Africa, people are used to growing crops all year round. There is no need to grow food for storage, although yams have special ritual houses build for them on the Trobriands . A state of emergency was declared for the Highlands region, probably as a result of a young Ugandan volunteer from Kundiyawa not being able to shower for more than two weeks. The announcement, of course, started high level political debate. The people were to be given seedlings to replant the damaged crops. A local MP was not impressed. ‘People are running out of food and water. It's food they need; by the time they can harvest the crops they will all be dead.' So, predictably, as a state of emergency was declared in the Highland region the drought broke. This Sunday afternoon the heavens let loose. It has been a downpour lasting more than six hours with no sign of an end. Our big water tank is now full again, having had to be replenished by water tanker a week ago. We use rainwater collected from the roof. Lightening comes with every saturated cloud and the thunder cracks and rolls down the narrow valley shaking the house. Children squeal with nervousness and excitement. The fine weather has at least made long walks enjoyable. I went up our mountain last Sunday and met a local man on the way who showed me his home, two hours walk up the mountain. There were no amenities, except those constructed through the ingenuity of rural people. He had a shower with constant running water through a pipe running from an underground spring further up the steep hill. Great stuff this gravity. He had dug two small fishponds but could not afford to stock them. His house was built in traditional style from bush materials. Kunai houses are usually rectangular; walls are woven bush materials with a thatched roof of kunai grass which is ridged and somewhat sealed by the tar smoke from the cooking fire within the house. In such a richly forested area, it is always a source of surprise to me that people are willing to pay loads of dosh to build ‘permanent' houses out of corrugated sheets when everything they need is at hand. Still, us profligate western people can talk, eh? He still complained that he and some local youth had worked on the steep, winding path, putting in ditches at the side of wet sections and laying branches across steep stretches as steps. He said that the Government had not paid them to do it. This is part of the change in attitude that comes with modern development. People, once used to looking after themselves, start to feel that someone else should do it. I saw an item in the newspaper today that featured two men from Southern Highlands who had made good in Lae (the port city). They had built a steel bridge structure to go across a small river as a thank you to the people from home in the bush. It seemed that people had to walk many kilometres out of their way to find a route to town. As I read on the article mentioned that the wooden bridge that used to be there had collapsed. It went on: ‘The wooden bridge collapsed and was left unattended for years. As well as private vehicles, police vehicles and the Ialibu district hospital ambulance couldn't venture beyond into villages that were beyond Larepe Creek. This was burdensome for the people, especially the sick, elderly and school children.' Why did no one cut down some trees and make a bridge? All through my time in developing countries it has been a theme that responsibility is often not taken for community initiatives. I saw endless water pumps left unusable, for the need of a nut and bolt to hold the pump handle on or some other small repair. It can be a trap for lazy western thinking, however. Sometimes it is because we think we know best. In one village a pump was not used by the women. In the end it was discovered that the long walk to fetch water was the only time women could talk and be away from the demands of men. The last thing they wanted was to lose that quality time. The walk was very enjoyable, but in small town Mendi it was a talking point. As I came down the hill towards town an elderly man called me over. He wanted to shake my hand. He asked if I had been up the mountain. He was impressed. “Yu namba wan, yu goodpela man straight.” He thought it wonderful that a white man was actually interested to walk up to meet people in the bush villages. I met this same gratitude in Kompiam , where it was a major joy for my host that I chose to stay in his beautiful kunai house rather than the local lodge. It is sad that people still feel such colonial inferiority when they are doing you a favour. All through the week people I met would say, “Did you walk on top of the mountain on Sunday?” Everyone seemed to know about this momentous event but found it difficult to understand why I would do such a thing. “Are you an anthropologist?” I was asked by the head of policy at the Provincial Administration Difficult to keep secrets here. Even a women I met halfway up the mountain knew exactly where I live. When I was last in Enga I had another long walk up to the top of a mountain ridge, along the ridge and down the other side. I was of course quickly colonized by two mangi (youth) who wanted to show me the local sights. How could I refuse? They showed the local sacred stone, the haus man, where in times past elders taught young men how to behave as a man and how to use a spongy moss that held water and could be used as a general household cleaner. We negotiated a difficult meeting with a drug baron (marijuana) who was a wantok . It was difficult because my friend was worried that he might muscle in on their tip. Halfway up the climb one of the boys stopped and turned to me. He spoke in Tok Pissin, so it took me a while to make sure I was really understanding what he was asking. When I asked him to repeat it his mimed actions reassured me that I had understood correctly. “Was it really true that western people engaged in oral sex?” He was actually a bit more direct than that. He had seen it on DVDs in the village. Remember that when I say village I am talking about small groups of huts up a mountain away from electricity. “Do you watch these DVDs in the village?” He nodded enthusiastically. In proselytizing, Christian PNG it seems that pornography is a major pastime, just like the rest of the world. We carried on with the walk and didn't mention the subject again. The gossip in Mendi hit a high point last weekend. I try to go running at weekends (I use the term running loosely these days) accompanied by cheery greetings, gales of laughter and occasional derision. As I ran up the hill to the police houses, I became aware of sticks, decorated with gaudy cut flowers standing along the roadside – someone had died. That evening, the sound of police sirens dominated the night sound- scape. I thought it was a tribe fight, but then next morning the sirens wailed again. I went down to the airport road at the end of our lane where a stream of people were walking from town in an informal procession. A line of police cars cut a swathe through the throng. As I reached the road a man stopped and turning to me said in good English, “It is a policeman they are taking the body back to Morseby .” “ Oh, how sad” I said, “was he killed? ”. “He was killed by his wife; she twisted his balls!” he graphically mimed the attack and then walked on. Too much information, I thought, but then marvelled at how quickly an essentially private matter had become public knowledge. It seemed sad that the gory details were in the public domain, an acoustic form of social media - Facebook unplugged. This month, Sister Gaudentia had to rescue another poor woman from a local village, who had been tortured with red hot rods to make her confess to witchcraft. Her whole body had been scarred. The sister feels that public torture is something that has come in modern times. In the past, she says, they just killed you. Her view is that people who want her out to get her property or for other reasons hire young ‘marijuana' boys to do the dirty deeds. Luckily, if you can call it luck, she will be able to live with her sister. There is no way she can return. There were others too. As in many developing countries, life is led in public. Families often have little in the house to keep them inside and people like nothing more than to sit cross-legged on any spare piece of ground. ‘Telling stories' is the most important part of life and in this case the term is used to mean chatting. I see lots of childcare going on. Unlike much of rural Africa the fathers are often seen to be in loving contact with the pikininis . All over town men will be holding the hand of the small child and even talk to them. Some thrust them towards the white man to shake his hand. However, it is still the women who bear the brunt of day-to-day care. It is striking how much the women around me shriek at the children. They grow in an atmosphere of angry telling off, which is a cultural norm. Something that would be a mild rebuke in our world, starts as an angry confrontation. The children soon learn how to shriek too. However, it is also heartwarming to see the softer side of life. Two young mothers downstairs are probably in their late teens. Adult responsibilities came very early , so when the pikininis start a game of ‘dodge ball' the most enthusiastic participants are the young mothers. This time the shrieking is signifying pleasure and excitement; the children get their nurturing too. All end up in a steaming heap in the middle of the grass. Children also play fantasy games. I was rather shocked to hear one drama taking an unexpected turn. A small child was playfully berating another, using the term ‘kanaka '. This is a deeply offensive term these days, having been the disparaging term used by old Aussie colonial types towards rural, uneducated locals. It became clear that the other role in the drama was ‘the white man '. I wondered how this scene had entered the world of the five-year-olds . It must still be alive in the minds of adults. A PNG friend told me that people still call each other ‘kanaka' in village arguments. The games adults play are rather more destructive. Like many people denied access to comfortable pleasures, people's desirable vices will also damage their health. Smoking, chewing buai and sexual fun are all seen as necessities and any consequential problems are for the future. More insidiously, cards are the backdrop to both urban and rural life. After any night of drinking endless packs of cards are to be seen littering the roads. I wonder if it is ritual to discard the deck. Day and night small groups sit cross-legged by the side of the road gambling small amounts for hours on end. It is probably one of the hidden causes of HIV infection as women seek to pay off their debts in the most available way. I suspect family incomes also suffer. I have been travelling a lot and that will go on through the placement. Last week I went off again to Hagen, Goroka and Chimbu provinces. This week I stay in Mendi because there is a cloud over one of the organisations I was to visit, thought to have misused some money. We really do ask a lot of rural people. We set out glittering prizes, but they must leave their world and learn how to live in our's to get them. We are always disappointed and shocked when occasionally their world takes over again. Still, all in a good cause . Time to go and bring the benefits of civilization to the masses. Do drop in when you are passing, the kettle is always on the boil, Best wishes Paul |
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