Paul's PNG Collection

Papua New Guinea 2008

VSO Placement With PNG Assembly of Disabled People 2008-10

Chapter 1 - Two Letters

A young American World Bank economist with the sort of boundless energy and enthusiasm that only young Americans can spare asked me 

“ Why do they spit so much blood on the sidewalk?”

Sure enough, if you walk on the streets, you must negotiate not only the blood-red patches along the road but also keep an eye on your neighbour who might at any moment project a stream of unpleasant sputum across your path.

The young man's assumption that the streets are covered with blood fits easily with the world's idea that Papua New Guinea is one of the most dangerous places on earth. Here in Port Moresby, the Capital and now home to me, you are told that you are unlikely to last more than one day. Rascols set up roadblocks, kill at will, and break into houses as they please. Squatter settlements exist in almost all areas with desperate families whose sons feed the family and their own marijuana needs through criminality. Every day the papers are filled with stories of rape, burned houses, murdered people and tribal fighting.

The truth is, of course a little less dramatic than the packaging would have you believe. The red patches are the juice from the habit of chewing a mixture of betel nut, powered lime and mustard which produces both a mild narcotic effect and excess bitter blood red juice that must be ejected from the mouth. The crimes do take place and care must be taken, but most people are delightfully friendly and keen to help. As I bravely walked along the roads of Boroko on my first day in POM a woman leapt from her stool by the Buai (betel nut) table. As I considered curling into what I thought might be a believable karate stance she said

“Are you lost – where do want to go?”

Soon a group of people gathered who would not be satisfied until they had information about my destination and provided detailed and graphic descriptions of the route and points of interest. No reward was expected or demanded. I am something of a curiosity here as the only white person regularly on the streets, although they have been used to white people in PNG for many years and refreshingly do not shout at or after me. 

Of course, dear reader, you must also be entertained. The dark side does exist. This is a nation that never seriously excited the interest of avaricious colonialists until the second half of the 20th century. Prior to that it was mainly the province of people whose life's work was the saving of the souls of primitives, or scientists searching for Darwinian clues on land and sea along with gold-digging adventurers. Thus, whilst the islands and coastal areas were in contact with westerners for more than 100 years, nobody believed that many people lived in the centre of the island, which was thought to be a continuous range of inhospitable mountains. In 1930 an Australian mining expedition, excited by a gold rush closer to the coast decided to explore the mountain rivers. As they reached the Highlands, they suspected that the Lutheran missionaries knew of clans higher up the mountain but were not shouting for fear that the Catholics would get their souls first.

Even more amazing was that they discovered more than a million people living in fertile valleys and plains in the temperate Highlands. These were people who were still living with stone age implements and were locked into their land by a system of tribal conflict that restricted movement. Contemporaneous accounts describe how most men had fighting scars on their bodies, and each clan was at constant war with its neighbours. When the white people, who were thought to be returning dead ancestors, set up a camp and began trading, a clan less than 10 miles from the camp had to send its women to find out what was happening, because it was too dangerous for the men to enter the enemy clan's land. 

Between then and now, less than the time consumed by a human life, modernism has slowly introduced itself through the colonial activities of the British, Germans and latterly a reluctant Australian administration set up by the League of Nations. Independence was never fought for and even resisted by the Papuans. Now global greed has ensured that little will remain untouched. Australians mine, Malaysians and Thai cut down vast swathes of trees, Filipino over fish the tuna for European markets and the Chinese own all of the major stores and food joints and are on the move in the mining industries. People are in a confused space between tradition and modernism. Young men increasingly reject the authority of the clan, and some are now stranded in the urban environment that demands cash and offers few ways of obtaining it. Many are now second or third generation urban dwellers who know nothing of their village roots or ways of life. However, before I give the impression that all is fundamental change it is still the case that at least 80% of the population lives in rural areas, many so remote that it can take days to reach them on foot.

In this strange netherworld it is not surprising that the modern mixes with the traditional in a potent cocktail of actions and reactions. Doing work here is like handling nitro-glycerine. Just yesterday I went with a highlander to view a possible house for rent. He stopped to talk to a diminutive older man with a long-forked beard. It seemed that this man was in town to mobilise clan members. An Australian mining company had made a deal some years ago to explore the clan area for minerals. It was not clear what went wrong but the clan thought the company was selling the rights without paying the landowners . Although they will litigate, they were not primarily interested in drawn out legal cases. Here, things are settled quickly, in this case by burning the company helicopter and chasing the Australian manager out of the Highlands, where his life could be in danger. The principles at play are ‘compensation' for wrongs done and ‘payback '. This means that even killings can be settled by the receipt of large sums of compensation in pigs and cash. However, the clan may still retaliate by killing someone in return - payback. Recently, a volunteer was sitting in a car driven by a Catholic Brother when it knocked down and killed a man. His house was surrounded by angry clan members. However, things turned out all right when they found that the driver was a Catholic Brother – that would mean that considerable compensation would be available. If it comes to court the right of compensation is enshrined in law.

In the Political sphere you will not be surprised to hear that there is an elite that gets very rich , very quickly, by selling whatever Aussies or Asians want as long as they can pay. Political parties were, until recently, created at will to grab the strings of the public purse and election time is usually violent as clan loyalties become conflictual. In one highland area an MP was voted out. The health centre he had built in his tenure was burnt down by disgruntled clan members. It is not unusual to find ex-criminals or local gangsters standing for local or national elected positions.

So, what of me you are asking, or perhaps “who is he? ”. Well, my entry to PNG has been relaxed to the point that people check that I am still breathing. I spent seven weeks in Pacific Island Paradise, Madang. During this time, I was inducted into VSO and the country, stayed in a seaside lodging with meals, good company and a swimming pool and daily went to the VSO office to try to find housing in POM (Moresby). I visited villages, went out on a boat, saw hundreds of cork-screw dolphins weaving across the bows of the boat, snorkelled on reefs a bit and generally had a fine time. 

I finally persuaded VSO to fly me to POM to look for a house. The house I found was given to someone else before we had time to pay the rent. Now I am in The Country Women's Association with my Ugandan housemate getting irritated by the tweed skirt and brogues I have to wear to fit-in. I have spent the last two weeks running from house to house to try to find a house in a relatively safe area. We saw a good house close to a settlement of Highlanders and will find out if it works out tomorrow.

You may realise from my words that work has not really started yet. I have managed to start meeting people, all of whom tell me how everyone else can't be trusted with lurid tales of corruption, misuse of money and personal indiscretion. My work looks like being a slow-moving challenge due to the fact that the organisation has no funds and a bad reputation because the last 2 disabled leaders ran (wheeled) off with the funds. I start for real tomorrow and will look for a place to make a start. At least the people I will be working with are very friendly and the Government are supportive.

One of the more difficult challenges is the cost of living here. POM is a strange Capital. There is no road connecting it to the rest of the country. You must fly over the mountains or go by sea. The Government seems to have put other airlines out of business and now run the only airline, which is very expensive . It is cheaper to fly to Cairns (£160 return) in Oz than to Madang (£200 return for 1 hr flight). A major land slip in the food-producing Highlands took more than 400 metres of the only road down the mountain which has increased prices. Vegetables are as or more expensive than in U.K. and no beans and pulses are available unless imported. Email costs £3 per hour and is very slow . All in all I will be putting in more effort than usual to find the ‘best buys' .

Because I have little access to the net communication may be sporadic (who was that cheering at the back?). I have a digital phone as long as I can keep it in this pickpocket's paradise. This is one area in which the Government allows limited competition, but my service cannot speak to the Government system. In case you need it the number is 675 72395124 – watch the cost. The VSO address is Post Box 1061, Madang, Madang Province, PNG, but I hope to let you know a POM address soon – internal post is not very reliable .

Best Wishes To Everyone,

Drop - in when you are passing.

Lukim Yu

Paul

Postscript: I wrote this letter some weeks ago and have since moved into a house with my young Ugandan colleague, Armstrong. The house is wildly too good for us and only tolerated by VSO because they messed up the original house and have been forced to put us into better accommodation than they wished due to huge pressure on housing in Boroko (our work area). My welcome into POM was a little surreal. As I bravely, and a little tentatively, ventured alone into the shopping centre on my first day here my ears were assailed by the wailing of Scottish bagpipes. There outside of a shop in the main shopping area was a Papua New Guinean playing a selection of your 100 favourite Scottish bag pipe tunes. An old Aussie Catholic priest told me on first acquaintance “expect the unexpected in PNG – it will happen sometime.” I am already beginning to understand what he means

Letter Home 2 - Xmas 2008 - A Letter From PNG

Written Nov. 2008 but sent later to avoid spoiling your Christmas

Like everywhere else in the world, our dull moments have been filled by endless coverage of the presidential campaign in the U.S. Armstrong, my young Ugandan live-in volunteer agreed with me that we could not make a decision based on policy issues alone so we decided to vote on who had the nicest smiles. There was no contest. Charming Mr Obama with his ‘every mother's son' smile and Uncle Joe's ‘here you are kids come and get a sweetie' smile won hands down . Mr McCain, on the other hand, looked like a computer-generated character. His smile suddenly flashed onto a stern, featureless face as though he was suffering from a muscle spasm and disappeared as quickly, whilst the fixed-jaw smugness of Sarah Palin's perfect-teeth smile held no appeal. 

Our chairperson, Mr Tole Wia, would also win any election on his smile. He is a diminutive figure who wheels himself smartly around with the assurance of a man who has spent more than twenty of his fifty or so years on wheels. He effortlessly leans back into wheelies to get up steps and spins the vehicle around in the tightest space. Tole is a softly spoken man with a slight gruffness in his voice. His educated, considerate manner and generous, slightly shy, ‘angel-child' smile would melt the polar ice-cap. This is a man for whom the word charming was coined. 

Tole, has been my main and almost only work colleague since I arrived. We are supposed to be the national organisation for people with disabilities run by them. However, rather than finding a finished piece of sculpture in need of a touch of burnishing I have a block of un-worked rock needing to be hit with a chisel. That is if the chisel hasn't been stolen. We work from a store-room office with no windows or fresh air and do not, as yet even have a phone. In six years, it appears that no disabled person has ever received any benefit from the organisation other than the few that have run it and stolen its resources. Tole will agree but will win you over with an ‘angel' smile even as he is picking your pocket.

This has been the unpromising situation of my placement and much of my time thus far has been a struggle to find a compromise between colonial bossiness and development sensitivity. If it all sounds impossible and disheartening then I should also balance the picture with the fact that the Government here is very positive and supportive, even if it struggles to complete tasks. There is a world-wide push to support disability issues and Tole has worked tirelessly to the point that he has to rest to save his health. We have managed to set up the possibility that we can re-launch the organisation at a major organisational conference for disabled people from across the country. We just need the Government to deliver the promised funding.

As I suspected, life is a little monochrome after the vivid colours of Africa. If an African is the big cat, resting in the heat of the day, but springing into vibrant life at the slightest scent of fun or advancement then a Papua New Guinean is the buffalo grazing peacefully and amiably, stern faced and solid on the earth, until spooked, when it turns into the most dangerous of animals with a herd instinct. Yesterday I saw for myself the buffalo roused in two separate moments. At three o'clock in the afternoon I returned on the mini bus from the main business district to my office. I walked from the bus station to my office about half a kilometre away. As I walked down the sleepy road to my office, I saw some young men close together in a somewhat conspiratorial huddle. As I passed, I saw that one had his arm round the shoulder of another and was whispering into his ear. The other two were standing so close that it was difficult to see the recipient of the advice. This did not feel right. I turned to look about 10 yards further on. The recipient was angrily trying to shrug off the attentions of the whisperer and the other two were also looking animated and agitated. A woman walking my way offered me advice

“Keep going, they are rascol boys.”

No-one was helping the man, who presumably had been warned not to move or shout as they relieved him of his possessions. It was the fortnightly Friday pay day.

Next morning, I awoke and decided to go off to a festival at the town beach. I wanted to call in at the post office to make a phone call on the way. As I turned the corner by the police station there in the car park by a police pick-up vehicle was a man curled in a foetal position on the ground, naked to the waist. A few people were standing to the side of the police vehicle watching the blood run from several wounds on his head into the dirt of the car park. My first thought was that he was dead; my second was that the police had beaten him. I was confused. I had to do something. Again, a passing woman enlightened me.

“There has just been a fight. Some highlanders hit him with a bush knife (machete)”

“Is he dead?”

“ No, he is still alive. The Police should do something to help him.” As she moved on a large policeman with an automatic rifle passed to join his colleagues.

I quickly phoned someone I could trust for advice. I asked what I could do in the circumstances, fearful of making things worse. 

“It is alright to tell the police that you are concerned and ask what can be done.”

As I walked back to the scene, I was relieved to see that the inaction of the police was due to lack of first aid skills rather than lack care. An ambulance had arrived, and the young man was to be taken to hospital.

These two incidents happened close in time and within 100 metres of each other in our relatively peaceful area of the city. They were unpredictable, unusual and left me with the frustrated and impotent feeling that I should have done more to help – the dilemma of city violence anywhere for the fearful bystander. 

All of my experiences at work and outside have led me to feel that progress is very difficult and slow here because people are still so close to their tribal roots, grown over thousands of years of relatively undisturbed co-existence based upon protecting your clan and getting whatever you can from others by warfare. These roots have been disturbed by the unsubtle excavation of the modern world but are still the strength and sustenance of the culture. Our version of civilisation is no different to the efforts of the missionaries to cover naked bodies with western clothes – the bodies are still the same underneath and the clothes very thin. The tales I tell you in this letter are really examples of how, even highly educated people still quickly revert to their tribal instincts and patterns. Stealing does not have the same moral context as our puritan view dictates; violence is still the way that disputes are settled for many and governance is related to tribal rather than national authority. This is confusing for us do-gooders and places upon us a huge task of trying to understand how we can create a meaningful dialogue. When it goes wrong it can lead to terrible consequences. Recently, the Secretary of the Department was upset. He had just heard of the murder of an Australian consultant who he had brought over to help his finance section. The man had not understood the difference between his world and the world of his PNG companions. He picked two local young men and took them into his high-income flat for a drinking session. Perhaps sex was also involved. He ended up being raped and killed – the boys had no thought for the consequences. They probably did not see any real moral wrong in their actions.

I watched a marvellous documentary on the TV entitled ‘Papa Bilong Simbu' about the life of a Lutheran German priest who came as a missionary to PNG in the mid 1930s. Prior to his arrival in the highlands a Catholic Priest had been murdered – that is in our terms. To Simbu people this had simply been a scientific experiment. They had never seen a white person and thought it must be the ghost of an ancestor. There was debate. If it was an ancestor, then it could not be killed by a spear. As the priest died there was incontrovertible proof that he was not ancestor but a man. At the end of a long life in PNG the German missionary was so much part of the life of the tribe that they named him after a revered dead chief. He said that after more than 40 years of sharing the life and language of Simbu people he still could not tell you how they thought, came to decisions or reasoned. As he became frail, he was whisked off to Germany, where he died. Older people in Simbu were angry and upset.

“He should be buried here. This is his home. He has the name of our chief.” They had been robbed of their chief and, more importantly the link to their ancestors. This was not just a matter of a Christian burial in any piece of consecrated ground to them.

I am conscious that everyone is drawn to the violence of PNG society. My stories add to the ‘give a dog a bad name' image of PNG. As you have heard from me before the other side of this culture is equally, if not more, true. There is unrivalled hospitality and care in this culture. We have a local bar/dancing spot close to us that we go to each Friday or Saturday. Its name, ‘Paddy's Bar ', would lead you believe it is an ex-pat haunt. This is far from the truth. I am usually the only westerner there and it is owned by an M.P. who has probably seen the name on trips abroad. Invariably the PNG people come over to talk over the noise of live PNG Eagles, rock and local music. The same themes invariably form the basis of the conversation – respect and hospitality. Last Friday, I was sitting on my own at a table waiting for my Ugandan housemate to join me. A large group was seated at the next table. They were mainly small highlanders from all over bush country. One tapped me on the shoulder and introduced himself. They were all from a World Vision course on Tourism and Culture. As he spat copiously onto the floor between his legs, he assured me that they had learnt how to welcome people like me and how to help me to enjoy their hospitality. This was immediately followed by an invitation to join their group. I thanked him but said that I was waiting for a friend to join me. 

“It is how we are in Papua New Guinea. In our culture we must offer hospitality to people who visit our country. We respect you.”

Of course, as the evening wore on their group merged into ours and spit turned into vomit at the expense of the potted shrubs. It is the custom to come during happy hour and buy sufficient cheap beer for the evening. The tables are covered in beer cans and bottles. The result of this is that a beer is often placed in front you as a necessary token of hospitality. I have never been asked to buy one in return. Nobody asks you to buy them anything, although occasionally someone in the street will ask for a bus fare. That does not mean that your unopened beer bottle on the table will not tempt a drunk but craving wantok later in the evening. Here you must drink fast to get your share.

And so let me leave you back at the election of Mr Obama. My Ugandan friend noticed that with the change of a single letter his name becomes Osama – I then realised that if you reverse the names, you have Osama's Baracks (scary eh Sarah?). Anyway, the euphoria even carried through to PNG. I asked a woman from the Women's Council if she had been following the US election.

“Oh yes. We were so excited when the news came through. We were at a conference and us women cheered and danced around.”

“Why was it so important for you?”

“Because he is black like us ”, she ran her finger up and down her arm.

Love to all and season's greetings. Lukim Yu Behain

Paul

P.S. As you will see from my accounts, life here is not all-action, so you see that much of my musing focuses upon people. The other stories worth noting inevitably tend to be about gruesome and frightening events or corruption, both of which feed the stereotypes of PNG. It is difficult to find a way of avoiding this bias if I am not to lose you to sleep at an early stage. Thus, I am not sure where the next set of stories will come from or when, but I am sure PNG will think of something .

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