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I realised with alarm that my group had grown into a small crowd that surrounded me. They pushed forward not to attack but desperate to explain, to justify themselves, expecting me to provide an explanation, an instant solution.
‘Everyone hates us. No tourists come because the newspapers report so much violence.’
I said nothing but the headline in the newspaper in my hotel screamed of the rape of three nurses at Mt Hagen Hospital and the theft of an ambulance. The thieves were demanding compensation for the return of the vehicle or they would torch it.
‘Violence is terrible in the Highlands. That’s why I chose the islands.’ I was out of my depth.
‘You’re lucky. You have money to travel,’ said a boy from Oro Province wearing a bedraggled feather in his hair.
Beavis and Butthead cartoons flickered on the screen behind the heavily-barred windows of the ‘Jamaica Bar’. Papuan reggae music was playing somewhere. I was a distraction but not a solution. Some drifted away and sat under the trees again. Large spots of rain from an afternoon storm kicked up the reddened dust.
‘Well, I’d better be going. Nice to have met you. Gideon, Isaiah …’ I shook their hands.
‘Tenk yu tru long toktok wantaim yu, bikman.
(#ulink_d3b9b5e9-04d1-5fee-8194-66c2c2192a0f) All the way from London! Enjoy our country.’
They remained standing and smiling as I headed back. This encounter with wasted potential, cynicism, and the crushed optimism of youth left me feeling depressed and impotent. The cultural diversity of the country meant that there was tension between youths from many regions thrown together by unemployment. In traditional villages in the past, fear of neighbouring peoples and respect for the authority of the elders would have limited the freedom of the young. The notion of respect had almost disappeared, but not only in Papua New Guinea. London and Sydney were similar, but this country was poor and the politicians corrupt.
Many observers blame the present law and order troubles on the premature commitment Australia made to the granting of independence in 1975. At the outset, an inappropriate West-minster-style two-party democracy was imposed on the country with legislative power vested in a national parliament. The national government devolved power through nineteen provincial governments. The country joined the Commonwealth with the Queen as Head of State, and a governor-general appointed as her representative. Papua New Guinea covers a vast area (it is the second largest island in the world) and possesses such extreme cultural diversity that the growth of a properly integrated strategy for development has remained a perennial challenge. The first Prime Minister, Sir Michael Somare, was an able and popular politician, but the many emergent parties have become increasingly unable to establish clear ideological principles. Political candidates pursue personal or regional goals at the expense of party policies.
(#ulink_fd6bfd63-2f1a-5389-997d-f37777946891)
Most Papua New Guineans still live a subsistence lifestyle in villages quite separate from the influence of the cash economy. The villagers have become convinced that, at both the provincial and national levels, politicians are self-serving and uninterested in their welfare. Traditional social arrangements had already begun to disintegrate under colonial rule. The adoption of an inappropriate Western legal system has only exacerbated the agony of cultural fragmentation. Tribal fighting has resumed in the Highland provinces, but under more murderous rules than in the past. As the traditional society in the village disintegrates, many young people flee to the urban ghettoes of Port Moresby and Lae to face almost certain unemployment followed by a descent into crime. The challenge remains to evolve a system that combines the strengths of traditional leadership with the ideals of modern government, giving due legal weight to the fraught claims of land ownership by the numerous clans.
On my return to the ‘executive floor’ of my hotel, I passed psychedelic kiosks and wrecked cars in the oppressive heat and scalding rain. Luxury expatriate enclaves seemed to be going up everywhere on higher ground. Segregation has made this a city divided against itself. The cool, spacious lobby transported me to a different planet to that inhabited by my ‘new friends’ on Ela Beach, and the grim reality of their settlement homes. This was the arena where exploitation and ‘aid’ were strategically planned by company generals. The sunset from the elevation of the executive floor was sublime; copper and tarnished brass shot through with blue. This luxurious scene was decidedly different from the wild 1920s when Tom McCrann’s hostelry in Moresby displayed a notice in the saloon:
Men are requested not to sleep on the billiard table with their spurs on.
At dinner there was an astounding mixture of guests. A tattooed Scot was having dinner with an Asian engineer.
‘Glad you’re on the fuckin’ project, Wang. You’ve got a degree.’
A German trio who had run out of time were attempting to negotiate a price for the ethnic decorations on the hotel walls. A heavily-tattooed Pacific islander in a black sleeveless singlet, chiselled black beard and jeans patched with grandmother’s chintz was eating soup and tugging at his pearl earring. A Belgian photographer with a ponytail was talking to a glamorous Parisian collector of artefacts from the Maprik region who had a gallery in Aix-en-Provence.
‘Every week I ’ave ze fever on ze exact same day!’ she exclaimed in desperation.
A newly-rich Highlander was eating a roast chicken, juggling greasy drumsticks in both hands and attempting to talk on a mobile phone. Pallid Englishmen and tanned Australians were earnestly discussing football and drink. They had the weak eyes and the furtive mouths of social casualties, bolstering their own false optimism or drowning betrayals in liquor.
‘The free drinks are from five thirty to six thirty. Don’t come after or we’ll have to pay.’
‘Right, mate!’
‘They’re tough men the South African rugby team!’
‘Blood oath! Fuckin’ tough!’
‘Hides like a rhinoceros!’
‘More like a fuckin’ elephant, mate!’
‘Fuckin’ tough.’
‘Yeah. Fuckin’ tough, real men.’
‘Fuckin’ tough!’
‘Yeah, fuckin’ …’ and so on, endlessly, whilst downing bottle after bottle of South Pacific lager.
A huge butterfly enamelled in iridescent blue battened against the glass door leading out to the swimming pool. A Chopin nocturne floated across the lounge from the Papua New Guinean pianist playing a grand piano. I wandered over at this unexpected appearance of European culture and spoke to him.
‘You’re playing Chopin,’ I rather pointlessly observed.
‘Yes. I studied classical music for many years. Do you have a request?’
‘Not classical. Jazz. Can you play “Misty”?’
‘Sure. If you like jazz you might like my novel. It’s on the music stand.’
A small pile of paperbacks entitled The Blue Logic: Something from the Dark Side of Port Moresby by Wiri Yakaipoko was stacked on one side above his fluent fingers.
‘What’s your novel about?’
‘It’s a crime novel about Moresby. Plenty of it around here to write about.’ I could hardly disagree.
Chopin, jazz and crime are an odd mixture. Unexpected conjunctions and unpredictable outcomes were to become a feature of all my travels in Papua New Guinea. I went to bed suffering from a blinding headache which seemed to come from the combination of the anti-malarial drug Lariam
(#ulink_a5850b26-1e16-59c8-8754-565b9683842f) and alcohol.
The next day the usual horrors were introduced quietly under the door of my room via the dailies.
A youth was chopped to death and two houses burnt down in the Kaugere suburb of Port Moresby over the weekend.
Under the banner headline ‘Patients Hungry’ we learn that patients’ food was stolen from Modilon Hospital in Madang.
A thirteen-year-old sex worker said, ‘My aunt kicked me out because she said I slept with her husband. Prostitution is fun and I get a lot of money.’ Tribal fighting now takes place with homemade guns, grenade launchers and Kalashnikovs rather than spears.
The city looks more attractive on my birthday. Red and mauve bougainvillea are flowering, Ela Beach looks inviting and the frangipani spiral down in pink and white. I decide to go for a walk. Outside the US Embassy I am almost arrested for writing down the sign NOKEN PARK LONG HIA meaning ‘No Parking’ in Tok Pisin (Pidgin).
The evolution of Melanesian Pidgin (or bêche-de-mer English, as it was popularly known in colonial days) was complex. There are many regional varieties of this colourful and witty language which originated on the Pacific plantations of Queensland, Samoa and New Caledonia in the early eighteenth century. It had emerged fully formed by about 1885 and is still evolving in rich referential complexity. Around eight hundred or one seventh of the world’s languages are spoken in Papua New Guinea. Some two hundred are Austronesian spoken in the coastal and island regions, and the remainder are Papuan spoken in the Highland areas. There are three lingua francas – English, Motu (spoken in Port Moresby) and Tok Pisin.
Outside the Westpac Bank a huge Alsatian and armed guard in a baseball cap stand in the centre of three signs warning ‘Beware of the Dog’. The brooding atmosphere of male unemployment hangs about like a miasma, and I have not seen a white face in three hours. Huge holes in the pavement and deep storm-water channels offer possibilities of serious injury. The light burst of a glowering Melanesian face suddenly smiling. At the Port Moresby Grammar School, children in pale uniforms are caged up in a security tunnel hung with plants waiting to go home. Fishing trawlers of unbelievable decrepitude are moored at the wharves. Thick, black smoke pours from their funnels, the idle crews lounging in the shade of tarpaulins or carrying huge tuna by the gills. One boy drops a plastic bag full of silver sprats that cascade over the wharf like pirate’s treasure. Six mothers breast-feeding babies inexplicably sit in the broiling sun on a concrete platform raised above a potholed road. I slip into the shade of the Port Moresby Public Library. An eerie silence reigns, but people greet my unexpected presence with smiles of surprise. Useful titles such as Australian Imperialism in the Pacific and Tuscan Cuisine grace the shelves.
A friend, John Kasaipwalova, had invited me for a birthday dinner. He is a prominent and controversial Papua New Guinean poet and writer and was a student rebel during the drive for Independence in the 1970s. He is also chief of the Kwenama clan on Kiriwina Island in the Trobriands, one of my destinations. I was collected in a Mitsubishi Pajero with gigantic bull-bars, a fantastically cracked windscreen and peeling sun filters. John has a round friendly face framed by a halo of tightly curled hair, his sensibility a rich repository of poetic image and symbolic knowledge. But entrepreneurial activities tend to preoccupy him these days, as he attempts to balance the claims of individual business and his responsibility to his own clan community. He was accompanied by Mary, his attractive Malaysian wife, and ‘Uncle Sam’, who drives the Pajero with fearsome spirit, thundering over unsealed roads past striped drums marking dark detours. While avoiding a cavernous pothole, he asked me to guess his nationality. His mother turned out to be from Sri Lanka and his father an unusual mixture of Dutch, Portuguese and Australian Aboriginal. ‘Dad’s family moved about quite a bit.’ Under an Australian bush hat he had the long grey beard of a swami and spoke with a slight Indian accent. It was a striking face, a colonial cocktail.
The shopping precinct that housed the Chinese restaurant was protected by a high security fence with bars two inches thick, armed guards, slavering dogs and a searchlight.
‘It’s a gourmet place!’ explained Sam as we parked among a crowd of children.
We were shown into a private room with intense fluorescent lighting. Geckos erupted into life on the walls like surrealistic wallpaper. Sam’s gold rings glinted on his slender fingers and the cutlery was reflected in his melancholic eyes.
Delicious coconut prawns, chilli crab and coral trout with tender asparagus appeared like magic. The conversation ranged lethargically over many topics, as if we were in an island village. They were shocked to learn of my walking alone in Moresby and even more surprised when I mentioned the young boys.
‘I’m hoping to go to the Trobriands quite soon, John.’ I briefly outlined my island itinerary.
‘You’ve made the best decision in choosing the islands. How come the Trobriands?’
‘Well, it’s a short story that’s taken a long time to complete. I bought a tabuya
(#ulink_234df5ba-8a26-55f2-a346-2b72c4630945) or wave-splitter from Kiriwina in an artefact shop many years ago. It’s been in my music room in London for ages, and I’ve always wanted to visit where it was made.’
‘I can tell you that the tabuya has been watching you. The design symbolises bulibwali or the eye of the sea eagle [osprey]. You had to come. His eye never sleeps, you know. In an instant he decided on you as his particular fish. That’s why you came. It’s very simple.’
‘Do you really believe this?’
‘Of course. You’re a person who possesses concentration. You plan and attend to detail. Am I right?’
‘Actually, yes. I drive people mad with it.’
‘There you are!’ John reached for more coconut prawns in an ebullient mood. He continued his arcane explanations with some seaweed poised between chopsticks in midair. I wanted to hear an account of the famous kula trading ring from the chief of a clan. I was anxious to know if the classical descriptions were still accurate.
‘Tell me something about kula, John.’
‘Well, first you must understand the mystery of Monikiniki or the Five Disciplines of Excellence.’
‘Sounds a bit complicated.’
‘Never! It’s simple! The disciplines are symbolised in the five compartments of a Trobriand mollusc shell. Each compartment represents one of the senses and is represented by a bird, plant or even a grasshopper. The eye is represented by the bulibwali or the sea eagle.’
We had moved into the realm of myth and magic for which these islands are famous, rather daunting for a European unused to the sharing of mystical experience.
‘But what is kula exactly?’ I was impatient as usual.
‘That’s not easy to answer, but basically it’s an activity of giving and receiving between people that results in them growing spiritually.’
‘But doesn’t it involve trading valuable soulava or necklaces in a clockwise direction around certain islands and mwali or arm shells in a counter-clockwise direction?’
‘Of course, but they’re only the outward manifestation of the activity, in fact the consummation of it. The objects accumulate power as they pass from hand to hand over time. Some might even kill you. But it’s the quality of this experience that’s important.’
I began to be drawn irresistibly into the rich mythological world of the Trobriand Islands, so unlike the sterility of my own empirical society where success seemed the sole criterion. I began to look forward to my trip with keen anticipation. A couple of lines of a poetic song concerning the kula came to mind.
Scented petals and coconut oil anoint our bodies We’re ready to sail with the south-east wind
John fell silent and took some more chilli crab. The mood had become serious yet our state of mind was happy and free.
‘I’ve never been to the yam festival in the Trobes. Never managed to get there. God knows why.’ Sam trailed off and adjusted his hat to a more comfortable position. He reached for some more coral trout.
‘God’s saving you, Sam, from a long period of self-abuse,’ John observed. Everyone laughed heartily. The yam festival is famous for its ecstatic expression of sexual freedom in celebration of the harvest and the end of ten months hard gardening.
Myth and magic give life meaning in the islands. We discussed the weighty word kastom. It is an essential Pidgin concept that derives from the English word ‘custom’ but with a more complex Melanesian meaning and multifarious connotations. It is normally used in reference to traditional culture that has come under threat from aggressive European development. But kastom cannot be simply translated. There are many contradictions within this multilayered concept. The idea has led to a strong cultural revival as regional identities become increasingly diluted. People are always talking about the loss of it. Closeness to nature and the traditional sense of belonging to a community are being replaced by the desire for individual consumption. European technology dominates modern life in the cities, yet a profound need remains for the unseen worlds of magic and religion. A further complication is the extreme cultural diversity of the country. Many distinct cultures have been wilfully cobbled together into the artificial political entity known as Papua New Guinea. Cultural differences are ignored, or worse, attempts are made to diffuse them.
‘More chilli crab?’ Sam spun the lazy susan.
‘Do you know there is a ruined temple on the top of Egum Atoll?’ John said, secretively.
‘Yes, and flat stones with magical properties on Woodlark Island,’ his wife whispered.
It was getting late. We emerged from the restaurant into the glare of security searchlights. The massive gates swung open and we drove out of the compound. Uncle Sam began to sing the praises of Port Moresby as we drove back into town. Mansions surrounded by high fences topped with glistening razor wire, signs painted with cartoon-like dogs and guards posturing with guns, spun through the headlights. Dark hills sprinkled with twinkling lights reared on either side of the highway.
‘Nothing is as beautiful as this in the world!’ Sam suddenly exclaimed with great feeling.
I spent a restless night poring over maps, anxious to leave the place. Papua New Guinea can be broadly divided into the mountainous interior, the coastal regions, great rivers and the island provinces. My decision to explore the islands had come from their extreme isolation, their reputation for beauty, tranquillity and the preservation of their ancient cultures. Near Moresby, the start of the Kokoda trail had been closed by tribal fighting. There were reports of a white, female bushwalker who had been raped even though she was with a local guide. This constant threat of violence in the capital had begun to depress me. I was tired of being holed up for safety in a luxury hotel with paranoid expatriate businessmen planning the disintegration of a culture for profit. My jumping-off point for the islands would be Alotau, the capital of Milne Bay Province at the eastern extremity of the mainland. From there I could leap aboard a banana boat
(#ulink_2591bbc4-0051-5238-8b96-7a6fb704a94e) to Samarai, the traditional gate to the old empires.
(#ulink_54086fc4-7196-5a0a-bc59-3787e645e701)‘Somebody shot at me. Everything around here’s pretty bad. It’s completely buggered up!’
(#ulink_326a351f-baa3-5919-993d-99075c56896a)‘Port Moresby’s a good place.’
(#ulink_ec877a61-a3ef-57c4-b655-4409ed6ce0b5)Public Motor Vehicle – these minibuses are considered to be dangerous for visitors, but in my experience they were a source of all my best conversations and friendships with local people.
(#ulink_d171a1b2-b897-58fc-a166-d242c7f36287)‘Good morning, boys. How’re you?’
(#ulink_6674fa73-7afc-5d4f-8000-897fb85f418b)‘Fine thanks, Sir.’
(#ulink_40540860-5002-5278-82d7-be09a241756c)‘We can’t afford university.’
(#ulink_7f762aef-b7ea-5da5-bd4e-c79911404690)‘Thanks very much for talking to us, Sir.’
(#ulink_64cd5c84-3fe1-52e0-9854-4bed3681ca17)Sir Michael Somare was born in 1936 in Rabaul, East New Britain. He led the Pangu Pati (Party), the largest and most influential political party in the move towards independence in 1975. He became the first Prime Minister of independent Papua New Guinea from 1975–80 and again from 1982–5. His membership of the Pangu Pati ended in 1997 and he formed the National Alliance Party which won a comfortable majority in the violent 2002 elections. After seventeen years, Sir Michael Somare, ‘the father of the nation’, was elected Prime Minister for a remarkable third term.
(#ulink_4df6f921-1f48-53ab-ae6d-59ee1841bef5)Mefloquine or Lariam (the trade name) is the most powerful of the anti-malarial prophylactics. Unlike other drugs, it protects against the fatal strain of cerebral malaria. It can have disturbing psychological side-effects.
(#ulink_6ccb450a-e4c8-5069-812a-db85d5eaee33)A tabuya is the prowboard of a Trobriand canoe.
(#ulink_69d7b43c-9010-5ac4-83b1-36dc300ab484)The term ‘banana boat’ has nothing to do with bananas or their transport. It refers to the shape of the innumerable fibreglass dinghies fitted with forty-horsepower outboard motors that ply the islands and coast of PNG like noisy water insects. They have taken the place of the elegant sailing canoes of the past, which have almost completely disappeared. They sometimes carry suicidal numbers of passengers, often travel enormous distances across open ocean, and never take a single life jacket. Many simply disappear, the occupants lost to drowning or sharks.
3. ‘No More ’Um Kaiser, God Save ’Um King’ (#ulink_52a29f05-1bca-5c4a-bb3a-86fa83ca8cff)
Australian Military Proclamation 1914
East of Java and West of Tahiti a bird of dazzling plumage stalks the Pacific over the Cape York Peninsula of Australia, her head almost touching the equator, tail looping above. In her wake she spills clusters of emeralds on the surface of the sea. These are the unknown paradise islands of the Coral, Solomon and Bismarck Seas, the islands lying off the east coast of Papua New Guinea.
As a child I had been captivated by the monolithic Moai statues of Easter Island. Painstakingly, I built a balsa replica of the Kon-Tiki raft on which Thor Heyerdahl tested his theories of the migration of the Incas and their sun-kings across the Pacific to Polynesia two thousand years ago. As I carved, lashed and rigged my diminutive vessel, I dreamed the boyhood dreams of distant voyages to the South Seas with only a green parrot for company. My seafaring uncle, Major Theodore Svensen,
(#ulink_3f20cfbf-4b5d-5096-b1a8-e16942e71c79) a former naval draughtsman born in Heyerdahl’s own Norwegian coastal town of Larvik, was a veteran of the Boer War and the Gallipoli Campaign in 1915. He stoked my imagination with tales of the sea and foreign campaigns, his budgie chirruping on his shoulder, a large tropical butterfly tugging against the thread that tethered it to a palm trunk in his garden.
‘Useless to read books m’boy! Head for the front line! Go to the islands – that’s the last virgin land. Sail before it’s too late!’ he would thunder as he waxed his magnificent moustache, jabbing with a finger at yellowing maps. Many years were to pass before I could attempt such a voyage to Melanesia, and in many ways it turned out to be sadly too late.
