Only in PNG

Things I've learned in PNG

• Opening a coconut with a bush knife (machete) is NOT as easy as locals make it look and should NOT under any circumstances be attempted by inexperienced white girl.

• Wearing a swish blazer over head to toe army fatigues is a pretty rocking look.

• The 'sitting next to a crazy person on the bus experience' is a lot more entertaining in Pidgin.

• Cockroaches can fly.

Things we say in PNG

"I can't wait to get back to Australia so that I can treat my fungal infection."

"Shut up and drink your coconut."

"Who wants to crush up our doxy and try and snort it?"

FEVER! In the morning, fever all through the night.

I’ve had my first run in with mysterious tropical virus. I was completely bed ridden for almost a week and am only just on the mend. It wasn’t Malaria because the slides were negative, but was perhaps Dengue. Although we will never know because the hospitals Dengue tests were all expired!

I spent a good 5 days straight in bed with a fever, sweating, and sleeping far more than I was awake.

Whatever it was, I have survived my first bout of tropical sickness and have emerged back to the world of the living with nothing but amusing tales and muscle deterioration!

Melanesian compassion and hospitality

I have been so overwhelmed by the care I have been given while I have been sick. Looking after one and other is so deeply ingrained in Melanesian culture, which was more apparent than ever when I was under the weather.

All the staff from the station were texting and calling me each day, making sure I was ok.

My lovely counterpart from work came to my house to deliver me supplies; juice and imported Aussie fruit. And AMAZINGLY Cadbury chocolate! Which you cannot buy anywhere in Alotau! Her husband had brought it back on the dinghy from his rugby trip to a different province… and she had sacrificed it for me! In my fragile, sick state I seriously almost cried.

Our haus meri (housekeeper) would come and check on me every day and was offering to bring me soup. The bar staff from the lodge across the road even came by to see how I was doing!

Diagnoses and remedies; right, left and centre

The funny thing about being sick around here is that everyone throws in their two cents. Everyone has their diagnosis for you despite having absolutely no medical expertise. I was informally diagnosed with everything under the sun. One person’s Pneumonia is another person’s Malaria, which is another person’s Flu.

Everyone also has their own remedy for the problem; from massaging your capillaries to shots of whisky.

This time at least, bed rest seemed to do the trick.

Going to the hospital

There are no GPs here so no matter what is wrong with you, you go to the hospital. And not only the hospital, but the Accident and Emergency ward at that!

Alotau has comparatively great medical facilities when compared to the rest of the country (a health system which is often considered to be in crisis, and was described by a former PNG health minister as ‘bloody useless’).

Even so, my visits to the hospital were pretty eye opening.

However, as a white person you are never privy to the full extent of the conditions. I experience ‘positive discrimination’ pretty often throughout daily life (I don’t get patted down and searched by security guards when leaving each shop for example) and the hospital was no different.

On my first visit, despite the fact that there was a full waiting room of patients, I as the only white person, was seen to first. I also knew the doctor’s brother which in PNG goes a long way!

The next few visits were not as easy.

Among the things that I encountered;

-          There was a used needle on one of the benches in the waiting room. It had the plastic covering on it, but it was still a used needle, laying around in a health facility, in a country where transmissible diseases like HIV are extremely prevalent. It was still there when I returned the next day.

-          There is sometimes a bit of a queue system operating in the waiting room and people shuffle down the benches as people are slowly seen to. There was a space on the bench near the front of the line where no one had been sitting the whole time I had been waiting. People would shuffle up the line, but always around that one spot. As I got closer, I realised why. There was blood all over the seat.

-          The place where you go and pay hospital fees, there is a list of costs for each service (consultation, blood test, etc). In amongst all of the usual hospital services, there are also the morgue fees for each day that you leave a dead body in the hospital. Death is just another everyday part of the hospital experience.

Amazingly though, getting medical attention is pretty cheap. A consultation with a doctor cost 2 Kina (approx. $1AUD). Any medication they prescribe is also 2 Kina. A small consolation for waiting hours on end to see a doctor in a waiting room with blood in it, I guess.

All in all, being sick here made me realise how lucky we are in Australia. Being here, I have the comfort of knowing that if I get sick I will be med-evacced back to Australia to get medical attention. Most people don’t have that luxury, and relying on the health system alone would be terrifying.

A compelling case for vegetarianism

What even are giblets?

Machete Mowers

Machete wielding men doing some garden maintenance!

This is how we mow the grass in PNG. Machetes, or bush knives as they are known locally, are used for just about everything.

It looks like hard work as well. To cut the small patch of grass in front of our studio we had two men working on it for two full days.

It is common to walk past people in the street holding giant bush knives. In Alotau at least, they are rarely used for fighting. Mainly for gardening, opening coconuts etc.

And they are not limited to adults. I've children holding bush knives the same size that they are. Children are totally gipped in Australia... We're not allowed to run with scissors and these kids can do whatever they want with enormous potential weapons!

Playing Soccer in PNG

Playing soccer in PNG has certainly been an experience!

It’s a different game here.

There’s no other way to describe it.

Community sport is a massive part of PNG life. For the entire weekend, rain or shine, scores of people can be found around the sports field; playing sport, watching sport, talking about sport.

Needless to say it was quite the entertainment when a ‘dimdim’ (white girl) decided to try her luck at joining a local team.

Becoming a celebrity athlete…

Each weekend on the radio we do a regular sports segment. Apparently me playing soccer was newsworthy enough to make the cut and I was forced into the studio to discuss my soccer debut. This was broadcast just hours before our game – meaning that when it came to game time the oval had attracted a bigger crowd than I have ever seen there. All out to check out the white girl.

Furthermore, apparently it was appropriate to make an announcement about me on the loud speaker during the game! The officials have a tent set up on the side of the field with a PA and they announced to the crowd who the white girl was, where I was from, what I was doing here, my soccer background, etc etc etc. I don’t think I have ever been such a spectacle!

Under - resourcing…

There is one sporting field in Alotau. It is used for both soccer and rugby. For women’s soccer alone there are 19 teams. Every team needs to share the oval. As a result, games are played in 20 minute halves so that each team has a chance to play.

The mud, always the mud…

Alotau gets more rain than just about anywhere in the world! The pitch is constantly being rained on, and constantly being played on. It is an absolute mud pit. No joke, there are puddles so big that frogs live in them.

Several times I have had to change the way I was dribbling in the middle of games because all of a sudden there was a frog hopping in front of me.

Even though the games are only 40 minutes long, the mud makes it such hard yakka. The game here doesn’t involve much passing or dribbling. It’s more of a kick and run affair. I’m beginning to realise that this may have evolved not through lack of coaching but out of pure necessity of getting around the mud!

Rituals…

Before every game, we say a prayer. At half time, we say a prayer. After the game, we say a prayer.

I may not be religious but I actually think that this is lovely.

It’s more just a time to reflect and be thankful. The types of things said include; we hope that we are able to support each other today and that we are blessed with a good result, we hope that the referee is fair, and that our opponents have a safe game. They often thank god for the experience of having me on their team and hope that they will learn all they can. After the game they pray that everyone makes it home safely.

These are all things that I would think of when playing back home, but here it’s all open and voiced. And although it’s to a higher power, I think it’s just nice that it’s said and considered at all.

The PNG of it all…

The pitch that we play on, though muddy, is stunning. It’s right by the water and surrounded by palm trees.

I’ve never seen the level of sportsmanship displayed here anywhere else in the world. After each game both teams huddle together in a big group hug and chat about the game before everyone is individually acknowledged and hugged!

There is no kind of planning, communication or strategy on the field. But it seems to work.

All in all, soccer in PNG is pretty metaphoric of my everyday life in here; a good spirited, relaxed, friendly type of organised chaos that I rarely understand.

 

 

Accidently voicing my first ad...

Apparently in PNG when you’re minding your own business trying to do some work and someone casually strolls up to you, hands you a piece of paper and says “Hey Annie, can you read this?”, what they actually mean is; “ Hey Annie, can you familiarize yourself with this information while I immediately herd you into the recording studio where you will read the words on this paper aloud into a microphone fit with a recording device in the tone of voice that I specify so that we can mix it with corny music and create a 30 second advertisement to be broadcast on the radio several times a day for the coming weeks? Kthanks”

We are living in a security world, and I am a security girl

Milne Bay proudly boasts the reputation of "the safest place in PNG".

And, truly, I feel it.

But it's impossible to ignore that while it's comparatively safe, this is still PNG.

We live in a lovely house, in a lovely area. But still we have bars on all of our windows, locks on our bedroom doors and 24 hour security guards patrolling our street.

In saying that, I don't really notice it. The bars become just part of the scenery, the security guards are just friendly guys who we chat to in the street.

Things do go wrong here. Not often, but they do. When things do happen, it's the locals that get really upset about it. It's nice to see that it's not just something that is expected as it is in other areas. They are sad to see what is happening to their province, and quick to lay the blame on people coming in from other areas of the country (specifically, highlanders!).

I have found the local perception of, and response to, crime to be quite interesting.

In my first week here there was a particularly horrific event in which a junior police officer was shot dead by some criminals following a hold up.

The community was just absolutely devastated. But the blame wasn't laid on the criminals themselves. There was limited talk about retribution or anything like that. The response centred more around the sadness that services, the authorities, the administration had failed these people and they'd turned to crime as a result. For the most part, people weren't wishing harm on the young fellow who had masterminded the robbery, and in turn, the shooting, They were sending their prayers for him, that he would find peace and a life free from crime, and that his ultimate judgement would be fair.

It was horrible that these things happened and that people had been hurt, but it was humbling to see a community in mourning with such compassion and love for their fellow humans, even when they had strayed.

Living here, you are certainly afforded much more freedom than those in other areas of the country. But you still have to be mindful.

"Be alert, not alarmed. Walk with purpose. Think of plans B, C and D." Are the types of advice that we live by.

Your safety lies largely in your connections. I am really lucky to be working in the media because it means that my colleagues are very well connected, and through my affiliation with them have scores of people looking out for me. I know that if anything happened to me there would be hell to pay and it's really comforting to know that. Making friends who drive armoured vehicles and have bullet proof vests also helps :)

My new office....

"Annie, this is your new office. Please don't suicide on these cables"

The Power of Journalism

I’d like to share a story that was shared to me by my colleagues – with both great sadness and great pride.

In 2011 they were tasked with putting together a story under the category of ‘governance’. They travelled to remote Islands off the coast of Milne Bay to investigate claims that government services, especially education, were not reaching these people.

They travelled long distances to remote areas of the province, and what they uncovered was alarming.

Trained teachers are scarce as it is, and they are even more reluctant to take up remote postings where the funding is poor, the resources are limited and the quality of life is poor.

What they found was a community of children who had been sent by their families to get whatever little education they could from the one island centre where there was what could loosely be categorised as a school.

The children were living by their own means with no adult supervision. They had formed their own community among their makeshift housing. Sometimes they had food, sometimes they didn’t. They weathered the challenges of being separated from their families and having to provide for themselves and look after each other at such a young age because receiving what little primary education they could was the priority.

My colleagues recounted the compassion and sadness they felt for their people upon seeing the circumstances in which these children were living, just to be able to receive an education – a basic human right.

Many of them were holding back tears while interviewing the children and often ended interviews so they wouldn’t break down. The recordings were often shaky because the person holding the equipment was crying.

They told of two brothers who had tried to canoe home to their island during the school holidays. The older brother was rowing and lost control of the canoe when a giant wave came and they capsized. The older brother was pushed under water and when he surfaced, he couldn’t find his younger sibling. Distraught, he searched and searched the deep waters, but he couldn’t find him.

Days later a group of fisherman saw something in the water and paddled over. It was the young child, face down in the water, his school bag still on his back.

Arriving back to the mainland, my colleagues broadcast the story on the Milne Bay airwaves. It triggered a chain of reaction. The community was devastated to hear the disadvantage suffered by their brothers and sisters on the islands. The next day the provincial authorities were forced to act, triggered by community outrage. Radio had been the catalyst for addressing a problem that had previously been unheard and out of sight. I could tell it was a very proud moment in my colleagues working life and such a powerful testament to the importance and value of information.

Soccer: Finding a Team

It was a massive bummer to leave my beloved soccer team back home and I had very little hope for being able to find any women that played in Alotau at all.

To my surprise and delight, Soccer is the number one sport among women here.

And a side note to the die hards and tragics out there; you’ll be pleased to know that they call it ‘football’

My first day of work had come and I decided that I’d try and make conversation with the Driver when he came to pick me up for the first time. I mentioned that I was keen to find a team and he obviously made it his personal mission to find me one.

And find me a team he did!

Thirty minutes later he said they had been thinking of some options.

One hour later they presented the team options to me depending on where I was looking to live and each team had been contacted to ask if they would take me.

Amazing how efficiently some things can happen here when others, not so much…

 

Getting recruited right, left and centre

All of a sudden everyone wanted a piece of me.

They had no idea whether I could actually play or not, but that didn’t seem to matter.

On my first weekend, I went out to watch a game. Several people approached me to ask what my story was and the all-important question – did I have a team!

It got to the stage where when being introduced to people on the street I would be met with responses like:

 “Yes I know you, you were the one who was going to play for our soccer team, but now you’re playing with that other team, why are you playing with them? You should be playing with us.”

I had never seen that guy in my life by the way.

The Original Market Economy

We are very fortunate to have an excellent open air food market, where you can get some great produce. But again it largely comes down to luck of the draw with what’s available. This can be exciting, but it’s hard to plan what you’ll be eating and disappointing when the options are limited.

But above all, the market is a great experience. Fresh coconuts for around 30-60 toaea (approx. 15-30 cents Aussie) each… AMAZING. Given the complete Adelaide lack in this area, I was drinking a coconut a day for at least my first two weeks!

The market sells plenty of goodies; bananas (of ALL varieties, even those I didn’t know existed), coconuts old and young, an amaaaaaaaaaaaaazing variety of tropical fruits; paw paw, star fruit, sugar fruit (passion fruit?), ‘Lemons’ also known as grapefruit!. I will never, never get sick of eating delicious fresh tropical fruit everyday… and so cheaply!

While it can be difficult to get the types of veggies were accustomed to back home there are plenty of veggies on offer at the market; Taro, pumpkin, an array of root vegetables I can’t tell a part or even begin to try and name, hoardes of ‘greens’ of different varieties some of which look like they should be in the garden not on your plate but they are delish.

There’s also a range of seafood on offer – including giant fresh mudcrabs for around $5 Aussie dollars. Incredible.

And of course, there is the Buai…. Always the Buai….


 

Foraging for food in Papua New Guinea

Foraging for food has been a part of PNG life for thousands of years, and is a custom I have become quite familiar with… My foraging however takes place not in the mountainside, off a canoe or in the village, but in the aisles of Alotau’s various ‘supermarkets’.

Food shopping in Alotau is… different to say the least.

For an itty bitty town it seems to have more supermarkets per capita than anywhere I’ve ever been.

The problem is that no one supermarket stocks everything, so I find myself zigzagging amongst them non-stop just to get basic food items.

The stock is also completely unpredictable. Alotau relies heavily on imports which means that all of a sudden random products disappear from the shelves for long periods of time.

Finding fresh foods in the supermarkets can be really challenging. You can generally rely on being able to scrounge up some browned cabbage and some blackened carrots for extortionate prices but that’s not terribly inspiring day to day.

One of the supermarkets plays top 40 music really loud, so whenever I’m in there I feel like I’m shopping in some kind of really well lit PNG night club.

The stores are almost exclusively owned and run by Filipinos (there is quite a large Filipino community here) and a large percentage of the food available in the supermarkets is Filipino.

There is also a range of products that look deceivingly familiar to what we would be used to on the shelves back home (twisties, coke, etc) but they all sport the logo ‘PNG Made’ which means they taste completely different and are much worse for your health. There is also heaps of Malaysian knock offs (Tim Tams, Oreos) which means that a lot of these foods have the comfortable familiarity, mixed with mild disappointment.

Some things I have found about food shopping:

1)      Absolutely nowhere in this town can you buy fresh milk, yet you can buy lavish items like cocktail strainers and (if you’re willing to shell out 400kina) TEN KILOS of Mozzarella.

2)      The meat here makes a very compelling case for vegetarianism.

3)      No item is too small or too minor for a plastic bag.

The obsession with knowing where everyone lives….

In Australia, if you were to ask someone you just met where they live (I’m not talking what suburb, I’m talking geographic coordinates) they would think you were a creep and perhaps even report you to the local authorities.

Here, “where do you live?” is just about the first question people ask me.

I tried to play dumb about not knowing all the names of places and being a little bit vague to try and gloss over the question. But I’ve found that there is generally some well-meaning Papua New Guinean within earshot who tries to ‘help’ the poor foreigner out by saying my exact address. All of my “Ummm, ahhhh, I don’t know the name, we’re about to move anyway, it’s next to that place where those other people live” are interrupted with a ‘helpful’ “she lives at ***** Lodge, Unit 20.” Face palm.

People aren’t satisfied with a simple I live in this suburb, or I live at this guest house. No, they want exactly what residence, how much rent you pay for said residence and what your cooking facilities are like.

The below is a fairly standard type of conversation for me, but I certainly had a bit of a giggle at this. My boss was asking me about a friend of mine, this is how the conversation went:

“Your friend, where does he live?”

“Middle Town”

“Middle Town? Where in Middle Town?”

“Not sure”

Then with an extremely serious tone in his voice, he ACTUALLY said this, no joke:

“We must trace him”

A day in the life: Expecting the Unexpected

I began my day a little cross because there had been dogs in outside my window fighting all night. The dogs here are not domesticated pets like back in Australia, they are completely ravenous. When they fight they sound like enormous and enraged bears. Their growling and attacking had disturbed my sleep at unpredictable but constant intervals throughout the night. At around 2.30am, the fighting seemed to stop. Suddenly. I wondered if someone had reached their limit and hit them over the head with the shovel. At that moment of exhaustion and frustration – I didn’t care if they had. (Some people eat dogs around here by the way).

I woke tired and frustrated at my lack of sleep. I went to have a shower to snap out of it. No hot water. This has become fairly standard in our current temporary accommodation. Most of the time I am happy to have a shower with only the warmth of whatever sun the pipes had managed to muster. This was not one of those times.

With a coffee in my system I decided I would walk to work and enjoy the beautiful morning air that only the tropics can provide.

People are supposed to be at work at 8am. It was now 8.20, but the boss wanted to go down to the Market so he could stock up on his beetlenut.

We arrived at work, none of the staff were there. One dropped in to say she wouldn’t be at work that day. She had to attend a Haus Krai (kind of like a wake.. on steroids). Rituals around death are a massive part of PNG culture.

The rest of the staff trickled in at around 9.30. Our editorial meeting could now begin.

Following the editorial meeting, the reporters were to embark on collecting their stories for the day. No car. Someone had taken it out to cover an event outside of town. We waited another hour for the vehicle to return.

While waiting, conversation turned to the hottest work place topic of the moment. My supposed “romance” with one of the local Filipino business owners. This is a romance of the fictional variety, established from the boredom of my colleagues. My boss has taken to calling him his ‘Tambu’ which roughly translates to son-in-law. (In Melanesian culture, family titles such as father, mother, daughter are not limited to biological relations. In the past couple of weeks I have become the sister, the aunty, the daughter of many, it’s really touching to be a part of).

The banter was monentarily interrupted by a series of police and response vehicles speeding past. My colleagues assumed there had been a hold up. We found out later that day it was the petrol station. I was expecting that someone from the station would need to go down there and cover the story. I forgot where I was for a minute, it’s unsafe for our journalists to report on local crime in PNG.

When the vehicle had returned, we went out to one of the local highschools, which will soon host the annual Cultural Show. The Cultural Show is an exciting event where the youth of the area don cultural dress from their respective areas and do traditional performances. Like any good PNG event there is also feasting. I had met the organiser by chance while out covering another story. He said he was hoping he would run into me again as he had decided he would like me to judge the competition for King and Queen. Yes, apparently you can have cultural King and Queens. It sounds very Miss Universe-esque - they are asked a series of questions that they must respond to and they are judged on key criteria. Hot tip to any contestants reading this: If you answer any question with “world peace” you’re a winner.

On the way back to the station we encountered people on the side of the road selling grilled food. We decided to pull over and had fried banana on a plate of banana leaf. It was a pretty delicious lunch that cost 2kina for all of us (approx $1). Over this shared lunch my colleagues were educating me on more Melanesian culture; where everything is shared, and everyone looks out for each other. No matter what.

We returned to the station and the rest of the day was spent much like most other days in the station; chatting. Or, “sharing stories” as my colleagues call it. We read the newspaper and talk about PNG politics, they teach me about rugby (It brings them great joy that I’m Australian and they know more about the game, the players and the teams than I do), we watch Bougainvillian video clips (autotuned reggae is the most accurate description I can muster).

I went for my daily walk into town to try and do some grocery shopping. There are a surprising amount of supermarkets in my two street town. Four in the main street. But no one shop stocks everything. So I find myself zigzagging between them to find what I need, and at the best price.

After being here for only a short time, I can’t go anywhere without seeing someone I know. Or seeing people that I don’t know, but that know me (“hey, I heard you were going to play on our soccer team, why are you playing with that other team?”). Or the inevitable chat that you end up having automatically when you encounter another white person. Because… They are another white person.

One of the other Aussies with the program, Rob, is working with a local fishing company. He texts to let me know the boat has just come in with some beautiful fresh fish. He asks if I’d like him to bring some to my work on his way home that I can buy on the cheap. $27 a kilo back home, 4Kina a piece in PNG… straight off the boat and hand delivered.

I got dropped home and had my usual after work snack – a coconut (annnnnd a couple of knock off oreos from Indonesia).

My roomie, and fellow AYAD, Em, arrived home shortly after. We debriefed on our days; while I had been bonding with my colleagues over Bougainvillian rap music, she had been educating people on Domestic Violence against women in PNG. Hmmm.

At about 7pm I began to prepare dinner, stoked to be cooking my fresh fish, thinking to myself “how PNG is this”. Half way through cooking the power went out. Typical. I thought to myself with much less enthusiasm “how PNG is this”.

Em and I retrieved our matching emergency wind up camo torches designed for tsunamis and sat on the couch by torch light waiting for the power to come back on. By the time the power came back on, I had to start cooking dinner all over again. Three quarters of the way through cooking, the power went out. Again.

This was my day. It doesn’t describe every day, but today was an example of the range of things that happen here and make up my daily life. Living in PNG is the most incredible experience and my heart feels so full every day. Things don’t always go to plan here. Actually, things rarely go to plan here. But that is the charm of the place. PNG never fails to remind you why it has gained its title of the ‘land of the unexpected’. This is why each day I conform more and more to the well weathered advice of local people and expats alike, and expect the unexpected.