Catherine and Jon's adventures in PNG

Oh boy it is 2 weeks since we got back to chilly Melbourne – but it has been an eventful two weeks – Jon submitted his manuscript on time and on budget last week and I have had my yearly scanning regime and have been given the all clear today, which makes it 5 years cancer free – yippee. I have now graduated to yearly check-ups (rather than quarterly) – another reason to celebrate.

So it is really time to sign off the PNG blog and actually get ready for the Fiji blog – we are jetting off there in July and will be there until December. Jon suggested I could call the blog ‘Kava and Coups in Fiji’ given the current political situation there – fun and games no doubt are ahead.

Well since, as I said, we are in chilly Melbourne I thought I would for this last blog give you a taste of tropical Moresby:

Tropical plants and flowers

I do love the tropical plants and flowers, you can’t help feeling happy when you see them. Frangipani trees, bougainvillea and Hibiscus grow everywhere. And as I have previously mentioned PNG has over 3,000 orchid species.

I think you would call these palm berries

And of course in the tropics things grow big – this is one of the giant snails which would come out at night. And I won’t mention the toads that also came out to frighten Jon at night.

Cocktails

And what are the tropics without cocktails – we were sorry we only found this range of spirits on our last night in Moresby. Sadly we passed on them for an unwooded Chardonnay – there was not a Sav Blanc to be found – Australia is obviously sending all its Chardonnay to PNG, as that was all that seemed to be the only white wine to be found.

Students playing rugby at sunset

I forgot to share these photos earlier – I took them at Parliament House when I attended a great seminar called Women, Kastom and Modernity in PNG.

These last photos of the coral reef were taken flying back to Cairns from Port Moresby.

So this brings us to an end of our PNG adventure – there is so much more I could have shared – but this will have to wait until we return hopefully next year.

So now stay tuned for our Fiji adventures coming soon ....

Art is a very important way Papua New Guineans express their cultural heritage. It is an area I would like to explore more, to understand its meaning. Below I will share some of the snaps I was able to take around Port Moresby.

Sculpture and carving (Wooden)

As I have mentioned in a previous blog, some of the sculptures you encounter are really the stuff of nightmares and in fact were probably designed to be so - to ward off evil spirits etc. Jon remembers as a child visiting the Port Moresby Museum and being absolutely terrified and refusing to return.

The motif which I liked (or rather was fascinated by the) most was this figure which is either eating or regurgitating a crocodile - he appeared in a number of locations:

Magi Seafood restaurant

PNG Art gallery

The mask with the toad (just because Jon hates toads)

Some other interesting sculptures at the PNG Arst Gallery

Duk Duks

Last trip to PNG I was a little obsessed by mudmen, this trip it was Duk Duks.

Now here goes with my very limited knowledge in describing a Duk Duk - they are full body costumes worn by men during ceremonies and SingSings (festivals) – though I suppose originally they would have been used to scare off enemies and evil spirits. They seem to come in a variety of shapes and motifs – here are some which were on display at the PNG Arts gallery (on the Poreporena Highway):

This was my favourite round-about with a Duk Duk

Our three little Duk Duk souvenirs

Painting

The majority of paintings you see for sale in Port Moresby are in a naive style with vibrant colours. At the Art Market at the PM Arts Centre we did, however see some that I suppose you would call more traditional western styles of painting.

I loved this painting which was just propped up against a wall at the Uni, as if it was on the way to the dumpster. It uses a motif of tribal people sitting in an aeroplane – which we saw in a number of paintings.
It is not until you go to the domestic airport in Port Moresby that you realise how reliant PNG is on air transport, as many of the locations are nearly impossible to reach via land. Thus it is not surprising that aeroplanes should feature in their art.

Outside the Holiday Inn each morning artists set up their paintings for display, stringing them between trees. Along with paintings, there are also bilums (string bags) in every colour imaginable and baskets and platters made by weaving plant materials. The little market is a riot of colour.

This is an example of the type of baskets they weave.

Religious Art

You really can’t understand modern PNG without an appreciation of the influence Christianity and the work of missionaries has had in the development of the country (good and bad).
Thus naturally Christian ideas have come to influence some artists. These photos were taken in St John’s Anglican Cathedral in PM.

Jesus as depicted here is very much a Melanesian man

This is the Altar which depicts a very Papua New Guinean scene showing the baby Jesus, Mary and the angels in a village context.

The Stations of the Cross have a Melanesian flavour

Finally the statue of Mary and Jesus depicts a simple village woman with her baby

Contemporary Art

We came across Steve (in pink shirt below) at the Art market at the PM Art Centre. We loved his quirky welded sculptures. If we were staying put in PNG longer, we would have definitely got some of his large pieces.

The Statue which Steve’s friend has his hand on is actually a copy of the famous WWII photo of the “Fuzzy Wuzzy Angel” assisting the injured Australian solider down the Kokoda Track.

We settled for a small piece showing some hunters returning with a wild pig. Although I had also been keen on the Duk Duks.

Later in the week after meeting Steve at the Market, we came across his work again at the Ela Beach Hotel (not that it was identified):

‘The Gallery’ in Gordon's is a great place to go to get some contemporary PNG art.

I fell in love with their Meri dolls, so Jon got me this one last year. Her name is Turu ka – each doll has its own name.

We liked the graphic on this T-Shirt by local artist Hesso Kiwi. It looks as if it has been made by fuzzy hair and of course is depicting a Fuzzy Wuzzy Angel and an Australian soldier during WWII

We also managed to add to our ever growing PNG Pig collection

And should we ever take up betel nut we now have an authentic lime container

Our lovely students also gave us some going away presents which they made for us.

And finally Parliament House is also a work of art in itself

Prior to visiting PNG for the first time the Australian scientist and writer Tim Flannery had heard the tales of savagery and violence about the land he was about to visit. Despite this, on arriving in Port Moresby he was unprepared for the amount of ‘blood’ he saw splattered on the streets, seeming to affirm the stories he had heard.

However, it did not take long for him to realise that this was not in fact blood but rather the result of PNG’s favourite pastime - chewing and spitting buai.

Tim, like all of us who have visited, soon realised that rather than being a bunch of bloodthirsty savages, the majority of Papua New Guineans are amongst the world’s politest, kindest and albeit very shy, friendliest people. Unfortunately many have this rather distasteful habit of chewing and spitting buai – which could be easily mistake for blood as shown in the pictures below.

This area looks as if a massacre has taken place - it is actually where PMVs and cars slow down to go around a round about, so hence a great place to spit your buai

One of the many cars which fall victim to buai splatter

Since this is a very important part of life in PNG I have done some research on betelnut and how to use it.

Step One – Purchasing the betel nut

As mentioned previously little mini market stores are propped up all along the roads with the majority selling betel nut.

Our favourite set of stalls were set up in the park (or should I say vacant land) across the road from the City Hall. They proudly displayed their produce under the sign stating ‘No selling betel nut, smoke, food’ - you could buy all of the above and more in the park.

I purchased two betel nuts for two kina from this lady. The going price really is 50 toea each (1/2 kina), but I really wanted the photo. I had the photo developed, discreetly cutting out the sign, and gave it to her – she was very pleased and is now my new best friend.

What you cannot see in this photo is that her teeth are stained red and are rotting, which is a result of excess betel nut chewing.

Step Two – Preparing the betel nut

Betel nut is actually a fruit/seed from a particular type of palm.

You peel the outward layer which reveals a whitish pinkish flesh as shown below.

You break off some of the flesh and start chewing it.

Step Three – Adding Mustard and Lime

Now I must admit I didn’t get the lowdown about what the ‘mustard’ is – basically it looks a bit like a twig: you break a piece off and dip it in the lime. The lime is a white powder made by baking and grinding certain shells into a powder. The lime is what causes the teeth to rot as it is very alkaline.

Lime powder

Mustard that has been dipped in lime

After dipping the mustard into the lime you put it into your mouth with the betel nut and start chewing.

Step Four – Chewing and spitting

As you chew this mixture it goes a deep red/orange colour, which is easily mistaken for blood and you start to salivate like a rabid dog.

The reported affects of betel nut are – numbness in the mouth, relaxation and a slight euphoric feeling. One friend said they like having it after a meal like some people like a cigarette to relax them. Though for some people it can act as a mild stimulant like drinking a coffee.

Because you salivate so much you need to spit a lot and basically people spit anywhere and anytime – out the window of a moving PMV/Car is particularly gross.

So doesn’t this just make you want to go out and have some betel nut? I have refrained from doing so but Jon has tried it once. He could not cope with the salivation so he spat it out pretty much straight away and had no effect.

Of course PNG is not the only place in the world that has betel nut – Taiwan for example has it but you rarely see the spit and it is sold on the road in glass booths with flashing lights by sexy young girls in short skirts – quite sleazy really – not PNG’s style.

Betel nut signs

Along with the betel nut splatter you see many signs asking people not to chew it in various locations here are some of our favourite:

The University Library

The Hertz rental car

Up and down Waigani Drive

In the Vision City Mega store

Today the winds are blowing; they started on Friday heralding the change of the season here in Moresby. Port Moresby apparently has six seasons which are largely influenced by the way the winds are blowing. Jon remembers his father teaching him about them, when he was a child growing up here, although now he can only remember the names of two - Laurabada and Lahara.

I was pleased to find out that the Laurabada blows all the mosquitoes away, so I can go a bit easier on the Bushmans. They return during the Lahara when the winds come from the direction of the tropical rain forest.

The winds also bring relief from the heat, although for us southerners we would still consider it a warm summers day, whereas the locals consider it positively cold, especially at night and thus start pulling out the cotton blankets (or even a doona, as one local told me) to go on the beds at night.

Port Moresby from the air

It is probably time I started to describe Moresby for those of you who have never visited. It is actually quite a spread out city, with a number of suburbs that are mainly divided by the hill range which weaves through the city. Along with established suburbs there are an increasing number of squatter settlements, which are largely a result of the lack of affordable housing here.

Flicking through the newspaper during the week I read an article, which stated the average public servant salary was 500 kina a fortnight. Then looking through the rental section of the same paper the cheapest house for rent was 800 kina a week – which gives you an idea of the issue of affordable housing for the average Port Moresby resident. (At the moment the Kina = $0.36 AU).

As the name suggests Port Moresby has a very large and deep port, which is protected by a coral reef. The water is a beautiful aqua.

Looking down on the PM port

Ships waiting to dock at port

Pier on Ela Beach

The view you have when you come over the hill from Waigani

The area around the port is referred to as ‘Down Town’. It is the business and financial district. The American embassy is also located there. Like all ‘down towns’ parking is always fun, for example, on Friday we went in for a meeting and found a street park but when we came out we found we had been parked in by a number of cars double parking – so we had to go off for a coffee until the other cars had moved. It was our own fault for not parking in the street where street kids guide you into a park for a few kina and then ‘look after’ your car while you are away.

Down Town

Ela Beach is close to Down Town

The original villages around the Port Moresby were built on stilts over the water

Unfortunately schooling is not free in PNG and thus there are always school aged children on the streets eking out a living, which can be anything from collecting empty bottles to fill with water or selling newspapers to motorists. On the ‘Down Town’ pavements people have set up their little stores, which they call ‘mini market stalls’ (basically a piece of board propped up as a small table showing all their wares) selling almost anything from used shoes, mobile phones, cigarettes (sold by the cigarette not the packet) and of course betel nut. Now I think I will have to dedicate a whole blog to betel nut and its prevalence in PNG.

Mini market stall selling betel nut at a PMV stop

Selling shoes down town

The pavements are stained by betel nut, which is chewed and then spat out – leaving blood coloured stains wherever it lands. Apart from these stains the streets are very clean compared to other cities. The City Council employs an army of workers to sweep the streets – you see people in their yellow/orange vests sweeping along the sides of roads every week day.

Posters encouraging people to keep Moresby clean

You do get a sense the locals are proud of their capital city. Many of the roundabouts have beautiful sculptures depicting the richness of PNG’s culture.

Some of the roundabouts

Nevertheless, driving around you are aware that it is a city from the ‘third world’ given the size of the pot holes. No street is free of them and they do terrible things to a car’s suspension, so no wonder most motorists are driving huge four wheel drives or pick-up trucks, as some of the pot holes could easily swallow a normal sedan. Last night we dropped a student home – as soon as we turned into the residential streets the roads turned to dirt and the holes got larger. Nicky (the student) wanted to know if the roads in Australia were like those in Moresby – pot holes included.

Some of PM's infamous pot holes

Of course driving is for the privileged and the majority of Moresby’s residents get around on foot or travelling on overcrowded PMVs (small buses which are the extent of PNG’s public transport.) They have tried to overcome the overcrowding of PMVs by getting the NRL (National Rugby league – like the rest of the Pacific nations PNG is rugby mad but in their case it is League) on board with an awareness campaign about the dangers involved with overcrowding – with Australian League players speaking in Tok Pisin in the advertising campaigns. Many PMVs have large stickers on them shaped as a rugby ball stating ‘Road safety – it’s not a game’. You also see a lot of people travelling in the back of trucks and utes – whole families in some cases.

Truck with ‘Road safety – it’s not a game’

PMV which has seen better days

You see many trucks/pickups which are associated with Christian groups driving their members around

Not surprisingly the newspaper reported last week that PNG has the highest road toll in the whole of the Pacific. It is, however, hard to compare PNG with say the Cook Islands, the main island of which only has one road going around the island. PNG also has the largest population of the pacific islands with over 6 million, making it larger than New Zealand.

The area we are staying is called Waigani. You reach it from down town by going over and through a cutting in the hills that surround the port area. This is where the parliament, public administration offices and the university are located. Most of the building date from post independence (1975). This is also where the new RH Mega Mall Vision City is located.

The actual landscape could probably be compared to the hinterland of the Gold Coast; in that it is a bit scrubby but also has lovely tropical plants eg frangipani trees and palms. The hillsides are patchworked with farming plots – many locals still rely on subsistence farming for their food.

Wood smoke is a feature of the PM landscape

Throughout the city there are open air markets where the locals shop and as there is in ‘Down Town’ mini market stalls are set up along the roadsides. Last night when we were driving through the residential areas you would see these little stalls set up with a cut bottle being used as a lantern selling drinks, cigarettes, betel nut etc.

Now I’m sure you will all be pleased to know that the front page of today’s paper announced “Ramu Sugar back on sale” the sugar shortage will soon be over. This exciting news bumped the news of the opposition party changing their leadership team in preparation for next year’s election, to page two.

So it has been a week since I arrived here and how time flies when you are having fun. I have been helping Jon out in his lectures and tutorials, which has been fun and interesting – though I have to confess I did not attend yesterday’s 8am lecture. The students are all so quietly spoken, speaking just above a whisper - which makes it hard for those of us who are hard of hearing at the best of times. They are also very reluctant to answer questions in class – even though they know the answers. So yesterday to try and encourage them out of their shells, we brought out the old butchers paper, split them into groups, gave them time to answer questions in their groups and then had two students from each group present to the class what they had discussed. This worked a treat, each group presented very well (funny they are happy to stand up and present but not so happy answering questions in class). So we think this is the way to handle tutorials to encourage participation.

Jon in action during a tutorial

On the weekend we got caught up with the excitement of the opening of the RH Vision City MegaStore. This is the first shopping centre to open in PNG in probably 20 years. The most exciting news is that there will be a cinema opening sometime this year as part of the complex – PNG has not had a movie cinema for over 25 years.

We rode the escalators with all the other excited children, many of whom had never seen an escalator before. Did you know you could walk up backwards, sit down or even go up the wrong way on an escalator? The young boys were having such fun exploring all the different things you can do going up and down the escalators. If they weren’t riding the escalators people were having their photos taken in the grand new mall.

On Friday night we were a little concerned when at 10.27pm we heard large explosions coming from outside – we went out onto the balcony to investigate but could see nothing. If only we had read more carefully the 32 page supplement that had come with the Friday newspaper about the grand opening (did I mention ‘The National’ newspaper is owned by the same people who own the new Mega Store) we would have known that the explosions were in fact fireworks – who lets fireworks off at 10.27pm at night, in a country where people don’t stay up or out late? (Obviously the same person who thought it was a good idea to use the blower/lawn mower at 11.25pm in our garden last night).

On Sunday we headed out of town, with two university colleagues, to have lunch at the Bluff Inn, which is situated on the Laloki River, on the way to the start of the Kokoda Track.

Jon sitting outside at the Bluff Inn. Local children played and swam in the river behind us, while their mothers washed clothes in the river.

Bushmans is my favourite friend up here in malaria country. However on this occasion it actually seemed to attract these tiny little bush bees, which seemed quite intoxicated with the smell of Bushmans.

After lunch we called into the newly opened National Orchid Garden and Bird sanctuary. PNG has over 3,000 orchid species and as an orchid lover I thought I was in Paradise. The bird sanctuary had a wonderful range of Birds of Paradise and parrots.

Jon having a chat to a Papuan Hornbill

On the way home we stopped off at the Bomana War Cemetery – which is the main Australian/Commonwealth War cemetery in PNG. The grounds are kept beautifully – Jon remembers having family outings there as a boy and playing between the headstones with his brothers.

Bomana War Cemetery

Please note we have been somewhat technologically challenged here as internet access is not that reliable so the updates might be a bit sporadic. Also we forgot the charger for the camera so we have been reduced to using the iphone - but hope to resolve this on the weekend.

Best wishes and love to you all,

C&J